Biographical Profile Arthur O. Lovejoy and The Revolt against Dualism Jonathan B. Imber A rthur O. Lovejoy is best known for The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, published in 1936. Although fixed permanently in the pantheon of outstanding works in the history of ideas, it represents only one aspect of Lovejoy's scholarly voca- tion. The Revolt against Dualism, first published in 1930 and republished in 1960 and again in 1995, belongs to a tradition in philosophical theorizing that Lovejoy called "descriptive epistemology." In the United States, this tra- dition owes much of its force to the writings of William James, Lovejoy's teacher, whose clarifications of such ideas as perception are distinguished by their resource- ful and sophisticated common sense. Lovejoy's principal aim in The Revoltagainst Dualism is to clarify the distinction between the quite separate phe- nomena of the knower and the known, something regu- larly obvious to common sense, if not always to intellectual understanding. This work is as much an argument about the ineluctable differences between subject and object and between mentality and reality as it is a subtle polemic against those who would stray far from acknowledging these differences. With a resolve that lasts throughout this long book, Lovejoy offers candid evaluations of a generation's worth of philosophical discussions that ad- dress the problem of epistemological dualism. The Early Development of the Ideal of Academic Freedom Arthur Oncken Lovejoy was born in Berlin on Octo- ber 10, 1873. Before he was two years old his family settled in Boston, where his father pursued a career in medicine. Lovejoy's mother died of an accidental drug overdose shortly after the move to Boston. His father abandoned the practice of medicine to become an Epis- copal minister and remarried in 1881. The elder Lovejoy's evangelical enthusiasms never especially impressed his son, except as resistances to his plans to study philosophy rather than to become a minister as his father wished. Arthur Lovejoy's early life was typi- cal of many, especially bright but religiously uninspired young men who sought intellectual challenges and re- freshment in the newly forming graduate programs in the humanities and social sciences. Lovejoy was by no means hostile to religious con- viction; he was simply not interested in being its per- sonal advocate. His struggles with his father were undoubtedly significant to his intellectual develop- ment, but psychoanalytic explanation became socio- logical reality: He applied his intellectual energies to scholarly and professional tasks that collectively would help to disestablish the central role and intellectual prestige of Protestant clergymen in the administration of higher education in America. Throughout the nine- teenth century, these clergymen were gradually re- placed by a leadership dominated by university degrees other than those in theology. The future of the univer- sity was passing to a new kind of leadership called "scientific," which required organizational change that no churchman or church movement could single- handedly effect.