George Raymond Geiger

From Philosopedia

Geiger, George Raymond (8 May 1903 - 19 March1998)

Geiger, the only child of Oscar Geiger, a Viennese tailor, was related to Abraham Geiger (1810-1874), the leading proponent of Reform Judaism in Germany. At the age of 19 his father studied for the rabbinate and was ordained. But his father married a Roman Catholic and made a name as founder in New York City of the Henry George School of Social Science.

Although his father wanted his son to write the doctoral dissertation on the philosophy of Henry George, Geiger chose to work with John Dewey, becoming Dewey's last doctoral student. Christopher K. and Helen B. Ryan wrote about Geiger in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology (Jan 1999)

• As Geiger commenced work on his dissertation under the supervision of John Dewey. Sidney Hook informed him that as a new student, his responsibility would be to sit close to Dewey during his seminars in order to prevent the chain-smoking Dewey from burning his bushy mustache. Incredulous at first, Geiger found that it was, indeed, a necessary task. Oscar Geiger wished that his son would write his dissertation on the philosophy of Henry George (for whom he was named - his mother balked at Oscar's desire to name him Henry George Geiger). George was skeptical about this possibility, as a typical dissertation of the day involved translations of medieval texts. As Clancy relates, Dewey agreed not only to support the thesis, but also to provide a preface should the thesis be published. (Biographers of Dewey generally neglect his connections to Georgists and his general acceptance of the single-tax idea, as well as his high estimation of George's status as a social philosopher.) For three years Geiger labored on his topic only to find that the sole copy of his work of some 350 pages had been lost by his eminent professor! Geiger eventually found his thesis wedged behind a desk in Dewey's home. Dewey's chagrin, Geiger has speculated, may have helped him in his long search for permanent employment during the difficult years of the Great Depression. He taught philosophy and a number of other subjects at Bradley Polytechnic Institute and the Universities of North Dakota, Illinois, and Missouri before arriving at Antioch College in 1937, again at the instigation of Dewey. Geiger found the atmosphere at Antioch informal and congenial; moreover, as his colleagues have indicated, he found intellectual stimulation and discourse there as well.

For fifty years, Geiger was John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Antioch College in Ohio, a position for which he had been recommended by Dr. Dewey himself. He continued teaching until 1969.

Geiger was founding editor of the Antioch Review, a treasurer of the American Philosophical Association, a founding member of the editorial council of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology (1941-1998), and in the 1950s a consulting editor of The Humanist (1955-1959).

Geiger wrote The Philosophy of Henry George, The Theory of the Land Question, Toward an Objective Ethics, John Dewey in Perspective, and Science, Folklore and Philosophy. Written as an undergraduate textbook, Philosophy and the Society Order was Deweyan but emphasized Geiger's concerns with values and methodology in the social sciences:

• There is only one way for the social scientist to be objective - objective, that is, in the artificial sense of being morally indifferent. It is to acknowledge uncritically and almost unconsciously the status quo. He cannot abolish values from his field even if he wants to, because values are the long-time decision of the human animal; but what he can do is to make the implicit and unrecognized assumption that the institutions and practices with which he deals are to be accepted as they are. . . . The danger lies in the deception that although a man may say or indeed think he is having no traffic with moral values, he is instead conserving, even if unknowingly, the existing system of values" (pp. 224-5).

According to the Ryans,

• In a chapter titled "Economics and a Democratic Society," Geiger demonstrated a broad familiarity with contemporary economic literature and issues - greater than that of his mentor, Dewey. While not ignoring the arguments of L. von Mises, Hayek, and Knight he sided with Keynes, Hansen, and Beveridge in opining that some degree of "planning" was necessary to obtain the goal which he termed (economic) "security." In this he seemed most influenced by Clarence Ayres' The Divine Right of Capital (1944) and, lingering in the background of Geiger's mind was the figure of Henry George.

Geiger taught until 1987. He used his professorship to initiate an annual John Dewey Lecture Series and invited Sidney Hook to be the first lecturer.

After the death in 1981 of his wife, Louise, his companion was Joan Leon King.

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