Jeremy David Bendik-KeymerBeamer - Schneider Professor in EthicsOn Leave Fall 2012
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Elmer G. Beamer was the accountant for Kent Smith, a co-founder of Lubrizol and President of Case Institute of Technology (1958-61). Hubert H. Schneider was Smith's lawyer. The two men -Beamer and Schneider- exhibited the highest ethical standards as professionals. The brothers Kent, Kelvin and Vincent Smith did a great deal for Case Western Reserve University -and still do through foundation support.
Educated in public schools in New York State and in France, I studied philosophy at Yale University and University of Chicago, where I worked especially with Susan Neiman, Candace Vogler, Martha Nussbaum, Jean-Luc Marion and Charles Larmore. Previously, I taught at Yale, University of Chicago, Colorado College, American University of Sharjah, and LeMoyne College.
My charge is to promote ethics throughout the undergraduate curriculum. Ethics is a kind of know-how in community. Relational and practical in doing ethics, we orient our sense of humanity and develop the possibility of a just, wholesome life in community. In ethics we do as Dr. King said --we "create the beloved community."
My published work has ranged from human rights (and civics more broadly) to philosophy of education, focusing on transversal innovations across parts of schools and across schools to communities, to environmental philosophy where I have worked on two books. I also worked on the research team for one book in early childhood education. Currently, I am writing a book on conscience and what I call "relational reason", Do You Have a Conscience?, and I am writing a book around the risk of cascading into the sixth mass extinction called, Against Extinction: Practice then Theory. At the center of this latter work is my understanding of how goodness must be adapted to the form of power of aggregate collectives and of how civic activism against structural injustice emerges as the primary duty of good people.
A recent course on philosophy and literature led me to a philosophy of language course I plan to teach called "From Language to Communication" which focuses on the transitions from the early 20th century theory of language as propositional (theoretically understood), to the mid 20th century focus on speech acts (language practically understood), to what I take as an emerging focus on language as communication, as " interpersonal connection" (relationally understood). Other courses I regularly teach include a SAGES seminar called "Vocation & life."
I am married to Elaine Wolf, a couples and family therapist and a NIA blue belt, who does philosophy holistically and relationally. We're lucky to raise Isaiah, age seven. My family originally comes from the greater Cleveland area, my father graduating from Oldsted Falls High School, attending Hiram College on scholarship, and my mother graduating from Elyria High School, attending Bowling Green State University on a teaching scholarship, the first in her family to attend college. In the early 1970s, she discovered feminism and retook her maiden name. When I was 13, I decided it was only fair to take her name, too, which is how I have a hyphenated name. My parents have been married 47 years.