Rev Dr John Owens SM

DPhil  (Munich)
PhL  (Angelicum)
BA  (Cant.)

Lecturer in Philosophy

E-mail: owens@gsc.ac.nz 

My particular academic interests include twentieth-century philosophy and its relation to Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas. Outside of academic life, I play the flute (after a fashion) and am a keen cycle-camper.

Research Interests:
My research interests have lately centered around contemporary authors developing an account of the human situation which avoids large notions of transcendence (i.e. metaphysical notions of God, Good, Truth, Reality), in particular Richard Rorty, Martha Nussbaum and DZ Phillips.

PUBLICATIONS:

“Aquinas’ Fifth Way,” New Blackfriars, Vol. 101, Issue 1094, May 2020, pp. 356-370

Rorty, Religion, and Metaphysics (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019).

“Creation Paradise Lost and Modernity” Logos 20/4, 2017, 39-53

“Martha Nussbaum on Ethics and Religion” Colloquium 49/1, 2017, 48-60.

Review of Thinking About Political Things: An Aristotelian Approach to Pacific Life, by Andrew Murray (Adelaide: ATF Press 2016), in The Australasian Catholic Record, July 2016, 93/3, pp.381-2.

“C.S. Lewis’s Argument Against Naturalism in A Myth Retold: Re-encountering C. S. Lewis as Theologian,  (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2014) ed. Martin Sutherland, 57-68.

“Dei Verbum and the Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer” in God’s Word and the Church’s Council: Vatican II and Divine Revelation, eds. Mark O’Brien OP and Christopher Monaghan CP (Adelaide: ATF Theology, 2014) 179-191.

“Recycling the Soul”, in Taking Rational Trouble Over the Mysteries: Reactions to Atheism (Wipf and Stock, 2013) ed. Nicola Hoggard Creegan and Andrew Shepherd, 79-92.

“Without God, Truth, or Nature” in God, Freedom and Nature , eds. Ronald S. Laura, Rachel A. Buchanan, Amy K. Chapman ( Sydney , New York, Boston : Body and Soul Dynamics, 2012), 99-104.

“Recycling the Soul: The Physicalist Anthropology of Nancey Murphy”  Colloquium 2011, 169-182.

“Nietzsche and the Christians” Australasian Catholic Record 88, 2011, 191-201.

“Creation and End-Directedness“ Sophia 49, 2010, 489-498.

“Paley, Aristotle, and the Artefact Analogy” Colloquium , Vol. 41, No.2, 2009, 204-215.

“Animals, Ontology and Rorty’s Giraffe“ Colloquium Vol 39 (2) 2007, 170-184.

“Dissenting from Reality: The Denials of Evil” Logos, Volume 7, Number 4, Fall 2004.

The God Whereof We Speak: DZ Phillips And The Question of God’s Existence” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly Vol 78 (1) 2004.

“Religion Within The Limits Of Our Talk: DZ Phillips And The Question of God’s Reality” Colloquium Vol 35 (2) 2003, 115-129.

“Two Possibilities of Existence: Sophism, Plato and Metaphysics” in Talking Theology 2001-2002 proceedings (Auckland: Carey Baptist College, 2003).

“Transcendence and the Human” Colloquium Vol 33 2001 121-134.

“The Obligations of Irony: Rorty on Irony, Autonomy and Contingency” The Review of Metaphysics 2000 27-41.

“A Creaturely Ethic: Veritatis Splendor and Human Nature” The Linacre Quarterly, August 2000 11-21.

“The Sign and its Trespass: Signs, Presence, and Metaphysics in Kevin Hart” Sophia Vol 38 1999 36-53.