Christopher S. Morrissey, Ph.D.

Sessional Assistant Professor of Philosophy

I studied Ancient Greek and Latin at the University of British Columbia and have also taught classical mythology, ancient history, and ancient languages at Simon Fraser University, where I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on hominization and the mimetic theory of René Girard: “Mirror of Princes: René Girard, Aristotle, and the Rebirth of Tragedy”. At the University of British Columbia, the M.A. thesis “Studies in Aristotle’s Physics” inaugurated a series of subsequent philosophical inquiries into the philosophy of nature. Other teaching has included Greek and Latin language courses for the Faculty of Philosophy at the Seminary of Christ the King located at the Benedictine monastery of Westminster Abbey in Mission, British Columbia. Major publications include the books Hesiod: Theogony / Works and Days (Talonbooks, 2012) and The Way of Logic (Nanjing Normal University Press, 2018).

  • Ph.D.
  • M.A.
  • B.A.
  • B.Sc.

Expertise

  • Term Logic
  • Peircean Semiotics
  • Computational Metaphysics
  • Philosophy of Nature
  • Mimetic Theory
  • Ancient Greek and Latin

Editorial Team, The American Journal of Semiotics:

Managing Editor from issue 28.3–4 (2012) to 35.1–2 (2019); Associate Editor (2020–2021).

https://www.pdcnet.org/ajs/Editorial-Team

Awards & Honors

My poem “One Great City” won the Second Award in the Poetry Institute of China’s Shangyin Li Poetry Contest. At the award ceremony in Zhengzhou, China, on August 17th, 2018, my poem was performed with a full translation of it into Chinese (whereas the original text uses three languages: English, ancient Greek, and Laozi’s ancient Chinese): https://youtu.be/6ljIVjBnCqo>.

Recent Publications

Selected Publications

The Way of Logic: 逻辑之道 (Nanjing Normal University Press, 2018), Select Works of Eminent Contemporary Semioticians (Jie Zhang and Hongbing Yu, Series Editors); ISBN 7-5651-3577-1. Reviewed in The American Journal of Semiotics at: https://doi.org/10.5840/ajs2019353/460>.

“Subversions of Exclusions: A Commentary on Esther”, in Semiotics 2019: New Frontiers of Semiotics (Semiotic Society of America, 2021), 67–78. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/cpsem201910>.

“The Logic of Relativism”, Philosophical News: Official Publication of the European Society for Moral Philosophy 16 (2018): 145–159. Special Issue on Dietrich von Hildebrand (printed July 2020): https://www.philosophicalnews.com/issues/issue-n-16/>.

“Benedict Ashley's Reappraisal of Marxism”, in Grant Havers and Lee Trepanier (eds.), Walk Away: When the Political Left Turns Right (Lexington Books, 2019), 101–119; ISBN 978-1498595193 (published Aug 15, 2019): https://twu.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=2197141&site=ehost-live&scope=site&ebv=EB&ppid=pp_101>.

“The Five Ways of World-Empire”, in Eric Voegelin Today: Voegelin’s Political Thought in the 21st Century, edited by Scott Robinson, et al. (Lexington Books, 2019), 173–190; ISBN 978-1498596633 (published July 15, 2019); ProQuest Ebook Central: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/twu/reader.action?docID=5812467&ppg=181>.

“The Five Ways of the Cosmos: Stoicism and Eco-Spirituality in the Perennial Tradition”, in Gabriel Ricci (ed.), Natural Communions, Volume 40 of Religion & Public Life (Routledge, 2019), 1–13. ISBN 978-0367231811.

“The Analogy of Marshall McLuhan”, in Rajesh Heynickx and Stéphane Symons (eds.), So What's New about Scholasticism? How Neo-Thomism Helped Shape the Twentieth Century (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2018), 231–253. ISBN 978-3110586282.

“On Finding Beauty and Truth in René Girard”, in James Bryson (ed.), The Religious Philosophy of Roger Scruton (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 99–110.

“A Logic Without Nominalism: Existential Assumptions on the Aristotelian Square of Opposition Revisited”, The American Journal of Semiotics, 31.3–4 (2015), 183–202. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/ajs201621011>.

Hesiod: Theogony / Works and Days (Vancouver, British Columbia: Talonbooks, 2012).

Affiliations & Memberships

  • Colloquium on Violence and Religion
  • Semiotic Society of America
  • Certified Member, The Institute for Advanced Physics, Baton Rouge, LA

  • PHIL 105 Introduction to Philosophy
  • PHIL 109 Critical Thinking—Informal Logic
  • PHIL 210 Contemporary Ethical Issues
  • PHIL 350 Symbolic Logic