Comps: why I’m not blogging much this week

You may have noticed that blogging has been light for the past week or so. Today, Thursday, and Friday I’ll be undergoing the baptism of fire known as “Ph.D. comprehensive exams.”

This test is a beast. Three days at four hours each day. Please offer up a prayer for me. I’m pretty stressed at the moment.

I’m responsible for any question from the following texts. Everything below is fair game:

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.1-13, 75-89, I-II. 90-97, De ente et essentia
• Aristotle (6 books) Categories, Posterior Analytics, Physics I-IV, On the Soul, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics
• Augustine: Confessions, City of God
• Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Necessity of Loving God
• Holy Bible
• Council of Trent: On Justification
• Dante: Divina Commedia
• Descartes: Meditations  Discourse
• Dostoevski: Brothers Karamazov
• Hegel, Philosophy of Spirit, Phenomenology of Spirit
• Heidegger: Being and Time
• Henri Bergson, “An Introduction to Metaphysics”
• Homer: Iliad
• David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
• Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations
• John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
• Immanuel Kant: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics and Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals
• Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Concluding Unscientific Postscript
• Gottfried Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics 
• John Locke, Essay Covering Human Understanding
• Luther: Freedom of a Christian
• Machiavelli: The Prince
• J.H. Newman: Essay on the Development of Doctrine
• Friedrich Nietzsche: Genealogy of Morals
• Parmenides, On Nature
• Plato, (6 books) Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides
• Rousseau: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts and
• Shakespeare: Hamlet, Tempest, King Lear
• Vergil: Aeneid
• Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Philosophical Investigations

Thank you all ahead of time for your prayers. I know that many of you are already praying. Deo gratias!


I will also being praying for all the intentions of everyone who prayed for me. Thank you all.