Setting the thought of Robert Grosseteste within the broader context of the intellectual, religious, and social movements of his time, this study elucidates the evolution of his ideas on topics ranging from the mathematical laws that govern the movement of bodies, God as the mathematical Creator, and human knowledge, to religious experience and the place of humanity within the social, natural, and providential orders.

Setting the thought of Robert Grosseteste within the broader context of the intellectual, religious, and social movements of his time, this study elucidates the evolution of his ideas on topics ranging from the mathematical laws that govern the movement of bodies, God as the mathematical Creator, and human knowledge, to religious experience and the place of humanity within the social, natural, and providential orders.

Robert Grosseteste was the initiator of the English scientific tradition, one of the first chancellors of Oxford University, and a famous teacher and commentator on the newly discovered works of Aristotle. In this book, James McEvoy provides the first general, inclusive overview of the entire range of Grosseteste's massive intellectual achievement.

BETWEEN St. Augustine and Plato, as between St. Thomas and Aristotle, there are significant analogies. If Whitehead exaggerated only pardonably little in describing Western philosophy as a series of footnotes to Plato, one could point to a similar relationship between Christian thought and Augustine. Plato and Augustine were fertile in inspiration, Aristotle and Aquinas were systematizers on the grandest scale. Augustine is often styled the Christian Plato; this is true in part because he was a Platonist, but perhaps even more (...) because both men were great artists, who have scarcely had rivals in the whole of Western philosophical history. Even in their manner of artistry they agree, for both were censorious of art, and indeed for analogous reasons; yet each manifested in his writings an artistry that somehow achieved the goal for the attainment of which he disputed with art itself. The difficulty of disengaging from the thought of Plato, or of Augustine, a series of views, a synthesis of arguments, a statement of acquired conclusions, is notorious; the expositor who, like myself, undertakes to explain the Augustinian view of time cannot hope simply by excerpting a series of propositions from the living dialectic of the Confessions to present them as a remainderless rendering of the original, any more than one can translate poetry into prose and expect to retain its meaning, without remainder. If the attempt is made, there remains, despite all disclaimers and warnings, an ineluctable element of betrayal. I offer what I do, neither in the guise of an accurate summary of Augustine's views on time, nor as a rebuttal of other interpretations of Augustine's mind, but simply as an incitement to the reading of the Confessions, and as a provocation or stimulus to philosophical mimesis. (shrink)

The foundation of humanist friendship and its purpose lay in the sharing of the Christian faith accompanied by the love of classical letters. The ideas of Erasmus concerning friendship are best developed in his Adagia, and thus in relationship to the ancient proverbs on the subject. The approval given by him to the classical, humanistic ideal of noble, virtuous, equal, and lasting friendship contrasts with Thomas More’s traditional conception of friendship which derived directly from Christian sources. More held that the (...) experience of friendship is a partial anticipation of the secure friendship of heaven, where we may hope that all will “be merry together”—not just our friends in this life but our enemies too. (shrink)

Love and Friendship in the Western Tradition comprises a collection of essays written over a 25 year period by the late Rev. Professor James McEvoy on the theme of friendship. The book traces the genesis and development of philosophical treatments of friendship from Greek philosophy, through the Middle Ages, to modern and postmodern philosophy. The collection's three major concerns are: (1) the history of philosophical discussions of friendship; (2) the role of friendship in the cultivation of the philosophical life; (3) (...) the marginalization of friendship as a theme for philosophical reflection and practice in the modern period. As the author was primarily a medievalist, a great deal of the focus of the essays is on the development of the theme of friendship in the Middle Ages (in the thought of Augustine, Aquinas, Aelred of Rievaulx, Henry of Ghent, Robert Grosseteste, etc.). However, this focus, while a value in itself, also serves to connect philosophical perspectives on friendship from before and after the middle ages. It connects to the time before inasmuch as much of the work done on friendship in the Middle Ages is anchored in interpretations of Aristotle and Plato, and it connects to the time after by providing a counterpoint to the modern paradigm of what constitutes the philosophical life. The collection combines historical with thematic approaches to scholarship on this issue and is one of the only books of its kind to do so. It is, perhaps, unique in its historical sweep and will prove to be a canonical source for further research on this topic. (shrink)

Review of: The church in the modern world: Gaudium et Spes then and now, by Michael G. Lawler, Todd A. Salzman, and Eileen Burke- Sullivan, pp. 205, $24.95.

This article explores the history of the prayer Deus qui humanae substantiae dignitatem as a contribution to the conceptualization history of human dignity. It is argued that the prayer can be traced back to pre-Carolingian times, that it forms part of an early tradition of reflection on human dignity, and that it was adapted to use at the offertory, such that an association was made between human dignity and the holy exchange of gifts. In this way, the prayer significantly shaped (...) the Christian concept of human dignity as the holy ‘place’ of commerce with God. (shrink)

McEvoy, James There's something distinctive about Australia, not only about its landscape, its vegetation, its wildlife, and its history, but also about the patterns of life and understanding that we, the country's human inhabitants, have developed together. There's something distinctive about Australian culture.

Review of: Prophetic pastoral leadership: The Adelaide archdiocesan pastoral team, 1986-2001, by Paul K. Hawkes,, pp. 138; paperback, AU$23.00;1 Kindle, US$7.29.

Diogenes Laertius preserved a saying of Aristotle, “He who has friends can have no true friend.” This was mistranslated by Erasmus and gave rise to the words Montaigne attributed to Aristotle, “O mes amis, il n’y a nul amy.” Kant and Nietzsche both used the saying in this sense, which is in fact a contresens. The original Greek words carried much of the sense of ancient friendship, being a warning against polyphilia and a reminder that intimacy is the central value (...) of friendship. This meaning was turned upside down to become an emblem of the lonely subject at the core of modernity. (shrink)

McEvoy, James Review of: The theological notion of the human person: A conversation between the theology of Karl Rahner and the philosophy of John Macmurray, by Gregory Brett, pp. 288, US$93.95.

The English language version of Professor Van Steenberghen’s Epistémologie at present used was made from the second French edition of 1947, and appeared in 1949. That second edition already counted numerous modifications of the first, and the process of revision was further extended by the fourth French edition of 1966 to cover the entire extent of the text, though it did not change its content in any fundamental way. The new English version incorporates all of the author’s revisions, being based (...) upon the latest edition; it is therefore much more than a mere re-presentation of the existing translation. Fr Moonan has retained a number of sections relatively unchanged from the first English version, but even these he has retouched in the interests of rendering the whole work homogeneous and uniform. (shrink)