Current and Past Research

Research Interests

My research interest focuses on the ethics of Thomas Aquinas. More generally, I am interested in ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics in the 13th/14th century philosophy.

Currently my work regards practical rationality in Thomas. In particular, my research concentrates on the notion of weakness of will, free decision, knowledge by connaturality, and prudence.

A further research interest regards 13th century commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics.

Work in Progress

• In the next years I plan to write a monograph on Thomas’s ethics that focuses in particular on the unity of reason and affection.
  
• Medieval angelology is a context that gave medieval thinkers the occasion to discuss highly relevant philosophical topics. I am currently editing a volume (working title: A Companion to Angels and Medieval Philosophy) which collects essays by eminent scholars on the Neo-Platonic background of medieval angelology, the demonstrability of separate substances, their metaphysical composition, the individuation of angels, angelic location, angelic time and movement, angelic cognition, angelic speech, and angelic sin. The contributors are Matthias Vorwerk, Gregory Doolan, John Wippel, Giorgio Pini, Christopher Martin, Richard Cross, Harm Goris, Timothy Noone, Bernd Roling, Peter King, and myself. The volume will be published in 2009 by Brill.
  
• As a side effect of past work on Duns Scotus I will soon make available a bibliography of primary and secondary literature (to be posted on the web), which covers the period of 1950 until now, and which currently counts about 1,500 titles.
  

Recently Completed Work

Two projects are on weakness of will have been brought to conclusion:

• A conference in Jena (Germany) in August 2004, which focuses on akrasia / incontinentia in Medieval Philosophy, organized in collaboration with Theo Kobusch (Bonn), Jörn Müller (Bonn), and Matthias Perkams (Jena). — Publication:

  Das Problem der Willensschwäche in der mittelalterlichen Philosophie / The Problem of Weakness of Will in Medieval Philosophy. Co-edited with Jörn Müller and Matthias Perkams. Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales Bibliotheca 8. Leuven, Paris, and Dudley, Mass.: Peeters, 2006. See TOC & abstracts.

• A Lecture Series at School of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America, in which the problem of the Weakness of the Will was studied throughout the history of Western Philosophy. The Lecture Series took place in the Fall of 2004. — Publication:

  Weakness of Will from Plato to the Present. Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy 50. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008. See TOC.

Last updated: January 22, 2007