Catherine Peters

My research examines medieval philosophy in its historical context and brings its insights into conversation with contemporary ethical questions. Centering on Thomas Aquinas and Avicenna, I work across philosophical anthropology, metaphysics, natural theology, and the philosophy of disability.

My historical research centers on medieval philosophy, especially Thomas Aquinas and Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā), and the reception of Avicenna’s thought by Aquinas. I especially examine their accounts of nature across natural philosophy and metaphysics: nature as a principle of change, as the source of particular beings’ characteristic powers and operations, and, in the case of human nature, as a basis for understanding action and flourishing.

These inquiries inform my work in metaphysics, natural theology, philosophical anthropology, and normative ethics. In natural theology, I study arguments for God’s existence and their metaphysical foundations. In ethics, I ask how accounts of being, goodness, and human nature inform practical reason and moral normativity, especially in Aquinas’s accounts of virtue and natural law.

My contemporary work in normative ethics, philosophy of disability, and Catholic bioethics builds on my historical research, especially its accounts of nature, human powers, and human flourishing. I am developing a Thomistic account of disability itself: how disability relates to impairment, human nature, and the characteristic powers and ends of human beings. This account informs my examination of personhood, dignity, and flourishing, as well as the claims of justice that arise in social and institutional life. I ask what justice requires in providing accommodations and enabling persons with disabilities to participate fully in civic and institutional life, while also considering how to acknowledge impairment without reducing people to what they can or cannot do. My articles and chapters address these questions, and I am developing this work into a book-length systematic Thomistic account of disability, impairment, human flourishing, and justice.

My work has appeared in The Thomist, New Blackfriars, The Journal of Islamic Philosophy, European Journal for the Study of Thomas Aquinas, Lex Naturalis, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and Jesuit Higher Education, as well as several edited volumes. Since 2024 I have been an invited regular contributor to the “Philosophy and Theology” column of The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly. My articles for this series include:

• Forthcoming: “The Ethics of Ascending: a Catholic Critique of Looksmaxxing.” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 26.3 (2026).
• “Ableism Reconsidered.” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 26.1 (2026): 177-186.
• “The Usefulness of ‘Dignity.” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 25.2 (2025): 327-334.
• “The Significance of ‘Normal’ in Catholic Bioethics.” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 24.4 (2024): 731-740.
• “Essential and Functional Definitions of Personhood.” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 24.2 (2024): 371-384.

Articles (Peer-Reviewed)

• Forthcoming: “Disability in the Ignatian Tradition.” Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal.
• “Contemporary Nominalism? a Thomistic consideration of ‘Sex’ and ‘Gender’.” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 98 (2024): 139–151.
• “Thomas Aquinas on Non-Theological Faith.” New Blackfriars 105 (2024): 478–491.
• “‘Necessary’ and ‘Possible’ as Metaphysical Preambles: a defense of Avicenna against Averroes.” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 96 (2022): 199-217.
• “Ibn Sīnā on ‘Nature’ as Matter and Form: an Exposition of Physics of the Healing I, 6 & 9.” The Journal of Islamic Philosophy 13 (2022): 50-82.
• “Cura Personalis: the Incarnational Heart of Jesuit Education.” Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal 11 (2022): 26-34.
• “Common by Causality and Common by Predication: Avicenna and Aquinas on a Twofold Division of Principles.” The Thomist 85 (2021): 295-328.
• “A Thomistic Defense of ‘Nature’ in Avicenna’s Physics.” European Journal for the Study of Thomas Aquinas 39 (2021): 43-60.
• “Participation and the Thomistic Definition of Natural Law.” Lex Naturalis 4 (2019): 73-90.
• “Hylomorphic Teleology in Physics II.” Studia Gilsoniana 8 (2019): 147-168.
• “The Objective Relativity of Goodness: a rapprochement between Peter Geach and Thomas Aquinas.” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 92 (2018): 285-300. Winner: ACPA “Young Scholar” Award.
• “Personal Participation in the Thomistic Account of Natural Law.” Originally published in E-Journal of the Society for Thomistic Personalism 4 (2015): 31-43; Re-published in Studia Gilsoniana 7 (2018): 443-458.
• “St. Thomas’ Proof for the Lord of Lords from the Cause of Causes.” Biblica et Patristica Thoruniensia 8 (2015): 75-88

• Forthcoming: “A Metaphysics of Sex and Gender.” Catholic Thought and Gender Theory (Paul Allen & Angela Franks, editors). Catholic University of America Press [Solicited].
• Forthcoming: “Avicennian Physics as Aristotelian Science: The Reception of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics in Avicenna’s Physics of the Healing.” From Philosophy to Falsafa: A Graeco-Arabic Dialogue (Josh Hayes, editor). To be published in English (Bloomsbury Press) and Arabic translation (King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies Publishing House). [Solicited]
• “Aquinas and Disability.” Thomism Revisited (Gaven Kerr, editor). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026. [Solicited]

• Forthcoming: “Worth Beyond Work: the Person as Imago Dei.” The Better Part Journal: an Intellectual Catholic Women’s Journal.
• “Justice, Mercy, and the Hope of Repentance.” Teaching the Faith (Publication of The Fellowship of Catholic Scholars). July, 2023.
• “Aristotle’s Chinese Counterpart,” review essay of J. D. Rooney’s Material Objects in Confucian and Aristotelian Metaphysics: The Inevitability of Hylomorphism. Bloomsbury Academic: New York, 2022. Law & Liberty (online), October 27, 2022.

• Article-length study of ADA accommodations as requirements of justice, examining their proper scope, potential misuse, and the corresponding obligations of institutions, persons with disabilities, and the broader public.
• Article-length study of Thomas Aquinas’s account of language and its extension to sign language.
• Contributed Chapter on MacIntyre and Disability to The MacIntyrean Mind (Richard Kim & Micah Lott, editors). Routledge Philosophical Minds Series. 
• Contributed Chapter on Bioethics to Acting to Love: Kevin L. Flannery’s Retrieval and Reinvigoration of Catholic Ethics, Invited Festschrift Chapter (Matthew Levering & Christopher Kaczor, editors).
• “Jewish and Muslim Sources.” The Oxford Handbook of the Summa Theologiae (Matthew Levering, Therese Cory, Thomas Joseph White, OP, editors). Volume under contract with Oxford University Press.