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). At a particular stage early in his academic career, there was a time when he was enrolled simultaneously in two different universities, in two different graduate programs, in two different academic disciplines -- Philosophy and Sociology -- in two different cities, in two different states, while he was also under federal indictment, prosecution, and trial at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, New York City for draft evasion and resistance to the Vietnam War. And, in between these two American graduate school experiences, he spent two years studying the critical social and political theory of the Frankfurt School at the University of Frankfurt and the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt/Main, Germany (1973-1975).

           Academic Experience, Study, and Research in Germany: 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 Politikwissenschaft 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 ( Hermeneutische Wissenschaft or verstehende Soziologie), cultural science (Kulturwissenschaft), historical science (Geschichtswissenschaft or sociology of social institutions and structures), human or moral science (Geisteswissenschaft), historical materialism (political economy), dialectical or critical science (Kritische Wissenschaft: immanent critic of the values, logic, and dialectic of capital), and depth hermeneutics (Tiefenhermeneutik: neo-Freudian analysis), while rejecting the methodology of the natural sciences: positivism, empiricism, naturalism, and nominalism; (5) to develop a critical social theory that incorporates classical and contemporary European social theory -- philosophy, history, and political economy -- into a comprehensive theory of social justice; (6) to integrate the vision and ideals of philosophy with the structures and historical reality of economic and social theory; (7) to expand quantitative and qualitative methods while liberating them from the narrowness of analytic philosophy and positivism (scientism and naturalism); and (8) to interpret Marx's labor theory of value, abstract labor, surplus value, and exchange value, as well as his theory of the structural contradictions (Widersprüche) and economic crises of capitalism in his later writings, not as part of a theory predicting the inevitable breakdown of the economic system, but as a critical theory of ethics and social justice. The main goal of these eight points in education and scholarship is to revive the spirit of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century European social theory and their classical horizons at a time of the decline and "eclipse of reason" in the American academy.

          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 and reinterpret 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 this effort 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). Professor McCarthy recently published a book outlining Marx's six-point theory of social justice while integrating the latter's early and later writings into an ethical and political whole:

PART I: Marx's Theory of Social Justice Based on Aristotle's Ethics and Theory of Happiness, Practical Wisdom, and Moral and Intellectual Virtue:
(1) Legal and Civil Justice: emancipation and human rights of free speech, assembly, and political participation as articulated in the French Constitution and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which was originally drafted by Abbé Sieyès and the Marquis de Lafayette in consultation with Thomas Jefferson in 1789 and then expanded in 1791, 1793, and 1795 (On the Jewish Question, 1843).
(2) Workplace Justice: worker ownership of private property and the means of production along with the economic rights to equality, freedom, human dignity, self-determination, and worker creativity in a moral community of artisanship and industrial production. These ethical and political ideals were derived from the traditions of Aristotle to Kant, Schiller, and Hegel in his early writings. Marx's early philosophical writings continue where Hegel's Objective Spirit in the Phenomenology of Spirit left off -- with the French Revolution and Kantian philosophy but within a new and expansive interpretation of historical materialism and a new theory of legal and workplace justice (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844).
(3) Ecological Justice: non-exploitative, non-alienated, organic, and ethical view of nature based on Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics.

PART II: Marx's Theory of Social Justice Based on Aristotle's Politics, Economics, and Theory of Democracy and Political Wisdom:
(4) Distributive Justice: economic reciprocity, fairness, and redistribution based on human needs within a moral economy from the Critique of the Gotha Program (1875).
(5) Political Justice: decentralized politics, workers' communes, producer cooperatives, economic democracy, and self-government "of the people, by the people" expressed in the Paris Commune of 1871 (Civil War in France, 1871).
(6) Economic Justice: critique of the structures of political economy, the logic of capital, and the political incoherence, ethical immorality, and economic contradictions of the alienation, class exploitation, and human misery of capitalist production in his later writings of the Grundrisse (1857), A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), and Capital (1867, 1885, and 1894). Traditionally, these later economic writings have been misinterpreted through the positivist prism of naturalism and scientism that predict economic crises and the historically inevitable breakdown of the capitalist system. However, on closer investigation, these writings reveal that, when viewed from within the framework of the German Idealism of Hegel and Schelling and the political and economic theory of Aristotle, they expose the structural irrationality, social immorality, and dialectical contradictions of capitalism. For Marx, the logic, structures, and contradictions of capital or unnatural wealth acquisition, as with Aristotle, are incompatible with a society based on virtue, practical wisdom, freedom, equality, self-determination, and democracy, that is, they are morally incompatible with Ethics and Politics.

Liberalism and capitalism are incompatible and inconsistent with the ethical values and political ideals of the Ancients and the Moderns. With its materialism, consumerism, market morality, class oppression, workplace alienation and exploitation, political authoritarianism, global colonization and militarism, and racism, modern industrial society offends the heart, soul, spirit, and reason of humanity and democracy. Marx used his early and later ethical, political, and economic theories, along with his historical and empirical research, in a manner similar to Aristotle -- they were to provide the foundations for his theory of social justice, and not the foundations for a positivistic, Enlightenment, and economic science. Note: Corresponding to each chapter and aspect of social justice, there is a different understanding of the nature of social science -- historical science, hermeneutical or interpretive science, human or moral science, phenomenological science, critical science (immanent critique), dialectical science, etc. -- that goes beyond the boundaries, questions, and methods of modern positivism and contemporary American sociology and that integrates Science and Social Justice.

This view of justice mirrors closely Aristotle's broad theory of social justice as (1) rectificatory justice, (2) ethics, virtue, and practical wisdom, (3) organic physics and metaphysics, (4) particular justice, (5) universal justice, and (6) the critique of chrematistike or private wealth acquisition. Marx was a nineteenth-century critical social theorist who redefined and retranslated Aristotle's theory of virtue, democracy, and social justice for the modern age. From this perspective, we can characterized Marx as Aristotle with an umlaut --Aristötle.

More recently, Professor McCarthy has turned his attention to the interaction among science, nature, and society as he attempts to integrate issues of ecological justice with social justice. To date, he has published ten books mainly in the area of 19th- and 20th-century German social theory. Three of these books have been translated into foreign languages -- Chinese and Japanese.