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2Anselm as TeacherAmerican 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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Late scholastics and renaissance humanists on the passions in moral actionIn Stephan Schmid (ed.), Philosophy of Mind in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Routledge. 2018.
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12New Readings of Anselm of Canterbury's Intellectual Methods (edited book)BRILL. 2022.New readings of Anselm’s speculative and spiritual writings brought in light of questions and thinkers from Augustine to today.
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5What Is a Person? Realities, Constructs, Illusions by John M. RistJournal 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
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8When Is It Wrong? Models of Argument and Interpretation from the 12th to the 13th CenturyIn Andreas Speer & Maxime Mauriège (eds.), Irrtum – Error – Erreur (Miscellanea Mediaevalia Band 40), De Gruyter. pp. 19-38. 2018.
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4The Soul–Body Problem at Paris, ca. 1200–1250: Hugh of St-Cher and His Contemporaries (review)Speculum 88 (1): 255-257. 2013.
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Aquinas' Notion of Science: Its Twelfth-Century Roots and Aristotelian TransformationDissertation, 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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2Aquinas' Notion of Science: Its 12th Century Roots and Aristotelian TransformationUniversity Microfilms International. 1986.
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Ordering Differences: Aquinas vs. the ModernsAquinas Center of Theology, Occasional Papers on the Catholic Intellectual Life, 4 5-24. 2001.
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9Thomas Aquinas’ Double Metaphysics of Simplicity and InfinityInternational Philosophical Quarterly 33 (3): 297-317. 1993.
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4Roger Bacon and Albert the Great on Aristotle’s Notion of ScienceQuaestio 15 447-456. 2015.The paper examines the different uses of and responses to Aristotle’s account of science in the first wave of interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of science and works in natural science and metaphysics in the early 13th century in Roger Bacon and Albert the Great. The author argues that Bacon reduces all the disciplines to mathematics as the most scientific discipline, even as he argues that experimentum is at the center of scientific evidence and conclusions. Albert the Great, by contrast, giv…Read more
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1Aquinas on the Seven Deadly Sins: Tradition and InnovationIn Richard G. Newhauser Susan J. Ridyard (ed.), Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, York Medieval Press/boydell and Brewer. 2012.
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5Abelard in Four Dimensions: A Twelfth-Century Philosopher in His Context and Ours by John Marenbon (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 53 (3): 547-548. 2015.
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Anselm and the Phenomenology of the Gift in Marcel, Sartre and MarionIn Giles E. M. Gaspar Ian Logan (ed.), Saint Anselm of Canterbury and His Legacy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 385-404. 2012.
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Speculative Theology and the Transformation of Separation and LongingIn Chris Schlauch & William Meissner (eds.), Psyche and Spirit -Dialectics of Transformation, University of America Press. pp. 199-224. 2003.
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4Miner, Robert. Thomas Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Summa Theologiae Ia2ae 22-48. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009, in The Journal of Religion 91 (2) (2011): 277-78. (review)Journal of Religion 91 (2): 277-278. 2011.
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5Rewriting the Narrative of Scripture: 12th-Century Debates over Reason and Theological FormJournal of Nietzsche Studies 3 1-34. 1993.
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9From Determined Motion to Undetermined Will and Nature to Supernature in AquinasPhilosophical Topics 20 (2): 189-214. 1992.This essay will focus on analogies drawn from Aristotle’s account of natural motion and change which Thomas Aquinas uses to construct responses and explanations of free choice and its characteristic act, i.e. creation for God, and acts of virtue for human beings. Though these analogies to natural change recur throughout the Thomistic corpus, my analysis will focus on their use in the Summa Theologiae, where they consistently bear the weight of Aquinas’s account of the divine and human will and t…Read more
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8Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the WordThe Catholic University of America Press. 2012.Eileen C. Sweeney. gap between what faith believes and what reason understands, is also expressed in the attempt to think “that than which none greater can be thought.” For to think it is to reach God via a single, long extension of the mind ...
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1Three Notions of Analysis (Resolutio) and the Structure of Reasoning in AquinasThe Thomist 58 (2): 197-243. 1994.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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5Logic, Theology and Poetry in Boethius, Abelard and Alan of LillePalgrave/MacMillan. 2006.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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2Review of Thomas Aquinas, The Treatise on Human Nature: Summa Theologiae 1a 75-89 (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (4). 2003.
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3Aquinas on Vice and SinIn Stephen J. Pope (ed.), The Ethics of Aquinas, Georgetown University Press. 2002.
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2From Determined Motion to Undetermined Will and Nature to Supernature in AquinasPhilosophical Topics 20 (2): 189-214. 1992.
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7Abelard and the JewsIn Babette S. Hellemans & E. J. Brill (eds.), Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, Brill Academic. pp. 37-50. 2014.
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Thomas Aquinas and the Difficulties of Reading the Natural Law Written on Our HeartsIn Jonathan A. Jacobs (ed.), Reason, Religion, and Natural Law: From Plato to Spinoza, Oxford University Press. 2012.
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Continental Philosophy |