Dr. Christopher S. Morrissey
Specialist in Aristotelian-Thomistic Philosophy
Recent Publications
My primary research interest is in the philosophy of nature as the foundational part of natural science. In connection with this, I am a certified member of the Institute for Advanced Physics. I am especially interested in how phenomenology "can help restore the understanding of being and mind that was accepted in classical Greek philosophy and medieval thought and can still take into account certain contributions of modernity, especially those of science".
My Aristotelian-Thomistic studies have focused on Aquinas' commentaries on the natural philosophy of Aristotle's Physics. My current interests include the development, from the Latin philosophy of nature of John of St. Thomas, of the foundational doctrine of signs for the interdisciplinary field of semiotics. My doctoral dissertation made a study of mimetic theory and generative anthropology.
"Reading between the Vatican's lines" is my commentary in The Globe and Mail on the CDF's Ad catholicam profundius. My review of some recent Pope Benedict XVI books discusses Galileo and warp drive in The Globe and Mail. The Vancouver Sun interviewed me about The Da Vinci Code. And I wrote about the Nativity for The Globe and Mail, as well as Bruce Chilton's new book, Abraham's Curse.
Live conversation is best, as Plato suggested in the Phaedrus. My recent teaching takes the Socratic method to the classrooms of RPC/TWU and SFU:
But if publish I must, here are some of my recent publications, a selected list that includes articles and book reviews available on-line.
I quite enjoy keeping busy with ongoing research that occasionally gets presented in the form of papers and presentations at academic conferences.
During the dotcom era (in which I worked for stockbrokers), I was President and CEO of More C Communications Inc., Computer Consulting Services. We specialized in database projects (related to money markets), and also developed a proprietary program for generating concordances of Greek and Latin texts. Now I spend most of my time in the rural environs of Langley.
Devoted to the study of Aristotle, I have developed a semiotic interpretation of Aristotle's Poetics as connected with the wise reflections on human experience found in his ethical and political philosophy. Some of my thoughts from this project appear in "Oedipus the Cliché: Aristotle on Tragic Form and Content," in Anthropoetics 9.1 (Spring / Summer 2003): 1-14. [ISSN 1083-7264]
Screenwriters should study Aristotle, and I have written about this in two book reviews of scenarists who know about this Hollywood secret. My review of Ari Hiltunen, Aristotle in Hollywood in Scope:An Online Journal of Film Studies (May 2004), praises Hiltunen for his engagement with Aristotle but chastises him for his fascination with Joseph Campbell's trendy monomyth theory. My review of Michael Tierno, Aristotle's Poetics for Screenwriters in Scope:An Online Journal of Film Studies (Nov 2003), corrects Tierno on scholarly details but praises his overall effort to present Aristotle in popular form to his Hollywood screenwriting seminars.
Recently I wrote a review of the Troy movie, in which I defended David Benioff's Hollywood re-interpretation of Homer as being appropriate for our times. The review is called "Pomo Homer" and is found on-line in Chronicles of Love and Resentment 304 (June 2004).
There are many popular books on the ancient Greeks, but the worst ones take cheap shots at the Greeks for "sexism" or "militarism". I take such sententious moralizing to task in "The ancient world: 'Wars and homos'," my review of Thomas Cahill, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter, in The Globe and Mail: Books (December 6, 2003), D6.
I discuss a connection between U2 and the Third Secret of Fatima (Commentary) in The Globe and Mail: Books (January 1, 2005), D10. Believe it or not, I do this in a book review of John Cornwell.
My research on Robert F. Kennedy and Aeschylus got a mention in the Times Literary Supplement (Oct 15, 2004): 11.
You have seen it everywhere, but "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" is bogus, nonsensical Latin, although it does have an obscure Ciceronian connection, as I pointed out in a letter published in the London Review of Books, Vol. 23 No. 17 (September 6, 2001): 4.
At Simon Fraser University, I studied mimetic theory and generative anthropology as a Special Arrangements Ph.D. My research has used Aristotle to think about Greek tragedy and Shakespeare, in order to prepare a book that evaluates, from the perspective of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, the thought of René Girard and of Eric Gans on the esthetic evolution of culture. This involves considering "the role of the action of signs in mediating objects and things, in particular the manner in which experience itself is a dynamic structure or web woven of triadic relations (signs in the strict sense) where elements (representamens, significates, and interpretants) interchange positions and roles over time in the spiral of semiosis."
I am part of what Ralph McInerny has described in his book Aquinas (Polity Press, 2004) as "a new generation of freelance Thomists"; we are "autodidacts rather than disciples" and "there is something like a secret handshake by which the scattered devotees acknowledge one another" (p.150). Here's a picture of Ralph signing a copy of his book for me:
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