Professor David Schweickart, Professor of Philosophy
at Loyola University Chicago will speak on April 18, 2007
at 2:00pm room 1604 on the Des Plaines Campus

The Philosophy Department will be honored to sponsor a public address by David Schweickart who is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago and who is the author of three books. Professor Schweickart holds two Ph.D's, one in mathematics and one in philosophy. His areas of expertise include social and political philosophy, market socialism, Marxism, and existentialism. He is also very interested in philosophical issues of race and gender.

Professor Schweickart's advocacy of a democratic socialism based on workers' control, democratic control of investment, and use of some market mechanisms has sparked an important and lively international debate. As a consequence he has given numerous presentations in the United States, Canada , Mexico , Cuba , El Salvador , Spain , France , Italy , the Czech Republic , the Philippines , Venezuela and China . Many of his articles have been translated into Chinese, Spanish, French and Catalan, and his most recent book After Capitalism has been translated into Chinese.

Professor Schweickart recently returned from Caracus , Venezuela where he was invited to speak on “Socialism for the 21st Century” at the Centro Felix Miranda as part of a book launching of the Venezuelan edition of Dercho a Decidir: Propuestas para el socialismo del siglo XXI , a collection of translated essays recently published in Spain . Dercho a Decidir includes an article written by Dr. Schweickart entitled, “Economic Democracy: A Worthy Socialism that Would Really Works” as well as a postscript he had written for this edition. Dr. Schweickart spoke to a full house, including many government officials, delivering his presentation in Spanish and conducting an extensive question and answer session.

For his visit to Oakton, Professor Schweickart will speak on his book After Capitalism and answer questions. He will also meet with the student-faculty seminar on Marxism that has been studying his book. After his Oakton presentation, Professor Schweickart will be heading to Jilin University in China to give several presentations there.

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David Schweickart is Professor of Philosophy Department at Loyola University Chicago. He holds a B.S. in Mathematics (University of Dayton, 1964), a Ph.D. in Mathematics (University of Virginia, 1969), and a Ph.D. in Philosophy (Ohio State University, 1977). His dissertation for the doctorate in mathematics was "Complex Bordism Rings of Periodic Maps," and his dissertation for the philosophy doctorate was "Capitalism: A Utilitarian Analysis."

Professor Schweickart has taught at Loyola since 1975, and was at the Loyola Rome Center several times (1987-88, 1994-95, 1999-2000). He has been a Visiting Professor of Mathematics at the University of Kentucky, 1969-70, and a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire, 1986-87. He has lectured in Spain, Cuba, El Salvador, Italy, and the Czech Republic, as well as throughout the United States.

His primary areas of research are Social and Political Philosophy, Philosophy and Economics, and Marxism. He also has major interests in Feminist Theory, Existentialism, Critical Theory, and Race and Racism. He has published several books, chapters, and articles on these topics, including Against Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 1993/Westview Press, 1996, published in Spanish as Mas alla del capitalismo, 1997), Capitalism or Worker Control? An Ethical and Economic Appraisal (Praeger, 1980), and articles in such journals as Theoria, Review of Radical Political Economics, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Economics and Philosophy, Critical Review, Science and Society, Social Theory and Practice, Praxis International, and The National Women's Studies Association Journal. He is co-author (with B. Ollman, J. Lawler, and H. Ticktin) of Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists  (Routledge, 1998). He is co-author (with B. Ollman, J. Lawler, and H. Ticktin) of Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists  (Routledge, 1998). Dr. Schweickart'swork has been translated into Spanish, Catalan, French, and Chinese.

He is presently writing a shorter, more popular version of his Against Capitalism, to be called After Capitalism, and is doing research on a large project on Third World poverty, in order to determine what sort of economic structure a poor country should put in place, if not constrained by local elites or international interference, in order to optimize genuine development over time for all its citizens. Over the years Dr. Schweickart has served as faculty advisor of Loyola's Amnesty International chapter and also the Loyola Organization in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, and co-chaired the Committee on the Racial Climate at Loyola. He is an active member and program organizer for the Conference of North American and Cuban Philosophers and Social Scientists, held annually in Havana, as well as for the Radical Philosophy Association.

In 1999 Dr. Schweickart was named Faculty Member of the Year.

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