1
VITA
William S. Hamrick
Address: 7052 Pershing Avenue
St. Louis, MO 63130
Telephone: (314) 8622299
Present Title: Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University
Edwardsville
Last positions within the university: Chair, Department of Philosophy, 1 July 2002-30 June
2003
Executive Assistant to the Chancellor: 1 July 2003-1 June 2005
Date of Retirement:1 June 2005
Major Areas of Specialization
Continental Philosophy, especially Maurice Merleau-Ponty; metaphysics, especially
Alfred North Whitehead
Academic Degrees with Institutions and Dates
A.B. in PhilosophyDePauw University May 1966
M.A. in PhilosophyIndiana University June 1968
Ph.D. in Philosophy Vanderbilt University May 1971
Ph.D. in PhilosophyKatholieke Universiteit LeuvenDec 2008
Scholarships, Fellowships, Organizations, Special Recognition
Rector Scholarship, DePauw University 19621966
Ford Foundation Teaching Grant, DePauw University 1966
University Fellowship, Vanderbilt University 19681970
National Humanities Series Grant for Community Education 19741975
Illinois Humanities Council Grant for Senior Citizens Program 19741976
National Science Foundation Chautauqua Short Course in Bioethics19771978
SIUE Graduate School Summer Research Fellowships 1978, 1979
Election to Phi Kappa Phi Honorary Society 1984
Outstanding Teaching Award, SIUE Department of Philosophy 1989
NEH Summer Seminar on “After Post-Structuralism: The Individual in Contemporary French Thought,” with Thomas Pavel, Princeton University 1996
Winner of the Edward G. Ballard Prize from the Center for Advanced
Research in Phenomenology for the best book in phenomenology
during the previous three years [Kindness and the Good Society, Connections of the Heart (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002] 2004
VariaRelated Professional Experience
Program committee of the Society for the Study of the History of Philosophy 19741975
Program committee of the Society for the Study of Process Philosophies19751984
Member of the Executive Council, Metaphysical Society of America2003—
Metaphysical Society representative for ACLS2003—
Member of the Editorial Board for Human Studies2007—
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Associate Editor and
later Member of Editorial Board1982—
Executive Committee, British Phenomenology Society 1983—2007 Varia--Related Professional Experience, cont.:
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy organizer of annual meeting and chair/commentator for Vincent Descombes' "The Fabric of Subjectivity" 1983
Principal Organizer for the annual meeting of the International
Merleau-Ponty Circle 2002
Chaired 2 papers at the annual general meeting of the British Society for Phenomenology, Oxford, April 1984
Attended and cotaught a seminar in Philosophy for Children, Collège de Philosophie, Paris, October 1984
Referee for book ms. on the philosophy of law for Martinus Nijhoff 1986
Chaired 2 papers at the annual general meetings of the British Society for Phenomenology, April 1995, 1996
Chaired a paper at the annual general meeting of the Illinois Philosophy Association, November 1996
Chaired 2 papers at the annual general meetings of the Merleau-Ponty Circle, September 1996, 1997
Moderator and Commentator on Wesley DeMarco’s “A Continuum of World-Negating Acts,” Metaphysical Society of America annual meeting in Boston, 4 March 2010
Professional and Learned Societies
American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division 1970
British Society for Phenomenology 1977—
International Merleau-Ponty Circle1996--
Metaphysical Society of America 1973
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy 1969--
Society for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy 1978
Society for the Study of Process Philosophies 19701984
Tennessee Philosophical Association 19721980
Professional Speeches, Panels, etc.
"Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty," St. Louis University Philosophy Department colloquium, February 1972.
"Some Notes on the Will to Live," Center for Process Studies Conference on Contemporary Brain Research and Whitehead's Process Philosophy, Claremont, CA, February 1975.
Commentator on "Robert Neville's "The Psychiatrist: A Philosophic Dialogue," Society for
Professional Speeches, Panels, etc., cont.:
the Study of Process Philosophies, in conjunction with the Metaphysical Society of America meeting, Boston, March 1975.
"Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty: Some Moral Implications," Society for the Study of Process Philosophies, in conjunction with the APA Western Division meeting, Chicago, March
1976.
“Ingarden and Artistic Creativity," International Ingarden Conference, Warsaw, June 1975.
"Some Difficulties of a Concrete Philosophy," Metaphysical Society of America meeting, Chicago, March 1976.
"Pribram's Biology and Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology," Center for Process Studies Conference on Whitehead's Philosophy and David Bohm's Physics, Claremont, CA, April 1976.
"Of Men and Machines: Photography as Art," American Society for Aesthetics meeting, Toronto, paper read by Edward Hudlin, October 1976.
"Qu'est-ce qui se passe aujourd'hui dans la philosophie américaine?" paper presented to the Department of Philosophy, Université de Caen, France, February 1977.
"L'Ethique chez Merleau-Ponty," paper presented to the Department of Philosophy, Université de Caen, February 1977.
"Towards a Phenomenology of Legal Rules," British Society for Phenomenology meeting in Oxford, April 1977.
"Humanity, Nature, and Respect for Law," International Society for Phenomenology and the Social Sciences meeting in Paris, July 1978.
"The Sense of Phenomenology," Tennessee Philosophical Association meeting in Nashville, November 1978.
"A Once and Future March," SIU-Carbondale Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series, December 1978.
"Towards a Phenomenology of Toleration," British Society for Phenomenology meeting in Oxford, April 1979.
"A Phenomenological Critique of Hart's Concept of Rules," International Association for Philosophy of Law meeting in Basel, August 1979.
Commentator on Frederick Schauer's "Free Speech and the Paradox of Tolerance," Royal Institute of Philosophy Conference on Law and Philosophy, Lancaster, September 1979.
"Post-literate Man," Center for Process Studies Conference on Whitehead and Education, Claremont, CA, October 1980.
"Interests, Justice, and Respect for Law in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology," Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy meeting in Ottawa, November 1980.
"Towards a Phenomenology of Kindness," British Society for Phenomenology meeting in Oxford, April 1981.
Professional Speeches, Panels, etc., cont.:
"Redeeming the Earth: Tragic Wisdom and the Plains Indians," Machette Foundation Lecture, Manchester Polytechnic Institute; repeated for the British Society for Phenomenology meeting in Oxford; both March 1982.
Commentator on Robert Barry's "Creativity and Social Institutions," Society for the
Philosophy of Creativity meeting in conjunction with the APA Western Division meeting, Columbus, Ohio, April 1982.
Chair and commentator for a symposium on phenomenology and ethics, Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy meeting at the Pennsylvania State University, October 1982.
Chair and commentator for Kenneth Stikkers' "Phenomenology and Economic Life," British Society for Phenomenology meeting in Oxford, April 1984.
"Whitehead and Marx: Toward a Political Metaphysics" (co-authored with James L. Marsh), Society for the Study of Process Philosophies meeting in conjunction with the APA
Western Division meeting in Cincinnati, April 1984.
"Free Speech and its Constitutional Applications," presented to the Department of Philosophy, King's College, University of Aberdeen, Scotland; March 1985.
"H.L.A. Hart and Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the Concept of Legal Rules," presented to the Human Sciences Seminar, Manchester Polytechnic Institute, March 1985.
"Interests, Justice, and Rights in the Phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty," paper presented to the Department of Philosophy, University College, Galway, Ireland, May 1985.
"Quelques Approches Concrètes de la Nature dans Kio and Gus, Société de Philosophie du Québec, Montréal, November 1986.
Commentator for Matthew Lipman's "Cretivity and Philosophy for Children," Society for Philosophy of Creativity" meeting in conjunction with the APA Western Division meeting in Chicago, April 1987.
"Civic Virtue, Democracy, and the Philosophy for Children Program," International Conference on Philosophy for Children, Graz, Austria, May 1987.
"SelfTransposal and the Moral Life," The Husserl Circle meeting at Washington University (St. Louis), June 1987.
"Aesthetic Education and the Philosophy for Children Program," Montclair Conference on Philosophy, Literacy, and Thinking Skills, June 1987.
"Coercion and Exploitation: SelfTransposal and the Moral life," The British Society for Phenomenology meeting in Oxford, April 1989.
"Phenomenology and the Philosophy for Children Program," 3rd annual meeting of the International Council for Philosophical Inquiry with Children, Tapei, June 1990.
"Perception, Expression, and Corporeity," Commemorative Conference for MerleauPonty sponsored by the British Society for Phenomenology, London, May 1991.
Professional Speeches, Panels, etc., cont.:
"MerleauPonty and Lost Illusions," The British Society for Phenomenology meeting in Oxford, April 1992.
"MerleauPonty's View of Creativity and Its Philosophical Consequences," Society for the Philosophy of Creativity meeting with the American Philosophical Association Central Division meeting, Louisville, May 1992.
"Ethics, Mortality, and Compassion," Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy meeting in New Orleans, October 1993.
“Pragmatism and Literature,” The University of Amsterdam, March 1995.
“Virtue Revived,” The University of Maastricht, March 1995.
“Concrete Universals,” Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy meeting
in Chicago, October 1995 (read by James Marsh because of unforeseen illness).
“Fashion, Individuality, and Democracy,” Missouri Philological Society meeting in St. Louis, March 1997.
“A Process View of the Flesh: Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty,” 25th Anniversary Conference of the Center for Process Studies, Claremont, CA, 4-8 August 1998.
“Merleau-Ponty and Cognitive Science,” International Merleau-Ponty Circle meeting in July,
1999, Wrexham, Wales, UK.
“Phenomenology and Metaphysics: Merleau-Ponty and Whitehead,” Metaphysical Society of
America annual meeting, March 2003, Santa Clara University.
Commentator for Joseph Grange’s “Comparative Philosophy and Globalization,” Metaphysical
Society of America annual meeting, March 2004, University of Georgia.
“Thinking through Nature,” invited for the Metaphysical Society of America annual meeting, 7-8 March 2008.
“Art and the Overcoming of the Discourse of Modernity,” invited for a conference celebrating the centenary of the birth of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 14-16 March 2008, University of Sophia, Bulgaria.
“Topoanalysis,” the annual general meeting of the International Merleau-Ponty Society, 10 September 2009.
Publications
Books
Editor of, and contributor to, Phenomenology in Practice and Theory (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1985).
An Existential Phenomenology of Law: Maurice MerleauPonty (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987).
Kindness and the Good Society: Connections of the Heart (Albany, NY: State University of New
Publications, cont.:
York Press), 2002.
Co-editor with Suzanne L. Cataldi of Merleau-Ponty and Ecology: Dwelling on
the Landscapes of Thought (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007).
Accepted for publication: Minding Nature, A Whiteheadian Interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, State University of New York Press. Publication date: 2011.
Articles and Book Reviews
"Heidegger and the Objectivity of Aesthetic Truth," The Journal of Value Inquiry, Vol. V, No. 2, Spring 1971.
"Ingarden on 'Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Object',' Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. V, No. 1, January 1974.
"Fascination, Fear, and Pornography: A Phenomenological Typology," Man and World, Vol. VII, No. 1, February 1974.
"Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty: Some Moral Implications," Process Studies, Vol. IV, No. 4, Winter 1974.
"Ingarden on Artistic Creativity," Dialectics and Humanism, No. 4, 1975.
Review of Merleau-Ponty’s Adventures of the Dialectic, The Modern Schoolman,1975-76.
Review of Gabriel Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, The Modern Schoolman, 1975-76. Review of Cornelius A. van Peursen, Phenomenology and Reality, The Modern Schoolman, 1975-76.
"Persons and Other Students," Man and World, Vol XI, No. 1/2, 1978.
"Towards a Phenomenology of Legal Rules," Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. X, No. 1, January 1979.
Review of Wolfe Mays' Whitehead's Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. XI, No. 1, January 1980.
"A Phenomenological Critique of Hart's Concept of Rules," Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress on Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy: Contemporary Conceptions of Law, ed. Paul Trappe (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982).
"Language and Abnormal Behavior: Merleau-Ponty, Hart, and Laing," Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. XVIII, No. 1,2,3, 1983 (but published in 1985).
"Humanity, Nature, and Respect for Law," in A.-T. Tymieniecka, ed. Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XIV (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1982).
"Interests, Justice, and Respect for Law," proceedings of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Phenomenology in a Pluralistic Context, ed. Calvin Schrag and William McBride (Albany: SUNY Press, 1983).
"Redeeming the Earth: Tragic Wisdom and the Plains Indians," The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. XVI, No. 1, January 1985.
Review of Eugene P. Wratchford's Brain Research and Personhood, Process Studies, Volume
Publications, cont.:
12, Number 4, Winter 1982.
Translation of, and introductory essay for, "Merleau-Ponty [I]" by Jean-Paul Sartre, The
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. XV, No. 2, May 1984, 123-154. This is the first, unpublished version of Sartre's memorial article from Les Temps modernes of October 1961.
Phenomenology in Practice and Theory, editor (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1985). The
editor's contribution is an article entitled "Kindness."
Review of Robert Ladenson's A Philosophy of Free Speech and its Constitutional Applications, Philosophical Books, Volume 25, Number 4, October 1984.
"On Teaching Suki," Analytic Teaching, April 1984.
"Whitehead and Marx: Towards a Political Metaphysics," co-authored with James L. Marsh,
Philosophy Today, Vol. 28, No. 3/4, Fall 1984.
"Some Concrete Approaches to Nature in Kio and Gus," Thinking, Vol. VII, No. 2, 1987.
Philosophy for Children and Aesthetic Education," The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 23, No. 2, Summer 1989.
"Coercion and Exploitation: Self-Transposal and the Moral Life," Journal of the British Society
for Phenomenology, Vol. XXI, No. 1, January 1990. I also edited this issue as a special number dedicated to Herbert Spiegelberg.
"Herbert Spiegelberg: The Ironic Self," Human Studies, 15: 389-394, 1992.
"Phenomenology and the Philosophy for Children Program," in Matthew Lipman, ed. Thinking Children and Education (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., 1993).
"Perception, Corporeity, and Kindness," The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 25, No. 1, January 1994.
"Merleau-Ponty's View of Creativity and Its Philosophical Consequences," International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. XXXIV, No. 4, Issue No. 136 (December 1994).
"Law," invited contribution for the Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997).
“Comments on Wolfe Mays’ ‘Genetic Explanation in Husserl and Piaget,’” New Ideas in Psychology, Vol. 16, 27-30 (1998).
“A Process View of the Flesh: Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty,” Process Studies, Volume 28/1-2, Spring-Summer 1999, pp. 117-129.
“Maurice Merleau-Ponty: ‘Ethics’ as an Ambiguous, Embodied Logos,” in John J. Drummond
and Lester Embree, eds., Phenomenological Approaches to Moral Philosophy
(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), pp. 289-310.
“Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty: Healing the Bifurcation of Nature,” in Janusz A. Polanowski and Donald W. Sherburne, eds. Whitehead’s Philosophy: Points of Connection (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004, pp. 127-142.