Verene, Donald Phillip 1937-

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VERENE, Donald Phillip 1937-

PERSONAL: Born October 24, 1937, in Galesburg, IL; son of Phillip Nelson and Eleanor (Grant) Verene; married Molly Black, October 13, 1960; children: Christopher Phillip. Education: Knox College, A.B. (cum laude), 1959; Washington University, St. Louis, A.M., 1962, Ph.D., 1964.

ADDRESSES: Home—1169 Hancock Dr. NE, Atlanta, GA 30306. Office—Department of Philosophy, Emory University, 561 S. Kligo Circle, Atlanta, GA 30322; fax: 404-712-9425.

CAREER: Writer, philosopher, and academic. Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, assistant professor, 1964-69, associate professor of philosophy, 1969-71; Pennsylvania State University, University Park, visiting associate professor, 1970, associate professor, 1971-80, professor of philosophy, 1980-82; Emory University, Atlanta, GA, professor of philosophy and chairman of the department, 1982-88, professor of philosophy, 1988-90, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy, 1990—. Visiting assistant professor, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, summer, 1965; visiting fellow, Pembroke College of Oxford University, 1988. Director, Institute for Vico Studies, 1982—.

MEMBER: American Philosophical Association, Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Metaphysical Society of America, American Society for Aesthetics, Hegel Society of America (treasurer and member of executive council, 1969-75; president, 1992-94), Society for Philosophy of Creativity (secretary of Eastern Division, 1971-80), Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

AWARDS, HONORS: L.H.D. Honoris causa, Knox College, 1990; Galileo Prize for Philosophy, Italy, 1998.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Man and Culture: A Philosophical Anthology, Dell (New York, NY), 1970.

(Editor, with Georgio Tagliacozzo and Michael Mooney) Vico and Contemporary Thought, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 1980.

(Editor and author of introduction) Sexual Love and Western Morality, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1972, 2nd edition, Jones & Bartlett (Boston, MA), 1995.

(Editor, with Giorgio Tagliacozzo and others) Giambattista Vico's Science of Humanity, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1976.

(Editor) Symbol, Myth, and Culture: Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer, 1935-1945, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1979.

Hegel's Social and Political Thought: The Philosophy of Objective Spirit, Humanities Press (Atlantic Highlands, NJ), 1980.

Vico's Science of Imagination, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1981.

Hegel's Recollection: A Study of Images in the "Phenomenology of Spirit," State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1985.

(Editor, with Giorgio Tagliacozzo and Vanessa Rumble) A Bibliography of Vico in English, 1884-1984, Bowling Green State University Press (Bowling Green, OH), 1986.

(Editor) Vico and Joyce, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1987.

The New Art of Autobiography: An Essay on the "Life of Giambattista Vico, Written by Himself," Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1991.

(Editor, with wife, Molly Black Verene) Albert William Levi, The High Road of Humanity: The Seven Ethical Ages of Western Man, Rodopi Bv Editions (New York, NY), 1995.

Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1997.

(Editor, with John Michael Krois) Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 4, The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1998.

(Author of foreword) Ernst Cassirer, The Logic of the Cultural Sciences: Five Studies, translated by Steve G. Lofts, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2000.

(With Thora Ilin Bayer) Cassirer's Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms: A Philosophical Commentary, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2001.

The Art of Humane Education, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 2002.

Knowledge of Things Human and Divine: Vico's New Science and "Finnegan's Wake," Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2003.

(With Jurgen Trabant and Sean Ward) Vico's New Science of Ancient Signs: A Study of Sematology Routledge (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to periodicals and journals such as Owl of Minerva: Journal of the Hegel Society of America, Clio, Monist, Journal of the History of Ideas, New Vico Studies, Review of Metaphysics, and Philosophy and Rhetoric.

Contributor to volumes such as Hegel's Political Philosophy, edited by Z. A. Pelczynski, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1971; Discourses of Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, edited by K. Brownlee and W. Stephens, University Press of New England (Hanover, NH), 1989; and Philosophical Imagination and Cultural Memory, edited by P. Cook, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 1993.

SIDELIGHTS: Writer and philosophy professor Donald Phillip Verene and coeditor Georgio Tagliacozzo assemble a multidisciplinary examination of "the long range effectiveness of Viconian ideas in many fields of culture" in Giambattista Vico's Science of Humanity, wrote Glauco Cambon in Renaissance Quarterly. The book's five sections concentrate on Vico's wide-ranging contributions to political theory, epistemology, historical knowledge, humanistic and social scientific thought, and philosophy of history. By virtue of Vico's relevance to modern humanism, he also had an influence on social sciences such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, and political ideology. Vico's works affected prominent writers and thinkers such as James Joyce and Karl Marx. Vico "emerges from this volume as an almost inexhaustible author who keeps inviting interpretive scrutiny for his own sake and at the same time turns out to have been seminal, or at least prophetically anticipatory, in a multitude of unpredictable ways," Cambon remarked. The book also includes a detailed bibliography of critical works on Vico as well as Vico's own works in English translation. "I recommend [Giambattista Vico's Science of Humanity] highly, not only for Vichian scholars but to those desiring a first introduction to this most fascinating and original thinker," remarked James C. Morrison in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Verene "develops an original and suggestive analysis of Vico's texts" in Vico's Science and Imagination, remarked Antonina Alberti in the Journal of Modern History. In his study, Verene asserts that Vico's philosophy represents "a completely new kind of thought, in which imagination is considered a cognitive facility in and of itself," Alberti observed. Alberti concluded that Vico's Science and Imagination is "a valuable contribution, not only to the study of Vico's thought, but to the history of eighteenth-century philosophical thought in general."

Hegel's Recollection: A Study of Images in the "Phenomenology of Spirit" is a "rereading of Hegel" in which Verene "insists on the relationship between thought and figurative language and the function of recollection," wrote Patricia Anne Simpson in MLN (Modern Language Notes). A relationship exists between speculative philosophy and recollection, Simpson noted. Verene examines Hegel's ideas in the Phenomenology of Spirit through chapters on method, physiognomy and phrenology, meaning, images, metaphors in the Phenomenology, and more. "Verene's main virtue is his erudition, and he draws on a lot of extraneous material which might enrich a scholarly discussion of some of these passages," remarked Stephen Bungay in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Simpson concluded that Verene's reading "provides historically correct and substantial reevaluations of the figures of thought in the Phenomenology."

In Symbol, Myth, and Culture: Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer 1935-1945, "Verene's editing of Ernst Cassirer's unpublished papers reveals Cassirer at work over a ten-year period as a polished text could not," commented Margot Drekmeier in Ethics. Between Cassirer's death in 1945 and the 1980 publication of Verene's book, "nothing has been able to erode [Cassirer's] reputation as the greatest twentieth-century historian of ideas," remarked Patrick Riley in the American Political Science Review. "How fine it is, then, to be given a collection of 'new' Cassirer pieces drawn by Donald Verene from papers and lectures dating from 1935 to 1945, and artfully grouped under the titles of some of Cassirer's best-known books," Riley wrote.

Verene presents a "penetrating criticism of our technological society" in Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge, commented P. Newberry in Choice. Philosophy has deviated from Socratic origins and abandoned its relationship to "mortality and the search for self-knowledge," Newberry wrote. Method preoccupies modern philosophy at the expense of the fundamental search for wisdom and knowledge. Verene "offers us a diagnosis of our current philosophical malaise and a prescription for its cure," wrote Kevin E. Dodson in the Review of Metaphysics. Verene also endorses folly as the means for overcoming the "barbarism of reflection" that enlists the mind's abilities to serve the basest forms of human activities and desires. "Folly enables us to see the opposites which speculative philosophy tries to relate to each other in order to think of the truth of the whole," stated Rik Peters in Clio. Dodson called Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge "a provocative and intriguing book."

The Art of Humane Education includes Verene's "brief overview of pedagogy in both a theoretical and practical sense," noted Samuel T. Huang in Library Journal. Verene offers a detailed statement of humanist and classical ideals that he feels should form the basis of liberal arts and sciences education. The Art of Humane Education is a "necessary and radically important work," Huang commented.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

American Anthropologist, February-April, 1972, Stanley Diamond, review of Man and Culture: A Philosophical Anthology, p. 10.

American Political Science Review, December, 1980, Patrick Riley, review of Symbol, Myth, and Culture: Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer 1935-1945, pp. 1073-1075.

Choice, February, 1998, P. Newberry, review of Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge, p. 1003.

Clio, summer, 1994, "Selected Writings of Donald Phillip Verene," bibliography of Donald Verene, pp. 329-333; summer, 1999, Rik Peters, review of Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge, p. 474.

Ethics, January, 1981, Margot Drekmeier, review of Symbol, Myth, and Culture, pp. 333-335; January, 1982, Andrzej Rapaczynski, review of Hegel's Social and Political Thought: The Philosophy of Objective Spirit, pp. 362-353.

Journal of Aesthetic Education, spring, 1999, review of Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge, p. 113.

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, summer, 1986, Stephen Bungay, review of Hegel's Recollection: A Study of Images in the "Phenomenology of Spirit," pp. 415-416.

Journal of Modern History, March, 1983, Antonina Alberti, review of Vico's Science of Imagination, pp. 150-152.

Library Journal, April 15, 1981, Leslie Armour, review of Vico's Science of Imagination, p. 887; July, 1996, Leslie Armour, review of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 4: The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms, p. 119; August, 2002, Samuel T. Huang, review of The Art of Humane Education, p. 114.

MLN (Modern Language Notes), December, 1986, Patricia Anne Simpson, review of Hegel's Recollection, pp. 1270-1273.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, June, 1977, James C. Morrison, review of Giambattista Vico's Science of Humanity, pp. 569-570.

Renaissance Quarterly, autumn, 1978, Glauco Cambon, review of Giambattista Vico's Science of Humanity, pp. 368-369.

Review of Metaphysics, December, 1993, James Olney, review of The New Art of Autobiography: An Essay on the "Life of Giambattista Vico, Written by Himself," pp. 393-394; March, 1999, Kevin E. Dodson, review of Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge, p. 731.