M. Whitcomb Hess

Mary Whitcomb Hess (11 December 1893 – 12 February 1987) was an American writer, philosopher and poet.

Biography

Mary Whitcomb was born in Hayden, Indiana, the daughter of Harry Y. Whitcomb and Caroline Whitcomb. She graduated from Hayden High School in 1911 and then enrolled at Moores Hill College in Dearborn County. She began her career as a teacher at Hayden and then taught at Vernon. In 1918, she married John Hess and they moved to Lawrence, Kansas. She earned her bachelor's degree at the University of Kansas (1926) and joined Phi Beta Kappa Society. In 1927, the Hess family moved to Athens, Ohio, where her husband became chairman of the German Department at Ohio University. During this time, she obtained a master’s in Philosophy from Ohio University with a thesis entitled The Name is Living, a study of the life of Isaac Pennington, the Quaker mystic and father-in-law of William Penn.

She was an assiduous collaborator of scholarly journals and the popular press. She had over 160 articles that were published in periodicals such as The Journal of Philosophy, Hibbert Journal, The American Scholar, and The Saturday Evening Post. Mary Whitcomb Hess died in Columbus, Ohio at the age of 93.

Works

• "More About Space and Time in Music," The Open Court, Vol. XLII, No. 4 (1923), pp. 208–11.
• "A Quaker Plotinus," The Hibbert Journal, Vol. XXIX, No. 3 (1930), pp. 479–86.
• "Epistemology and Symbolism," The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXIX, No. 10 (1932), pp. 265–68.
• "The Universal-Particular Situation in Sculpture and Poetry," The Monist, Vol. XLIV, No. 2 (1934), pp. 255–61.
• "A Note on Criteria," The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXXIII, No. 14 (1936), pp. 382–84.
• "The Mind of the Third Reich," The Christian Century, Vol. LIV, No. 31 (1937), pp. 970–71.
• "Age and Politics," The Commonweal, Vol. XXVI, No. 6 (1937), pp. 153–54.
• "The 'Thoughts' of Joubert, 1838," The Commonweal, Vol. XXVIII, No. 9 (1938), pp. 239–40.
• "Objectivity in Moral Philosophy," The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXXV, No. 14 (1938), pp. 381–86.
• "Conversations in Boston, 1839," The Catholic World, Vol. CXXXIX (1939), pp. 309–17.
• "Margaret Fuller: An Appreciation," The Commonweal, Vol. XXX, No. 25 (1939), pp. 555–56.
• "His Majesty's Government," The Commonweal, Vol. XXXI, No. 12 (1940), pp. 259–61.
• "The Power of Being a Poet," The Commonweal, Vol. XXXII, No. 20 (1940), pp. 407–8.
• "The Nazi Cult of Nietzsche," The Catholic World, Vol. CLVI, No. 934 (1943), pp. 434–37.
• "William Penn, American," The Christian Century, Vol. LXI, No. 42 (1944), pp. 1194–95.
• "Humanism and Modern Science," The Catholic World, Vol. CLVIII, No. 946 (1944), pp. 370–76.
• "The Power of Poetic Language," Spirit, Vol. XI, No. 6 (1945), pp. 173–76.
• "Language and Sense Perception," The Thomist, Vol. X, No. 1 (1947), pp. 56–74.
• "The Cult of Verbal Noises," The Catholic World, Vol. CLXV, No. 3 (1947), pp. 256–59.
• "Two Historians: Ozanam and Toynbee," America, Vol. LXXVIII, No. 17 (1948), pp. 465–66.
• "Sidney Smith: A Knight of Humor," America, Vol. LXXIX, No. 14 (1948), pp. 330–31.
• "Thomas Ewing: An American Epic," America, Vol. LXXXX, No. 2 (1948), pp. 73–75.
• "The Semantic Question," The New Scholasticism, Vol. XXIII, No. 2 (1949), pp. 186–206.
• "The Goethe Bicentennial," America, Vol. LXXXI, No. 17 (1949), pp. 482–83.
• "The Poet of the Catholic Revival," America, Vol. LXXXII, No. 9 (1949), pp. 282–83.
• "Hegelianism and the Making of the Modern Mind," The Thomist, Vol. XIV, No. 3 (1951), pp. 335–50.
• "Rainer Maria Rilke’s Flight from God," The Catholic World, Vol. CLXXV, No. 1048 (1952), pp. 278–84.
• "Poetry as Illustrating Verbal Reference," The Modern Schoolman, Vol. XXXI, No. 1 (1953), pp. 1–9.
• "Reinhold Niebuhr versus Socrates," The Catholic World, Vol. CLXXXII, No. 1087 (1955), pp. 37–41.
• "A Last-Century Liberal: Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)," The Catholic World, Vol. CLXXXIII, No. 1096 (1956), pp. 281–85.
• "Father Bruckberger and America," The Catholic World, Vol. CLXXXIII, No. 1098 (1956), pp. 438–43.
• "Kafka in Wonderland," America, Vol. XCVII, No. 2 (1957), pp. 44–45.
• "German Lutherans Judge their Founder," The Catholic World, Vol. CLXXXVIII, No. 1124 (1958), pp. 116–17.
• "Music and Meaning in Poetry," Spirit, Vol. XXV, No. 2 (1958), pp. 53–55.
• "The Modern Stress on the Difference between Poetry and Science," Spirit, Vol. XXVI, No. 2 (1959), pp. 52–56.
• "A Note on Tennyson's Sesquicentennial," Spirit, Vol. XXVI, No. 4 (1959), pp. 118–20.
• "Modern Philosophy and the Apostolate," The Thomist, Vol. XXIII, No. 3 (1960), pp. 345–61.
• "Fénelon the Dalphin's Tutor," Contemporary Review, Vol. CXCVII (1960), pp. 207–9.
• "Graham Greene's Travesty on The Ring and the Book," The Catholic World, Vol. CXCIV, No. 1159 (1961), pp. 37–42.
• "Logic, Symbolism, and the Art of Poetry," The Modern Schoolman, Vol. XLI, No. 2 (1964), pp. 158–64.
• "Thoreau and Hecker: Freemen, Friends, Mystics," The Catholic World, Vol. CCIX (1969), pp. 265–67.

External links

• Mary Whitcomb Hess papers
• Works by M. Whitcomb Hess at JSTOR
• Works by M. Whitcomb Hess at Unz.com