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12Rules of the Game in Social Relationships by Josef PieperReview of Metaphysics 74 (2): 400-402. 2020.Before achieving universal acclamation as professor of philosophical anthropology at the University of Munich, German philosopher Josef Pieper (1904–1997) was research assistant under Johann Plenge at The Research Institute for Organization Theory and Sociology from 1928 to 1932. The fruit of Pieper’s work under Plenge was his 1931 Grundformen sozialer Spielregln, and two years later (in 1933) the simplified, second edition. For the first time in the English-speaking world, we have this second e…Read more
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58Is intersexuality a mere difference or disorder?Bioethics 36 (6): 673-679. 2022.Is intersexuality a mere difference or disorder? Since the 2006 Chicago consensus statement's disorder of sexual development (DSD) nomenclature, intersex scholars have criticized and repudiated the use of “disorder” by arguing that it is medically inaccurate, yields unwarranted surgical implications, unnecessarily pathologizes intersex individuals, and that, most importantly, intersex individuals do not prefer it. They argue for linguistic alternatives such as “difference” and other similar alte…Read more
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19Don’t Worry about Socrates: Three Plays for Television by Josef Pieper (review)Review of Metaphysics 74 (4): 636-638. 2021.In recent years, St. Augustine’s Press and Ignatius Press have been a fruitful hub for translating into English the works of German philosopher Josef Pieper (1904–1997). Pieper’s engagement with Plato is known in the English-speaking world through his short Divine Madness: Plato’s Case against Secular Humanism (Ignatius Press, 1995) and The Platonic Myths (St. Augustine’s Press, 2011). In 2018 St. Augustine’s Press published Dan Farrelly’s translation of Pieper’s Kümmert Euch nicht um Sokrates (…Read more
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9Hope and History by Josef Pieper (review)Review of Metaphysics 75 (3): 601-603. 2022.Is the history of man perhaps of such nature that it gives him no grounds for hope? What becomes of our hopes if we must die after all? Where is the historical process as a whole going? These are the questions Josef Pieper (1904–97) asked decades ago in his Hoffnung und Geschichte (1967). Initially translated into English by Richard and Clara Winston as Hope and History in 1969, decades later in 2020 Cluny Media has reprinted the Winstons' translation, beautifully covered with symbolist George F…Read more
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How to Think Better about Intersex Pediatric SurgeryImpactethics. 2022.Rashad Rehman calls for the bioethical community to help contribute conceptual clarity to the debate about the ethics of intersex pediatric surgery.
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Beneficent Paternalism in the NICU: Improving Shared Decision-MakingImpactethics. 2022.Rashad Rehman, Nipa Chauhan and Rebecca Greenberg argue that beneficent paternalism should be integrated into shared decision-making in the NICU to maximize the patient’s best interests.
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Sharing Food and Sharing HungerJournal of Ethical Education 1 (1): 34-42. 2021.What do we owe to those who are homeless? This ethical question, difficult both in theory and practice, is doubly difficult in the context of a global pandemic e.g., COVID-19. The traditional answer to this question appeals - in many variations - to becoming benefactors. As benefactors, the beneficiaries - those who are homeless - are better off in virtue of the benefactors' causing a degree of hardship upon themselves via monetary donations, providing food and shelter, et cetera. However, this …Read more
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What is Intersex? A Reply to Perry's Applied Moral Theology of Sex, Intersex and Ordination (review)Theological Puzzles 7 (7). 2022.In his “Can Intersex Persons be Ordained as Catholic Priests?” (2021), John Perry begins with the hypothesis (which he later qualifies as not “confirmed” and was “overstated”) that the Catholic Churches’ limitation of the priesthood to exclusively men “cannot be applied with certainty…to any candidate for ordination” because of the presence of individuals with intersex conditions. “Without further guidance”, Perry writes, “the bishop would not know how to apply this rule to intersex individuals,…Read more
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Which Moral Theologians Should Care About Intersex-Selective Abortion?Theological Puzzles 10 (10). 2022.Many people, communities and countries are in favour of abortion as a healthcare right, arguing that women have a right to receive an abortion upon request. Some contexts place ethical constraints on this right, typically based on the age of the preborn child, the mother’s safety, or the circumstances of the mother (and her conceiving of her child) more generally. At the same time, intersex pediatric surgery (IPS) is being increasingly ethically challenged with many countries banning healthcare …Read more
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Intersex Does Not Refute the Sex BinaryThe Linacre Quarterly 90 (2): 145-154. 2023.This article supplements Julio Tuleda, Enrique Burguete, and Justo Aznar's “The Vatican opinion on gender theory” (Linacre). It supplements their article by providing a stronger argument for the thesis that “intersex” does not violate binary sex in human beings. In their response to Timothy F. Murphy's criticism of “the Vatican's” (rightfully corrected as the Magisterium of the Catholic Church's) position on the sex binary, they argue subsidiarily that “intersex” does not violate the sex binary.…Read more
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Inexhaustible Wonder: An Interview with Mike FoxThe Peace Chronicle. 2023.An interview with professor of philosophy Dr. Michael Fox of St. Peter's Seminary in London, Ontario.
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Josef Pieper's Defense of St. Thomas Aquinas on PeaceIn Andrew Fiala & Sahar Fard (eds.), Peace & Hope in Dark Times. pp. 157-170. 2023.This chapter has two aims.* First, it exegetes Aquinas’ notion of peace (pax) in his Commentary on the Gospel of St. John (14:7), which is centred around the definition, kinds and possibility of a perfected peace, as well as how love (amor) is the cause of peace. Second, rather than defending Aquinas’ position at length, I take the more humble task to defend one attractive, plausible feature of Aquinas’ position, showing how it reveals Medieval wisdom for the establishment of modern peace. The p…Read more
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13A Thomistic Reading of Alypius’ Curiositas in Augustine’s Confessiones (6, 8, 13)Augustinianum 62 (2): 383-396. 2022.What is Augustine’s commentary on Alypius’ curiosity (curiositas) at the gladiatorial show in Confessiones 6, 8, 13 fundamentally about? Augustinian scholars have interpreted the story widely. Following recent scholarly developments, this work argues for a distinctively Thomistic reading of Alypius’ curiositas. In 1987, Joseph Torchia interpreted this passage as putting only a secondary focus on the story’s emphasis on, in his words, «conflict with God, its inner self, and others». However, this…Read more
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30In defence of Feser’s Plotinian argument for God’s existenceHeythrop Journal 63 (5): 964-976. 2022.This paper investigates the prospects of a distinctively Plotinian argument for God’s existence. Specifically, this paper assesses Plotinus’ argument for the One/Good (Enneads; V.1,V.4), a principle rooted in Plato’s Republic (509b6-9), as a philosophical motivation for an argument for God’s existence. While the appropriative task of using Plotinus’ argument for natural theological purposes is not original to this work, this project remains in its philosophical infancy. It is to this end that th…Read more
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31Josef Pieper on Medieval Truth and Martin Heidegger’s WahrheitsbegriffConatus 7 (1): 103-122. 2022.Josef Pieper’s critique of Martin Heidegger’s Wahrheitsbegriff has been virtually ignored in both Pieper and Heidegger scholarship; however, Pieper’s critique of Heidegger is both lethal and affirmative. On the one hand, Pieper makes a strong case against Heidegger’s Wahrheitsbegriff in “Vom Wesen der Wahrheit” and yet on the other he affirms his thesis that “the essence of truth is freedom.” This paper attempts to mend this gap in the literature by first presenting Heidegger’s “Vom Wesen der Wa…Read more
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11Philosophizing TogetherSpontaneous Generations 10 (1): 88-97. 2022.Philosophers have various responsibilities. Articulating these responsibilities, however, is contingent on what one means by “philosophy” and what philosophers have “expertise” in. Responsible philosophers must therefore interact with the following kinds of questions: What do philosophers have expertise in? What responsibilities do philosophers have as intellectual experts, and to whom are they responsible? What are philosophers supposed to know and be able to publicly convey? What is the role o…Read more
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12Sana oculos meosAugustinianum 61 (1): 137-152. 2021.Augustine’s commentary on Alypius’ curiositas at the gladiatorial show (6, 8, 13) recounts one of the most well-known stories in Augustine’s Confessiones. Despite the various interpretations or explications of the story in Augustinian scholarship, this paper argues that the story centres around Alypius’ curiositas as a function of Alypius’ preceding, morally deficient character. The author provides a fourfold, cumulative and philological case for this thesis. He develops this case by means of fo…Read more
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1Josef Pieper’s Defense of the GeisteswissenchaftenIn Amin Asfari (ed.), Civility, Nonviolent Resistance, and the New Struggle for Social Justice, Brill | Rodopi. pp. 203-233. 2019.This chapter asks the following question: What are the conditions, within and fostered by contemporary educational institutions, for social justice to be grounded philosophically and put into concrete action? In answer- ing this question, I argue that a defense of the liberal arts is a plausible candidate for grounding the possibility of “social justice,” understood as fulfilling an obligation to another in virtue of their intrinsically being owed that obligation. The liberal arts are not merely…Read more
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Ethics, Homelessness and The Artes Liberales/Artes Serviles DistinctionIn John Abbarno (ed.), The Ethics of Homelessness ed. John Abbarno. Leiden, NV: Brill, 2020. pp. 429-447. 2020.It is a relatively uncontroversial proposition that without “ethics,” an “ethics of homelessness” is impossible. What is less uncontroversial, though, is that philosophy—or at least philosophical analysis—is a necessary condition of ethical discourse. The distrust—or skepticism regarding the utility of— philosophical analysis is predicated on rendering philosophy as useless. This, though, should create a sense of cognitive dissonance, since we universally acknowledge that ethics informs how we i…Read more
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1Perfect Freedom in The Good Place and St. Thomas’ Commentary on the Gospel of Johnde Philosophia 1 (I): 1-15. 2021.Mike Shur’s Netflix-aired The Good Place has been a focus of philosophical attention by both popular-culture (written by pop-philosophers) and professional philosophers. This attention is merited. The Good Place is a philosophically rich TV show. The Good Place is based in three places: The Good Place, The Medium Place and The Bad Place. Every human being ends up in one of these places after they die based on their good points (points received for doing good actions e.g., chewing with your mouth…Read more
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12The single most influential and widely accepted objection against any form of dualism, the belief that human beings are both body and soul, is the objection that dualism violates conservation laws in physics. The conservation laws objection against dualism posits that body and soul interaction is at best mysterious, and at worst impossible. While this objection has been both influential from the time of its initial formulation until present, this paper occupies itself with arguing that this obje…Read more
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Franciscan University of SteubenvilleDepartment of Philosophy
Department of BioethicsAssistant Professor
Areas of Specialization
Biomedical Ethics |
Biotechnology Ethics |
Feminist Bioethics |
Philosophy of Religion |
Medieval Ethics |