Dr. Jamie Spiering

Dr. Spiering received her bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Thomas Aquinas College in California (2003), and her M.A. (2006) and Ph.D. (2010) in philosophy from The Catholic University of America in Washington DC.  She has been at Benedictine since the fall of 2010, teaching a variety of courses on ethics, God,  the soul, and logic.  Her areas of interest include theories of free will, particularly in the medieval period, and philosophy of God.  In her spare time she enjoys canoeing and reading fiction.

Curriculum Vitae

Classes

Logic and Nature/Principles of Nature (12 sections)
Ethics (7 sections)
Natural Theology (2 sections)
Philosophical Psychology (5 sections)     
Logic (1 section)
Ancient Philosophy (1 section)
Business Ethics (1 section)

Education

Ph.D.

Philosophy

The Catholic University of America

“An Innovative Approach to Liberum Arbitrium in the Thirteenth Century”

Master of Arts

Philosophy

The Catholic University of America

“Divine Freedom in the Thought of Leibniz”

Bachelor of Arts

Liberal Arts

Thomas Aquinas College

Research Interests

Medieval theories of human freedom, divine freedom in medieval and early modern thought,  philosophy of the human person, medieval and classical psychology.

Publications

Review of Aquinas the Augustinian, by M. Dauphinais, B. David, and M. Levering.  The Review of Metaphysics 42.3(2009), 652-3.

Review of The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics, ed. Olli Koistinen. The Review of Metaphysics 64.2 (2010),388-90.

Review of Augustine and Spinoza, Milad Douhei.  The Review of Metaphysics 65.2 (Dec. 2011), 419-421.
 
“Liber est Causa Sui”  Thomas Aquinas and the Maxim “The Free is the Cause of Itself.”  The Review of Metaphysics 65 (Dec. 2011) 351-376.

Review of The Problem of Negligent Omission: Medieval Action Theories to the Rescue, by Michael Barnwell.  The Thomist76.4 (Oct. 2012).

“What Is Freedom?  An Instance of the Silence of St. Thomas,” under review

Presentations

“The Textual Context of Thomas’s Account of Free Choice,” presentation at the 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI,  May 2010.  

“Augustine, Thomas, and the Memory of Things Sensed,” presentation at the 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2011.

“Ut Rabbi Moyses Dicit:  Thomas Aquinas and Moses Maimonides in Agreement,” presentation at the 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2012.

“Free Will – We Need It, But Is It Real?”  LaCroix Philosophy Lecture at Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO, October 2013

“The Sixth Method Doesn’t Work, but the Third Way Does?  Maimonides on the Role of Possibility in Proving God’s Existence,” presentation at the 2013 Annual American Catholic Philosophical Association Conference, November 2013.

Languages

Latin, French, some German