C. Hartley Grattan

From Philosopedia

Grattan, C. Hartley (19 October 1902 - 25 June 1980)

At the memorial held by the Faculty Council, University of Texas at Austin, on 6 October 1980, Teresa Palomo Acosta wrote the following:

C. Hartley Grattan, professor emeritus of history, died on June 25, 1980, in Austin. He was 77. A memorial service was held on October 6, 1980, to honor his accomplishments at the University.

Professor Grattan was born on October 19, 1902, in Wakefield, Massachusetts. He received his bachelor's degree from Clark College in 1923. He later embarked on a thirty-year career as a freelance writer in New York City, where he wrote for such influential magazines as American Mercury, Scribners, and Harper's. During his long writing career in New York, he also assembled the Grattan Collection of Southwest Pacificana. The collection emphasizes Australia but also includes New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, and Antarctica. It is considered the most comprehensive collection in the United States relating to this region. The collection was placed in the University's Humanities Research Center when Professor Grattan joined the UT Austin faculty in 1964.

A leading American authority on twentieth century Australia, Professor Grattan published a definitive two-volume study: The Southwest Pacific to 1900 and The Southwest Pacific since 1900. In 1977 he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the Australian National University in recognition of his research on Australia.

In 1932 he published The Three Jameses: A Family of Minds, a study of Henry, Sr., Henry, and William, which "put formidable emphasis on their continuing influence," according to the New York Times (June 1980).

Hartley, an economist and social analyst, also wrote The Critique of Humanism (1930) and The Quest of Knowledge (1955).

Asked about humanism, he responded to Warren Allen Smith:

I am flattered that you should have concluded that I am an expert on the subject of humanism, but I must resign the post forthwith. I cannot qualify for the high honor. As you remark, everybody is a humanist today, unless he is a bitter Communist, for even the Communists of softer hearts claim to be humanist on occasion. I suppose I should claim the title, too, if pressed to do so, but I do not find it necessary to hold systematic views on the subject. Maybe humanism is to most people simply a synonym of good will. In fact, I think that is the case. Most of us manage to live with bits and pieces of philosophy strewn around our lives, but feel no strong urge to formulate a system or even fit our thinking into other people’s systems. By and large I suppose my own thinking has been most strongly influenced, as far as philosophy goes, by John Dewey and William James. I really don’t know, though, for I have not, in recent years, inspected the fragments of philosophy that clutter my mind. This is a rather sorry confession and it causes me to resolve to repair my deficiencies in this line. But as of this moment I’m afraid you’ll have to demote me to the class of the hopelessly un-philosophical.

{WAS, 1 April 1949}