Brendan Sweetman

Brendan Sweetman headshot
Professor of Philosophy
College of Arts and Sciences
Arrupe Hall 338

Additional Positions 

Sullivan Chair in Philosophy
Special Advisor to the Provost on Catholic Studies

Degrees 

Ph.D. Philosophy, University of Southern California
M.A. Philosophy, University of Southern California
Diploma in Religious Studies, University of Cambridge (L.E.S)
M.A. Philosophy, University College Dublin
B.A. Philosophy and English, University College Dublin

Biography 

Brendan Sweetman, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy and holds the Sullivan Chair in philosophy at Rockhurst University. He is the author or editor of 16 books, including Religion and Science: An Introduction (Continuum, 2010), The Vision of Gabriel Marcel (Brill, 2008), Religion: Key Concepts in Philosophy (Continuum, 2007), Why Politics Needs Religion: The Place of Religious Arguments in the Public Square (InterVarsity, 2006), Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology (Oxford U.P., 1992), A Gabriel Marcel Reader (St. Augustine’s Press, 2011), Evolution, Chance, and God (Bloomsbury, Fall 2015), and most recently, The Crisis of Democratic Pluralism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

Sweetman has published more than 100 articles and reviews in a variety of journals, collections, and reference works, including International Philosophical Quarterly, Faith and Philosophy, Philosophia Christi, Philosophical Quarterly, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Encyclopedia Britannica, New Catholic Encyclopedia, Oxford U.P., University of Notre Dame Press, Macmillan Press, and the American National Biography. An elected fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion (based in Cambridge, UK),  Dr Sweetman has been a visiting scholar and keynote speaker at universities throughout the U.S., and internationally has given lectures in many countries. 

He is the current president of the Gabriel Marcel Society, and editor of Marcel Studies. His books have been translated into several languages, including Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.