by Rodrigo Ballon Villanueva
Seth Kreeger
This month, our small portrait is dedicated to Seth Kreeger. Seth is a PhD Candidate at Marquette University (US) and KU Leuven (Belgium), supervised by Professors Richard Taylor and Andrea Robiglio. He works on the Arabic and Neoplatonic background to the metaphysical thought of Thomas Aquinas and William of Auvergne, especially concerning the nature of metaphysics, the real distinction between being and essence, and their philosophical accounts of creation. Seth aims to show that the most important figure for Aquinas’ metaphysical thought is not Aristotle (although he was always a relevant source) but the 10th and 11th century Persian philosopher Avicenna. Furthermore, he claims that close attention to the often-overlooked figure of William shows that the well-known Thomistic doctrine of being is in many ways anticipated by him; to such an extent that Aquinas seems to be a follower of William. Seth’s research interests also extend to the thought of Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Maximus the Confessor. Currently, Seth is a 2023 Fulbright Scholar based in Leuven, working on his dissertation entitled “Aquinas in Context: The Real Distinction between Being and Essence and its Background in Avicenna and William of Auvergne.”
Before attending Marquette University, Seth obtained his MA at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California, and his BA at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Two of his most recent publications are “Aquinas’ Attribution of Creation Ex Nihilo to Plato and Aristotle: The Importance of Avicenna” (Studia Gilsoniana 11/3), and “The Plotinian Heritage of Thomas Aquinas” (forthcoming, Proceedings of the 2022 American Catholic Philosophical Association Conference). For Marquette University and Aquinas College, Seth has taught introduction to Philosophy, Ethics, and Logic. He is a member of the Aquinas and the Arabs International Working Group, the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy. You can contact Seth at seth.kreeger@marquette.edu or seth.kreeger@kuleuven.be
IPM Monthly 