Georgetown Undergraduate essay competition in medieval philosophy

In from Robert Matava, fellow at the Georgetown University Center for Medieval Philosophy, comes news of an inaugural competition for the best undergraduate essay in medieval philosophy:

Edward A. Martin Prize for Undergraduate Medieval Philosophy Paper

Prof. Mark Henninger, S.J., Director of the Center for Medieval Philosophy is pleased to announce the establishment of the Edward A. Martin Prize for the Most Outstanding Undergraduate Paper in Medieval Philosophy. The purpose of this prize is to recognize the best work currently being done in undergraduate medieval philosophy.

Criteria: A paper or honors thesis focused on western medieval philosophy from Augustine to Suarez of between 3,000 – 5,000 words, double-spaced, exclusive of bibliography or endnotes. The paper should have been written for an undergraduate course or as an honors thesis during the calendar year 2010 and must not have been published in professional fora or student journals. Papers will be judged based on their quality of research, depth of philosophic inquiry and clarity.

Prize: US$700.00 First Prize and two US$ 150.00 Honorable Mentions

Requirements for submission:

 Cover letter with the name, address, email and phone number of the student and supervising professor.

• The paper
• In addition to the paper, the student must submit a letter of recommendation from the supervising professor attesting to the superior quality of the work as well as its originality.
• Deadline: January 31, 2011.
• Cover letter, paper and letter of recommendation must be submitted together by either .pdf, .doc or .docx to the Center for Medieval Philosophy email address MedPhilGU@gmail.com or by mail to: Prof. Mark Henninger, S.J., Center for Medieval Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Georgetown University, Washington D.C., 20057. If mailed the package must be postmarked by January 31, 2011.

Other:

• Winners will be notified on March 31, 2010.
• For administrative purposes this inaugural year, the prize will be limited to US university students.

 For more information please go to Georgetown University’s Center for Medieval Philosophy’s website.

Update on Dewan in Spanish project

Following up on the news from a year or so back, Liliana Irizar provided the following update:

I am writing to you because I would like you to have some news on the Dewan Project in Spanish before 2010 finishes. We are planning to publish Metaphysical Lessons II (Natural Theology). I think that this book will be coming out in mid 2011. We also hope to publish Conversations with Lawrence Dewan. This booklet will content the conversations that we have had (both by e-mail and personally) since January 2008 until now. Besides this, I am attaching the video trailer of the Dewan Seminar which was given in his visit to Colombia (September-October 2008): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViyFZ5ZtQ8o

A Thomist on youtube, in hi-def; does it get any better?

Summa Theologica or Summa Theologiae? Google Answers.

Theologiae is the winner. According to the case-sensitive Google’s Books Ngram Viewer, “Summa theologiae” overtook “Summa theologica” in the mid-1970s, and “Summa Theologiae” overtook “Summa Theologica” around 1990, at least in books written in American English. For books in British English, the respective changes took place around 1980 and the mid-1980s. 

Fr Owens, the family friend

In from James Donnelly in Canada comes a smile about his family’s longtime friendship with Fr Joseph Owens, whose death we noted in 2005. He also sent along a picture of Fr Owens, dating from 1957:

Father Owens was a family friend for many years. My Father was an alter boy for Father Owens around 1932-34 in Norwich Ont Canada. Father Owens was a frequent visitor to our home for many years. I have attached a photo from 1957 when I was 5 years old. This photo was taken in Waterloo Ont. where I grew up.

Migne on-line. All of it.

Years back I remember Fr. Leonard Boyle lamenting that, after the Council, “you could buy a volume of Migne in Rome for a 100 lira.” At the time (1983-1984) he might not have foreseen how powerful the Internet was destined to be. Were he alive today he’d be thrilled to know that the abandonment of Migne was not successful, or total.

From David Whidden comes the following:

About a year ago you posted a link to this website on Thomistica.net: http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu. I had forgotten about it until I started looking for an on-line version of Hugh’s Didascalicon and it took me to their site. It appears that since your post that they have gone on and scanned all of Migne – all of Migne!! I wasn’t sure if you were aware of the development, but I know I’ll be using it quite a bit.

A welcome development. Check out the Patrologia latina (PL) here. David also notes that the individual PDF’s were scanned at high-resolution, so the download time, and footprint on your storage device, could be significant.

PS: for the Greek Fathers (PG) see here.

Philosophical Graduate Studies on Aquinas

Presently many college seniors are preparing to send applications for graduate study in philosophy. With a large number of programs, students have many choices. There have been some attempts to rank the strength of philosophy doctoral programs: one popular ranking focuses on perceptions of faculty quality; another highlights the number of publications and citations of faculty work. Still another allows users to select from a wide mixture of criteria to produce personalized results. One of them ranks programs in medieval philosophy. (An older version additionally identified unranked programs that have specialty niches in medieval philosophy.) Unsurprisingly, most attempts to rank philosophy doctoral programs generate criticism.

One less-than obvious way to determine which graduate schools emphasize the philosophical thought of Thomas Aquinas is to examine the number of dissertations on Aquinas produced at each school. One can consult The Review of Metaphysics, since the September issue of each volume includes a roundup titled “Doctoral Dissertations” that gives the titles of theses from North American institutions. Alternately, one can search Dissertation Abstracts with an institutional subscription, or use the much-abbreviated free version.

Since 2002, at least 20 North American institutions have granted PhDs in philosophy to students with dissertations on some aspect of Thomas Aquinas’s thought. Unsurprisingly, Catholic University, St. Louis University, Fordham University, and Boston College lead in the number of such degrees. Prospective philosophy graduate students should also keep in mind that that there are quite a number of overseas programs offering graduate studies in philosophy in the English language. Students should be encouraged to apply widely; there is some perception that acceptance into doctoral programs in philosophy has become more competitive in the last decade or so, and some evidence supports this view.

Forum for discussion created

In order not to lose the great comments and helpful recommendations that readers send along, I’ve created a fledgling forum on the site, to allow users to make comments, etc.

The forum is visible on the top menu-bar, as well as at http://thomistica.net/forum.

Thomistic Philosophical Terms (part 2)

Michael’s answer to a reader’s question about where to find a handy accounting of Thomistic philosophical terms mentioned Fr William Wallace’s The Elements of Philosophy, which contains pithy renderings of these polyvalent terms. I read Michael’s mention of the book, mentally checked-off on the issue, and went about my day.

But then I remembered that, given the reader’s original concern as a teacher, Fr Wallace’s The Elements of Philosophy is carefully indexed to the corresponding articles on philosophical and theological terms to be found in the New Catholic Encyclopedia! Indeed, if I remember correctly, Fr Wallace wrote the thing as a distillation of the corresponding NCE content. So, to the original question and for our other readers, don’t forget that the New Catholic Encyclopedia (together with its 2003 update) has articles on these essential philosophical terms (many of which were authored by Wallace, Weisheipl, and thomistic lights).

Editor change at The Thomist

Via Greg LaNave, assistant professor at the Dominican House of Studies (faculty page) and managing editor of The Thomist, comes news that the journal has a new Editor: Rev. Timothy Bellamah, O.P. (faculty page), replaces Rev. Joseph Torchia, O.P.

Publishing on Aquinas

Which good academic presses might be interested in publishing a book manuscript in philosophy about Aquinas?

The question arose among my colleagues. Admittedly, the expression “good press” could be understood in a variety of ways. Notions of prestige, editorial services offered to authors, or even royalty terms might be deciding factors.

The evaluation of prospective presses is not just important to potential authors. Rank and tenure committees need to make judgments too. The European Science Foundation ranked journals in philosophy and theology/religious studies in 2007, but it has not yet published its next phase: a ranking of academic book publishers. No doubt this second venture will be as controversial as the first. We’ve all seen that side comments about presses occasionally creep up in book reviews (one might think of this example). Moreover, at least one publisher seeks to forestall problems by requiring its authors to provide a letter from a departmental dean or chair testifying that publication with the press will count for promotion at the author’s university.

The question about where to publish a philosophy monograph on Aquinas overlaps with a more general one: which presses publish books on the history of philosophy? Some outlets have ceased to accept manuscripts (see here and here), and it is not difficult to identify presses that have published great books in the past but haven’t been active in the area in recent years. The good news is that many academic presses continue to publish exegetical works in philosophy. The Association of American University Presses identifies 36 presses with active lists in the history of philosophy, and this count omits overseas university presses and all commercial academic publishers.

For me, the first English-language presses that immediately come to mind for shopping a manuscript on some aspect of Aquinas’s philosophy include:

• The Catholic University of America Press
• Brill Academic Publishers
• Cambridge University Press
• Oxford University Press
• The University of Notre Dame Press

There are, of course, other good publishers that publish widely in the history of philosophy with some books on medieval philosophy. Examples of commercial presses are: Routledge, Springer, Peeters, and Continuum. Examples of university presses are: Penn State, SUNY, Georgetown, Fordham, Marquette, and Edinburgh. Also, I’ll note that I’ve heard rumors of one press of former glory planning to reconstitute its publishing program in philosophy.

I’m sure there are presses that I have missed from the listings above. Those writing in theology might have other options than the ones I have identified. So, I invite readers to offer suggestions in the comments section below.

Thomistic Scholarship and Plagiarism

Readers may be interested in the article “40 Cases of Plagiarism” appearing in Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale 51/2009 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 350-391, compiled by Pernille Harsting, Russell L. Friedman, and me. It presents evidence of plagiarism in a number of publications under the name of Martin W. F. Stone on mainly medieval and Renaissance philosophy.

That Martin W. F. Stone succeeded in publishing the words and research results of Fernand van Steenberghen, Ralph McInerny, Carlos Bazán, John Wippel, and Lawrence Feingold (among others) as his own, in academic journals and in books with reputable publishing houses, must surely cause scholars to take note. Arguably, the situation is especially pressing for Thomists; nine of Stone’s plagiarized pieces are currently listed in the Bibliographia Thomistica, and one piece is listed in Thomistica 2006: An International Yearbook of Thomistic Bibliography. The editor of the Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, Kent Emery, Jr., highlights the relationship of Stone’s work to Thomistic scholarship in an editorial in the same issue of the Bulletin, observing:

Or how was it possible that the scrivener hugely plagiarized the essay of an eminent Thomist published in a volume bringing together “Thomistic doctrines and modern perspectives,” and then published his workmanship in a volume bringing together “Thomistic and Analytical Traditions,” edited by another eminent Thomist and crammed full of essays by yet other eminent Thomists (see Case 14, pp. 367-68)? One thing is clear: Eminent Thomists do not necessarily read the essays of other eminent Thomists, which, if they had, they might have been able to detect that someone was ripping-off another person’s essay. (p. xii)

Elsewhere, Emery argues forcefully that the situation demands reflection among members of the scholarly community:

That there are those who commit acts of plagiarism is one thing; that such acts can be repeated successfully, without detection, in 40 articles, over a period of at least 11 years, in the pages of the most “prestigious” journals and at the most “prestigious” presses, is quite another thing altogether, which exposes some pathology in the contemporary body academic that cries out for diagnosis (p. 348)

So far, retractions have been issued by:

• Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales 76:2 (2009), pp. v-vi
• Tijdschrift voor Filosofie72:1 (2010) pp. 3 and 5
• Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 86 (2010)
• Springer
• The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

 Discussion and news reports on the issue include here, and here.

Allow me to repeat two requests made in the introduction to “40 Cases of Plagiarism.” First, as the great majority of Stone’s pieces examined in the article have not, at present, been retracted by the editors and publishers of these pieces, we encourage the many authors, editors, and publishers whose legal copyright and intellectual property rights have been infringed, to seek retractions of all the pieces plagiarizing their original work. Secondly, we caution that the evidence published in the Bulletin article is not exhaustive, and urge other readers to supplement our findings.

A blog devoted to St. Anselm

Thanks to David Whidden of Southern Methodist University, a link to a blog devoted to the life and work of St. Anselm, whose 900th-year anniversary of death just passed in 2009. The link is: http://anselm2009.blogspot.com. David notes:

It looks relatively new and seems to focus a bit on the philosophic side of Anselm rather than the theological.

Take a look!