Jorge Eduardo Arbeláez Orejuela

by Rodrigo Ballon Villanueva

Jorge Eduardo Arbeláez Orejuela

We are excited to welcome 2025 together with Jorge Eduardo Arbeláez Orejuela. Jorge holds a BA (2017) and MA (2020) in Philosophy from the Xaverian Pontifical University (Colombia). He is currently a doctoral student at the same institution in cotutelle with the University of Navarra (Spain), where he works under the supervision of María Jesús Soto-Bruna.

Jorge is a lecturer in Metaphysics and Theodicy at the Faculty of Philosophy and Human Sciences at the University of La Sabana (Colombia). In addition, as part of their Core Curriculum, he introduces students from several departments to metaphysical problems in a more accessible manner.

His research focuses on the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, with a special emphasis on his metaphysical thought. In this context, Jorge’s doctoral dissertation analyses Aquinas’s conception of light and its importance within his famous theory of being. For this purpose, he pays particular attention to Aquinas’s commentaries on the Book of Causes, the Gospel of John, and the Divine Names. Jorge proposes that Aquinas’s metaphysics should not be taken only as an Aristotelian metaphysics of act. Instead, it is an original metaphysics of manifestation, in which being is conceived as light – both in a metaphorical and an analogical sense. More generally, Jorge is interested in the relationship between philosophy and Christianity and the history of metaphysics.

Jorge’s recent publications include “Illuminating Causality: The Role of Light in Thomas Aquinas’s Metaphysics of Being” (Religions, 2024 – with M. J. Soto-Bruna) and “Presence in the Dark: Joint Attention and the Varying Modes of Being Aware of God’s Presence” (Religions, 2024 – with J. C. Espejo Duarte & J. A. P-Duarte). If you want to keep up with Jorge’s research, check out his ORCID profile!