Scott MacDonald

About

Scott MacDonald is the Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies at Cornell University, affiliated with the Department of Classics. His research interests include medieval philosophy, particularly the works of Augustine and Aquinas, as well as philosophical theology, philosophy of mind and cognition, moral psychology, and the philosophy of action. His work focuses on issues related to free will, moral responsibility, and practical reasoning, with a particular emphasis on themes in the later works of Augustine such as the Confessions, De trinitate, and the Genesis commentaries. He has contributed to the academic field through editing volumes like 'Aquinas’s Moral Theory: Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann' and 'Being and Goodness: The Concept of the Good in Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology.' His publications include articles on Aquinas’s moral theory, Augustine’s philosophy, and the metaphysics of goodness, among others. MacDonald’s scholarship is characterized by a detailed engagement with classical and medieval philosophical texts, and he has been involved in various digital projects and archaeological research within the department.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Physics
• Optics
• Astronomy
• Artificial Intelligence
• Engineering
• Electrical engineering
• Meteorology
• Geology
• Remote sensing

Selected publications

• William Greaves

  Columbia University Press eBooks · 2021-08-02 · 1 citations

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  William Greaves is one of the most significant and compelling American filmmakers of the past century. Best known for his experimental film about its own making, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, Greaves was an influential independent documentary filmmaker who produced, directed, shot, and edited more than a hundred films on a variety of social issues and on key African American figures ranging from Muhammad Ali to Ralph Bunche to Ida B. Wells. A multitalented artist, his career also included sti…

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• Education without Debt: Giving Back and Paying It Forward

  Project Muse (Johns Hopkins University) · 2021-01-12 · 1 citations

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• Augustine on God’s Presence in Creation

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-06-24

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  Abstract Augustine’s encounter with Platonist ideas convinces him that God is incorporeal and, unlike bodies, has no magnitude and cannot occupy places. What can it mean, then, to say that God fills heaven and earth, that God is present everywhere? Augustine’s nuanced reflections reveal other ways of being in creation and being present to creatures than by being located spatially in or being spatially present to it or them: God stands in causal and cognitive relations to all creation, is its ont…

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• Dean Fleischer Camp, from <i>Marcel the Shell with Shoes On</i> to <i>Fraud</i>, and Back Again

  2024-09-18

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract After Dean Fleischer Camp and Jenny Slate’s YouTube video Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2010) went viral, they worked for years to find a way to make a feature-length stop-motion/normal action hybrid with Marcel as the main character. In the meantime, Fleischer Camp directed Fraud (2016), transforming family YouTube postings into a suspense narrative (would the audience suspect what he was doing?)—a modern day David Holzman’s Diary (1967). Finally, Fleischer Camp and Slade were able t…

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• A Critical Cinema 2

  2023-04-28

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Frequent coauthors

• Vladimir Churilov

  4 shared

• Ross Zhelem

  4 shared

• John Pazder

  4 shared

• André Anthony

  Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics

  4 shared

• Greg Burley

  4 shared

• A. Densmore

  National Research Council Canada

  4 shared

• Tony Farrell

  4 shared

• Jordan Lothrop

  4 shared

Similar researchers at Cornell University

• Rachana Kamtekarh-18
• Mike Fontaineh-17
• Tad Brennanh-17