C. Wesley DeMarco, Ph.D.
Teaching Professor
Department of Philosophy
Clark University
Worcester, MA 01610-1477
Phone: (508) 793-7497
Email: cdemarco@clarku.edu
Dr. DeMarco (Ph.D, Vanderbilt University 1991) has taught full time at Clark since 2007, serving as Lecturer since 2011 and Senior Lecturer since 2014. He has worked for three decades to develop a 'Neosocratic' philosophy that engages Western and Asian wisdom traditions, and which offers a fresh approach to the philosophical life, meaning, metaphysics, nature, and human agency and interagency. Central to this approach is how the lineaments of wisdom might be intimated in the questions by which it is sought and the qualifications of language and thought needed to articulate these. The approach hangs on a general theory of symbolization and the metaphysics of nature implied by this theory. Ethics and aesthetics follow in turn. Wes was awarded the Aristotle Prize by the Metaphysical Society of America in 1997. He was awarded the Frank Thompson Award for excellence in sleight of hand in 1977. He is ranked in three styles of martial art. Wes is a published poet and amateur composer and guitarist (Listen to his Soundcloud).
Selected publications:
"Wise Questions" in Wisdom and Philosophy: Contemporary and Comparative Approaches ed. Moeller and Whitehead, Bloomsbury Academic 2016.
"Righting the Names of Change" Journal of Chinese Philosophy v. 36 (1) March, 2009.
"Spheres of Power, Spheres of Freedom" The Pluralist vol. 2, no. 1 (Sp. 2006).
"Great Teacher and Great Soul: Ueshiba and Gandhi on Personal Violence" in Comparative Philosophy and Religion in Times of Terror. Ed. Allen, D. Lanham: Lexington, 2006.
"The Generation and Destruction of Categories" in Categories: Historical and Systematic Essays. Ed. Gorman, M. and J. Sanford. Catholic University of America Press, 2004.
"How Does Descartes Derive His Knowledge of Body By Reflecting on Himself?" Southwest Phil. Rev.18 (1), 2002.
"Knee Deep in Technique: The Ethics of Monopoly Capital." Journal of Business Ethics 31 (2) 2001, 151 – 164.
"On the Impossibility of Placebo Effects in Psychotherapy." Philosophical Psychology 11 (2), 1998 pp. 207-227.
"The Greening of Aristotle" in The Greeks and the Environment, ed. Westra, L. and T. Robinson. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997.
"Plato's Ghost: Consequences of Aristotelian Dialectic" in The Crossroads of Norm and Nature: Aristotle's Ethics and Metaphysics. Ed. Sim, M. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995.
Selected work in metaphysics:
“The Touch of Contingency” (2017 meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, Boston, MA)
“Rewilding Imagination” (2016 meeting of the Académie du Midi at Alet-les-Bains, France.)
“Pre-Socratic Ignorance” (2016 meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership of the U. S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD.)
“The Silence of Pure Reason” (2012 meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, University of Georgia, Athens, GA).
"A Continuum of World-Negating Acts" (2010 meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, Boston University).
"Reason, Imagination, and Reality" (2009 meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, Emory University, Atlanta.).
"The Time Field" (2009 Meeting of the International Institute for Field-Being at the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association).
"The Emergence of Normativities in General Attractor Theory" (2008 Meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, University of Southern Maine, Portland).
"A Zero-Method for the Ultimate Why-Question" (2006 meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.).
"The Unexpected Utility of Neo-Socratic Metaphysics" (2004 Meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, University of Georgia, Athens).
"Life With Questioning" (2004 Meeting of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy at the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association).
"Nature’s Turn: Reflexivity as the Crux of the Psyche" (2003 Meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, Penn State University).
"Creativity: A Telling Transition" (2003 Meeting of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, Asilomar, CA).
"Fields, Environments, Contexts" (invited paper for the International Institute for Field-Being at the 2002 meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association).
"Platonism in the Means of Construction" (1998 Meeting of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association and 1998 Meeting of the World Congress of Philosophy).
"Modality and Mental Illness" (1997 Meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN.).
"Being and the New Dialectic" (1995 Meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, Loyola University, Baltimore, Maryland).
"The Becoming of Possible Musics" (1994 Meeting of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association).
Selected work in ethics:
"Choosing Natural Agency" (2018 meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, Atlanta, GA).
"Better than Ethics? The Way of Moral Power” (2013 meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA)
"Ethics Through Pragmaticism" (2003 Conference on Pragmatism and Moral Theory, O.S.U.).
"Nasty Imperatives" (2001 Value Inquiry Conference, Tulsa, OK).
"Relativism and Moral Power" (1998 Meeting of the Mountain-Plains Philosophical Society).
"Descartes’ Ethic of Self-Esteem" (1997 Meeting of the Mountain-Plains Philosophical Society).
"The Sefirotics of Power: Spheres of Freedom" (1996 National Conference on Liberty of the Academy for Jewish Philosophy, Nashville, TN).
"Aristotle on the Economic Determination of Family Values" (1993 Annual Joint Meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy and the Society for the Study of Islamic Philosophy and Science).
"Rights and Virtues: a Common Measure" (1992 Symposium of the International Center of Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Research,Zacharo/Olympia, Greece).
"The Separation of Moral Powers" (1992 Meeting of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association).