David Bidney was born in the Ukraine in 1908. He received his Bachelor of Arts Degree with Honors in Philosophy and Psychology in 1928 from the University of Toronto. In 1929, he earned his Master of Arts as a George Paxton Young Fellow in Philosophy. Bidney was a University Fellow in Philosophy at Yale University, and they conferred the Ph.D. on him in 1932. He then went back to the University of Toronto in 1932 as a member of the faculty where he stayed on until 1934. He became an Instructor at Yeshiva University from 1936 through 1938, and subsequently taught at Yale from 1939 to 1940.
In 1940 he published the book The Psychology and Ethics of Spinoza, which is a sequel to a doctoral dissertation submitted to Yale University in 1932. Later Bidney refocused his philosophical inquiries due to ties with anthropologists at Yale, and the chance to participate in a seminar concerning the philosophy of the social sciences. From 1942 until his arrival at Indiana University in 1950, he worked on developing a connection between anthropology and philosophy while working as a Research Associate and Assistant to the Director of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
In 1950, the Anthropology and Philosophy departments appointed David Bidney jointly at the Indiana University . This was and still is not a customary division of disciplinary talents, but it was consistent with his unique educational and experiential background. His students at Indiana University praised him and had a book of some of his students work entitled Essays In Humanistic Anthropology dedicated to him on his 70th birthday in 1979.
He wrote and edited several other publications and books over the years, including The Concept of Freedom In Anthropology, published in 1963, which was an attempt to classify and examine the relation between the various types of freedom with special reference to the conditions in nature and culture which are presupposed by them. Another of his books was entitled Theoretical Anthropology, published in 1967, which is a reprint and revision of articles he did earlier in his career.
In 1998, the David Bidney Graduate Paper Prize was created. A prize of $200 was to be awarded to the best paper written by a graduate student during the academic year. Students and faculty were allowed to submit one paper, and were to conform to the style of the American Anthropologist. The paper was to be judged on originality of the main idea, organization and lucidity of the argument, stylistic qualities, and contribution to anthropological knowledge.
David Bidney died in 1987.
Grindal, Bruce T. & Warren, Dennis M. Essays In Humanistic Anthropology, University Press of America, 1979
Bidney, David. The Psychology and Ethics of Spinoza, New York, 1962
Bidney, David. The Concept of Freedom in Anthropology, New York 1963
Written By: David Gruenzner, 2002