Bruce McCuskey
Education
B.A., Classics, Philosophy, and History, Summa Cum Laude, Washington and Lee University; M. Div., Summa Cum Laude, Duke Divinity School
Year of Matriculation
2022
Contact
Areas of Interest
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy and Theology (especially NeoPlatonism), Jewish Thought, Jewish-Christian Dialogue, Incunabula and Late Medieval Manuscripts
Profile
I study the history of late ancient, medieval, and renaissance philosophy, especially the interplay between philosophical thought and revealed and canonical texts. My research focuses on the distinct ways that Jews and Christians retrieved and the Platonic corpus in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. I am interested in how the retrieval of Platonic dialogues and late NeoPlatonic commentaries allowed thinkers like Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Yohanan Alemanno, and David ben Judah Messer Leone to rethink medieval debates over issues in philosophical theology, especially concerning questions of the divine attributes and the immortality of the soul. I am also interested in late medieval Kabbalah and the relationship of these debates to late medieval science.
Recent Scholarly Activity
- "The Platonic Roots of Aquinas's Account of Divine Infinity" in The Reception of Platonism in the Middle Ages (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2024), ed. Georgios Steiris (Forthcoming)
- "Pomponazzi's Criticism of Aquinas's Argument for the Soul's Incorruptibility" Panel on Thomistic Philosophy, International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 12, 2023
- "Aquinas, the NeoPlatonic One, and the Variety of Medieval Platonisms," Saint Louis University Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference, June 19th, 2023
- "Tradition and Re-appropriation in Isaac Abravanel's Commentary on Isaiah 53" Panel: Isaiah 53 as a Site of Contested Exegesis, Association for Jewish Studies Conference, December 18, 2023
- "Flavius Mithridates's Translations of Sefer Yetzirah Commentaries and their Influence on Pico della Mirandola: The Evidence of Vat.Ebr.191" Panel: Marsilio Ficino and Mediterranean Philosophies: The Legacy of Michael J. B. Allen, Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, Chicago, March 21, 2024