PROFESSOR
Department of Philosophy
St. John Hall, Room B30-7
Queens Campus
St. John’s University
8000 Utopia Parkway
Queens, NY 11439
Phone: (718) 990-5438
Fax: (718) 990-1907
ramosa@stjohns.edu
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
- Ph.D., Philosophy, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain,
1985
- Ph.D., French Literature, New York University, 1979
- M.A., French Literature, New York University, 1971
- B.A., summa cum laude, French (Spanish minor), Marymount
Manhattan College, 1970
AREAS OF INTEREST
- Metaphysics
- Ethics
- Aesthetics
- Thomas Aquinas
- History of modern philosophy
PROFILE
Alice Ramos has been a member of the Philosophy Department since
1987. Prior to her arrival at St. John’s, Dr. Ramos was
Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Navarra from 1985 to
1986 and Lecturer in French Philology from 1980 to 1986 at the same
university. Her interest in philosophy began in the French
Department of New York University, where her doctoral dissertation
concentrated on a phenomenological reading of the works of Michel
Butor, a French “new novelist.” At the University of Navarra,
she worked on finding a foundation for contemporary semiotics,
which led her to metaphysics and to Thomas Aquinas and to write a
book entitled: Signum: De la Semiótica Universal a la
Metafísica del Signo (Signum: From a Universal Semiotics
to a Metaphysics of the Sign).
Since her return from Spain in 1986, Dr. Ramos has written over 50
articles in areas such as Aquinas’s metaphysics and ethics, Kant’s
ethical theology, MacIntyre’s moral enquiry, and John Paul II’s
Christian anthropology and has edited two volumes of essays for the
American Maritain Association. She is the recipient of grants
for scholarly work both in the United States and Europe and was a
fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for the Philosophy
of Religion (1995) and a participant in an Erasmus Summer Institute
for Faculty on practical rationality, directed by Alasdair
MacIntyre (2005). She is a past president of the American
Maritain Association (2002 to 2004) and has organized four Maritain
conferences. She was twice elected to serve on the Executive
Council of the American Catholic Philosophical Association (most
recently from 2006 to 2008) and also served on the Executive
Committee of the Metaphysical Society of America (2005 to
2008). Her current research is in the area of the
transcendentals, especially beauty, and the foundation of
ethics.