In 1976, Koterski graduated with a H.A.B. degree in Classics from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1980, he earned a M.A. from Saint Louis University with a thesis titled Aristotle's Ethics and Reflective Equilibrium, and then two years later a Ph.D. from the same school, while there on a Danforth Fellowship. His dissertation, mentored by James Collins, was titled Truth and Freedom in Karl Jasper’s Philosophy of Science. Immediately, after obtaining his degree in 1982, Koterski taught at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. At the time, he was also discerning a vocation to the religious life. After two years of teaching, he applied to the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus. His studies continued and as a Jesuit Koterski earned his Masters of Divinity and License in Sacred Theology from Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts with a thesis titled Natural Law and the Book of Wisdom. From 1986 to 1988, he was Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland. He was ordained a priest in 1992. Soon afterwards, he was assigned as a professor at Fordham. In the late 1990s he also began teaching philosophical courses at the minor seminary of the Archdiocese of New York. From 1996 to 2001, he was director of the MA program in philosophical resources at Fordham. From 1994, he has served as chaplain for Queens Court Residential College Freshmen. In 2008, Koterski was elected president of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.
Publications
Koterski is the editor or author of numerous articles and reviews. Since 1994, he has served as editor-in-chief of International Philosophical Quarterly. He is editor of the annual proceedings of the University for Life organization, Life and Learning. Since 1999, he is co-editor of the Fordham University Press Series in Moral Philosophy and Moral Theology.
"A Reading Guide to Natural Law Ethics" in Ressourcement Thomism: Essays in Honor of Romanus Cessario, O.P., edited by Matthew Levering and Reinhard Hutter.
"The Status of Personalism in Catholic Moral Thinking Today" - Dunwoodie Review.
"Memory and The Tempest" in Tolle lege: Essays on Augustine and Medieval Philosophy in Honor of Roland J. Teske, S.J., edited by David Twetten et al..
"Society and the Formation of Free Persons" in Yves R. Simon: The Call of Philosophy, edited by John W. Carlson.
"Jaspers on Truth and Freedom" in Companion to Karl Jaspers, edited by Gregory J. Walters.
"Aquinas on the Sacrament of Marriage" in Rediscovering Aquinas and the Sacraments, edited by Mtthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais, pp. 102–13.
"Theological Reflections on Natural Family Planning" in Nova et Vetera 6/4 : 765-77.
"Calderon's La vida es un sueno" in St. Austin Review 8/1 : 15-17.
"More's Reflections on Complicity with Evil in The History of King Richard III" in Thomas More Studies 2 : 53-62.
"Non-Negotiable Principles of Christian Politics" in Inside Fordham 29/15 : 5.
"The Use of Philosophical Principles in Catholic Social Thought: The Case of Gaudium et Spes" in The Journal of Catholic Legal Studies 45/2 : 277-92.
"The Doctrine of Participation in Aquinas's Commentary on St. John" in Being and Thought in Aquinas, edited by Jeremiah Hackett, William Murnion, and Carl Still, pp. 109–21.
"How Jefferson Honored Religion in Crisis 19/3 : 35.
"On the Aristotelian Heritage of John of Damascus" in The Failure of Modernism: The Cartesian Legacy and Contemporary Pluralism, edited by Brendan Sweetman, pp. 58–71.
"Jaspers on Realism and Idealism" in Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Karl Jaspers Gesellschaft 11 : 58-69.
"C. S. Lewis and the Natural Law" in CSL: The Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society 26/6 #306 : 1-7.
"Certain Essentially Human Aspects of Intelligence," paper and discussion in the Proceedings of the ITEST Workshop on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 38–43 et passim.
"A Mystic's Epistemology: Truth and Freedom in the Thought of St. Bernard of Clairvaux" in the Proceedings of the Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference 8 : 47-52.
"Secularization or Christian Culture?" in The Dawson Newsletter 1/2 : 1-4.
