Masters or Gardeners? Thomistic Reflections on Environmental Ethics

About the speaker:

I work on medieval theories of mind, cognition, and personhood, with special focus on the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Themes that I have worked on include, e.g., the nature of consciousness, the history of the self/person and concepts of subjectivity, what it means exactly to be "immaterial," Aristotelian hylomorphism and how it applies to mind, and problems connected with mental representation and intentionality, the relationship of imagination and intellect, and medieval theories of light and vision. In some recent work, I also explore how Aquinas's ethics can help us navigate contemporary problems concerning environmental justice and racism. Another topic I enjoy studying is how Islamic philosophers--such as al-Farabi, Averroes, Avicenna, and the author of the "Liber de causis"--shaped Scholastic thought in medieval Christian Europe. Getting into the mindset of medieval philosophers requires a scholarly community that is committed to rediscovering the broader shared philosophical tradition that connects Muslim, Jewish, and Christian thinkers in the Middle Ages, and tracing its patterns of development from late antiquity.