June 13, 2011
Catholic University President John Garvey has appointed Associate Professor John McCarthy as dean of the University's School of Philosophy. His four-year term begins July 1.
"It gives me great pleasure to appoint Professor McCarthy as the school's new dean," said Garvey. "He is a very capable scholar who is well respected by the faculty not only for his academic achievements but also for the leadership skills he has displayed during the seven months that he has served as the school's interim dean. I am confident that under his direction the school will continue to fulfill its promise of being a locus of superior teaching and scholarship in the discipline of philosophy."
McCarthy was first appointed as an assistant professor at Catholic University in 1990. In 1996 he was promoted to associate professor. In October 2010 he was named interim dean when Rev. Kurt Pritzl, O.P., took a leave of absence for medical reasons. He continued to serve in that capacity when Father Pritzl passed away on Feb. 21 of this year.
"The School of Philosophy has long enjoyed an international reputation for excellence as a center of philosophical study and teaching," said McCarthy. "I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute in a new way to a scholarly community to which I am greatly indebted, confident not so much in my own capacities as in the grace of the truth it is the school's task and delight to serve."
McCarthy earned an M.A. and a doctorate with distinction in philosophy from Catholic University in 1982 and 1988, respectively. In recent years the focus of McCarthy's writing and teaching has principally been early modern philosophy, but he also has strong interests in political philosophy and Husserlian phenomenology, a philosophical approach, the focus of which is the being of things in their manner of self-disclosure. He is editor of Modern Enlightenment and the Rule of Reason , published in 1998, and he has written 30 scholarly articles and reviews on a wide array of philosophical topics and thinkers.
MEDIA: For more information, contact Katie Lee or Mary McCarthy in the Office of Public Affairs at 202-319-5600.