The Catholic University of America

Dr. John C. McCarthy
Associate Professor

 

Research Interests

Early modern philosophy, political philosophy , phenomenology

 

Selected Publications

Books:

Editor, Modern Enlightenment and the Rule of Reason. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1998.

 

Articles:

"Desire, Recollection, and Speech: On Augustine's Confessions I,1." Communio: International Catholic Review 14 (1987): 146-57.

"Parts, Wholes, and the Forms of Life: Husserl and the New Biology." In Phenomenology of Natural Science, edited by L. Hardy and L. Embree, 135-56. Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992. Also, in translation, "Parties, touts, et formes de la vie: Husserl et la nouvelle biologie." Recherches Husserlienne 3 (1995): 23-49.

"How Knowing the World Completes the World: A Note on Aquinas and Husserl." Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 57 (1993): 71-86.

"Pascal on Certainty and Utility." Interpretation: a journal of political philosophy 22 (1994): 247-69. Also, in substantially revised form, in Modern Enlightenment and the Rule of Reason, edited by John C. McCarthy, 92-123. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Press, 1998.

"Some Preliminary Remarks on 'Cognitive Interest' in Husserlian Phenomenology." Husserl Studies 11 (1994-1995): 135-52.

"The Being of the Maybe: Husserl on Doubting." Man and World 28 (1995): 261-281.

"Keeping up Appearances: the Moral Philosophy of Robert Sokolowski." In The Truthful and the Good. Essays in Honor of Robert Sokolowski, edited by John Drummond and James Hart, 121-44. Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996.

"Introduction." Modern Enlightenment and the Rule of Reason, 1-21. Edited by John C. McCarthy. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1998.

"The Descent of Science." Atti del Convegno Internazionale "Origine della Vita Intelligente nell'Universo," edited by Roberto Columbo, et al, 329-54. Como, Italy: Edizioni New Press, 1999. Also in revised form, in The Review of Metaphysics 52 (June 1999): 835-66.

"Keeping Modern Man in Mind." Review essay of Pierre Manent's The City of Man. Telos 116 (Summer 1999): 175-87.

"Virtù." Nuova civiltà delle macchine 20 (2002): 33-55.

"The Reach of Reason." In Ethics and Theological Disclosures: The Thought of Robert Sokolowski, edited by James Hart and Guy Mansini, O.S.B., 102-34. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003.

“Descartes’ Feeble Spirits,” in Weakness of the Will from Plato to the Present, edited by Tobias Hoffmann, 175–209.  Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008.

“Notes on Cartesian Freedom,” The Incarnate Word, 2 (2008), 3–39.

“Bacon’s Third Sailing:  The ‘Pre–Socratic’ Origins of Modern Philosophy,” in Early Greek Philosophy:  Reason at the Beginning of Philosophy, edited by Joe McCoy.  Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming.

"Seeing the Unseen," in Person, Being, and History: Essays in Honor of Kenneth Schmitz, edited by Michael Baur and Robert E. Wood (Washington, D.C:  The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 307-24.

 

Recent Courses

Graduate:

Hume's Enquiries

Francis Bacon and the Mastery of Nature
Descartes's Passions of the Soul
Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature

 

Undergraduate:

Political Philosophy

Philosophy of Knowledge

Senior Seminar

 

 

Notes Toward the Writing of an Undergraduate Philosophy Paper

 

 

Office: 216 Aquinas Hall

Office Hours: On sabbatical leave, Fall 2007

Phone: 202-319-6649

Email: mccartjc@cua.edu