Contact Information
Biography
Michael Harrington works primarily on the commentary traditions of the European and Chinese Middle Ages. He looks at the genesis of medieval philosophy in Late Antique Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus, Augustine, and Dionysius the Areopagite, and how their texts and practices percolate through a commentary tradition that stretches over the next thousand years. He has edited and translated Latin versions of texts from the Dionysian corpus, including the Mystical Theology (Peeters, 2004), Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (Peeters, 2011), and Divine Names (Peeters, forthcoming). He is the author of Sacred Place in Early Medieval Neoplatonism (Palgrave, 2004) as well as numerous articles on Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, and Eriugena. In the field of Chinese philosophy, he looks at Confucian tradition of commenting on the Book of Changes, particularly in the Song and Ming dynasties. He has translated The Yi River Commentary on the Book of Changes (Yale, 2019) by the Song-dynasty philosopher Cheng Yi, and has written on both Cheng Yi’s commentary and on the twentieth-century rethinking of the Book of Changes in the work of Xiong Shili.
Education
- Ph.D., Philosophy, Boston College, 2001
- M.A., Classics, Dalhousie University, 1997
- B.A., St. John's College, 1995
Profile Information
- Courses taught above the 100 level:
- Yoga Philosophy and Practice (PHIL 237)
- Asian Thought (PHIL 280)
- Augustine and Dionysius (PHIL 606)
- Confucianism and Zen (PHIL 310/402W)
- Confucianism: Philosophy of Change (PHIL 608)
- Dionysius and His Interpreters (PHIL 635)
- Gothic Philosophy (PHIL 496/570)
- Medieval Philosophy (PHIL 301)
- Medieval Women Philosophers (PHIL 624)
- Rethinking Place (PHIL 552)
Books:
On the Divine Names: The Thirteenth-Century Textbook Edition (Leuven: Peeters, forthcoming).
The Yi River Commentary on the Book of Changes (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2019).
On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy: The Thirteenth-Century Textbook Edition (Leuven: Peeters, 2011).
Sacred Place in Early Medieval Neoplatonism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
A Thirteenth-Century Textbook of Mystical Theology at the University of Paris (Leuven: Peeters, 2004).
Recent Articles and Book Chapters"
The Postulate of Clarification in Cheng Yi's Commentary on the Book of Changes." Signs & Media I (2020): 92-107.
"Eriugena and the Neoplatonic Tradition." In A Companion to John Scottus Eriugena, edited by A. Guiu, 64-92. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2019.
"The Divine Name of Wisdom in the Dionysian Commentary Tradition." Dionysius XXXV (2017): 105-133.
"Roots of Scientific Objectivity in the Quaestiones ad Thalassium." In Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher, edited by Sotiris Mitralexis, Georgios Steiris, Marcin Podbielski, and Sebastian Lalla, 131-139. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017.
"A Confucian Slippery Slope Argument." Confucian Academy: Chinese Thought and Culture Review 4:1 (2017): 89-101. Also published in Chinese: 儒家的 "滑坡论证." 孔学堂 4:1 (2017): 78-86.
"Principle and Place: Complementary Concepts in Confucian Yijing Commentary." Philosophy East and West 66:3 (2016): 861-82.