The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Sellars, Roy Wood

Born July 9, 1880, in Egmondville, Ontario, Canada; died Sept. 5, 1973, in Ann Arbor, Mich. American philosopher; professor at the University of Michigan (1905–50). One of the founders of critical realism.

Sellare’ early epistemological viewpoint, which affirmed the symbolic character of knowledge, contained elements of agnosticism. Subsequently, Sellars shifted to materialist positions, calling his philosophy “evolutionary naturalism.” In a number of works he examined epistemological questions of the theory of reflection: the cognitive role of perception, the place of individual practice and interest in knowledge, and the interaction of subject and object. Sellars engaged in vigorous polemics with idealist philosophical currents and criticized the theory of psychophysical dualism and teleological interpretations of evolution. In ethics he stressed the specific historical and socially generated character of moral judgments and values. Sellars rejected theology and church dogmas but adhered to a position of “religious humanism.”

WORKS

Critical Realism. New York, 1916.
The Next Step in Religion. New York, 1918.
The Principles and Problems of Philosophy. New York, 1926.
The Philosophy of Physical Realism. New York, 1932.
Reflections on American Philosophy From Within. Notre Dame-London, 1969.
In Russian translation:
“Tri stupeni materializma.” In Voprosy filosofii, 1962, no. 8.

REFERENCES

Kremianskii, V. I. Strukturnye urovni zhivoi materii. Moscow, 1969. Pages 109–16.
Karimskii, A. M. Filosofiia amerikanskogo naturalizma. Moscow, 1972. Pages 70–76.
Bogomolov, A. S. Burzhuaznaia filosofiia SShA XX veka. Moscow, 1973. Pages 205–17.
Bykhovskii, B. E. “Razmyshleniia ob amerikanskoi filosofii iznutri.” In Filosofskie nauki. 1972, no. 2.
Bykhovskii, B. E. “Pamiati R. V. Sellarsa.” Ibid., 1974, no. 4.
Melchert, N. P. Realism, Materialism, and the Mind: The Philosophy of R. W. Sellars. Springfield, 1968.

A. F. GRIAZNOV

References in periodicals archive

A Kantian Disagreement between Father and Son: Roy Wood Sellars and Wilfrid Sellars on the Categories, FABIO GIRONI

In this paper, the author examines a facet of the underexplored philosophical relationship between Roy Wood Sellars and his son, Wilfrid Sellars, analyzing both their published work and their unpublished correspondence.

Journal of the history of philosophy: vol. 55, no. 4, July 2017

IN THE COURSE of a long and fruitful career, Eustace Haydon was both a Baptist and a Unitarian minister, and the co-author, along with Roy Wood Sellars of the original Humanist Manifesto (1933).

A Good Life in a World Made Good: Albert Eustace Haydon, 1880-1975

This paper examines a facet of the under-explored philosophical relationship between Roy Wood Sellars and his son, Wilfrid Sellars, analyzing both their published work and their unpublished correspondence.

Journal of the History of Philosophy: Vol. 55, No. 3, July 2017

A majority of the signers were Unitarian ministers and few were tenured university professors like Roy Wood Sellars. This fact is apparently significant for both the development of humanism within the Unitarian denomination and for humanism as a philosophical movement.

Wilson, two Unitarian ministers who were instrumental in initiating the manifesto and seeing it through the several steps of writing, revision, signing, printing and distribution; and Roy Wood Sellars, who wrote the first draft of the manifesto.

Religion, spirituality, and humanism. (Humanist Flashback)

Potter signed the Humanist Manifesto (1933) along with John Dewey and Roy Wood Sellars. Potter was a Baptist minister for eleven years and a Unitarian minister for eleven more years before founding the first Humanist church in New York City in 1929.

It is, as Roy Wood Sellars, author of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto, says, "A religion founded on realities in a religion coming of age." Sellars said this in his ground-breaking work Religion Coming of Age (1928).

The religion of secular humanism

Drafted by philosopher Roy Wood Sellars of the University of Michigan, completed by Raymond Bragg, a Unitarian minister, and a panel of others, and endorsed by thirty-four people, primarily Unitarian ministers, it expressed a religious humanist outlook.

Symposium on Humanist Manifesto II: beyond Humanist Manifesto II

Marxism enriched the naturalisms of Roy Wood Sellars and Marvin Farber.

The American naturalist tradition

He taught at the University of Michigan for over forty years until his retirement in 1978 as the Roy Wood Sellars Professor of Philosophy.

In memoriam: William K. Frankena