McLean Center and Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Promote Scholarship, Dialogue, and International Cooperation
By Alex Santana
The McLean Center for the Study of Culture and Values (MCSCV) is hosting several colloquies during spring 2019 on the theme “Meaningfulness of Life.” Each colloquy consists of a different guest speaker and topics relating to the meaningfulness of life. The next colloquy will be on March 27th and the topic is “The Political Philosophy of Walt Whitman.” The speaker is David Sollenberger, an instructor of law and politics in Catholic University’s Department of Politics.
The McLean Center, formerly called the Center for the Study of Culture and Values, was renamed in 2017 after its founding director, the late Rev. George F. McLean, OMI. McLean was a professor of metaphysics in Catholic University’s School of Philosophy from 1956 to 1993. Over 40 years of his life were dedicated to traveling the globe and promoting civil dialogue between different peoples and international cooperation among the nations of the world.
“The long-range strategy of McLean’s corpus might be summed up in the question: how might Philosophy help to elevate thought, clarify basic issues, and enable people to dialogue within and across cultures in order to work for the common good?” stated John P. Hogan, who has taught at Catholic University and worked with the Peace Corps and Catholic Relief Services in Africa, Haiti, and South America.
Similar to the McLean Center, the mission of the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (RVP) is to research and publish studies on an array of human sciences. The Council was founded in 1983 by McLean and it emerged from several international philosophical conferences held during 1970s in different parts of world including Asia, South America, Africa, the Middle East, and the United States in New York City. Over the decades it has been a source of prominent research on cultural heritage and contemporary change. Over 300 volumes have been published and distributed by the scholars and associates of the Council.
The Council hosts between five and ten annual seminars around the world and its last seminar was held in 2018. The seminar comprised of seventeen participants at the University of Virginia and the participants were primarily professors at several international universities. This included the Gregorian University in Rome, the University of Bucharest in Romania, and several others from Asian countries including China, Russia, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
Texts selected for the Council’s 2018 seminar included German sociologist Max Weber’s The City (1921); German-American political philosopher Eric Voegelin’s New Science of Politics (1952); French philosopher Michel Foucault’s Lectures at the College de France 1977-78 and 1983-84; and Catholic University visiting scholar Dr. John McNerney’s Wealth of Persons: Economics with a Human Face (2016).
Catholic University’s Clinical Associate Professor of Philosophy, Jeffrey Dirk Wilson, believed McLean left behind a great legacy of decades of service to the University and the world. “He carried the mission of our University as he travelled to gatherings of scholars around the world, and he gathered scholars from around the world here at CUA,” he said. “He was a walking intersection of a thousand roads, a network of astonishing breadth and depth intellectually and culturally.”
The McLean Center, in conjunction with the Council, has already hosted four colloquies on subjects including Alexis de Tocqueville, African culture, and the academic as an activist. These colloquies are held on Wednesdays from 12:40 P.M. to 2:00 P.M. in Gibbons Hall B-12 and lunch is provided. The last two colloquies of spring semester are on April 10th and 24th. Themes that have been the focus of the Council’s work in the past include “Nation-Building” (1980s), “The Dialogue of Civilizations” (1990s), “Globalization at the Turn of the Millennium” (2000), “Faith in a Secular Age” (2009), and “Re-Learning to Be Human in Global Times” (2015). More information about the McLean Center and the Council can be found at http://www.crvp.org/about-RVP/rvp-mission.html
Over the decades McLean authored and co-authored 25 books and nearly 100 articles. He also gave over one hundred lectures regarding philosophy and human affairs. McLean passed away in 2016 at the age of 87 and his legacy continues to live on in the work of the scholars and associates of the Center in his name.
Catholic University’s Associate Professor of Politics, John Kromkowski, continues Fr. McLean’s work at the McLean Center for the Study of Culture and Values. “His inspiration to all of us will move his love of wisdom onward to another generation of practitioner,” he said. “His pioneer extension of philosophy as a way of living and researching has deepened the understanding of the many ways wisdom is embedded in traditional cultures as well as the ways these insight into the mystery of the really human and the divine are made fresh in our time.”
