Brian J. Himes, Ph.D.
Manresa Fellow
Center for Ignatian Service
Courses Taught
SERV 1000
Education
Ph.D., 2022, Boston College, Systematic Theology, Minor Area: Theological Ethics
M.T.S., 2012, Boston College School of Theology & Ministry, Concentration: Systematic
Theology
B.A., 2010, Aquinas College, Grand Rapids, MI, summa cum laude, Majors: Theology &
Psychology
Research Interests
Dissertation Title: “Max Scheler on Love and Human Dignity: The Wertkern [Core of
Value] as Resolving the Aporia of Dialogical and Metaphysical Personalism on the Knowledge
of Persons”
Diss. Summary: A specialized interpretation of Scheler’s concept of the core of value
(Wertkern) in every person resolves a disagreement between dialogical personalists
(e.g., Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas) and metaphysical/cognitive personalists (e.g.,
Thomas Aquinas, Bernard Lonergan) over whether persons can be known and whether such
knowledge is somehow essentially possessive and violent. I argue for this interpretation
of Scheler’s personalistic value realism, inspired by and in line with Blaise Pascal’s
‘reasons of the heart,’ through dialectical comparison of Scheler’s writings with
Charles Taylor on the emergence of modern identity and ‘soft (emotivistic) relativism,’
Levinas’ Holocaust- inspired radically concrete phenomenological ethics, and Lonergan’s
cognitional theory of transcultural intelligibility. The result is a heuristic method
for knowingly and respectfully loving any person for who they are without relying
on a naive notion of the true self or a religious command detached from philosophical
reflection. This theory and method rely on a concept of human dignity anchored not
in a transcultural metaphysical potency/essence but in a free act of affective love—a
‘reason of the heart.’
Publications and Media Placements
Peer-Reviewed Journal Article: “Lonergan’s Position on the Natural Desire to See God
and Aquinas’ Metaphysical Theology of Creation and Participation,” in The Heythrop
Journal 54, no. 5 (September 2013): pp. 767–783.
Invited Book Chapter: “Transcending Kantian Intuition Through Value-ception & Cognition:
The Complementary Legacies of Scheler and Bernard Lonergan,” in The Legacy of Max
Scheler, ed. Eric Mohr, St. Vincent’s College, PA, & J. Edward Hackett, Southern University
and A&M College, LA (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, expected publication
2024).
Invited Book Review of The Three Dynamisms of Faith: Searching for Meaning, Fulfillment
& Truth, by Louis Roy, OP, in The Lonergan Review, Vol. 10 (2019), pp. 154–157.
Professional Organizations and Associations
Max Scheler Society of North America