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Alice Ramos

St. John’s University

 
 

 

Profile:

 

Alice Ramos is Professor of Philosophy at St. John’s University in Jamaica, New York, where she has taught since 1987. She holds a Ph.D. in French literature from New York University and a second Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. Her areas of specialization are metaphysics, ethics, and Thomas Aquinas; her areas of concentration are philosophy of religion, epistemology, aesthetics, and Kant.

 

She has published a book in Spanish on contemporary semiotics and a metaphysics of the sign: Signum: De la Semiótica Universal a la Metafísica del Signo (Pamplona: EUNSA, Colección Filosófica, 1987). She has also edited two books and published over thirty-five articles in areas such as Thomistic metaphysics, Kantian ethical theology, Alasdair MacIntyre’s ethical inquiry, and Karol Wojtyla-John Paul II’s Christian anthropology. Her present research projects deal with the foundations of ethics and the transcendentals in Thomas Aquinas. She is also interested in the connection between modern moral individualism and aesthetics in Kant, as well as in Kant’s subjectivization of teleology. In her search for the foundations of ethics, she follows Alasdair MacIntyre’s thought that the modern project of morality is unintelligible due to its rejection of Aristotelian-Thomistic teleology.

 

Dr. Ramos was President of the American Maritain Association (named in honor of the French contemporary philosopher Jacques Maritain) from 2001 to 2004; during her tenure as president of the AMA she organized three international conferences with sessions at Princeton University (2002), the University of Chicago (2003), and Emory University (2004). She has served on the Executive Council of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and is presently on the Executive Council of the Metaphysical Society of America. She is also a member of other scholarly associations such as the American Philosophical Association. She currently is on the Board of Directors of Murray Hill Institute, a new institute in New York City for professional women.

 

In addition, Dr. Ramos has received several fellowships and grants both in the United States and abroad. To name a few: she was a fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame in the spring semester of 1995, was awarded a grant for the study of Lublin Thomism at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, in the summer of 1997, and was the recipient of a summer seminar fellowship from the National Endowment of the Humanities in 1991. She was also awarded the St. John’s University medal for Outstanding Faculty Achievement in 1998, and a Student Government Teaching Award in 2001.

 

 

Selected Publications:

 

Books:

 

  • Faith, Scholarship, and Culture in the 21st Century, co-edited with Marie George; volume of 19 essays, with an introduction by Robert Royal (American Maritain Association, 2002, distributed by The Catholic University of America Press).

 

  • Beauty, Art, and the Polis, edited volume of 22 essays, with an introduction by Ralph McInerny (American Maritain Association, 2000; distributed by The Catholic University of America Press).

 

 

 

Articles:

 

“The Unity of Ordinary Life: The Quest for the Good and the Divine,” in Paul O’Callaghan (ed.) Figlio di Dio nella Chiesa (Rome: Edizioni Università della Santa Croce, 2004), pp. 45-60.

 

 “Moral Beauty and Affective Knowledge in Aquinas,” Acta Philosophica 13, no. 2 (2004), pp. 321-37.

 

“Contemporary Culture on the Nature of the Human Person: The Relevance of Edith Stein,” 18 pp., on the website of Murray Hill Institute, 2004.

 

“The Human Person as Image and Sign,” 13 pp., on the website of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, as of January 2004, e-aquinas.net.

 

“From Literature to Philosophy: Faith’s Impact on my Work,” in Curtis Hancock and Brendan Sweetman (eds.), Faith and the Life of the Intellect (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), pp. 210-30.

 

“Evil and Providence: Toward a New Moral Order,” in Faith, Scholarship and Culture in the 21st Century (American Maritain Association, 2002, distributed by The Catholic University of America Press), pp. 269-79.

 

“The Dignity of Man and Human Action,” Acta Philosophica 10, no. 2 (2001), pp. 315-21.

 

“Human Life and the Primacy of Contemplation,” in William May and Kenneth Whitehead (eds.), The Battle for the Catholic Mind (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine Press, 2001), pp. 404-16.

 

“Beauty, Mind, and the Universe,” in Alice Ramos (ed.), Beauty, Art, and the Polis (The American Maritain Association, 2000, distributed by The Catholic University of America Press), pp. 70-84.

 

“The Enlightened Mentality and Academic Freedom,” in Daniel McInerny (ed.), The Common Things: Essays on Thomism and Education (The American Maritain Association, 1999, distributed by The Catholic University of America Press), pp. 35-47.

 

“Beauty and the Perfection of Being,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 71 (1997), pp. 255-68.

 

“Ockham and Aquinas on Exemplary Causality,” Proceedings of the Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference (Augustinian Historical Institute, Villanova University) 19-20 (1994-1996), pp. 199-213.

 

“A Metaphysics of the Truth of Creation: Foundation of the Desire for God,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 69 (1995), pp. 237-48.

 

“Karol Wojtyla—John Paul II's Idea of Ultimate Reality and Meaning,” Ultimate Reality and Meaning (University of Toronto Press) 18, no. 2 (June 1995), pp. 102-18.

 

“Tradition as ‘Bearer of Reason’ in Alasdair MacIntyre’s Moral Enquiry,” in Curtis L. Hancock and Anthony O. Simon (eds.), Freedom, Virtue, and the Common Good (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), pp. 179-93.

 

“Technologies of the Self: Truth, Asceticism, and Autonomy,” Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française 6, no. 1-2 (Spring 1994), pp. 20-29.

 

“Man and Woman, the Image of God Who is Love: Toward an Adequate Anthropology for a Theology of the Family,” Proceedings of The Fellowship of Catholic Scholars (Steubenville, Ohio: Franciscan University Edition, 1994), pp. 25-48.

 

“Kant as Precursor of Liberationist Hermeneutics,” Filosofia Oggi 16 (April-December 1993), pp. 317-28.

 

“Ethical Theology and Its Dissolution in Kant,” Acta Philosophica 1, no. 2 (1992), pp. 325-39.

 

“The Divine Ideas and the Intelligibility of Creation: A Way Toward Universal Signification in Aquinas,” Doctor Communis 43, no. 3 (September-December 1991), pp. 250-65.

 

“Activity and Finality in St. Thomas,” Angelicum 68 (1991), pp. 231-54.

 

“Foundations for a Christian Anthropology,” Anthropotes 2 (1989), pp. 225-57.