One of the topics renowned philosopher Marjorie Grene debates is the qualities that "make" a person, so it is fitting that editor Randall E. Auxier describes her as "a person of considerable wisdom and humility" and "that rarest of finds in the contemporary world, a true human being."
Grene, 92, the Virginia Tech Honorary Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, was chosen to be the first woman in The Library of Living Philosophers series. The value of her ideas earned her that distinction, as well as "a daunting reputation as a philosopher who can disarm or slay an opponent with a single phrase or question," Auxier notes in the preface to The Philosophy of Marjorie Grene, the 29th volume in the series. "Yet," he adds, "I would not leave the readersÉwith the false impression that there is a deficiency of kindness, guidance, or even philosophical mercy in Professor Grene's style of philosophizing." Besides, says her daughter, Ruth Grene, a Virginia Tech professor, "people had to realize they were not Ôslayed' forever. They just had to come up with an intelligent response."
Inclusion in the library puts Marjorie Grene in the ranks of such greats as philosopher-scientist Albert Einstein and philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, John Dewey, Alfred North Whitehead, and Bertrand Russell. Since 1939, the series has asked the greatest living philosophers what their ideas mean in order to avoid future "interminable controversies" over their works, according to the general introduction to the series.
"There is no Nobel Prize for philosophy," Auxier says. "Many people regard selection for The Library of Living Philosophers and for the Gifford Lectures in Scotland as the two highest honors a professional philosopher can receive." The book contains an intellectual autobiography of Grene--who is known for her controversial views--as well as comments about her work by 23 philosophers and her reply to each.
"Professor Grene has written about a wide variety of philosophical topics and issues over her long career," Auxier wrote. "Particularly she made and continues to make major contributions to the philosophy of biology, a field in which she has been an important voice in the community of biological theorists in their on-going discussion of evolution and its various possible interpretations."
In discussing what makes one a person, Grene says, "We become ourselves by the way we participate in our culture." Consequently, she believes, historical figures must be studied in the context of their time and not in terms only of consciousness. "My daughter's dog is conscious," she says.
Such humor permeates Grene's discourse. "The charm and dry wit of Professor Grene's writing might hold for us a certain danger, namely a tendency to underestimate the difficulties she faced as a woman in the middle portion of the twentieth century in gaining the professional positions and recognition for her ideas--recognition that men with only a fraction of her talent and learning could easily have commanded," Auxier wrote. Grene overcame the difficulties because she "came in as a curious outsider and found a way to produce serious criticisms that had a serious impact in the fields" about which she wrote, colleague Richard Burian says. "She finds a way to activate people in interesting ways."
Grene entered Wellesley in 1927, studying zoology and English. She went to Germany as an exchange student, where she attended lectures by Heidegger and Jaspers. She returned home in 1933, the year Hitler came to power, and earned a Ph.D. at Radcliffe," as close as women got to Harvard in those days." She enjoyed teaching the history of philosophy, but her appointment at the University of Chicago was not renewed during the war.
She moved to Ireland with her then husband, where she helped farm and raise two children, Ruth and Nicholas. "She's a devoted mother and grandmother," Ruth Grene says. "She raised us to respect scholarship and strive for it. É She didn't preach that, but she acted it." She did scholarly work while the children slept, Ruth adds. "I remember getting up and seeing all those books on the kitchen table. Then they got put up and we got fed." Both children became university professors; Nicholas Grene is now at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.
Marjorie Grene taught for five years at Queen's University, Belfast, moved to the University of California at Davis, and worked at a number of other institutions before coming to Virginia Tech with her daughter in 1988. In addition to having earned fellowships in the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Grene has published 12 books, including those on Heidegger, Aristotle, Sartre, and Descartes (and maintains a "lifelong loathing of Descartes' philosophy").
Two years ago at a symposium on Philosophical Insights Afforded by Aging held by the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division and carried on Ethics Videos on the Web, Grene was asked if she had changed her attitude about the theory of the separation of mind and body. "Nonsense," she said. "My body is aging despite my mind's alleged continuing activity. It is I who am wearing out, all of me. There's only one of me as there always has been. Fortunately, I do so far seem to go on thinking or at least working and writing."
Grene--who still comes to campus "most days"--is working on a book about relations between philosophy and biology at various junctures. She continues to work on various topics in 17th-century philosophy.
Grene said there are some genuine philosophical problems that continue to interest thinking people, including bringing philosophical thinking to bear on problems such as those in science or biology. Such discussions are becoming more popular, she said, citing Burian's history of genetics. "This is a relatively new development, and I welcome it; so maybe I'm not as out of fashion as I used to be."
Whether out of fashion or not, Auxier says that Grene "has been instrumental in changing the way historians of philosophy read and write about the figures they study."
