• Anselm as Teacher
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly. forthcoming.
    The essay examines Anselm’s De libertate arbitrii and De casu diaboli, arguing that the points made about the will and free choice are mirrored in the questions and struggles of the student interlocutor in the dialogues. In contrast to Plato and Aristotle, who want to bring us to see that virtue is the path to happiness, Anselm wants to show that we have free choice and are responsible for not choosing rightly (i.e., choosing justice for its own sake), and that human beings are autonomous but al…Read more
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    New readings of Anselm’s speculative and spiritual writings brought in light of questions and thinkers from Augustine to today.
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    What Is a Person? Realities, Constructs, Illusions by John M. Rist
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 59 (2): 345-346. 2021.
    John Rist's What Is a Person? is a scholarly, rich, and trenchant study of the history of the concept of personhood in Western thought. However, its sharp critique of modern and postmodern accounts of personhood, though thought-provoking, also uses jarringly polemical language, which further undermines the book's flawed overall argument. The first section, "Constructing the Mainline Tradition," carefully mines ancient and medieval sources, tracing with nuance and complexity the different threads…Read more
  • Aquinas' Notion of Science: Its Twelfth-Century Roots and Aristotelian Transformation
    Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin. 1986.
    In the period between the mid-12th and mid-13th centuries, the notion of 'science' replaced that of 'art' as the category against which all areas of academic inquiry including theology were measured. This dissertation selectively traces one aspect of this change as it is understood by Thomas Aquinas: the understanding of the relationship of sacred and secular study given these two different models of learning, art and science. ;Hugh of St. Victor's Didascalicon is discussed as it represents the …Read more
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    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THREE NOTIONS OF RESOLUTIO AND THE STRUCTURE OF REASONING IN AQUINAS 1 EILEEN c. SWEENEY Boston College Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts RESOLUTIO, better known by the English transliteration of its Greek counterpart, "analysis," has been touted as " the conceptual model for some of the most important ideas in the history of philosophy, including the history of the methodology and philosophy of science." 2 But while resolution /analysis …Read more
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    This interdisciplinary study offers an interpretation of the major logical, philosophical/theological and poetic writings of Boethius, Abelard and Alan of Lille. The author examines their theories of language and the ways in which they explore how words illuminate things, how the mind comprehends God and how the individual reaches beatitude.
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    The Moral Gap (review)
    Faith and Philosophy 17 (2): 260-267. 2000.
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    Aquinas on Vice and Sin
    In Stephen J. Pope (ed.), The Ethics of Aquinas, Georgetown University Press. 2002.
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    Abelard and the Jews
    In Babette S. Hellemans & E. J. Brill (eds.), Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, Brill Academic. pp. 37-50. 2014.
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    Seeing Double
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 83 (3): 389-420. 2009.
    This essay focuses on three interpretations of Aquinas influenced by Continental philosophy, those of John Caputo, Jean-Luc Marion, and John Milbank/Catherine Pickstock. The essay considers the well-worn question, whether Aquinas is an onto-theologian in Heidegger’s sense, but looks more broadly at the point of contact common to these interpretations: Aquinas’s relationship to modernity.As Continental thought has put into question the nature of philosophy through a critical look at modern philos…Read more
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    Anselm on Human Finitude: A Dialogue with Existentialism
    Saint Anselm Journal 10 (1). 2014.
    The paper discusses Anselm's account of human finitude and freedom through his discussion of what it means to receive what we have from God in De casu diaboli. The essay argues that Anselm is considering the same issue as Jean Paul Sartre in his account of receiving a gift as incompatible with freedom. De casu diaboli takes up this same question, asking about how the finite will can be free, which requires that it have something per se, when there is nothing, as St. Paul asserted in Romans, that…Read more
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    Literary forms of medieval philosophy
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.
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    Metaphysics and its Distinction from Sacred Doctrine in Aquinas
    In Reijo Työrinoja, Anja Inkeri Lehtinen & Dagfinn Føllesdal (eds.), Knowledge and Medieval Philosophy, Annals of the Finnish Society For Missiology and Ecumenics. pp. 162-170. 1990.
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    While the history of Western philosophy as a whole can be seen as the appropriation by philosophers of the discourse of truth from the poets and makers of myth, of the replacement of the narrative form by the 'properly philosophical' form of argument, it is an appropriation that also takes place within medieval thought, particularly in the construction of theology as a legitimate academic discipline. Whether that appropriation constitutes progress or loss was as much debated in the Middle Ages a…Read more
  • Anselm in Dialogue with the Other
    Plurality of Philosophies in the Middle Ages, Proceedings of the XIIth International Congress, Palermo, 16 – 22 September 2007 (1): 159-168. 2012.
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    Aquinas & Sartre: On freedom, personal identity, and the possibility of happiness (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 49 (1): 130-131. 2011.
    This well-written volume consists of paired chapters on human being, understanding, freedom, and happiness on Aquinas and Sartre. Stephen Wang's project is to use Sartre to reveal the more "radical" aspects of Aquinas's thought and to use Aquinas to "unlock the meaning" of Sartre's more radical claims . There is a great deal that is fresh and illuminating in this rapprochement between two thinkers most would not join together. Because the aim is to bring the thinkers into conversation, Wang avoi…Read more