Department of Sociology
Kenyon College
Treleaven House
105 West Brooklyn Street
Room 202
Gambier,  Ohio   43022
USA

 
Telephone:  
Office:  (740) 427-5849    
Department Office Manager: 
 (740) 427-5855 (morning)
 (740) 427-5809 (afternoon)
Email:  
McCarthy@Kenyon.edu
Website Address:
http://personal.kenyon.edu/mccarthy/




EARLY BOOKS



                                                     



(Click on the jacket cover image for more information about the Table of Contents and Introduction)


                                                     






MORE RECENT BOOKS



                                   



(Click on the jacket cover image for more information about the Table of Contents and Introduction)


                                   





LATEST BOOK




                                   

Hardbound Cover                     2018                           Frontispiece
                                                                                      by Devin S. McCarthy


Greek goddess of Justice
Dike
balancing and integrating the Ancients and the Moderns
as the classical inspiration and creative vision of Karl Marx's
Griechensehnsucht
(Longing for Ancient Greece)
and
Horizontverschmelzung
(Fusion of Horizons and Traditions)
as he creates a classical vision of workers' associations,
economic democracy, and self-government
"of the people, by the people"
-- The Paris Commune --



150th anniversary of Marx's Capital (2017) and
200th anniversary of Marx's birth (2018)





NEW PAPERBACK EDITION




                                   

Reprint Paperback Cover                       2019                          B&W Frontispiece
                                                                                                     by Devin S. McCarthy


https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1195-marx-and-social-justice





FOREIGN LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS




Chinese Translation
of
Marx and the Ancients:
Classical Ethics, Social Justice, and
Nineteenth-Century Political Economy
Ma ke si yu gu ren:
Gu dian lun li xue, She hui zheng yi he
19 shi ji zheng zhi jing ji xue
(2011)





Japanese Translation
of
Classical Horizons:
The Origins of Sociology
in Ancient Greece
Kodai girishia to shakaigaku:
marukusu veba dyurukemu
(2017)




Chinese Translation
of
Marx and Aristotle:
Nineteenth-Century German Social Theory
and Classical Antiquity
Ma ke si yu ya li shi duo de:
Shi jiu shi ji de guo she hui li lun yu gu dian de gu dai
(2015)




BIOGRAPHY


PROF. GEORGE E. MCCARTHY

 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES
DISTINGUISHED TEACHING PROFESSOR
OF SOCIOLOGY

 KENYON COLLEGE



           Professor George E. McCarthy is an American and Irish philosopher and sociologist who teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century European philosophy, classical and contemporary social theory, ethics and social justice, philosophy and sociology of science, and critical political economy at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. He holds a B.A. in philosophy from Manhattan College (1968), an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston College (1972), and an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research (1979).

           McCarthy has been a DAAD Research Fellow (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität (University of Frankfurt) and the Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt am Main. He has also been a guest research professor at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politische Wissenschaft at the University of Munich, the Katholische Sozialwissenschaftliche Zentralstelle in Mönchengladbach, and the department of Philosophie und Erziehungswissenschaft-Humanwissenschaften at the Gesamthochschule, University of Kassel, Germany. In 1994-1995, he was a Senior Fulbright Research Fellow in Germany.

          In the spring of 2000 he received the National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professorship in Sociology at Kenyon College. More recently, he has been the recipient of a twelve-month National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship (2006-2007) for his project, "Aristotle and Kant in Classical Social Theory," which examined the relationship between nineteenth-century European social theory and Greek and German philosophy.

          His main educational goals are: (1) to investigate the philosophical foundations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European social theory with a special focus on the integration of the Ancients (ancient Hebrews, Hellenes, and Hellenists) and the Moderns (German Romantics, Idealists, Historians, and Critical Materialists); (2) to help rediscover the nature of sociology as an empirical/historical and practical/ethical science; (3) to reintegrate Philosophy, History, and Political Economy back into a Critical Social Theory; (4) to expand the nature of 'social science' beyond traditional quantitative and qualitative methods to include the full range of critical social science, including interpretive and hermeneutical science (verstehende Soziologie), cultural science (Kulturwissenschaft), historical science (Geschichtswissenschaft or sociology of social institutions and structures), historical materialism (political economy), dialectical or critical science (immanent critic of the values, logic, and dialectic of capital), and depth hermeneutics (neo-Freudian analysis), while rejecting the methodology of the natural sciences: positivism, empiricism, naturalism, and nominalism; and (5) to develop social theory into the foundations of a comprehensive, ethical, and critical theory of Social Justice (Geisteswissenschaft).

          More specifically, his goal is to draw the connections between Ancient philosophy and the Greek polis and Modern social theory and political economy in order to reconfigure Aristotle's major works Nicomachean Ethics (Philosophy: happiness and the good life of moral and intellectual virtue from courage, moderation, and wisdom to friendship and citizenship) and The Politics (Sociology: institutions and structures of political economy, moral economy, and political democracy) for the modern age. This rewrite will take the form of joining together Ethics, Social Theory, and Social Justice. The main academic goal behind these five points is to fuse the intellectual horizons (Horizontverschmelzung) of Philosophy and Sociology, Ethics and Social Theory, Virtue & Natural Law and Political & Economic Democracy, and Social Justice and Social Science, thereby creating a critical and dialectical discipline or Science with Heart (Herz: ethics, virtue, and moral/social principles) and Spirit (Geist: politics, reason, social institutions, and empirical/historical research). The future of a democratic, egalitarian, and just society within a moral economy is open to those who can dream with critical insight and practical vision while also looking back to the Ancients for inspiration, compassion, and hope (Griechensehnsucht). To date, he has published ten books, three of which have been translated into foreign languages -- Chinese and Japanese.



                                         
           

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EDUCATION


1964-1968  
Manhattan College
4513 Manhattan College Parkway
Riverdale, New York  10471
B.A. in Philosophy, honors
June 1968

1968-1972  
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts  02467
M.A. in Philosophy, August 1969
Ph.D. in Philosophy, June 1972
Dissertation: The Social Anthropology of Hegel and Marx

Summer 1972  
U. S. Department of Justice
United States District Court
Southern District of New York
Foley Square, Manhattan, NY 10007
Indictment, Arrest Warrant, and Federal Trial
for Resistance to Vietnam War and Draft Evasion
Felony Indictment: Failure to Report for Armed Services Induction

Summer 1973  
Goethe Institute in Language Study
Blaubeuren, Baden-Württemberg, near Ulm
(2 months)
Brannenburg-Degerndorf, Bavaria, near Munich
(2 months)
West Germany
Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst
(DAAD) Language Fellowship

1973-1975  
Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität
Universität Frankfurt am Main
Institut für Sozialforschung
(The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory)
Bockenheim, Frankfurt am Main, West Germany
Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst
Research Fellowship (DAAD)
in Philosophy and Sociology

1971-1979  
Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science
The New School for Social Research
66 West 12th Street
New York, New York  10011
M.A. in Sociology, June 1973
Ph.D. in Sociology, June 1979
Dissertation: Systems Theory and the Engineering of Utopia:
Urban Technology and Planning in the Post-Industrial City






PUBLICATIONS:
BOOKS



Marx' Critique of Science and Positivism:
The Methodological Foundations of Political Economy
"Sovietica Series," vol. 53
Institute of East-European Studies
University of Fribourg, Switzerland
edited by T. J. Blakeley, Guido Küng, and Nikolaus Lobkowicz
(Dordrecht, Netherlands; Boston, Massachusetts; and
London, England: Kluwer Academic Publications, 1988)

Marx' Critique of Science and Positivism:
The Methodological Foundations of Political Economy
"Sovietica Series," vol. 53
edited by T. J. Blakeley, Guido Küng, and Nikolaus Lobkowicz
new publisher and reprint paperback edition
(Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer Publishing, 2012)
 

Marx and the Ancients:
Classical Ethics, Social Justice, and Nineteenth-Century Political Economy
(Savage, Maryland; London, England: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1990)

Marx and the Ancients
Chinese translation
Ma ke si yu gu ren:
Gu dian lun li xue, She hui zheng yi he 19 shi ji zheng zhi jing ji xue
translated by Wennan Wang
"Western Tradition: Classics and Interpretation -
Marx and the Western Tradition Series”
edited by Liu Forest
paperback edition
(Shanghai, China: East China Normal University Press, 2011)
 

Eclipse of Justice:
Ethics, Economics, and the Lost Traditions of American Catholicism
with Royal W. Rhodes
hardcover edition
(Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1992)

Eclipse of Justice:
Ethics, Economics, and the Lost Traditions of American Catholicism
with Royal W. Rhodes
new publisher & reprint paperback edition
(Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009)
 

Marx and Aristotle:
Nineteenth-Century German Social Theory and Classical Antiquity
collection of essays
edited by George E. McCarthy
"Perspectives on Classical Political and Social Thought Series"
(Savage, Maryland; London, England: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1992)

Marx and Aristotle
Chinese translation
Ma ke si yu ya li shi duo de:
Shi jiu shi ji de guo she hui li lun yu gu dian de gu dai
translated by Hao Yichun, Deng Xianzhen, and Wen Guiquan
"Western Tradition: Classics and Interpretation -
Marx and the Western Tradition Series”
edited by Liu Senlin
commentary by Chen Kaihua
paperback edition
(Shanghai, China: East China Normal University Press, 2015)
 

Dialectics and Decadence:
Echoes of Antiquity in Marx and Nietzsche
(Lanham, Maryland; London, England: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1994)
 

Romancing Antiquity:
German Critique of the Enlightenment from Weber to Habermas
(Lanham, Maryland; Oxford, England: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997)
 

Objectivity and the Silence of Reason:
Weber, Habermas, and the Methodological Disputes in German Sociology
(New Brunswick, New Jersey; London, England: Transaction Publishers, 2001)
 

Classical Horizons:
The Origins of Sociology in Ancient Greece
“Choice Outstanding Academic Title” Award, January 2004
(Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2003)

Classical Horizons:
The Origins of Sociology in Ancient Greece
Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic
(Princeton, NJ: Audiobook on Compact Disk, 2003)

Classical Horizons:
The Origins of Sociology in Ancient Greece
Japanese translation
Kodai girishia to shakaigaku:
marukusu veba dyurukemu
(Japanese title)
Ancient Greece and Sociology:
Marx, Weber, and Durkheim
translated by Tatsuo Higuchi & Daisuke Tagami
paperback edition
(Tokyo, Japan: Shogakusya Publishers, 2017)
 

Dreams in Exile:
Rediscovering Science and Ethics in Nineteenth-Century Social Theory
(Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2009)
   

Marx and Social Justice:
Ethics and Natural Law in the Critique of Political Economy
"The Historical Materialism Book Series." vol. 147
hardcover edition
(Leiden, The Netherlands; Boston, Massachusetts:
Brill Publishers, 2018)

Marx and Social Justice:
Ethics and Natural Law in the Critique of Political Economy
"The Historical Materialism Book Series." vol. 147
new publisher & reprint paperback edition
(Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books, 2019)
 

Shadows of the Enlightenment:
The Hidden Politics of Science, Technology, and Ecological Justice
(New York, New York: Monthly Review Press,
forthcoming)
 

Justice Beyond Heaven:
Natural Law and Economic Democracy in U.S., German, and Irish Catholic Social Thought
co-authored with Royal W. Rhodes
(Amherst, New York: Humanity Books,
forthcoming)
 

Classical Antiquity and Social Theory:
The Greek Inspiration for Marx, Weber, and Durkheim
edited collection of essays
(future project)
 

Existentialism and Classical Social Theory:
The Foundations of Sociology in the European Crisis of Meaning
(future project)
 




WIKIPEDIA, DIGITAL KENYON GALLERY,

AND

THE ONLINE COMPUTER LIBRARY CENTER (OCLC)

WORLDCAT IDENTITIES:

BOOKS



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_E._McCarthy


https://works.bepress.com/george_mccarthy/

and

http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n87917357/


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Prose Poem Meditation on
Social Dreams

Sociology as the Wings of Philosophy
&
Dreams of Ithaca and Social Justice


Sociology, when at its best, is philosophy with wings in search of Ithaca,
theory with praxis, ideas with application, values with facts,
ethics with politics, virtue with political economy, and justice with social science;
that is, it makes ideas and ethics historically and empirically concrete and relevant
to understanding and resolving today's complex social and environmental problems.
Philosophy without sociology is theoretically speculative, meaningless, and empty --
without Content and Spirit,
whereas Sociology without philosophy is overwhelmingly factual, visionless, and blind --
without Concepts and Heart.
However, together they offer unlimited horizons, creative visions, and hopeful futures.
(Durkheim regarded both Plato and Aristotle as the first sociologists
in his essay, "Sociology in France in the Nineteenth Century," 1900)

Social Theory is the poetry of the mind and
soulful yearning for human dignity, beauty, and justice
articulated in the political, economic and cultural institutions of society
that, unfortunately today, is lost in a positivist world of
disciplinary fragmentation, surface phenomena, and alienated consciousness.

Philosophy helps give sociology ethical and social purpose, meaning, and ideals --
it encourages sociologists to dream and hope for a better future,
whereas Sociology helps make philosophy historically and socially
real, relevant, and practical --
it encourages philosophers to implement and actualize their thoughts in the modern world.
Without the integration of sociology and philosophy into a comprehensive and critical
social theory, one only produces a disenchantment and eclipse of reason --
the loss of substantive reason and social justice accompanied by the rise of fascism.
(G. E. M    April 2019)


"Thoughts without content are empty,
intuitions without concepts are blind."
(Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 93)

For of the last man in the iron cage, it may truly be said:
"Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart."
(Weber, The Protestant Ethic, p. 182)

Without Content and Spirit -- Without Science: empirical, interpretive, and historical research
and
Without Objective Spirit or Justice: reason, beauty, and self-determination expressed
in objective social, economic, and political institutions (Hegel)
&
Without Concepts and Heart -- Without Ideas: substantive reason and social ideals
and
Without Morality: virtue, sentiment, compassion, and the common good (Kant, Weber, and Hume)

********************

"As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body..."
(C. P. Cavafy, Ithaka, October 1911)

Searching for Ithaca--
Learning to Dream with
Aesthetic Creativity and Political Ideals
to realize
Classical Beauty and Social Justice

The Academy as Betrayal

American Positivism and Analytic Philosophy
have sadly misunderstood and forgotten the
dreams of European social theory.
They have fragmented and scientized the disciplines just as
they have repressed the social ideals of the academy
to the point where liberal arts is a lonely and isolated political ideology
incapable of reason, dreams, or theoretical visions of the future.
The academy was once a place of hope and purpose, of dedication and enlightenment,
of intellectual and spiritual exploration, of rebellion and ideals,
and of individual growth and communal moral responsibility.
Now all that remains is a soulless materialism, isolated and meaningless individualism,
and a narcissistic and never-ending search for academic recognition and power
accompanied by the desire for metaphysical solace and market comfort.

We live in an authoritarian world that still yearns for democracy, equality, and freedom
but has no understanding of what that entails or means.
We see concentration camps for very young immigrants on our Southern border and
watch Nazis and nationalists march in the streets with impunity and arrogance
as we vaguely remember a time past that echoes throughout the present.
We also see a general imprisonment of Americans in camps of
inequality, poverty, and human misery all over the country
even for those who believe that hard work will set them free.
But there is no recognition of their abuse or even need for immediate structural change.
There is racism, homophobia, misogyny, gerrymandering, voter suppression,
massive class inequality, poverty of the mind and body, and gross indifference among the adults,
along with growing fear, anxiety, depression, self-deprecation, and loneliness among the young.
And they still call it a democracy.
Have they not lost their sense of honor, human dignity, and shame
or for that matter even their sense of irony?
All that remains is Silence
and
Silence is the betrayal of humanity.





 COURSES AT KENYON COLLEGE



(Click on the blue course number in the left-hand column for more information about
 the syllabus, course description, required readings, and audio recordings for each course)



Socy 102                     Social Dreamers:
          Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud
      (Introductory Sociology Course)
Socy 222           State and Political Economy:
           Profits and Poverty in the
                  Welfare State
Socy 234       Communitarianism and Social
                      Democracy
Socy 242               Science, Society, and
                the Environment:
       Crisis of the Enlightenment
                     and Ecology
    (Environmental Studies Program)
Socy 243                     Social Justice:
         The Ancient and Modern
                      Traditions
          (Legal Studies Program)
Socy 248          Modernity and the Ancients
Socy 324       Natural Law and Natural Rights
                         Theory
Socy 360                 Kant, Hegel, and
           Modern Social Theory
Socy 361             Classical Social Theory:
      Marx, Weber, and Durkheim
Socy 362         Contemporary Social Theory
Socy 461              German Social Theory:
          From Freud to Habermas
Socy 474                Western Marxism:
            Critical Theory of the
               Frankfurt School
National Endowment for the Humanities Project         Democracy and Social Justice:
              Ancient and Modern


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MANY OF THE COURSES LISTED ABOVE ARE ON DIGITAL
AUDIO AND VIDEO EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES







 PICTURE ALBUM




 

Montage of
Ancient Corinth and Athens
Greece


 


 


Palme House
Gambier, Ohio


 


 


Die Weisse Rose
"Liebe, Freundschaft, und Mut zum Widerstand"
Social Dreams and Classical Ideals

"Silence is Betrayal," Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Beauty will save the world,” Fyodor Dostoevsky



 


 


"Expanding the Classical Horizons of the
Ancients and the Moderns"

Acropolis and Parthenon
Athens, Greece

Ho ti kalon philon aei
(A thing of beauty is a joy forever)
Euripides, Bakkhai

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know."
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

And the ultimate Beauty in the World is
Ethics, Politics, and Social Justice






   


"Dancing Star" & Friend
Eugene, Oregon





 


"Classical Dreams of Justice and Beauty"

Parthenon from the Pnyx
Athens, Greece
Home of the Athenian Assembly

The True Beauty of Classical Greece lies in
Aristotle and the Athenian Polity





 


"Modern Impression of Classical Beauty"

April 2015






WHAT THE PROPHETS SAW


We shun them, living exiles, labeled mad,
who see the world turned upside down we shrink
by private ownership of all each hand
imprints, and in our iron cage we think

we’re free. The mad behold this human treason
and scream against the death of nature’s reason.
But dreams reveal to what were blinded eyes
the truth that Justice holds that never dies.

The Commune, like far Ithaka, contains
ideals we journey towards before we die,
when like gods we break our final chains
to boldly face our own Thermopylae.

Life itself is found in simple joy,
in beauty, love, and art – the spinning earth
in all the random grace that hearts employ
will see a new creation at its birth.

In dreams an ancient wisdom whispers: Heal
our modern madness, help the heavens move,
seek a newer world and make it real,
with hearts the sun and stars unite in love.

--- Royal Rhodes
Endpiece in Marx and Social Justice
2018




WEBSITE ADDRESS


http://personal.kenyon.edu/mccarthy/


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All syllabi, pictures, paintings, written course outlines, electronic audio lectures,
and electronic video lectures are the personal property of the author
and should not be used without his permission.