Today, I am going to start a series of occasional posts on the history of philosophy at Harvard University.  I have been doing some research about this, and I would like to share the fruits of my labor with you.  Harvard has had (and still has) a large and influential role in American philosophy, so it’s interesting to learn more about this history.
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Given the prominence and history of Harvard in American education, it is unsurprising that several famous figures have passed through the Department of Philosophy over the years.

Three of the Department’s most famous visitors are Bertrand Russell, Rudolph Carnap, and Alfred Tarski. These three taught at Harvard during the 1940-1941 academic year: Russell and Carnap in the Department of Philosophy, and Tarski in the Department of Mathematics. [1]

Yet, we may number more than philosophers among those who have passed through the Department. There are poets among these ranks, most notably Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955) and T. S. Eliot. (1888 – 1965). Stevens attended Harvard from 1894 to 1897 as a non-degree special student, and became close to George Santayana – in fact, one of his later poems is “To an Old Philosopher in Rome,” written in homage to his old mentor. [2] Stevens maintained a life-long interest in philosophy, as evidenced in his poetry and essays. [3]

On his part, Eliot attended Harvard from 1906 to 1910, taking his A.B. in the latter year. He spent the next several years studying philosophy and traveling in Europe, submitting a dissertation in philosophy to Harvard in 1916. However, he was not awarded a Ph.D., since he did not return to Cambridge for a dissertation defense. Philosophy would be part of the fabric of Eliot’s work for much of his life.

Finally, J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904 – 1967), the father of the atomic bomb, included philosophy among his studies during his undergraduate years at Harvard. Bird & Sherwin (2006) write that, as a concentrator in chemistry, he attended Whitehead’s 1924 course on the Principia Mathematica. [4]  They also include a letter of Oppenheimer’s to a friend, in which he notes that he spent a good deal of time studying in Robbins Library. [5]  Oppenheimer, a gifted polymath, retained an interest in philosophy, especially Asian philosophy, throughout his life.

Notes:

[1.] For those who are curious, the Harvard President’s Report for 1940-41 lists their respective courses, along with enrollment numbers: http://hul.harvard.edu/huarc/refshelf/AnnualReportsCites.htm#tarHarvardPresidents.

[2.] A copy of this poem can be found at http://englishhistory.net/keats/old-phil.html.

[3.]  See Stevens, W. (1997).  Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose.  New York: Library of America.

[4.] Bird, K. & Sherwin, M.J. (2006).  American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.  New York: Vintage Books, 34-35.

[5.] Bird & Sherwin (2006), 35.

Here are the February 2009 reviews from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews:

Philosophy of Law

• Peter Goodrich, Florian Hoffmann, Michel Rosenfeld, Cornelia Vismann (eds.), Derrida and Legal Philosophy, Reviewed by Douglas Litowitz, Magnetar Capital LLC

Moral & Political Philosophy

• Kelvin Knight, Aristotelian Philosophy: Ethics and Politics from Aristotle to MacIntyre, Reviewed by Peter C. Meilaender, Houghton College
• Charles Larmore, The Autonomy of Morality, Reviewed by Richard Kraut, Northwestern University
• Jennifer S. Hawkins, Ezekiel J. Emanuel (eds.), Exploitation and Developing Countries: The Ethics of Clinical Research, Reviewed by David DeGrazia, George Washington University
• Christopher Woodard, Reasons, Patterns, and Cooperation, Reviewed by Rob Lawlor, University of Leeds
• Hilde Lindemann, Marian Verkerk, Margaret Urban Walker (eds.), Naturalized Bioethics: Toward Responsible Knowing and Practice, Reviewed by Rosemarie Tong, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
• Jon Miller, Rahul Kumar (eds.), Reparations: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, Reviewed by Bernard Boxill, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Christopher Bennett, The Apology Ritual: A Philosophical Theory of Punishment, Reviewed by Gabriel S. Mendlow, Yale, Law School and Department of Philosophy
• Bob Brecher, Torture and the Ticking Bomb, Reviewed by C.A.J. Coady, University of Melbourne
• Michael J. Murray, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, Reviewed by Mylan Engel Jr., Northern Illinois University
• Michael Thompson, Life and Action: Elementary Structures of Practice and Practical Thought, Reviewed by Paul Hurley, Claremont McKenna College

Philosophers and History of Philosophy

• Penelope Deutscher, The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Ambiguity, Conversion, Resistance, Reviewed by Gail Weiss, The George Washington University
• Michael Della Rocca, Spinoza, Reviewed by Michael LeBuffe, Texas A&M University
• Daniel Garber, Béatrice Longuenesse (eds.), Kant and the Early Moderns, Reviewed by Andrew Janiak, Duke University
• Katherin Rogers, Anselm on Freedom, Reviewed by Thomas Williams, University of South Florida
• John Preston (ed.), Wittgenstein and Reason, Reviewed by Daniel D. Hutto, University of Hertfordshire
• Robert Mayhew, Plato: Laws 10, Reviewed by Nathan Powers, The University at Albany (SUNY)
• Elizabeth S. Radcliffe (ed.), A Companion to Hume, Reviewed by James A. Harris, University of St. Andrews
• Stewart Candlish, The Russell/Bradley Dispute and its Significance for Twentieth-Century Philosophy, Reviewed by James Levine, Trinity College, Dublin
• Diane Perpich, The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, Reviewed by Lisa Guenther, Vanderbilt University
• Frederick C. Beiser (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, Reviewed by Robert M. Wallace, www.robertmwallace.com
• Henry E. Allison, Custom and Reason in Hume: A Kantian Reading of the First Book of the Treatise, Reviewed by Karl Schafer, University of Pittsburgh
• Todd May, The Political Thought of Jacques Rancière: Creating Equality, Reviewed by Miguel Vatter, Universidad Diego Portales
• Maria Rosa Antognazza, Leibniz: An Intellectual Biography, Reviewed by Gregory Brown, University of Houston

Critical Theory

• Nikolas Kompridis, Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future, Reviewed by Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame

Philosophy of Language

• Clive Cazeaux. Metaphor and Continental Philosophy: From Kant to Derrida, Reviewed by Jeffrey Powell, Marshall University
• Jerry A. Fodor, LOT 2: The Language of Thought Revisited, Reviewed by Mark Wilson, University of Pittsburgh

Aesthetics

• Yuriko Saito, Everyday Aesthetics, Reviewed by Tom Leddy, San José State University
• Scott Walden (ed.), Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature, Reviewed by John Andrew Fisher, University of Colorado at Boulder

Perception

• Paul Coates. The Metaphysics of Perception: Wilfrid Sellars, Critical Realism and the Nature of Experience, Reviewed by Matthew Burstein, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown

Personal Identity

• Simon J. Evnine, Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood, Reviewed by Krista Lawlor, Stanford University
• David Shoemaker, Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction, Reviewed by Amy Kind, Claremont McKenna College
• Neil Feit, Belief about the Self: A Defense of the Property Theory of Content, Reviewed by Cara Spencer, Howard University

Philosophy of Religion

• Michael Ayers (ed.), Rationalism, Platonism and God, Reviewed by Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Johns Hopkins University

Logic

• Douglas Walton, Chris Reed, Fabrizio Macagno, Argumentation Schemes, Reviewed by Leo Groarke, Wilfrid Laurier University

A short administrative update: I will be in tomorrow, as my plans have changed.

Now, for our main attraction: here are the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews from August 2008.  Should any of these be added to the Robbins collection?

Epistemology

• Jeffrey Blustein, The Moral Demands of Memory, Reviewed by Sue Campbell, Dalhousie University
• Yujin Nagasawa, God and Phenomenal Consciousness: A Novel Approach to Knowledge Arguments, Reviewed by Uwe Meixner, University of Regensburg
• Sanford C. Goldberg (ed.), Internalism and Externalism in Semantics and Epistemology, Reviewed by Hanseung Kim, University of Seoul
• Simone Gozzano, Francesco Orilia (eds.), Tropes, Universals and the Philosophy of Mind: Essays at the Boundary of Ontology and Philosophical Psychology, Reviewed by Keith Campbell, University of Sydney

History of Philosophy

• Christian Lotz, From Affectivity to Subjectivity: Husserl’s Phenomenology Revisited, Reviewed by A. D. Smith, University of Warwick
• Samantha Frost, Lessons from a Materialist Thinker: Hobbesian Reflections on Ethics and Politics, Reviewed by Stewart Duncan, University of Florida
• Johann Georg Hamann, Writings on Philosophy and Language, Reviewed by Ted Kinnaman, George Mason University
• Douglas Hedley, Sarah Hutton (eds.), Platonism at the Origins of Modernity: Studies on Platonism and Early Modern Philosophy, Reviewed by Eric Schliesser, Leiden University
• William F. Bristow, Hegel and the Transformation of Philosophical Critique, Reviewed by Paul Franks, University of Toronto
• Allen Speight, The Philosophy of Hegel, Reviewed by Mark Alznauer, Sweet Briar College
• James Hankins (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, Reviewed by E. Jennifer Ashworth, University of Waterloo
• Keith Green, Bertrand Russell, Language and Linguistic Theory, Reviewed by Bernard Linsky, University of Alberta
• Santiago Zabala, The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy: A Study of Ernst Tugendhat, Reviewed by Robert Sokolowski, The Catholic University of America
• Francis J. Ambrosio, Dante and Derrida: Face to Face, Reviewed by Donald G. Marshall, Pepperdine University

Philosophy of Law

• Douglas Husak, Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law, Reviewed by John Gardner, University College, Oxford
• Douglas E. Edlin (ed.), Common Law Theory, Reviewed by W.J. Waluchow, McMaster University

Philosophy of Science

• Steve Fuller, Science v. Religion? Intelligent Design and the Problem of Evolution, Reviewed by Sahotra Sarkar, University of Texas at Austin
• Michael Ruse, Charles Darwin, Reviewed by Bruce Weber, California State University, Fullerton/Bennington College

Philosophy of Religion

• Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, Reviewed by Michael L. Morgan, Indiana University

Metaphysics

• Peter van Inwagen, Dean Zimmerman (eds.), Persons: Human and Divine, Reviewed by William R. Carter, North Carolina State University
• Laird Addis, Ontology and Explanation: Collected Papers, Reviewed by Katalin Farkas, Central European University, Budapest

Historiography

• Jonathan Gorman, Historical Judgement: The Limits of Historiographical Choice, Reviewed by Paul A. Roth, University of California, Santa Cruz

Moral & Political Philosophy

• Robert B. Talisse, A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy, Reviewed by David Hildebrand, University of Colorado Denver
• Larry May, Aggression and Crimes Against Peace, Reviewed by Douglas Lackey, Baruch College/Graduate Center, CUNY

Here are the July reviews from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.  Are any of these books candidates for inclusion in the Robbins collection?

Philosophy of Language

Frederik Stjernfelt
Diagrammatology: An Investigation on the Borderlines of Phenomenology, Ontology and Semiotics
Reviewed by Valeria Giardino, Institut Jean Nicod (CNRS-EHESS-ENS), Paris

François Recanati
Perspectival Thought: A Plea for (Moderate) Relativism
Reviewed by Kepa Korta, University of the Basque Country

 Epistemology

Mark Okrent
Rational Animals: The Teleological Roots of Intentionality
Reviewed by Matthew Ratcliffe, Durham University

Michael N. Forster
Kant and Skepticism
Reviewed by Anthony Brueckner, University of California, Santa Barbara

Zenon W. Pylyshyn
Things and Places: How the Mind Connects with the World
Reviewed by Christopher S. Hill, Brown University

Jennifer Lackey
Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge
Reviewed by Aaron Z. Zimmerman, University of California, Santa Barbara

Philosophy of Religion

Alvin Plantinga, Michael Tooley
Knowledge of God
Reviewed by William L. Rowe, Purdue University

J. L. Schellenberg
The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticism
Reviewed by Stephen Wykstra, Calvin College and Timothy Perrine, Calvin College

Erik J. Wielenberg
God and the Reach of Reason: C.S. Lewis, David Hume, and Bertrand Russell
Reviewed by Bruce Russell, Wayne State University

Metaphysics

Robin Le Poidevin
The Images of Time: An Essay on Temporal Representation
Reviewed by Craig Callender, University of California, San Diego

John Leslie
Immortality Defended
Reviewed by Charles Taliaferro, St. Olaf College

Max Kistler, Bruno Gnassounou (eds.)
Dispositions and Causal Powers
Reviewed by Jennifer McKitrick, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Lynne Rudder Baker
The Metaphysics of Everyday Life: An Essay in Practical Realism
Reviewed by Charlotte Witt, University of New Hampshire

History of Philosophy

Terence Irwin
The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study; Volume I: From Socrates to the Reformation
Reviewed by Dimitrios Dentsoras, University of Manitoba

Iain Macdonald, Krzysztof Ziarek (eds.)
Adorno and Heidegger: Philosophical Questions
Reviewed by David Pettigrew, Southern Connecticut State University

Larry A. Hickman
Pragmatism as Post-Postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey
Reviewed by Dennis M. Senchuk, Indiana University

P. J. E. Kail
Projection and Realism in Hume’s Philosophy
Reviewed by Angela Coventry, Portland State University

Christopher Shields
Aristotle
Reviewed by Barbara Sattler, Yale University

Andrew Haas
The Irony of Heidegger
Reviewed by Richard Polt, Xavier University

Quentin Skinner
Hobbes and Republican Liberty
Reviewed by Bernard Gert, Dartmouth College

Paul Russell
The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion
Reviewed by Rico Vitz, University of North Florida

Charlie Huenemann (ed.)
Interpreting Spinoza: Critical Essays
Reviewed by Steven Barbone, San Diego State University

Philosophical Practice

Rupert Read, Laura Cook (ed.)
Applying Wittgenstein
Reviewed by Colin Johnston, Institute of Philosophy, University of London

Steve Fuller
The Knowledge Book: Key Concepts in Philosophy
Reviewed by Val Dusek, University of New Hampshire

Ethics/Moral Philosophy/Political Philosophy

Jerome Neu
Sticks and Stones: The Philosophy of Insults
Reviewed by Macalester Bell, Columbia University

J. McKenzie Alexander
The Structural Evolution of Morality
Reviewed by Herbert Gintis, University of Massachusetts

Francisco J. Benzoni
Ecological Ethics and the Human Soul: Aquinas, Whitehead, and the Metaphysics of Value
Reviewed by Christopher M. Brown, University of Tennessee at Martin

Aesthetics

Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei
The Ecstatic Quotidian: Phenomenological Sightings in Modern Art and Literature
Reviewed by K. Gover, Bennington College

Elisabeth Schellekens
Aesthetics and Morality
Reviewed by James Harold, Mount Holyoke College

Jane Kneller
Kant and the Power of Imagination
Reviewed by James Schmidt, Boston University

James O. Young
Cultural Appropriation and the Arts
Reviewed by John Rapko, San Francisco Art Institute

Stephen Davies
Philosophical Perspectives on Art
Reviewed by Christian Helmut Wenzel, National Chi Nan University, Taiwan

Philosophy of Mathematics

Marcus Giaquinto
Visual Thinking in Mathematics: An Epistemological Study
Reviewed by Sun-Joo Shin, Yale University

Do any strike you as needing to be in the Robbins collection?

Historical Figures & Periods

Gregory Landini
Wittgenstein’s Apprenticeship with Russell
Reviewed by Nicholas Griffin, McMaster University

Judith Chelius Stark (ed.)
Feminist Interpretations of Augustine
Reviewed by Colleen McCluskey, Saint Louis University

Mark Dooley, Liam Kavanagh
The Philosophy of Derrida
Reviewed by Matthew C. Halteman, Calvin College

Robert B. Louden
The World We Want: How and Why the Ideals of the Enlightenment Still Elude Us
Reviewed by Beatrix Himmelmann, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Bret W. Davis
Heidegger and the Will: On the Way to Gelassenheit
Reviewed by Frank Schalow, University of New Orleans

Aaron Preston
Analytic Philosophy: The History of an Illusion
Reviewed by William Larkin, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Paul Redding
Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought
Reviewed by Willem A. deVries, University of New Hampshire

Brad Inwood
Seneca: Selected Philosophical Letters
Reviewed by Katja Maria Vogt, Columbia University

Songsuk Susan Hahn
Contradiction in Motion: Hegel’s Organic Conception of Life and Value
Reviewed by Richard Velkley, Tulane University

Epistemology & Perception

Mary Margaret McCabe, Mark Textor (eds.)
Perspectives on Perception
Reviewed by José Luis Bermúdez, Washington University in St. Louis

Jaakko Hintikka
Socratic Epistemology: Explorations of Knowledge-Seeking by Questioning
Reviewed by Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde University, Denmark

David Reisman
Sartre’s Phenomenology
Reviewed by Katherine Morris, Mansfield College, University of Oxford

Russell T. Hurlburt, Eric Schwitzgebel
Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic
Reviewed by Gualtiero Piccinini, University of Missouri, St. Louis

Metaphysics

Christian Kanzian, Muhammad Legenhausen (eds.)
Substance and Attribute: Western and Islamic Traditions in Dialogue
Reviewed by Sajjad Rizvi, University of Exeter

Christian Kanzian (ed.)
Persistence
Reviewed by Thomas Sattig, Washington University

Moral & Political Philosophy, Ethics

Jens Timmermann
Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary
Reviewed by Sean P. Walsh, University of Minnesota, Duluth

David Copp
Morality in a Natural World: Selected Essays in Metaethics
Reviewed by Eric Gampel, California State University, Chico

Christopher J. Finlay
Hume’s Social Philosophy: Human Nature and Commercial Sociability in A Treatise of Human Nature
Reviewed by Lorraine Besser-Jones, University of Waterloo

Michael W. Austin
Conceptions of Parenthood: Ethics and the Family
Reviewed by Joseph Millum, National Institutes of Health

Pedro Alexis Tabensky
Judging and Understanding: Essays on Free Will, Narrative, Meaning and the Ethical Limits of Condemnation
Reviewed by Meghan Griffith, Davidson College

Simon Keller
The Limits of Loyalty
Reviewed by John Kleinig, John Jay College, CUNY; and Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, CSU

Philosophy of Science

Steven Horst
Beyond Reduction: Philosophy of Mind and Post-Reductionist Philosophy of Science
Reviewed by D. Gene Witmer, University of Florida

Aesthetics

Paul Crowther
Defining Art, Creating the Canon: Artistic Value in an Era of Doubt
Reviewed by Ingvild Torsen, Florida International University

Philosophy of Religion

Sandra Menssen, Thomas D. Sullivan
The Agnostic Inquirer: Revelation from a Philosophical Standpoint
Reviewed by Keith M. Parsons, University of Houston, Clear Lake

Miscellaneous

Barry C. Smith (ed.), Fritz Allhoff (ed.)
Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine; and, Wine and Philosophy: A Symposium on Thinking and Drinking
Reviewed by Peter Machamer, University of Pittsburgh

This has always been one of my favorite Bertrand Russell quotes:

I was a solitary, shy, priggish youth. I had no experience of the social pleasures of boyhood and did not miss them. But I liked mathematics, and mathematics was suspect because it has no ethical content. I came also to disagree with the theological opinions of my family, and as I grew up I became increasingly interested in philosophy, of which they profoundly disapproved. Every time the subject came up they repeated with unfailing regularity, “What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.” After some fifty or sixty repetitions, this remark ceased to amuse me.

– Bertrand Russell, The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, pp. 52-53.

The “What is mind?” line was also said by Homer Simpson on the very first episode of “The Simpsons” in 1987, when it was a cartoon short on the Tracey Ullman Show.

At the start of the review, van der Schaar writes:

In 1913 Russell worked on a manuscript called Theory of Knowledge which became well known when it appeared as volume 7 of The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell in 1984. Russell’s aim in the manuscript was to provide an epistemological counterpart to the Principia. He started writing on the 7th of May; in mid-June he stopped, having been ‘paralysed’ by criticism Wittgenstein presented at several meetings while Russell was working on the manuscript.

In her book, Rosalind Carey asks: Why did Russell abandon the manuscript? The aim of her book is to give a reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s criticism and of Russell’s responses to his objections. We do not have any direct record of those objections which, along with Russell’s answers, have to be reconstructed from a variety of sources: from their correspondence shortly before and after their meetings, from Wittgenstein’s ‘Notes on Logic’ (September 1913), from Russell’s letters to Lady Ottoline Morrell, from the development in the manuscript itself, from notes and diagrams Russell composed when he was working on the manuscript, from Russell’s unpublished notes called ‘What is Logic?’ (1912), and from Russell’s writings published between 1910 and 1918.

For my readers who are studying Russell, Wittgenstein, and epistemology: is this book worth considering for the Robbins collection?