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Incoming Faculty, Visitors, Doctoral Students

●  Spring 08: The Philosophy Department of Boston College welcomes Professor William Desmond. He will be the new Gadamer Distinguished Visiting Professor, following in the footsteps of  Profs. Jean Greisch, Axel Honneth, Rudolf Bernet, Jean-Luc Marion and Hans-Georg Gadamer himself. William Desmond is Professor of Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and Visiting David Cook Chair in Philosophy at Villanova University. His interests are in metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy of religion. He has studied and taught in the Ireland and the United States, as well as teaching in Belgium. He is past President of the Hegel Society of America, as well as of the Metaphysical Society of America. He is currently President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. He is the author of many books, including the award winning Being and the Between. Among his other books are Ethics and the Between (2001), Hegel's God: A Counterfeit Double? (2003), and Art, Origins, Otherness: Between Philosophy and Art (2003); Is There a Sabbath for Thought? Between Religion and Philosophy (2005). God and the Between was recently published and forms the basis of the doctoral seminar on the philosophy of God he is giving at Boston College. He is also giving an undergraduate seminar on the philosophy of art.

●    Fall 07: the Philosophy Department of Boston College welcomes Pr. Jeffrey Bloechl. He joins us as Associate Professor, having previously been in the department of philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross, where he was also Edward Bennett Williams Fellow.  In addition to his teaching, he has held research fellowships in Belgium, Australia, and the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA.  He studied philosophy, theology amd psychology at the Catholic University of America and the Catholic University of Louvain (Ph.D., 1996). He has lectured and taught widely in the areas 20th century French and German philosophy, especially phenomenology and psychoanalysis, and philosophy of religion.  A prominent interpreter of the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, he is the series editor of "Levinas Studies. An Annual Review" (Duquesne University Press).  He will be teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in the department, and a year-long course in the Perspectives program.

●    Fall 07: The Philosophy Department of Boston College welcomes the eight new doctoral students:

  • Mathew M. Daley received his bachelor's degree from St. John's University, Santa Fe.  He is interested in philosophy of language, especially as explored by Heidegger and Derrida and the  phenomenological tradition.
  • Anna Djintcharadze received her bachelor's from University of Montreal,  and has an MA in philosophy from the Hochschule fuer Philosophie in Munich, Germany and has an MA in theology from the Institute de  Formation Theologique de Montreal.  Her interests are in ancient and  medieval philosophy, especially Neoplatonism and the 13th century.
  • Shane M. Ewegen is continuing in the PhD program, having received his  MA from BC last year.  He holds a bachelor's degree from University of  Colorado at Denver.  His interests are in Plato, Heidegger, Gadamer and  Derrida.
  • Sarit Larry holds a bachelor's degree from the American College of  Greece and Tel Aviv University.  Her interests are in Marx and  Frankfurt School.
  • Misael Enrique Meza Rueda, S.J., holds a BA and MA in philosophy from  Uinversidad de las SAlle, Bogota, Columbia, and an M.Div. from  Pontifica Uinversidad Javeriana, Bogota, Columbia.  His interests are  in political philosophy, Kant, and Lonergan.
  • Joshy Varghese Paramthottu, CMI, holds a BA and MA in English language  and literature from MG University, Hottayam, Kerala, India and Madras  University, Chennai, India.  He also has received an MA in philosophy  from Dkarmaram Vidya Kshetram University, Bangalore, India.  His  interest are in existentialism and phenomenology.
  • Elizabeth B. Purcell is continuing in the PhD program, having received  her MA from BC last year.  Her bachelor's degree is from the University  of Dallas.  Her interests are in Satre, aesthetics, Arendt, Lonergan  and philosophy of science.
  • James L. Taylor III received a bachelor's degree from Gordon College  and an MA in philosophy from Loyola Marymount University.  His interests are in Ricoeur, Foucaults, Heidegger and Gadamer

 

●    Fall 06: the Philosophy Department of Boston College welcomes Dr. Thomas Miles. He joins us as Adjunct Professor, having completed his PhD at the University of Texas (June, 2005), where he received Distinguished Teaching awards for two consecutive years. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Soren Kierkegaard Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark, during 2005. He  received a masters degree from Cambridge University (England) in 1998 and his bachelor's degree from Yale University. His areas of specialty are ethics and 19th and 20th century Continental Philosophy. He already has several articles at press on Kierkegaard, Hume, ethics and reason. He will be teaching courses in our Core Philosophy Program this coming year.

●    The Philosophy Department of Boston College welcomes Professor Jean Greisch. Fall 06, he will be the Gadamer Distinguished Visiting Professor, following in the footsteps of  Profs. Axel Honneth, Rudolf Bernet, Jean-Luc Marion and Hans-Georg Gadamer himself. Prof. Greisch is member of the Philosophy Faculty of the Institute Catholique de Paris.  He has published a dozen books and hundreds of articles, especially in hermeneutics and the phenomenology of 
language (see http://www.umr8547.ens.fr/Productions/Greisch.html).He will be offering two courses that will run for seven weeks (September 5 - October 19) : PL 816 "Truth and Understanding," (Wednesdays only, 3:00-5:30pm); and  PL 598 "Who are We? The Problem of Philosophical Anthropology," (TWTh 12:00-1:30pm), which is intended to shift the classical question about human existence toward a more intersubjective focus.

●    Fall 06: The Philosophy Department of Boston College welcomes the six new doctoral students:

  • William Britt received a BA from Yale University. He is interested in 19th/20th century continental and its relationship to Christian belief/practice especially Nietzsche, Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida.
  • Fr. Roy Pereira, S.J. was in the Master's program and has been accepted into the Ph.D. program. Fr. Pereira's area is Philosophy of Science with special reference to the Mind-Body issue.
  • Mark Thomas received a BA from Notre Dame. Mark is interested in the continental philosophy of religion, specifically Hegel's philosophy of religion and the relationship of religion with phenomenology and post modern thought.
  • Jessica Williams received a BA from New College of Florida. She intends to focus her studies in contemporary continental philosophy. Her areas of interest include phenomenology, existentialism, German Idealism, post structuralism and postmodern/postcolonial studies.
  • Jeffrey Witt received a BA from Wheaton College. He is interested in the development of late medieval philosophy, i.e. the transmutation of Thomism through the 14th century, its revival in the 16th century, and its arrival into the modern period.
  • Christopher Yates received a BA from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and received an M.A. degree from the University of Memphis. He is specifically interested in 19th and 20th century French and German thought. This would include phenomenology, deconstruction, archival approaches, and the parallel developments in philosophies of religion.

●    The Philosophy Department of Boston College welcomes Professor John Sallis. Beginning in the Fall Semester of 2005, Prof. Sallis assumes the Frederick J. Adelmann, S.J. Chair in Philosophy.  Prof. Sallis comes to Boston College from Pennsylvania State University, where he held the Edwin Erle Sparks Professorship in Philosophy; he has held chairs also at Vanderbilt University and at Loyola University of Chicago and served as Chairperson of the Philosophy Depart-ment at Duquesne University.  Prof. Sallis is the author of fifteen books ranging from Ancient Philosophy to Modern and Contemporary Continental Philosophy.  He is best known for his writings on Plato, on Kant and German Idealism, on Phenomenological and Post-Phenomenological Philosophy, on Aesthetics, and for his systematic work on Imagination.  Prof. Sallis is also the Editor of the journal Research in Phenomenology and of the book series Studies in Continen-tal Thought, published by Indiana University Press.  In the Fall Semester of 2005 he is offering courses on Plato’s Phaedo and on Philosophy and Painting.  In the Spring Semester of 2006 he will offer a course on German Idealism.

 ●    Fall 2005: Prof. Axel Honneth, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt and director of the Institute for Social Research (founded by Max Horkheimer), is currently a Visiting Professor at Boston College. His major books are The Critique of Power (MIT Press, 1993) and Struggle for Recognition (Polity Press, 1996) and with Nancy Fraser, Redistribution or Recognition? (Verso, 2003). He recently gave the Tanner lectures on Human Values at UC Berkeley which will be published as Reification: a Recognition-Theoretical View (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).  His main areas of research are social and moral philosophy and theory of society. Prof. Axel Honneth is teaching two courses this Fall in the department, “Horkheimer and Adorno” and “Intersubjectivity from Hegel to Present.

●     The Philosophy Department of Boston College welcomes Professor Jean-Luc Solère to its faculty. Prof. Solère begins as Visiting Professor at Boston College in the spring semester of 2005. Prof. Solère comes to us from his positions as Research Fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Free University of Brussels, and the Catholic University of Louvain. He has also taught at universities in France, Quebec, Colombia  Prof. Solère’s scholarship has focused on the areas of early modern and late medieval philosophy, having published books and articles on figures as Descartes, Arnauld, Malebranche, Bayle, Aquinas, Cajetan, Eckhart, Plato, Augustine, Neo-Platonism, Ockham, Henry of Ghent, and on such topics as nature, causality, time, reason, skepticism, consciousness, intentionality, the theory of forms, magnitude, and the changing relationships between philosophy and theology. His interests extend into the influences of modern and pre-modern philosophy on twentieth century thinkers. The courses that Prof. Solère will be offering in spring 2005 "Medieval Philosophy" (PL407), as well as a graduate level seminar on "Passions, Pleasure and Happiness in Modern Philosophy" (PL705). In coming semesters Prof. Solère will offer courses on Spinoza’s Ethics; Time: Ontology and Subjectivity; The Concept of Representation; and The Mind and Body in Medieval Thought.