John Owens SM
D.Phil (Munich), Ph.L (Angelicum), BA (Cant.)

Lecturer in Philosophy

E-mail: owens@gsc.ac.nz

My particular academic interests include twentieth-century philosophy and its relation to Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas. Outside of academic life, I play the flute (after a fashion) and am a keen cycle-camper.

Research Interests:
My research interests have lately centered around contemporary authors developing an account of the human situation which avoids large notions of transcendence (i.e. metaphysical notions of God, Good, Truth, Reality), in particular Richard Rorty, Martha Nussbaum and DZ Phillips.

Publications:
“The Sign and its Trespass: Signs, Presence, and Metaphysics in Kevin Hart” Sophia Vol 38 1999 36-53.

“A Creaturely Ethic: Veritatis Splendor and Human Nature” The Linacre Quarterly, August 2000 11-21.

“The Obligations of Irony: Rorty on Irony, Autonomy and Contingency” The Review of Metaphysics 2000 27-41.

“Transcendence and the Human” Colloquium Vol 33 2001 121-134.

"Two Possibilities of Existence: Sophism, Plato and Metaphysics" in Talking Theology 2001-2002 proceedings (Auckland: Carey Baptist College, 2003).

"Religion Within The Limits Of Our Talk: DZ Phillips And The Question of God's Reality" Colloquium Vol 35 (2) 2003, 115-129.

The God Whereof We Speak: DZ Phillips And The Question of God's Existence" American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly Vol 78 (1) 2004.

"Dissenting from Reality: The Denials of Evil" Logos, Volume 7, Number 4, Fall 2004.

"Animals, Ontology and Rorty's Giraffe" Colloquium Vol 39 (2) 2007, 170-184.

“Paley, Aristotle, and the Artefact Analogy” Colloquium , Vol. 41, No.2, 2009, 204-215.

“Creation and End-Directedness” Sophia 49 2010, 489-498.

“Nietzsche and the Christians” Australasian Catholic Record 88, 2011, 191-201.

“Recycling the Soul: The Physicalist Anthropology of Nancey Murphy” Colloquium 2011, 169-182.