James McEvoy

Robert Grosseteste was one of the most eminent and universal scholars of his time. At his death, in 1253, as Bishop of Lincoln, he left behind him a literary heritage, which contemporary scholarship is still trying to come fully to terms with. This volume offers a series of studies concerning aspects of Grosseteste’s thought on religious and metaphysical themes. Paying particular attention to questions of chronology and sources, the author aims to elicit his deeper presuppositions and to isolate certain of his intuitions that seem quite original. The articles include two unedited writings by Grosseteste, on the sun and on human nature, and place the accent not on the possible unity of his intellectual initiatives, but on their variety - concerning language and thought, the nature of light, the Ten Commandments and the Christian conscience, mystical union and the reasons for the incarnation.

Setting the thought of Robert Grosseteste within the broader context of the intellectual, religious, and social movements of his time, this study elucidates the evolution of his ideas on topics ranging from the mathematical laws that govern the movement of bodies, God as the mathematical Creator, and human knowledge, to religious experience and the place of humanity within the social, natural, and providential orders.

Love and Friendship in the Western Tradition comprises a collection of essays written over a 25 year period by the late Rev. Professor James McEvoy on the theme of friendship. The book traces the genesis and development of philosophical treatments of friendship from Greek philosophy, through the Middle Ages, to modern and postmodern philosophy. The collection's three major concerns are: (1) the history of philosophical discussions of friendship; (2) the role of friendship in the cultivation of the philosophical life; (3) the marginalization of friendship as a theme for philosophical reflection and practice in the modern period.As the author was primarily a medievalist, a great deal of the focus of the essays is on the development of the theme of friendship in the Middle Ages (in the thought of Augustine, Aquinas, Aelred of Rievaulx, Henry of Ghent, Robert Grosseteste, etc.). However, this focus, while a value in itself, also serves to connect philosophical perspectives on friendship from before and after the middle ages. It connects to the time before inasmuch as much of the work done on friendship in the Middle Ages is anchored in interpretations of Aristotle and Plato, and it connects to the time after by providing a counterpoint to the modern paradigm of what constitutes the philosophical life.The collection combines historical with thematic approaches to scholarship on this issue and is one of the only books of its kind to do so. It is, perhaps, unique in its historical sweep and will prove to be a canonical source for further research on this topic.