Stephen Bujno, Ph.D., thinks and writes at the intersection of philosophical anthropology and the ethics of care. His ontology yields respect for the person, rigor for the truth, and the patience to navigate the contested questions of public life with rational care. A beer or bourbon for his thoughts.
Stephen Bujno, Ph.D., is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University, where he teaches the foundational philosophy course and the ethics course required of pre-med, nursing and biomedical engineering students.
His doctorate, in the philosophy of political and social thought, was completed at the Global Center for Advanced Studies College in Dublin. He also holds advanced degrees in philosophical anthropology and moral theology. His writing proceeds in two registers. The applied register addresses the public dialogue on contested questions of ethics, bioethics, and the formation of conscience. The philosophical register addresses anthropology as an ontology that forms moral being.
He is the founder and editor of Lacuna Press, a micropublisher seeking original projects often neglected by the industry but belonging at the center of serious intellectual life. He is also an artist; he created Bujno Pottery along with his wife Tina, who is its owner and operator.
He has lectured before legislators, clerics, and students on the philosophical anthropology beneath the public abortion question, and has taught the dialectical method to nurses, physicians, seminarians, and undergraduates for over twenty years. He lives in Adamstown, Pennsylvania. His name is typically pronounced BOY-no, though he answers to some creative variations.
An ethics of health care framed in light of an authentic understanding of the human person and the common good. Written for professionals, caregivers, and patients alike, the book turns the clinical conversation inward and asks what is upstream of every protocol and ethical principle.
Read more →A primer in logic and critical thinking that reorients the public abortion dialogue away from the binaries of life and choice and toward the central issue of personhood. The book proceeds dialectically, treating the customary objections seriously and pressing them against what they claim to be.
Read more →Part original treatise and part anthology, the book addresses Christian morality from an orthodox position without overt dogmatism. Eight chapters move through freedom, the moral self, society, and the place of beauty in the moral life. Foreword by Brendan Sammon.
Read more →A speculative narrative in the form of Justin Martyr’s second-century defense. The Christian landscape is divided among the Compromised, the Radicals, and the Weak. The story unfolds as a letter from an imprisoned member of the Weak to a secular authority. Middle volume of a trilogy.
Read more →A guided journal absorbing the boundaries of philosophical anthropology, humanistic psychology, and Christian spirituality. Twelve themes across one hundred days, addressed in the second person, drawing the reader into the daily discipline of attention and self-honesty. Foreword by Ronda Chervin.
Read more →Three volumes of theological narrative in three classical forms of address: the soliloquy, the apology, and the apocalypse. Apology has been published as the middle volume. The two further volumes have since been declared. The writing order inverts the reading order.
Stephen works best when he is not arguing a position so much as entering into one, and perhaps even opening one. He begins by identifying what the disagreement is actually about, uncovering the question beneath the question. He is open to correction, and to questions in dialectic form. His disposition is to help model how to speak about it rationally and within orthodoxy. You will agree with much of what is presented, perhaps help reframe the question, and be challenged in unexpected ways.
It does not matter whether the room holds hundreds at an annual event or six around a kitchen table. The conversation is the same, and so is the care brought to it. He has spoken before legislators, clerics, students, and earnest thinkers of all kinds on the philosophical anthropology beneath the bioethical questions pressing on the public; the idea of love and the human person in terms of solidarity and responsibility; and on the theology of precarity, hope, and eschatology; and is especially drawn to philosophical discourse in less formal rooms, where discovery is the point, the table is small, and the minds large.
If it is an opportunity to share these thoughts, the invitation is payment enough. Though a beer or a bourbon during the conversation is an incentive. If it requires planned traveling, get him there, and perhaps ease the chosen precarity a little.
An exploration of philosophical responses to the questions of how we can know, what is real, and what is the nature of the human person. Readings explore the dialogue on these questions between Catholic/Christian responses and secular and skeptical perspectives.
This course serves both as an introduction to philosophical ethics and its application to clinical case studies. While developing skills in logic and critical thought, the student should expect to consider various applications for the ethics of care and wellness. Those will include medical consent and privacy, maternal/fetal care and end of life/futility, testing and research, mental health and disability, access and allocation, along with emergent bioethical topics. Fundamental questions of life will also be addressed, such as what it means to be ethical and what constitutes personhood. An underlying ethos of the course is to align professional medical care with respect and dignity for the patient as a person.
Introduction to Philosophy · Alvernia University, Reading, Pennsylvania
Medical Moral · Alvernia University, Reading, Pennsylvania
Bioethics · Saint Joseph's College of Maine, Standish, Maine
Foundations in Moral Theology · Saint Joseph's College of Maine, Standish, Maine
Philosophy for Catholic Theology · Saint Joseph's College of Maine, Standish, Maine
Critical Thinking and Logic · Penn State University, Berks Campus, Reading, Pennsylvania
Catholic Social Teaching · Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Morality and Ethics · St. Charles Borromeo Graduate School of Theology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Ethics and Moral Problems · Northampton Community College, Northampton, Pennsylvania
Ethics in Global Society · Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, New Hampshire
He has also advised many Master's candidates at Saint Joseph's College of Maine and doctoral candidates at Pontifex University.
For lectures, manuscript reviews, and editorial correspondence: