Clarence Shole' Johnson
Professor
Department of Philosophy
email: csjohnso@mtsu.edu

Middle Tennessee State University
Box 73
Murfreesboro, TN 37132

Phone: (615)904-8309 (Direct)

Main Office: (615)898-2907
Fax: (615)904-8055

Curriculum Vitae

EDUCATION

Ph.D. (Philosophy)
McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada --- May, 1986
(Dean's Honor List for Excellence in the Doctoral Program.)
Doctoral Dissertation: "Hume's Theory of Moral Responsibility in the Treatise."
Director: Professor David Fate Norton.

M.A. (Philosophy)
Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada --- September, 1978.
Thesis: "Strawson and Disembodied Existence."
Director: Professor Richmond Campbell.

B.A. (Philosophy & English)
Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, Freetown, Sierra Leone,
West Africa -- June, 1975
Thesis: “Persons and Disembodied Existence.”
Supervisor: Mr. A.G. Elgood

PRESENT POSITION

Full Professor (Tenured), Department of Philosophy,
Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132

AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION

Early Modern Philosophy; Ethics; Hume.

AREAS OF COMPETENCE

Epistemology; Elementary Logic; Contemporary Analytic Philosophy; African Philosophy and African American Philosophy.

PUBLICATIONS:

BOOK(S)
· Cornel West and Philosophy: The Quest for Social Justice (Routledge, 2002).

ARTICLES & CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

· "Reconceptualizing Blackness and Making Race Obsolescent." Commissioned chapter contribution to volume entiled White on White/Black on Black (ed.) George Yancy. Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.

· “Author Meets Critics Session on Cornel West and Philosophy at the APA Eastern Division Meeting December 27-30, 2003: Response to My Critics.” In the APA Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience, Vol. 4 No.2, (spring 2005), pp.6-9.

· “A Critique of Cornel West’s Christo-Marxian Prescription for Social Justice.”
In Cheryl L. Hughes (ed.), Race, Social Identity, Human Dignity, Social Philosophy Today Book Series, Vol. 16, (Philosophy Documentation Center, 2002).

· “Reading Cornel West as a Humanistic Scholar: Rhetoric and Practice.” In George Yancy (ed.), Cornel West: A Critical Reader, (Blackwell, 2001).

· “Cornel West, African American Critical Thought, and the Quest for Social Justice.” The Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 32, No.4 (Winter 2001), 547-572.

· "Paulin Hountondji, African Philosophy and Philosophical Methodology." Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXXVI (1998), pp.179-195.

· “Scholarship, Power, and Moral Decency.” The Journal of Thought, Vol. 33 (1), (Spring 1998), pp.9-14. This is the lead piece in the volume.

· "Cornel West as Pragmatist and Existentialist." In Lewis R. Gordon (ed.), Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy, (Routledge, 1997).

· "An Analysis of John Mbiti's Treatment of the Concept of Event in African
Ontologies." QUEST: An International Journal of African Philosophy, Vols. IX (2) and X (1), (1996), pp.139-157.

· "Annette Baier on Reason and Morals in Hume's Philosophy." DIALOGUE: Canadian Philosophical Review, Vol. XXXIV, No. 2 (Spring 1995), pp.367-380.

· "Teaching the Canons of Western Philosophy at Historically Black Colleges and Universities: The Spelman College Experience." Metaphilosophy, Vol. 26, No.4 (October 1995), pp.413-423.

· "Capaldi's Copernican Reading of Hume." DIALOGUE: Canadian Philosophical Review, Vol. XXXIII No.1 ( Winter 1994), pp.71-78.

· "Hume's Theory of Moral Responsibility: Some Unresolved Matters." DIALOGUE: Canadian Philosophical Review, Vol. XXX1, No.1 (1992), pp.3-18. This is the lead article in the volume and it has been reprinted in
Roland G. Bonnel (ed.), Facets of the Eighteenth Century (Ontario: Captus University Publications, 1991), pp.79-92. The reprint in Facets appeared before the original publication in DIALOGUE because DIALOGUE, as a result of a backlog, rescheduled the manuscript from its originally slated issue.

· "Yet Another Look at Cognitive Reason And Moral Action in Hume's Ethical System." Journal of Philosophical Research, Vol. XVII (1992), pp. 225-238.

· "Lehrer and the Analysis of Knowledge." The Southwest Philosophy Review, Vol. 8, No. 2 (July, 1992), pp. 89-96.

· "Hume on Character, Action and Causal Necessity." AUSLEGUNG: A Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Summer 1990), pp. 149-164. This article has been indexed in the select bibliography of The Cambridge Companion to Hume (ed.) David Fate Norton. Cambridge University Press, 1994.

· “The Humanistic Scholarship of Cornel West.” In Lewis R. Gordon (ed.) Key Figures in African American Critical Thought. Routledge. Forthcoming.

· "The Concept of Essence in African Religious and Philosophical Thought."
Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy, (ed.) V.Y. Mudimbe.
Commissioned article. Dordretch, The Netherlands:
Kluwer Academic Publishers Inc. Forthcoming.

· "The Nature of Event in African Religious and Philosophical Thought."
Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy, (ed.) V.Y. Mudimbe.
Commissioned article. Dordretch, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic
Publishing Inc. Forthcoming.