John J. McDermott (philosopher)

John Joseph McDermott (born January 5, 1932) is an American philosopher and a professor at Texas A&M University. He has been a distinguished professor at Texas A&M since 1981 and holds the Melbern G. Glasscock Chair in the Humanities.

Biography

McDermott grew up in New York City as the first of eight children in a lower-middle class family.^[1] He earned an undergraduate degree in 1953 at St. Francis College. He went to Fordham University to complete a master's degree and a Ph.D. in the late 1950s. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Union Theological Graduate School. McDermott joined the faculty of Queens College, City University of New York, where he stayed until he took a position at Texas A&M University as philosophy professor and department head in 1977.^[2]

A focus of McDermott's work is the connection between American philosophy and culture. He has compiled and introduced volumes of writing by William James, Josiah Royce and John Dewey.^[3] He was president of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy from 1978 to 1980.^[4] He is a past president of the William James Society.^[5] In 2016, he was awarded the society's first Lifetime Achievement Award.^[6]

At Texas A&M, McDermott called the school's first faculty meeting in 1983. That meeting resulted in the formation of the school's faculty senate and McDermott was the group's first speaker.^[1] That year he won a Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching from the university.^[7] In 2012, McDermott was named the founding director of the school's Community of Faculty Retirees.^[1]

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