James Kintz, PhD

Courses Taught

• Dante’s Divine Comedy and Aquinas’s Moral Psychology
• Divine Hiddenness and the Problem of Suffering
• Aquinas on Love and Friendship
• Ancient Philosophy
• Medieval Philosophy
• Contemporary Philosophy
• Medieval Theories of Cognition

Recent Publications

• “True Love is Reciprocal: Thomas Aquinas on the Love of Friendship,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 105(3), 2024: 328-353.
• “A Thomistic Solution to the ‘Deep Problem’ for Perfectionism,” with Matthew Shea, Utilitas, 34(4), 2022: 461-477.
• “Observation, Interaction, and Second-Person Sharing,” with Jeffrey P. Bishop, International Philosophical Quarterly, 62(1), 2022: 65-82.
• “Social Interactions, Aristotelian Powers, and the Ontology of the I-You Relation,” The Review of Metaphysics, 75(1), 2021: 91-113.
• “The Illuminative Function of the Agent Intellect,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 27(1), 2019: 3-22.
• “The Unity of the Knower and the Known: The Phenomenology of Aristotle and the Metaphysics of Husserl,” Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 22(2), Spring 2018: 293-313.

From the Professor

I have a wide range of philosophical interests, but my research tends to focus on issues in metaphysics, medieval philosophy, and philosophy of mind. In current work I explore various features of Thomas Aquinas’s theory of cognition, historical and contemporary accounts of personhood, and the nature of intersubjectivity.

As Plato taught, philosophy is an intrinsically dialogical activity, and thus my goal in the classroom is to engage students in a conversation in which we critically evaluate arguments and examine our own presuppositions. I often find it helpful to consider historical theories alongside contemporary theories; this can be mutually enlightening as we seek clarity on perennial topics in philosophy. Further, whenever possible I like to bring work from other disciplines (e.g., physics, psychology, art) into the conversation, which can help call attention to philosophical claims that need to be evaluated more carefully, as well as reveal ways in which the tools of philosophy are valuable for interdisciplinary discourse.

I am a member of the American Philosophical Association, the American Catholic Philosophical Association, the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, and The Society of Christian Philosophers.