The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded Dr. Bernd Goehring, Clinical Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wagner College, a multi-year grant for his research on Henry of Ghent, a medieval philosopher and theologian. The $220,000 grant is for three years of work on an edition of Henry of Ghent’s Summa, art. 68-72. Henry of Ghent taught at the University of Paris in the late thirteenth century. He has been linked to the Goethals family in Flanders (now Belgium), some of whose descendants later moved to New York together with countless other Dutch and Flemish immigrants who settled on Staten Island and in other parts of the city.
Dr. Goehring is the general coordinator of the critical edition of Henry’s complete works and a research associate at Leuven University in Belgium. He has already discovered new manuscripts in European libraries as part of his groundbreaking work, and he will study these manuscripts with a group of fellow researchers at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, and Lyon College. As America celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, this research project will contribute to our understanding of the humanistic and intellectual roots of our nation’s institutions, ideas, and values.
The edition of Henry’s Summa, art. 68-72 addresses perennial humanistic issues like relation, sameness and difference, community and freedom. It will shed light on major ethical questions such as the nature of justice and the obligations of responsible citizens and leaders – in healthcare, business, the arts and beyond – that Dr. Goehring discusses in his Ethics classes and which align with Wagner’s mission.
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- Bernd Goehring.
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- A Henry of Ghent manuscript in the Vatican Library. ©Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.
