Marjorie Grene, the ninety-four-year-old professor emerita of philosophy at Virginia Tech, is difficult to categorize. She is at once an intellectual giant, the personification of hostile irascibility, and a kind and gentle great-grandmother. She verbally berates cocky students and fellow professors who make slipshod arguments, slamming her fists on the table and yelling “no no no no no” in the seminar room, but then strolls the hall, distributing cookies and candy to all who want them.

Sort of a philosopher’s philosopher, her legacy is not widely known outside academic circles. Nonetheless, as the author of about twenty books, a hundred or so articles, and five translations (with one more on the way), and as the recipient of a host of accolades, her influence is unquestionably significant.

Professor Grene studied Plato with Heidegger, Kant and Hegel with Karl Jaspers, and Descartes with a bunch of professors she’d rather not talk about. Between tours of duty with logical positivists, existentialists, and phenomenologists, she took a fifteen-year hiatus from philosophy to farm and raise a family in Ireland and Illinois. Depending on whom you talk to, she may have been involved in the death of a fellow philosopher. Perhaps most prominently, she is considered a founder of the philosophy of biology, though she refrains from taking credit.

After convincing her that the Believer was not religiously affiliated—which required three verbal assurances, two hyperlinks, and finally a hard copy of the Ice Cube issue—we met in her office where our conversation turned on matters historical, personal, and otherwise. In the course of the discussion, it turned out Professor Grene cut through a pretty decent swath of twentieth-century thought.

—Benjamin R. Cohen

I. MARJORIE GRENE IS NOT, NOR
DOES SHE WANT TO BE, A HERMIT.

THE BELIEVER: You were recently featured as the subject of the twenty-ninth volume of the Library of Living Philosophers. Previous editions have been devoted to Alfred North Whitehead, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Dewey, and even Albert Einstein. What did you think when they approached you about doing this?

MARJORIE GRENE: I thought they must be looking desperately for a woman.

BLVR: What do you think about people who see you as a role model, as a pioneering professional female philosopher?

MG: I think they’re pretty silly. They have no idea how different things used to be.

BLVR: In that LLP volume, you include a brief intellectual bio where you talk about your education. It all sounds very straightforward, as though it all was pursued with ease and confidence. You graduated from Wellesley with a degree in zoology, studied philosophy at Radcliffe, and from there took courses at Harvard. It’s a pretty astonishing record. Did you always have the...