Maynard Adams

Elie Maynard Adams (December 29, 1919 – November 17, 2003) was an American philosopher of value and meaning devoted to understanding and criticizing the philosophical foundations of modern Western culture and developing an intellectual vision that makes sense of the human condition.

Biography Adams was born on December 29, 1919 in Clarkton, Halifax County, Virginia, to Wade Hampton Adams and Bessie Calloway Adams. He grew up on a tobacco farm and attended a one-room school.

He was married for 61 years to Phyllis Stevenson Adams.

Among other personal projects, he hand-dug a full-sized basement to his family home with a pick ax, a shovel and a wheelbarrow, including completing the masonry and the electrical wiring himself.

Adams died on November 17, 2003, at age 83.

He was a recipient of honorary degrees from the University of Richmond and from Wake Forest University.

Teaching After a year of teaching at the University of Ohio in Athens, Adams joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1948 and served as chairman of the philosophy department from 1960 to 1965 and as faculty chairman from 1976 to 1979. During the Vietnam War era, he helped launch the Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense.

Instead, Adams argues that our window onto reality is much larger than the sense-experience window; we also have value experiences and meaning experiences that we learn from. Humans cannot properly conceive of the universe in purely physical terms but rather must include value and meaning in our conception of the universe. We also must think of ourselves as value and meaning beings, as well as physical beings, not solely as material creatures.

Community Adams was one of the founders of Chapel Hill Community Action, Inc., an organization that addressed issues of segregation and poverty in Chapel Hill, and he served as its chairman. That program was adopted as a nationwide model by the federal Office of Economic Opportunity. He served as chairman of the Joint OrangeChatham Community Action, Inc., and vice chairman of the Orange County Economic Opportunity Commission, Inc. He also was a frequent commentator on issues of education and public affairs in local newspapers.

Publications Fundamentals of General Logic, 1954 Logic Problems, 1954 Language of Value (with others), 1957 Ethical Naturalism and the Modern World View, 1960 Categorical Analysis: Selected Essays of Everett W. Hall, ed. "Common Sense Realism: Critical Essays on the Philosophy of Everett W. Hall", ed., Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol. 4 (fall), 1966 Philosophy and the Modern Mind, 1975 The Idea of America (with others), 1977 The Metaphysics of Self and World: Toward a Humanistic Philosophy, 1991 Religion and Cultural Freedom, 1993 A Society Fit for Human Beings, 1997