William E. Kennick Papers, 1947-2009
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Amherst College Archives and Special Collections Amherst, MA
Finding aid encoded in NoteTab Pro. Encoded by Peter A. Nelson. 2010-04-06
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Encoded Archival Description (EAD) Version 2002
collection
William E. Kennick Papers
Creation of William E. Kennick Papers
Time of Creation of William E. Kennick Papers
Kennick, W. E.
Biographical History for: William E. Kennick Papers
Biographical Note William E. Kennick taught philosophy at Amherst College for more than 35 years. He was the William F. Kenan Jr. Professor from 1978 to 1980 and the G. Henry Whitcomb Professor from 1976 until 1993, when he retired -- the last Amherst professor forced to do so because he had turned 70. He served as faculty marshal from 1972 to 1993. Kennick was born in 1923 in Lebanon, Ill. Co-valedictorian of his high school class, he received a full tuition scholarship to Oberlin College, which he supplemented by working in steel mills every summer. He graduated from Oberlin in 1945 with honors in philosophy, the only summa cum laude graduate in his class. He entered Cornell University as a Susan Linn Sage Fellow in philosophy but was called up by the Army in 1946. He served for 18 months in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. While recovering from an injury suffered during basic training, Kennick was summoned by a major who asked how he'd like to be a clinical psychologist. Reluctantly, he accepted an assignment to the neuropsychiatric department at Madigan General Hospital at Fort Lewis in Tacoma, Wash. After the Army, Kennick took a special teaching fellowship at Oberlin, after which he returned to Cornell and was awarded a Ph.D. in philosophy. He taught briefly at Boston University before returning to Oberlin in 1951. Three years later, he was named permanent head of Oberlin's philosophy department. He arrived at Amherst in 1956 and began to teach a two-semester course on the history of philosophy. "His seriousness as a teacher, sometimes felt as severity, brought out responsive efforts in his students who wanted to be taken seriously, who looked not just for a degree but an education," said Henry Clay Folger Professor of English William H. Pritchard '53. Kennick regularly handed out a four-and-a-half page single-spaced document he compiled, "Some Rules for Writing Presentable English." He was among those who lamented the demise, in 1966, of the New Curriculum and its program of required core courses. Kennick was acting dean of the faculty in 1979-80. He was also the author of 23 papers and numerous reviews. He wrote and edited the textbook Art and Philosophy (1964 and 1979) and co-edited Metaphysics: Readings and Reappraisals (1966). His 1958 essay, "Does Traditional Aesthetics Rest on a Mistake?" was, for decades, one of the more influential and reprinted essays in aesthetics. He inaugurated the aesthetics course at Amherst and also taught courses on metaphysics and the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Kennick died in Amherst on April 12, 2009 after a long illness. [Source: "Professor Kennick, Remembered." Amherst, Summer 2009]
Gift of Nancy Kennick, 2009.
Scope and Contents of the Collection Professional and personal correspondence, lecture notes and other philosophy course materials, speeches and writings related to Professor Kennick's career as a professor of philosophy at Amherst College. Letters are mostly incoming correspondence from former students, fellow faculty members and administrators at Amherst. Correspondents include Profs. Theodore Baird, William Pritchard, and Jerold Rothstein (AC 1962); Amherst College Presidents Calvin Plimpton and John William Ward; and former students, David Foster Wallace (AC 1985) and Hardy Culver Wilcoxon (AC 1974). Also included are Professor Kennick's 6-volume typescript on the history of philosophy and a binder of printed material entitled collectively "A Gallimaufry of Materials for Use in My Philosophy Courses." Among his writings are published articles and a personal memoir. The collection also includes ca. 40 letters of condolence to Mrs. Nancy Kennick after her husband's death in 2009.
There is no restriction on access to the collection for research use. Particularly fragile items may be restricted for preservation purposes.
Requests for permission to publish material from the collection should be directed to the Archives and Special Collections. It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights.
Non-Alumni Biographical Files -- Kennick, William
Processed in March-April 2010 by Peter A. Nelson.
Philosophy teachers -- United States.
lcsh
Kennick, W.E.
lcnaf
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889-1951 -- Aesthetics.
Baird, Theodore, 1901-
Forgie, J. William.
Pelczar, Michael W.
Plimpton, Calvin Hastings, 1918-
Pritchard, William H.
Rothstein, Jerold M.
Wilcoxson, Hardy C.
Wallace, David Foster
series
Series 1: CORRESPONDENCE, 1951-2006
Letters from former Amherst students of W.E.K. (A-F) 1960-2000
Letters from former Amherst students of W.E.K. (G-K) 1960-2000
Letters from former Amherst students of W.E.K. (L-P) 1960-2000
Letters from former Amherst students of W.E.K. (R-Z) 1960-2000
Letters to W.K. from Amherst Colleagues (A-G) 1961-2000
Letters to W.K. from Amherst Colleagues (H-Z) 1956-2004
Letters to W.K. from Officers of the Administration (AC Presidents) 1956-1993
Letters to W.K. from people outside Amherst 1958-1999
Professional and student correspondence (unsorted) 1951-2006
Correspondence - outgoing 1979-1988
Series 2: WRITINGS & SPEECHES, 1947-2000 and n.d.
"The Concept of God in Whitehead's Cosmology" 1950
Ph.D dissertation: "A Methodological Approach to Metaphysics" (Cornell University) 1952
Writings: Articles and reviews 1955-1989
Misc. published writings 1947-1961
"Robert Sweeney: A Note of Appreciation";"Who is Jesus?" 1959, n.d.
Miscellaneous published articles 1962-
Writings- promotional material from publishers 1963-1977
Writings on Plato n.d.
"The World as I Found It" (memoir) 2008
Speeches and talks - Oberlin College 1953-1960
Speeches and talks 1964-1989
Montale translations and notes 1999-2000
"Three Sequences of Short Poems by Eugenio Montale" trans. W.E. Kennick 2000
Diary of a trip to Paris, Madrid, and Rome n.d.
"Introduction to the History of Philosophy, Part I: Thales to Ockham, Chapter I: Early Greek Philosophy" by W.E. Kennick n.d.
"Introduction to the History of Philosophy, Part I: Thales to Ockham, Chapter II: Socrates and Plato" by W.E. Kennick n.d.
"Introduction to the History of Philosophy, Part I: Thales to Ockham, Chapter III: Aristotle" by W.E. Kennick n.d.
"Introduction to the History of Philosophy, Part I: Thales to Ockham, Chapter IV: Hellenistic-Roman Philosophy" by W.E. Kennick n.d.
"Introduction to the History of Philosophy, Part I: Thales to Ockham, Chapter V: Early Medieval Philosophy" by W.E. Kennick n.d.
"Introduction to the History of Philosophy, Part I: Thales to Ockham, Chapter VI: Islamic and Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages" by W.E. Kennick n.d.
Series 3: TEACHING MATERIALS / STUDENT WORK, 1958-2002
"A Gallimaufry of Materials for use in my Philosophy Courses" (p. 1-148) (see also box 4) 1959-1999
"A Gallimaufry of Materials for use in my Philosophy Courses" (p. 149-333) 1959-1999
"A Gallimaufry of Materials for use in my Philosophy Courses" (p. 334-481) 1959-1999
"A Gallimaufry of Materials for use in my Philosophy Courses" (p. 482-579) 1959-1999
Philosophy Dept: Prof Kennick-Assignments 1958-1977
Philosophy Dept: Prof Kennick-Philosophy II 1987
Philosophy Dept: Prof Kennick:-Philosophy 17 1969-1991
Philosophy Dept: Prof Kennick-Philosophy 18 1964-1995
Philosophy Dept: Prof Kennick-Philosophy 19 1977-1985
Philosophy Dept: Prof Kennick-Philosophy 41 1992
Philosophy Dept: Prof Kennick-Philosophy 61 1981-1999
Wittgenstein-Course Reader Spring 1999
Aesthetics Spring 1992
Philosophical Questions Drawn from the Writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, compiled and edited by Kennick 1989
Wittgenstein - Lecture notes 1 n.d.
Wittgenstein - Lecture notes 2 n.d.
Wittgenstein - Lecture notes 3 n.d.
Wittgenstein - Lecture notes 4 n.d.
Wittgenstein - Course materials n.d.
Wittgenstein - Syllabi 1983-1997
Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations n.d.
Miscellaneous 1995
Wittgenstein - Exams c.1981-1997
Miscellaneous notes n.d.
"Φώς ίλαρόν," a Greek Christian hymn 2002
"Philosophical Semantics" - Doctoral Dissertation by Michael W. Pelczar 2000
"Wittgenstein on Seeing: A Reading of Philosophical Investigations, Part II, section xi" - honors thesis by Sean Greenberg 1993
"Paternalism and the Liberal Paradigm" - honors thesis by Todd Michael Hinnen 1993
"Seeing the World Aright: Ludwig Wittgenstein's Moral Views in the Context of their Viennese Roots" - honors thesis by Jeremy Perlman 1997
"Istanbul: Indian Summer 2004" by Joseph Cary n.d.
"A Gallimaufry of Materials for Use in My Philosophy Courses" by W.E. Kennick (see also box 2, folders 15-18) n.d.
Series 4: HONORS / EPHEMERA / PHOTOGRAPHS, 1954-2005
Honors and ephemera c.1966-1995
Amherst College Endowment funds in honor of W.E. Kennick 1988-2005
Madigan Convalescent Hospital - activities card when W.E. Kennick was recovering from an injury in the U.S. Army 12 July 1995
Photographs - Philosophy department; Commencement c.1980s
Memorial tributes (to others) 1983 and n.d.
Miscellaneous ephemera c.1954-1991
Series 5: POSTHUMOUS MATERIAL, 2009
Memorial tribute to W.E. Kennick 2009
Correspondence to Anna "Nancy" Kennick about W.E. Kennick 2009
Letter and manuscript from Paterson Brown (AC 1960) 2009