James McEvoy (philosopher)
James J. McEvoy was an Irish philosopher and priest. His principal academic interests were related to medieval philosophy, particularly the work of Robert Grosseteste and John Scotus Eriugena. He also wrote about the philosophy of friendship.Biography
McEvoy undertook undergraduate and postgraduate study in philosophy at Queen’s University of Belfast where he wrote his MA thesis on Grosseteste's commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. He studied for his Bachelor of Divinity at St Patrick's College, Maynooth and was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1968 for the Diocese of Down and Connor. In 1974 he was awarded his PhD by the University of Louvain for a dissertation on the philosophy of Grosseteste.
McEvoy held chairs of philosophy at The Queen’s University Belfast, Louvain and Maynooth. He served as dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the National University of Ireland. He was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy and conferred with an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Leicester at Lincoln Cathedral in 2004, the same year that a volume on friendship, Amor amicitiae was published in his honour. He was the founder of the .
