Professional Career

Professor Sweeney joined the philosophy faculty in 1990.

Fields of Interest

• Medieval Philosophy
• Philosophy of Language
• Theories of the Passions

Current Teaching

• Medieval and Modern Theories of the Passions
• Philosophy of Language
• Medieval Philosophy of Language
• Augustine and Anselm
• Theories of Metaphor
• Greek Philosophy and Literature

Recent Publications

• “Seeing Double: Thomas Aquinas and the Problem of Modernity through the Continental Lens,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 83, 3 (2009): 389-420.
• "The Hermeneutics of Authenticity in Abelard's Historia Calamitatum and Letters," Poetics Today, vol 28. 2 (Summer 2007): 303-336.
• "Literary Forms of Medieval Philosophy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2002 edition). Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Revised and expanded, 2007.
• "The Rhetoric of Prayer and Argument in Anselm," Philosophy and Rhetoric 38, n. 4 (2005): 355-78.
• Logic, Theology and Poetry in Boethius, Abelard, and Alan of Lille: Words in the Absence of Things. Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006.