Richard McKeon (/məˈkiːən/; April 26, 1900 – March 31, 1985) was an American philosopher and longtime professor at the University of Chicago.
McKeon obtained his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1920,[1] graduating at the early age of 20 despite serving briefly in the U.S. Navy during the First World War.
"[2] He then studied philosophy in Paris, where his teachers included Étienne Gilson, until he began teaching at Columbia in 1925.
As professor and, also starting in 1935, as Dean of the Humanities, McKeon was instrumental in developing the distinguished general education program of the Hutchins era at the University of Chicago.
McKeon was a central intellectual figure in United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) early years.
He investigated pluralism, cultural diversity, and problems of communication and community, at a time when such subjects were less than fashionable.
A series of three volumes of "Selected Writings" from his widely scattered articles is planned by The University of Chicago Press, of which Vol.
[3] In 1941 he notes that "Aristotle has become a force again in contemporary discussions", and that his writings have "disclosed greater applicability in present day philosophic problems than they have in centuries".
[3] Former students of McKeon have praised him and proved influential in their own right, including novelist Robert Coover, authors Susan Sontag and Paul Goodman, theologian John Cobb, philosophers Richard Rorty and Eugene Gendlin, classicist and philosopher Kenneth A. Telford, sociologist and social theorist Donald N. Levine, anthropologist Paul Rabinow, literary theorist Wayne Booth, and poets Tom Mandel and Arnold Klein.
Richard McKeon and the Committee on the Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods appear under thin disguise in Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
The scope of his work extends to virtually all philosophies and to the whole cultural history of the Western world while being ordered by semantic schema.
He viewed the aim of pluralism as not achieving a monolithic identity but rather a diversity of opinion along with mutual tolerance.
Notwithstanding, it does not necessarily acquire characteristics from the perspectives with which it is opposed; his philosophy, by nature, resists being pinned down by a single name.
Essentially, pluralism is closely related to objectivity; a desired outcome of communication and discussion and a fundamental goal and principle of being human.
Human beings come together around common issues and/or problems and their different interests and perspectives are often an obstacle to collective action.
McKeon's philosophy is similar to rhetoric as conceived by Aristotle, whereby it has the power to be employed in any given situation as the available means of persuasion.
In the later stages of McKeon's academic career, he started giving more attention to world problems (see UNESCO).
Rhetoric is able to navigate among the various kinds of arts and sciences providing an opportunity to interrelate them and set new ends which makes use of both spheres.
Along with John Dewey, McKeon (as Rorty does) deemed philosophy to be basically a problem-solving endeavor.
The work of Richard McKeon shows that, despite multiple, great failures, even up to the 20th century, rhetoric following Aristotle continued to 'put a spell over people'.