PHILOSOPHIC SEMANTICS
& PHILOSOPHIC INQUIRY.

You may never have heard the name of the World's Smartest Man, Richard McKeon.  However, if you have read the 1974 novel, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig, you have some passing though thoroughly distorted acquaintance with him.  He is the "villain" ["The Chairman of the Committee"] of Pirsig's novel,  which reveals many more of Pirsig's shortcomings than of McKeon's.  I don't think Mr. Pirsig was one of The Chairman's better students.  [For certain, neither was I.]

To the best of my knowledge, he is the smartest man in known history.   For a rough approximation of his brilliance, think of ArIstotle, about 2,000 years SMARTER.  His life's work was to thoroughly and completely map out the posible structures of philosophy.  Basically, he presented us with the fundamentals of the science of epistemology as a fait accompli.

He completely analyzed the limited number of possible assumptions underlying all philosophies, and showed how the range of observable phenomenae are determined, not by the universe itself, but by the lens of the philosophy used to examine it.  And he would be the first to point out that statement as an example of a necessarily limited viewpoint that makes certain assumptions about existence and knowledge, and screens out all other possibilities.  HE could fill in ALL the other possibilities in as much detail as you would like.

One of his major goals was to help philosophers [like you and me] understand what part of their disagreemeents are simply semantic, based on different assumptions, and which are based on different truths, possibilities, or knowledge . . . so that thinkers could stop quibbling about things they can never possibly agree upon, and concentrate on the areas of possible discovery, resolution, agreement, and the advancement of knowledge.

Ideally, the well rounded philospher would be equally adept in ALL possible philosophies, and choose the philosophical system [including principles, methods, and interpretations] that was MOST USEFUL to examine the area in which he wished to increase his knowledge [topics].    This ideal is far beyond the normal reality of one principle, one method, and one interpretation per philosopher, out of a posible four in EACH category.   Structurally, there are 64 possible unique philophies, of which normal philosophers partially master ONLY ONE.  In othere words, they are really aware of only one square on the chessboard, and dismiss those arguments based on all the other squares.

He first came to my attention when I discovered the three most extraordinary teachers I had ever had, [in the diverse fields of art history, psychologoy, and philosophy], whose classes were all PACKED with students dumbfounded and awed by their brilliance . . . were ALL students of Mr. McKeon, had been so for many years, and made no secret of the fact that HE had taught them to think.

McKeon studied mathematics and philosophy at Columbia University, acquiring both Bachelor's and Master's degrees in 1920.   He then studied medieval philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris.  In 1925 he joined Columbia' faculty.  In 1935 he joined the University of Chicago, where he had a very long career, including Dean of the Humanities for many years.  He was the most influential person in reshaping the Division of the Humanities and the College under Robert Maynard Hutchins.  I'm not clear on the sequence and history, but eventually he got his own Department of Ideas and Methods in the University . . . also sometimes known as the Committee On Analysis of Ideas and Methods [or "Committee on Ideas and Methods"], whence Pirsig's "Chairman of the Committee" designation].   He was the President of the American Philosophical Association for many years [about 25, if my memory serves].  He retired in 1974 and died in 1985.

Apparently, he READ and COMPLETELY UNDERSTOOD the ENTIRE works of EVERY major philospher, and most of the minor ones too.  I once found a book in the libarary by a greek philosopher which had ONLY been read by HIM in it's entire 40 year history there.  He read so many philosophers so thoroughly, and was so well grounded in mathematics, that he could SEE the fundamental patterns that underlay ALL their works.  The elucidation of those finite unique universal patterns is a major part of his unique and incomparable contribution.

I suspect he was the MOST difficult teacher anyone has ever had.  His intellectual demands were extraordinary.  His vocabulary far exceeded that of the dictionary.  His patience was extremely limited.   His students were stunned, dismayed, and terrorized.   Many SERIOUS students showed up with their hi-tech battery powered Nagra reel-to-reel tape recorders, so they could pore over the lectures again and again until they got a clue.  I once showed up 45 minutes late for a 90 minute class, and hesitantly requested permission to enter.  He assented, noting [approximately] that "You may as well come in, THESE people haven't understood a word I've said either."  There WAS a little nervous laughter, but mostly it was TOO TRUE to be funny.  You always had the feeling that he was sincerely trying to convey something VERY IMPORTANT to you, but most of the time you also KNEW you just weren't getting it . . . AT ALL!  It was exhilarating and demolishing at the same time.

However, his rewards are unequalled.  I didn't comprehend 10% of what he tried to teach me  [and I had a pretty good college education in high school, was attending university on a scholarship, and was on  the Dean's List . . . so I wasn't totally stupid] . . . and that <10% put me in the major leagues as a thinker [by MY estimation of course, your mileage may vary].  I could often SEE the a priori unnoticed assumptions in others' arguments, the obvious and inevitable limits of their thinking, and sometimes even their unnoticed opportunities for actual inquiry and discovery.

Endless stories circulated among his students about Nobel Prize winners who thankfully attributed their successes to a casual half-hour chat with Richard, who told them off the top of his head to look at such-and-such . . . from this-and-that point of view . . . and when they did, their blinders fell away.   Brilliant and well known luminaries credit him.   [Susan Sontag, for instance.]  The MOST BRILLIANT and charismatic University of Chicago professors acknowledged him.  His analysis of the history of physics has been eclipsed ONLY by Steven Rado's new book on Aethro-Kinematics.  Understanding just a little of his basic semantics allows you to avoid 90% of the futile bullshit that philosophers, physicists, and other ostensible "thinkers" spend most of their time throwing at each other. 

The CORE of his semantic analyis of philosophy is a 17 page paper, "Philosophic Semantics and Philosophic Inquiry," which he gave out at the beginning of every basic course.  It is astonishingly demanding.  You better have your best dictionary out and be prepared to look up your latin and greek roots and figure out that "meroscopic" means "regarding the parts" or something like that, and "holoscopic" means considering something as an example of the whole or the overall encompassing pattern . . .ETC.,  because he uses a lot of words the dictionary hasn't found out about.  You need to be prepared to have your philosophical and mental lenses absolutely and painfully shattered . . . and then rebuilt as simply ONE of MANY ways of looking at the universe.  Repeated, thorough, rigorous, and painstaking dissection, analysis, and reconstruction of that paper is the basis for a BEGINNING of a comprehensive understanding of the basic fundamentals of the philosophical process.

I wish there was a better source for and an easier way of duplicating and understanding his knowledge.  If there was . . . I would be tapping it myself.  I wish I understood him better myself.  What little understanding I have of him has been amongst the most useful knowledge I have ever obtained. 

Here is an image copy of a seven page article about him:
University of Chicago Magazine article, December 1994 [slow load]
TEXT VERSION of that article on U of C Magazine site [fast load].

My web page is the best effort I am able to provide at this time to make this extraordinarily useful knowledge available to as many people as possible, and to help prevent it's extinction.  I pray that someone will assemble his 17 page paper and recordings or notes of ALL his extant lectures on it into a basic web page on his philosophic methods.  It is THE basis for ALL his other contributions.

The following file is a HUGE SLOW download because it contains 17 .jpg images of full pages.  Quick loading text files of this same 17 page paper are linked below, but the Version 1 images are the definitive original source from McKeon himself, and will always be valuable in that capacity as the reference standard.   Whichever version you choose to work from, PRINT it out and refer to the hard copy, and make an extra copy of the chart on page 13.  It takes MANY hours of diligent work to even START to understand it, but is well worth it. 

It is THE Rosetta Stone of philosophical bickering, THE satellite view over limited horizons of inquiry, and THE Grand Unified Theory of Epistemological Relativity and Philosophical Cosmology:
"Philosophic Semantics and Philosophic Inquiry"
           [This is VERSION 1, and is mostly 17 original full-page images = very slow load!]
Oversize CHART: page 13 from above

The versions below are successive modifications by Net Prophet of McKeon's original Version 1.   They are an effort to make the original information structurally more apparent, and possibly [?] more understandable . . . by someone with only the most feeble elementary clues to understanding it, who has many more questions than anwers.  They also comment and annotate the original material, provide some dictionary definitions of terms, etc..   They load very quickly compared to Version 1.
Version Two: ORIGINAL TEXT [NO IMAGES]
Version Three: PARSED TEXT
Version Three: CHART ONLY [page 13]
Version Four: PARSED AND ANNOTATED TEXT
Version Four: CHART ONLY [page 13]

Here is a starter bibliography of works by and about him:
Richard McKeon Bibliography.

Relevant input from anyone who has studied with Mr. McKeon is ernestly requested.   Anyone who has original copies of the two articles cited herein ["Being, Existence, and That Which Is" and "Facts, Categories, and Experience"] PLEASE copy them to me and I'll web them.  Know any other McKeon web sites?  Please tell me!   I'll link to them also.   How about a Richard McKeon Web Ring?  I have several other articles by McKeon and a partial bibliography which I can put up if there is interest.