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. 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.

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. He was president of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy from 1978 to 1980. He is a past president of the William James Society. In 2016, he was awarded the society's first Lifetime Achievement Award.

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. That year he won a Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching from the university. In 2012, McDermott was named the founding director of the school's Community of Faculty Retirees.