Lawrence Dewan, O.P’s, Aquinas Lecture at Marquette
/My mentor in Toronto, Lawrence Dewan, OP, recently gave the 71st annual Aquinas Lecture here at Marquette University (25 February 2007). The lecture, entitled St. Thomas and Form as Something Divine in Things, has already been published by Marquette University Press. Here’s the blurb from their page:
The 2007 Aquinas Lecture, St. Thomas and Form as Something Divine in Things, was delivered on Sunday, February 25, 2007, by the Reverend Lawrence Dewan, O.P., Professor of Philosophy at Dominican University College, Ottawa, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, University of Ottawa.
Lawrence Dewan was born in North Bay, Ontario, Canada, studied philosophy at St. Michael’s College of the University of Toronto, and received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto in 1967. His Ph.D. Dissertation, begun under Étienne Gilson and completed under Rev. Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., is entitled “The Doctrine of Being of John Capreolus: A Contribution to the History of the Notion of Esse.” After teaching in several universities, he joined the Dominican Order in 1973, received an M.A. in Theology from the Dominican University College, and was ordained in 1976.
Since 1974 Fr. Dewan has been a member of the faculty of Dominican University College, where he also served as Vice-President from 1984-1990. He has been Visiting Professor of Philosophy in the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies and the University of Toronto, from 1983-1989; in the School of Philosophy of the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., from 1990-1997; and in 2005 at the International Theological Institute, Gaming, Austria. In 2003 he was Lokuang Chair in Philosophy at the Institute of Scholastic Philosophy, Fu Jen Catholic University, Taipei, Republic of China.
Among other honors, Fr. Dewan has been President of the Canadian Jacques Maritain Association from 1988-1995, and President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, 1992-1993. In 1998 he was named Master of Sacred Theology by the Dominican Order. He was elected a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas in 1999.
In addition to his volume, Form and Being: Studies in Thomistic Metaphysics, and a forthcoming companion volume in ethics, Fr. Dewan has published over a hundred papers in the history of philosophy, metaphysics, natural theology, epistemology, and ethics. Among the titles are: “St. Thomas, Metaphysics, and Formal Causality,” “St. Thomas, Joseph Owens, and Existence,” “The Individual as a Mode of Being According to Thomas Aquinas,” “OBIECTUM: Notes on the Invention of a Word,” “St. Thomas and Pre-Conceptual Knowledge,” “St. Albert, the Sensibles, and Spiritual Being,” “Distinctiveness of St. Thomas’ Third Way,” “St. Thomas and the Divine Names.”
The lecture can be purchased for $15.00 from the MU Press website.