Fellows

FACULTY FELLOW

Scott Randall Paine, PhD

I am a priest of the archdiocese of Brasilia and tenured professor of medieval philosophy and Eastern thought at the city’s federal university. A native of the United States, since 1974 I have lived, studied, and taught in Europe, Asia and South America. In 1983 I was ordained by Pope St. John Paul II in Rome, where, in 1988, I also took my doctorate in philosophy at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas.

My research has long been dominated by the links between the humanities, philosophy, and religion (especially East-West conceptual confrontations, and what is sometimes called comparative religion). I also teach courses in Medieval philosophy, Indian and Chinese philosophy, metaphysics and philosophical anthropology (focus on the notion of person). Outside of the classical authors (and among them I include Newman and Chesterton), the writers who have most impacted me have been: Thomas Gilby, Josef Pieper, Cornelio Fabro, John Deely, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Louis Dupré, Richard De Smet, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Rémi Brague and Roy Wilson Organ.

My recent works include an edition of the essays of Bernard Kelly, A Catholic Mind Awake (2017); a study of the thought of G.K. Chesterton, The Universe and Mr. Chesterton (2nd ed., 2019); most recently, The Other World We Live In: A Catholic Vision of Angelic Reality (2021), my philosophical travelogue, Seven Islands: A Philosopher Island-Hops Through the World (2021, now available on Amazon), and my forthcoming book on philosophy’s interfaces, Face to Face with Everything: Philosophy’s Synoptic and Cenoscopic Outlook. My CV (in Portuguese), my current writing, some podcasts, and other resources can be found on the website: 3wisdoms.com, and some videos on youtube.com/c/3wisdoms.

FACULTY FELLOW

Herbert Hartmann, PhD

I received my M. A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto, where I studied under such distinguished Thomistic scholars as Fathers Joseph Owens, Armand Maurer and James Weisheipl, and, as well, Anton C. Pegis, under whose guidance and supervision I began my doctoral dissertation “St. Thomas and Prudence”. After his death, I completed the theses under the supervision of Lawrence Lynch. I had been chosen by Anton Pegis as one of the three inaugural professors of the then newly established Center for Thomistic Studies in Houston, Texas. During my years at the university in Canada, I had the opportunity to study under Allan Bloom and Hans Georg Gadamer, and am well-acquainted with Straussian political thought.

Over the course of my academic life, I’ve taught at Loyola University of Chicago and at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California. During my 12 years as a tutor at Thomas Aquinas College, I taught courses ranging from Astronomy and Euclidean Geometry to Theology and Logic. I’ve since also taught at Southern Catholic College, Our Lady of Thornwood Seminary and, most recently, for 12 years at the Catholic University of America. I retired from CUA in 2024 and am currently continuing my work on St. Thomas.

FACULTY FELLOW

KIRK KANZELBERGER, PhD

My name is Kirk Kanzelberger and I hold a Ph.D. in Philosophy (Fordham University, New York, 2011).    My undergraduate degree is in Biology (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 1984), and I also hold a master’s degree in Philosophical and Systematic Theology (Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley, 1994).  Originally from Wisconsin, I had a somewhat itinerant childhood, living in various places in the US, and in Madrid during the waning years of the Franco regime.

I am married to an organometallic chemist that I met in Dabney Hovse at Caltech (literally, the girl next door).  We have six children and (so far) two grandchildren.

When I graduated from Caltech, the Silicon Valley tech boom was in an accelerative phase.  Software technology was a convenient way to support a family while pursuing graduate studies in spurts, beginning at the Caltech Seismological Lab, where I programmed geophysics simulations to run on innovative parallel hardware.  One thing led to another, and to a career in the software industry.  During the 2000’s, I was lead engineer for a successful software startup, Netrics Inc., which brought to market best-in-class scalable inexact matching and machine learning components (AI before it became ubiquitous).  In 2010, Netrics was acquired by a Silicon Valley firm (TIBCO).

My philosophical interests lie in Peircean semiotics, moral psychology, and metaphysics.  On the technology front, I am an advisor to a startup (Peircy, Inc.) on basic technology involving the application of Peirce’s logic of the sign.

To learn about me and my interests, you might consult any of the following sources:  my lecture on evil, “Daydreams and Dark Magic”, for the 2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics; my Lyceum Institute Colloquium lecture, “Mending the Cartesian Rift”, on Walker Percy and Charles Peirce; and my article, “Reality and the Meaning of Evil”, in the inaugural issue of REALITY: A Journal for Philosophical Discourse.   You can also view my LinkedIn profile here.

FACULTY FELLOW

MATTHEW MINERD, PhD

My name is Matthew Minerd, and I hold a PhD in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.  I am a professor of philosophy and moral theology at the Byzantine Catholic Seminary of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Pittsburgh, PA.  I also do work as an academic translator from French and Latin (both in matters philosophical and theological).  Several of my translations are currently in print, and a number are anticipated for publication over the next several years.

I am personally devoted to the recovery of past philosophical and theological works, not out of a spirit of intellectual archeology but, rather, as providing legitimate voices in contemporary discussions.  Too much academic philosophy and theology centers on “the literature,” which often leaves out much wisdom from the great philosophers of the scholastic tradition which ran parallel to the modern “mainstream.”  Much of my academic interest involves injecting these voices into the current discussions—many of which must extend beyond mainstream academia, given its present ideological and financial constrictions.

FACULTY FELLOW

FRANCISCO PLAZA, PhD

My name is Francisco E. Plaza, I have a PhD in Philosophy from the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. My dissertation work centers on Jacques Maritain’s philosophy of culture, and how it applies to politics in our time. I have had a number of publications on the subject, notably, my article “Subjectivity and the Prise de Conscience in Jacques Maritain” published by the American Maritain Association in Engaging the Times (2017), and “Maritain’s Philosophy of Culture: A Bridge between Metaphysics and Politics” published in In Search for Harmony (2019).My primary research interests are political theory, ethics, and the culture of modernity.

I am originally from Caracas, Venezuela, and having experienced first-hand the transition from the Democratic state it once was to the totalitarian state it is today, I became invested in political philosophy and, in particular, the crisis of modern culture. One of the main questions I sought to answer was how people could continue to support failed political ideologies even in the face of obvious problems created by their adoption (e.g. an exponential increase of poverty and crime, clear human rights abuse on the part of the government, rampant fear and despair in the culture, an undeniable removal of basic liberties, etc.). The work of thinkers like Jacques Maritain, Eric Voegelin, and Pope Saint John Paul II, helped me to understand the genesis of this problem, as well as how it may be resolved. In our time, we face an anthropological crisis of meaning within our culture, and this is primarily what I hope to address in my own work.

FACULTY FELLOW

DANIEL WAGNER, PhD

I am an Associate Professor, Chair of Philosophy, and Director of Catholic Studies at Aquinas College, in Grand Rapids, MI. I received my Doctorate in Philosophy from the Center for Thomistic Studies, at the University of St. Thomas. My research focuses on the Philosophy of Nature and Science, Philosophical Anthropology, and the principles of Ethics in Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas (Dissertation: φύσις καί τὸ ἀνθρώπινον ἀγαθόν: The Aristotelian Foundations of the Human Good), and on the synthetic development of Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy with Phenomenology (“Penitential Method as Phenomenological: The Penitential ἐποχή,” and “On the Foundational Compatibility of Phenomenology & Thomism,” in Studia Gilsoniana).

With John P. Hittinger, I co-edited Thomas Aquinas: Teacher of Humanity (London, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), and I worked alongside Hittinger and Michael W. Tkacz on a volume of essays by the late Thomist and philosopher of nature and science, William Wallace: The Intelligibility of Nature: The Wallace Reader (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2023).

FACULTY FELLOW

Adam Pugen, PhD

I have long been interested in the relationship between rational inquiry, existential meaning, and the aesthetic ways in which ordinary and transcendent experience is symbolized by different forms of human culture. Discovering the work of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, and later St. Thomas Aquinas, has provided me with endlessly fruitful avenues for exploring this relationship as it pertains to – in my opinion – some of the most crucial developments of contemporary culture.  Receiving my PhD at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information in 2020, I wrote my dissertation “The Intellective Touch: A Phenomenology of Digital Modernism” as an attempt to develop a model of phenomenological aesthetics that might shed light on the existential challenges and opportunities of the digital media environment.

I have taught at the University of Toronto and the University of St. Thomas in Houston, and I continue to research psychological and aesthetic frameworks that help bring to light and counteract the power of media environments to shape human perception and behavior.

FACULTY FELLOW

JACOB J. ANDREWS, PHD

Salvē! I hold a PhD in medieval philosophy from Loyola University Chicago and graduate degrees from Marquette University and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. I teach Latin and Logic to students aged ten to eighteen at Covenant Classical School, and am an adjunct professor of philosophy at Wheaton College. I also serve as a houseparent at Jubilee Village, a transitional housing program for homeless single mothers, where I live with my wife, son, and daughter. And, occasionally, I sleep.

I started learning Latin at a classical school when I was six years old, and fell in love with it at eleven after I found a guide to scansion in the back of my dictionary . I taught myself to recite Latin verse quantitatively, and quickly realized that this rhythm was part of the language itself, not an oddity of its poetry. I marveled at the sound of this ancient language brought to life by careful study, and a quarter of a century later that wonder has never lessened. I am passionate about teaching students to engage with Latin as a living language, reading it fluently and developing an intuitive grasp of its subtleties.

My passion for philosophy was also a happy accident: during my freshman year of college, I took logic and philosophy of science to get out of math and science classes! (I wish I’d taken math and science, but I don’t regret the philosophy.) I quickly became attracted to analytic philosophy of religion and then to scholastic thought, which dovetailed with my love for Latin and gave me a new and invigorating way to think about my Christian faith. I also grew up in a neighborhood of immigrants and refugees, and philosophy has provided a way to engage with and learn from other cultures and religious traditions at their best. I have published comparative work on scholasticism and Confucian thought, and am pursuing a comparative project on Hindu philosophy.

You can learn more about me at my personal website, and you can get in touch with me on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.

FACULTY FELLOW

JOHN BOYER, MA

My name is John Boyer. I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University New Orleans.

My philosophical research interests include issues in philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, and philosophy of nature. I am particularly focused on issues of causality and explanation in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. You can find my publications here.

Prior to coming to Loyola, I taught philosophy for six years at the University of St. Thomas (UST) in Houston, TX. I am currently a PhD Candidate in Philosophy at UST’s Center for Thomistic Studies; my dissertation is on Aristotle’s theory of causal explanation. Prior to this, I earned an MA in philosophy at the Center and a BA in liberal arts from Thomas Aquinas College (California).

In addition to teaching, I serve as a senior editor at Reality: A Journal for Philosophical Discourse.