Barrows Dunham

Infobox Writer
name = Barrows Dunham


birthname = Barrows Dunham
birthdate = birth date|1905|10|20
birthplace = Mount Holly, New Jersey, United States
deathdate = death date and age|1995|11|19|1905|10|20
deathplace = Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, United States
occupation = university professor, author
nationality = American
period = Mid-twentieth century

Barrows Dunham, (October 20, 1905–November 19, 1995) was an American author and professor of philosophy. Best known for popular works of philosophy such as "Man against Myth" (1947) and "Heroes and Heretics" (1963), [Howard L. Parsons, “The Philosophy of Barrows Dunham,” "Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society", Spring 1997.] Dunham also gained notoriety as a martyr for academic freedom when he was fired from Temple University in 1953 after refusing to “name names” before the House Unamerican Activities Committee. [Fred Richard Zimring, “Academic Freedom and the Cold War: The Dismissal of Barrows Dunham from Temple University, a Case Study,” "Columbia University Teacher's College" (dissertation), 1981]

Life

Dunham was born in 1905 into a Philadelphia family with progressive leanings. His maternal grandfather had commanded a regiment of freed slaves in the Civil War, and his father James Henry Dunham was a Presbyterian minister who resigned his ministry in 1912, when Barrows was seven years old, because his study of philosophy and science, begun in the 1880s and 90s at the then College of New Jersey and at the University of Berlin, led him ultimately to disbelieve in supernatural religion. He took a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1913 and went on to become a professor and dean at Temple University, where his son would eventually come to teach as well. [Parsons, ibid.]

Barrows was educated in local public schools, the William Penn Charter School and, for a final pre-university year, at Lawrenceville School, through all of which he absorbed a full classical education, including Greek. At Princeton he was introduced to the formal study of philosophy, and though he began teaching English at Franklin and Marshall College upon receiving his A.B. from Princeton in 1926, Dunham returned to Princeton in 1928 to pursue a master's degree and, ultimately, a Ph.D. in philosophy. His dissertation was titled "Kant's Theory of the Universal Validity of the Esthetic Judgment", [Zimring, ibid.] later published as "A Study in Kant's Aesthetics".

References

Bibliography

* "Ethics, Dead and Alive" (1971) ISBN 0-394-42371-2
* "Heroes and Heretics: A Political History of Western Thought" (1964)
* "Thinkers and Treasurers" (1960)
* "Artist in Society" (1960)
* "Giant in Chains" (1953)
* "Man against Myth" (1947)
* "A Study in Kant's Aesthetics: The Universal Validity of Aesthetic Judgments" (1934)