Richard McKeon was een belangrijk Amerikaanse filosoof.
“McKeon
obtained his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1920, graduating
at the early age of 20 despite serving briefly in the U.S. Navy during the
First World War. Continuing at Columbia, he completed a Master's thesis on Leo
Tolstoy, Benedetto Croce, and George Santayana, also in 1920, and a doctoral
thesis on Baruch Spinoza in 1922. In his doctoral studies, McKeon's mentors
were Frederick J. E. Woodbridge and John Dewey. From Woodbridge, McKeon would
later write, he learned that "what philosophers meant might be comparable
or even identical, despite differences in their modes of expression",
while Dewey taught him how "to seek the significance of philosophic
positions in the problems they were constructed to solve". He then studied
philosophy in Paris, where his teachers included Étienne Gilson, until he began
teaching at Columbia in 1925.” [en.wiki]
Hoe McKeon tot Spinoza kwam
“McKeon had come to Spinoza because "scientific method and its
metaphysical implications" were prominent in philosophy courses in the
early twenties, and this interest led naturally to the seventeenth-century
philosophers, the first "moderns" concerned with these problems. In
Paris he studied Spinoza with Brunschvicg and learned to use historical
analysis as part of the task of dealing with contemporary problems. Although
Spinoza had earlier sent him to medieval thought, studying medieval philosophy
with Etienne Gilson in Paris taught him to find patterns and unity in
philosophical diversity. But these studies made it clear that without its Greek
foundations Western thought was "unintelligible." Thus 
he worked with
Leon Robin on Plato and Aristotle.”[In: Zahava
K. McKeon & William G. Swenson (Eds.),
Selected Writings of Richard McKeon: Volume One: Philosophy, Science, and
Culture. University of Chicago Press, 1998. – books.google
Een zo verscheen zes jaar na zijn doctorsthese dit boek over
Spinoza
Richard McKeon, The
Philosophy of Spinoza: The Unity of His Thought. New York/ London:
Longmans, Green, 1928. – ix, 345 pp. Reprinted by Ox Bow, Woodbridge, CT: 1987.
