
Philipp Rosemann
MU
A native of Germany, Philipp W. Rosemann holds advanced degrees from the Queen's University of Belfast (MA), the Université catholique de Louvain (Lic.Phil. and D.Phil.), and the National University of Ireland (D.Litt.). His dissertation director was the Irish scholar James McEvoy. Prof. Rosemann joined Maynooth University in January 2018, after twenty years of teaching and research at the University of Dallas.
Rosemann’s academic interests are at the intersection of the Western Christian tradition and contemporary thought. His doctoral dissertation, devoted to the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas, already carried a Heideggerian subtitle: A 'Repetition' of Scholastic Metaphysics. This was followed by a French book that looked at Aquinas through a Lacanian lens, and then by an attempt to sketch out a Foucauldian methodology for the study of Scholastic thought: Understanding Scholastic Thought with Foucault. Rosemann has also worked on Peter Lombard, the author of the celebrated Book of Sentences, which over several centuries served as the standard textbook of theology. In particular, he approached the Book of Sentences as a powerful case illustrating how traditional rationality unfolds in the interpretation of texts. His most recent book, Charred Root of Meaning: Continuity, Transgression, and the Other in Christian Tradition, endeavours to sketch a more general theory of tradition, with Scripture in the foreground and Foucault in the background. Since 2018, Rosemann has published several shorter pieces of Irish interest, such as ‘How Did We Get Here? Reflections towards a Philosophy of the Present’, which appeared in the Autumn 2021 issue of Studies.
Rosemann is also the founding editor, and now co-editor, of the series 'Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations'.