Professor, Department of Philosophy
1991
Bio:
Dr. Carlo Grassi joined the University of Detroit as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy in 1956, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1958, and earned full Professor rank in 1967. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy (1940) and a Master of Arts in Philosophy (1947) from Assumption College at the University of Western Ontario (Windsor, Ontario), and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto (1952).
Over the years he taught Introduction to Philosophy, Logics, Ethics, Plato & Platonism, Metaphysics, Human Values, Greek Philosophical Perspectives, and Medieval Philosophical Perspectives.
In his commitment to the University, he served as Executive Secretary of the Department of Philosophy, was a member of the Committee on Faculty Evaluation, the Committee on Curriculum, the Academic Affairs Council of the University Senate, the Rank and Tenure Committee of the Academic Affairs Council, a Dean’s Search Committee, and was an interviewer for the Insignis Scholarship Program. In the community he served as Secretary of The Academy of Arts and Sciences and Chairman of one of the Gesu Academy Adult Education Series.
As a member of the American Section of the Leonine Commission, Dr. Grassi served as a research associate at Yale University to do paleographical work on the critical edition of St. Thomas Aquinas: Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. Dr. Grassi was only the second layman appointed to the international commission which was founded in 1879.
The Chairman of the Department of Philosophy once wrote “Because of his research, especially his editorial work for the Leonine Commission, its importance to the scholarship of the history of philosophy in the middle ages cannot be over emphasized. Anyone working seriously on Thomistic texts knows of his participation and this reflects most favorably on the University. In this sense he contributes the most to the image of scholarliness of this Department in the eyes of the academic world.”
In addition, Dr. Grassi conducted research on the Critical Edition of De Sacramento Altaris of William Ockham and Critical Edition of Comparatio Sensibilium of Thomas of York in collaboration with Dr. James Reilly, Jr. The Dean of the College of Liberal Arts in 1979 noted that Dr. Grassi was “A man to be respected: an expert in the most difficult and demanding kind of textual work.”
Dr. Carlo Grassi was designated as Professor Emeritus by Sr. Maureen A. Fay, O.P., President, University of Detroit Mercy, on September 9, 1991.