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11Questiones super Physicam (Books I-VII) by Nicole Oresme (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 52 (3): 610-611. 2014.A review of the Latin text of Oresme's important work.
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141Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologia 1a 75–89Cambridge University Press. 2001.This is a major new study of Thomas Aquinas, the most influential philosopher of the Middle Ages. The book offers a clear and accessible guide to the central project of Aquinas' philosophy: the understanding of human nature. Robert Pasnau sets the philosophy in the context of ancient and modern thought, and argues for some groundbreaking proposals for understanding some of the most difficult areas of Aquinas' thought: the relationship of soul to body, the workings of sense and intellect, the wil…Read more
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23Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief (review)Philosophical Review 107 (4): 624-626. 1998.In August of 1989, as an eighteen-year-old atheist spending his last night at home before setting off cross-country for college, I had the one and only mystical experience of my life to date. Rather than grapple with expressing the content of that experience, let me quote from part of the record Blaise Pascal made of his own mystical experience, one that seems to have been similar in many respects to my own
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31Pyrrhonian Reflections on Knowledge and JustificationReview of Metaphysics 49 (3): 653-654. 1996.This is not a work of historical scholarship, but a provocative attempt to apply ancient Pyrrhonism and the later Wittgenstein to the problems of contemporary analytic epistemology.
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198A Theory of Secondary QualitiesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (3): 568-591. 2007.The secondary qualities are those qualities of objects that bear a certain relation to our sensory powers: roughly, they are those qualities that we can readily detect only through a certain distinctive phenomenal experience. Contrary to what is sometimes supposed, there is nothing about the world itself (independent of our minds) that determines the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Instead, a theory of the secondary qualities must be grounded in facts about how we conceive o…Read more
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3Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Volume 3 (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2015.Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy showcases the best scholarly research in this flourishing field. The series covers all aspects of medieval philosophy, including the Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew traditions, and runs from the end of antiquity into the Renaissance. It publishes new work by leading scholars in the field, and combines historical scholarship with philosophical acuteness. The papers will address a wide range of topics, from political philosophy to ethics, and logic to metaphysics. O…Read more
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93What Is Cognition? A Reply to Some CriticsAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 76 (3): 483-490. 2002.In an earlier work, I proposed understanding Aquinas’s theory of cognition in terms of the possession of information about the world. This proposal has seemed problematic in various ways. It has been said to include too much, and too little, and to be the wrong sort of account altogether. Nevertheless, I continue to think of it as the most plausible interpretation of Aquinas’s theory.
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16Action, Intention, and ReasonReview of Metaphysics 49 (2): 398-400. 1995.This volume collects thirteen papers by Robert Audi on action theory, all but two previously published, and dating back as far as the early 1970s. The reader should not be misled by the book's publicity, which proclaims that we are being given "for the first time... a full version of his [Audi's] theory of... human action". Despite such claims, this volume is no more than a collection of papers, and consequently it does not offer the depth and continuity one would expect from a book-length treat…Read more
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51On Efficient Causality: Metaphysical Disputations 17, 18, and 19Philosophical Review 105 (4): 533. 1996.A quick scan of the leading figures in western philosophy reveals that relatively few have made a name for themselves by defending intuitive, natural, and sensible positions. Aristotle is one, and perhaps Aquinas is another. Francisco Suarez, the sixteenth-century Spanish scholastic, would be a third. His invariable working procedure is to give copious consideration to the various ancient and medieval views, and then to find some sensible compromise position. But today Suarez can hardly claim to…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
Epistemology |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |