[1] Veatch was active in the Episcopal Church and served as president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.
In 1970–71 he served as president of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association.
Veatch was a major proponent of intellectualism, an authority on Thomistic philosophy, and one of the leading neo-Aristotelian thinkers of his time.
A staunch advocate of plain speaking and "Hoosier" common sense, in philosophy and elsewhere, he argued on behalf of realist metaphysics and practical ethics.
[2] Veatch's most widely read book was Rational Man: A Modern Interpretation of Aristotelian Ethics (1962) which explicitly offered a rationalist counterpoint to William Barrett's well-known study in existential philosophy, Irrational Man (1958).