Search results for ""st augustine's press""

The essay is one of the great inventions of the human mind. It can talk about anything and everything. It can be lightsome or solemn. It can be witty or informative. Above all, it is short. It likes the passage in which Socrates told Callicles in the Gorgias to make his answers brief. Yet, we can find in essays things we need and want to know. Aquinas often managed to make the most profound arguments in two paragraphs. Samuel Johnson did the same. The Classical Moment is, indeed, a collection of “selected essays.” Such a collection is a classical and beloved form of English letters, the literary form most preferred by Schall. The essays in this book all touch on knowledge and its pleasures. Schall does not tarry on the effort and determination it often takes to say just what we want to say, then say it and know that we have said it. Somehow, when an essay is written, an author simply knows that it is complete, that it is what he wanted to say. He says to himself, “Yes, that is it.” An essayist may well be conscious that when he begins an essay, he really does not know what he will finally say. The writing is the saying. Our writing is our thinking, our thinking-through, our being pleased to know this is it . . . this is the point Schall, one of America’s greatest essayists, makes here. The “classical moment” is that intense experience of seeing or hearing or encountering some vista, or song, or person that takes us out of ourselves. We are most ourselves somehow when we are most outside of ourselves, seeing what is not ourselves. We are intended to be more than ourselves in being ourselves, to know with others what is the truth, to know what is. These essays originally appeared in regular columns done in various journals, papers, and on-line sources. One can read them in any order. The order of the author or collector does have a certain “logic,” but each essay is also a whole, something contained within itself. The unity of an essay collection is found more in a kind enthrallment that comes to us when we deal with the things that are both important and delightful. At bottom, these essays belong together. Aristotle warned us that if we did not delight in the things that are, we would seek our highest pleasures where they are not really found. We will always seek something to delight in. What civilization is about lies in finding what is really worthy of the capacity of delight that is given to us in our being. The “classical moment” is the perfect phrase that brings us to the threshold of this experience. We have to enter it ourselves, but once inside, we will find so much more than ourselves. And we will rejoice.

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We have books that contain collected essays, verse, and humor. What we see less often are books that contain collected interviews on various topics. Interviews have a certain outside discipline about them. The one interviewed responds to a question someone else asks of him. Often the questions are unexpected, sometimes annoying. Answers have a freshness to them. They can be more personal, frank. The responses in At a Breezy Time of Day are occasioned when someone writes or phones with a request for an interview. There may be a common theme but often side questions come up. We are curious about what someone has to say – about sports, about God, about Plato, about education, about books, about just about anything. Usually central questions occur. The same question can be answered in different ways. We often have more to say on a given topic than we do say on our first being asked about it. These interviews appeared in various on-line and printed sources. Having them collected in one text makes the interview form itself seem more substantial. Interviews too often seem to be passing, ephemeral things, but often we want to hold on to them. There is something more existential about them. Yet there is also something more lightsome about them also. The truth of things seems more bearable when it is spoken, when it has a human voice. So, as the title of this collection intimates, we begin with the very first interview in the Garden of Eden. We touch many places and issues. The interview always has somewhere even in its written form the touch of the human voice. The one who interviews invites us to speak, to tell us what we hold, why we hold it. Interviews are themselves part of that engagement in conversation that defines our kind in its search for a full knowledge of what is. We know that when we have said the last word, much remains to be said. We can rejoice both in what we know, and in what we know that we do not know. I believe it was Socrates who, in an earlier form of interview at the end of The Apology, alerted us to be aware of what we know and to await the many other interviews that we hope to carry on with so many others of our kind in the Isles of the Blessed.

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The “mainstream” as the term is employed here finds it headwaters in antiquity, if not in the pre-Socratics, certainly in Plato and Aristotle. Through the centuries, that philosophy has been utilized and developed by the Stoics, the Neo-Platonists, the Scholastics, the Arabs, and by the Early Moderns. Dougherty approaches his topics from the perspective of the mainstream, specifically from the vantage point represented in contemporary discourse by the realism of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. In commenting on contemporary social and political issues, Dougherty provides a critique of the humbug that often passes as philosophy. Much of what is published as philosophy, he claims, has little to do with the pursuit of wisdom, and much is written without any knowledge of the history of philosophy – for example, a professor of moral philosophy, by his own admission, lecturing without any knowledge of the Stoics, and another professor at a prominent university, in a nationally televised series of lectures devoted to the history of philosophy, jumping from Plato to Descartes with nothing in between. Dougherty argues that the ancients, no less intelligent or observant than we, have much to say to us about nature, human nature, and the polity. It is from the vantage point of what he takes to be perennial philosophy that Dougherty discusses topics such as “The Acquisition and Use of Power,” “Property as a Condition of Liberty,” “Tolerance.” “Responsibility,” and “The Nature of Scientific Explanation.” Briefly Considered is divided into three parts. Part One presents a series of essays on contemporary social and political issues. Part Two surveys some recent works in the history and philosophy of science, and Part Three provides an introduction to Islamic scholarship that will aid those seeking an understanding of the origins and history of that movement.

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In this historical/philosophical reflection, Lee Congdon writes of the ways in which baseball spurs memory. This is particularly important at a time when many Americans suffer from a form of amnesia that renders them defenseless in the face of concerted efforts to seize possession of the past. “Who controls the past controls the future,” George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “who controls the present controls the past.” Baseball can, and does, stand in the way of those whose ambition it is to gain and maintain power by pretending that memory cannot be trusted; what was once thought to be “the past” was merely a fiction that served the interests of a ruling class. This, Congdon argues, is asself-serving as it is untrue. Memory can play tricks on us, but, supported as it often is by confirming evidence, it alone can tell us who we are – and more. When we remember important moments and players from the game’s past, we soon discover that they are inextricably intertwined with particular eras in our common history: Babe Ruth and the Jazz Age, Joe DiMaggio and the country at war, Willie Mays and the 1950s. In often revelatory ways, those eras come alive again, and as a result we gain greater self-understanding, as individuals and as a people. Although he draws upon the entire history of baseball, Congdon focuses primarily on the decade of the 1950s because he believes it to have been the game’s golden age – and a far better time in the nation’s history than Americans have been taught to think. Baseball’s continual invitation to communal remembrance can, he concludes, help us to avoid the fate reserved for those who forget.

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Any presentation of political philosophy in the 20th century is radically incomplete without Leo Strauss. The appearance of this collection is particularly important given the relentless but shifting interest in his influence and thought in recent years. Lenzner and Minkov contend that in order to evaluate Strauss's achievement properly, one must do so chiefly with reference to the works by which Strauss sought to establish his legacyi.e., those he chose to submit for the consideration of future readers. The most complete record of Strauss's thought includes his books together with his other published and unpublished writings and lectures. The achievement of this volume is to present in one collection every piece Strauss chose to publish in English that he did not himself include in a collection or a book. The material is arranged chronologically so as to avoid undue categorization by the editors. Among the highlights of these works published between 1937 and 1972 are striking fo

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One of the classics of modern spirituality, Encounters with Silence is one of Karl Rahner’s most lucid and powerful books. A book of meditations about man’s relation with God, it is not a work of dry theology, but rather a book of prayerful reflections on love, knowledge, and faith, obedience, everyday routines, life with our friends and neighbors, our work and vocation, and human goodness. The immense success of this moving work is a tribute to its practicality and the ability of the great theologian to speak simply and yet profoundly to ordinary men and women seeking an inspiring guide to the inner life, one that never forsakes the world of reality. The book is cast in the form of a dialogue with God that moves from humble but concerned inquiry to joyful contemplation.“You will come again because the fact that you have already come must continue to be revealed ever more clearly. It must become progressively manifest to the world that the heart of all things is already transformed, because you have taken them all to your heart. . . . The false appearance of our world, the shabby pretense that it has not been liberated . . . must be more and more thoroughly rooted out and destroyed. . . . And your coming is neither past nor future, but the present, which has only to reach its fulfillment. Now it is still the one single hour of your advent.” (from the book)

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This volume provides the most economical and textually accurate version of Calhoun's Disquisition available today. As a treatise, the Disquisition is one of the greatest and most enduring works of American political thought, and a text of seminal importance to all students of American politics, history, philosophy, and law.

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“In his Emile Rousseau proposes a new plan of education closely connected with a universal overthrow of civil order. The goal of the Emile is to prepare souls by means of a total revolution in their modes of thinking.”—These words were penned in 1763, by the young Catholic philosopher, H. S. Gerdil, more than two decades before the French revolution. In a prophetic moment in the history of the philosophy of education, Gerdil noted that the pedagogy of Rousseau’s book will inspire “vexation with and aversion for religious and social institutions . . . it will make bad Christians and bad citizens.” The disenchantment with any authority or social forms sunk deep roots in the modern European social imagination. It has informed the many liberal reforms of education of the last two centuries. The Emile is still with us. In his eminently readable reflections, H. S. Gerdil exposes the error of Rousseau’s Romantic naturalism. In the process, he illustrates sensible judgment regarding concrete curricular matters and pedagogical practices. Gerdil’s philosophy of education is grounded in the reality of original sin and the transcendent destiny of mankind. He provides both philosophical principles and concrete suggestions as to how parents and teachers might craft hearts and minds capable of serving “peace of families, the tranquility of states, and the general advantage of all men.” Gerdil’s humane Christian realism has lost none of its timeliness. The Anti-Emile is an original English translation of Gerdil’s work, first published in French under the title Réflexions sur la théorie, & la pratique de l’education contre les principes de Mr. Rousseau. In its day, the book was quickly diffused throughout Europe in its original French as well as in English, German, and Italian translations, and it soon picked up its popular title, The Anti-Emile. This translation is preceded by Frank’s Introductory Essay, which draws out the radically different views of human nature represented by Rousseau and Gerdil. It makes clear what is at issue in Rousseau’s rejection and Gerdil’s advancement of the living tradition of classical education. In his essay, Frank also introduces H. S. Gerdil as an historical figure with a distinctive place in the history of modern philosophy.

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Leszek Kolakowski shows how Henri Bergson sought to reconcile Darwin's theory with his own beliefs about the nature of the universe. Bergson believed that time could be thought of in two different ways: as an abstract measuring device used for practical purposes, or as 'duree', the "real" time we actually experience. He also held that all matter is propelled by an internal 'elan vital', or life-drive, and that the life of the universe is constantly creative and unpredictable. On the basis of these ideas he constructed a system of thought that embraced his views on memory, matter, conscousness, movement, religious morality, and the nature of laughter. His pantheistic and dynamic vision of the universe, which emerged at a time of crisis in Western intellectual life, was symptomatic of the struggle between a rigid scientific derminism and the Christian tradition of a divine creation.

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Acclaimed British historian examines the layers of craft and insight in Tobias Smollett, and discusses the particular nature of his genius and influence on British culture. Once again, Black acquaints the reader with the full range of a prolific writer's works and offers a backstage tour of the meaning and context of Britain's most beloved stories and story-tellers.

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"Is not modern democracy the finally-found form of the religion of Humanity?" (2007)The Religion of Humanity: The Illusion of Our Time is the first anthology in any language of the writings of the contemporary French political philosopher, Pierre Manent, on “the religion of Humanity.” The striking phrase comes from nineteenth-century French thinker, Auguste Comte (1798–1857). Comte coined the phrase and indeed created an atheistic religion of a self-adoring Humanity. In the aftermath of the Cold War, Manent observed victorious democracy interpreting itself in a similar framework. He took it upon himself to track this development, analyze it, and warn his fellow Europeans of its deleterious political, intellectual, moral, and spiritual effects. With conceptual precision and (most often) a sober tone, many contemporary sacred cows were gored. But in addition to cursing the humanitarian darkness, he also lit many candles of judicious political, philosophical, moral, and spiritual analysis. This anthology is thus almost unique in its subject matter, and certainly unique in its treatment of the subject. It is a rarity and gem: a first-rate work of political philosophy.

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In a statement published for Paul Cobley’s edition of Realism for the 21st Century. A John Deely Reader, Umberto Eco wrote that “John Deely has not only paid attention to the Second Scholasticism but also to the first one”. In the present book, Deely goes one step further, by establishing the continuity of the Latin Age as a whole. He shows how the Latin thinkers demonstrated the presuppositions and created the framework of critical thought that made possible and inevitable the turn to science in the modern sense. The book thus shows how and why criticalachievements of the Latins remain requisite, even today, for the proper understanding of science and technology as offshot of the “Way of Signs” upon which all of thought, as also evikytuib as a whole, perforce travels. “With the sophistic modern and Enlightenment misconceptions about philosophy’s nature and history daily crashing and burning around us, Deely’s unconventional way of understanding medieval philosophy is like a breath of fresh air amid intellectual smog. This is a great book, the single most important study of medieval thought in half a century or more. It deserves an unbiased hearing by anyone today claiming to be a serious philosopher.” — Peter A. Redpath Founding Chairman, Universities of Western Civilization Chairman of the Board, The International Etienne Gilson Society “Drawing upon the thought of John Poinsot and Charles Pierce, John Deely has opened a distinctively postmodern path to the metaphysics of being, at once illuminating much of this ancient tradition while casting new light upon it in the context of contemporary thought. His treatment notably of St. Thomas is not merely a return to an earlier thinker, but an opening to a different path, at once in profound agreement with St. Thomas and yet heretofore unexplored. This book, thus, not only constitutes a return to a past era, but shows this era in a new light that illuminates as well the contemporary scene.” — Kenneth L. Schmitz Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, Canada Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, Washington, D.C.

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Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) is widely regarded as one of the greatest political philosophers of the 20th century, yet adequate understanding of his writings stands as a challenge for current and future generations. Voegelin’s thought continued to develop at a rapid pace during the last two decades of his life, and as Ellis Sandoz has written, his work found “not only its final but its most profound expression” during this period. Voegelin’s fame stemmed mostly from his many books and the laudatory review articles published in response to them, but he was “preeminently an essayist,” as Sandoz observes. The meditative analyses and essays written in the culminating phase of Voegelin’s career not only expand and deepen his work as a whole, but also revise central components of it in ways that compel reconsideration of even his most widely read texts. Voegelin’s books gave rise to a vast secondary literature that continues to grow, yet the exceptionally impactful late essays and meditative works have never received the scholarly commentaries they deserve because they were published originally as journal articles or chapters in edited collections. This volume remedies that shortcoming with 14 critical analyses that elucidate the late essays while also addressing their implications for the entirety of Voegelin’s thought. The commentaries will prove invaluable to students and scholars in political science, philosophy, history, theology, and other disciplines, serving as a companion piece to the singularly important Vol. 12 of Voegelin’s Collected Works, Published Essays 1966–1985.

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Historian Jeremy Black is comprehensive, as ever, but in his treatment of the British Gothic novel his greatest service is the preservation of the detail––namely, the human impetus behind art that is often undervalued. Gothic novelists were purposeful, thoughtful, and engaged questions and feelings that ultimately shaped a century of culture. Black notes that the Gothic novel is also very much about "morality and deploying history accordingly." The true interest of the Gothic novel is more remarkable than it is grisly: the featured darkness and macabre are not meant to usurp heroism and purity, but will fall hard under the over-ruling hand of Providence and certainty of retribution. Black's understanding of the Gothic writer is a remarkable contribution to the legacy of British literature and the novel at large. Once again, in Black thoroughness meets fidelity and the reader is overcome with his own insights into the period on the merit of Black's efforts. In The Weight of Words Series, Black is devoted to the preservation of the memory of British literary genius, and in so doing he is carving out a niche for himself. As in the Gothic novel where landscapes give quarter to influences that seem to interact with the human fates that freely wander in, reading Black is an experience of suddenly finding oneself in possession of an education, and his allure takes a cue from the horrific Gothic tempt.

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What is the man who cannot be known apart from his socio-political environment? As Zbigniew Janowski asserts, one does not ask who this man is, for he does not even know himself. This man is suppressed and separated, and not by Fascism or Communism. In present-day America this has been accomplished by democracy. “Only someone shortsighted, or someone who values equality more than freedom, would deny that today’s citizens enjoy little or no freedom, particularly freedom of speech, and even less the ability to express openly or publicly the opinions that are not in conformity with what the majority considers acceptable at a given moment. It may sound paradoxical to contemporary ears, but a fight against totalitarianism must also mean a fight against the expansion of democracy.” Janowski all at once brazen and out of bounds states what he calls the obvious and unthinkable truth: In the United States, we are already living in a totalitarian reality. The American citizen, the Homo Americanus, is an ideological being who is no longer good or bad, reasonable or irrational, proper or improper except when measured against the objectives of the dominating egalitarian mentality that American democracy has successfully incubated. American democracy has done what other despotic regimes have likewise achieved––namely, taken hold of the individual and forced him to renounce (or forget) his greatness, pursuit of virtue and his orientation toward history and Tradition. Homo Americanus, Janowski argues, has no mind or soul and he cannot tolerate diversity and indeed he now censors himself. Democracy is not benign, and we should fear its principles come by and applied ad hoc. It is deeply troublesome that in the way democracy moves today it gives critics no real insight into any trajectory of reason behind its motion, which is erratic and unmappable. The Homo Americanus is an ideological entity whose thought and even morality are forbidden from universal abstraction. Janowski mounts the offensive against what the American holds most sacred, and he does so in order to save him. After exposing the danger and the damage done, Janowski makes another startling proposal. It is a “diseased collective mind” that is the source of this ideology, the liberal anti-perspective that presses man into the image of the Homo Americanus, and its grip can only be broken through the recovery of instinct. Homo Americanus cannot be free again until he is himself again. That is, until the shadow that belongs only to him is restored, and he is thereby no longer alienated from others. Despite the condemnation Janowski seems to be levying on the citizen of the United States, he betrays a great hope and confidence that the means to shake ourselves awake from the bad dream are nevertheless in hand. Janowski’s work is the next title in St. Augustine’s Press Dissident American Thought Today Series. It occupies a controversial overlapping terrain between the philosophical descriptions of liberalism as a tradition, psychology and the fundamentally influential critiques of democracy offered by Thucydides, Jefferson, Franklin, Tocqueville, Mill, Burke and more. More anecdotal than analytical, Janowski offers the contemporary proof that the reader is right to be scandalized by democracy and his or her own likeness of the Homo Americanus. Once upon a time it was the despicable Homo Sovieticus fruit of tyranny, but now we fear democratic society too might fall and all its citizens never be found again.

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The central contention of the “New Atheism” of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens is that there has for several centuries been a war between science and religion, that religion has been steadily losing that war, and that at this point in human history a completely secular scientific account of the world has been worked out in such thorough and convincing detail that there is no longer any reason why a rational and educated person should find the claims of any religion the least bit worthy of attention.But as Edward Feser argues inThe Last Superstition, in fact there is not, and never has been, any war between science and religion at all. There has instead been a conflict between two entirely philosophical conceptions of the natural order: on the one hand, the classical “teleological” vision of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, on which purpose or goal-directedness is as inherent a feature of the physical world as mass or electric charge; and the modern “mechanical” vision of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, according to which the physical world is comprised of nothing more than purposeless, meaningless particles in motion. As it happens, on the classical teleological picture, the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the natural-law conception of morality are rationally unavoidable. Modern atheism and secularism have thus always crucially depended for their rational credentials on the insinuation that the modern, mechanical picture of the world has somehow been established by science. Yet this modern “mechanical” picture has never been established by science, and cannot be, for it is not a scientific theory in the first place but merely a philosophical interpretation of science. Moreover, as Feser shows, the philosophical arguments in its favor given by the early modern philosophers were notable only for being surprisingly weak. The true reasons for its popularity were then, and are now, primarily political: It was a tool by which the intellectual foundations of ecclesiastical authority could be undermined and the way opened toward a new secular and liberal social order oriented toward commerce and technology. So as to further these political ends, it was simply stipulated, by fiat as it were, that no theory inconsistent with the mechanical picture of the world would be allowed to count as “scientific.” As the centuries have worn on and historical memory has dimmed, this act of dogmatic stipulation has falsely come to be remembered as a “discovery.”However, not only is this modern philosophical picture rationally unfounded, it is demonstrably false. For the “mechanical” conception of the natural world, when worked out consistently, absurdly entails that rationality, and indeed the human mind itself, are illusory. The so-called “scientific worldview” championed by the New Atheists thus inevitably undermines its own rational foundations; and into the bargain (and contrary to the moralistic posturing of the New Atheists) it undermines the foundations of any possible morality as well. By contrast, and as The Last Superstition demonstrates, the classical teleological picture of nature can be seen to find powerful confirmation in developments from contemporary philosophy, biology, and physics; moreover, morality and reason itself cannot possibly be made sense of apart from it. The teleological vision of the ancients and medievals is thereby rationally vindicated – and with it the religious worldview they based upon it.

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This book does some philosophy of religion. It takes as its point of departure what Aquinas calls divine truth (veritas divina), i.e. the collection of truths revealed to man by God. And it tries to make as clear as possible what Aquinas says about some of these revealed truths. Then it agrees or disagrees with what he says, as needed, for reasons of various sorts, whether philosophical, theological, scientific, historical, etc. - of whatever sort, just so long as they are relevant and cogent' to do these things as well as possible, if only in a small way - 'pro nostro modulo', as Aquinas puts it, in describing what he intends to do as the author of the 'Summa Contra Gentiles'. Veritas Divina includes not only certain truths which are attainable by natural reason, like truths abouth certain aspects of the virtue of religion, of prayer, of pain and suffering, of friendship, of death; but also certain truths which are not attainable by natural reason, like truths about the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Eucharist, Purgatory, Heaven, Hell.

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This detailed commentary on the action and argument of Sophocles' Antigone is meant to be a reflection on and response to Hegel's interpretation in the Phenomenology (VI.A.a-b). It thus moves within the principles Hegel discovers in the play but reinserts them into the play as they show themselves across the eccentricities of its plot. Wherever plot and principles do not match, there is a glimmer of the argument: Haemon speaks up for the city and Tiresias for the divine law but neither for Antigone. The guard who reports the burial and presents Antigone to Creon is as important as Antigone or Creon for understanding Antigone. The Chorus too in their inconsistent thoughtfulness have to be taken into account, and in particular how their understanding of the canniness of man reveals Antigone in their very failure to count her as a sign of man's uncanniness: She who is below the horizon of their awareness is at the heart of their speech. Megareus, the older son of Creon, who sacrificed his life for the city, looms as large as Eurydice, whose suicide has nothing in common with Antigone's. She is 'all-mother'; Antigone is anti-generation.

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Heidegger intended to replace metaphysics by a new kind of thought about that which he called 'Sein', but in his works this noun is very far from meaning the act of being such as it has been traditionally conceived by Western philosophy. His explanations as to what he does mean by 'Sein' underline his departure from traditional metaphysics. 'Sein' is no longer to be understood as the act of the things that exist in the eternal world, but as something revealed to the human mind in an esoteric way. The association of this esoteric revelation of 'Sein' With Holderlin's theosophy led Heidegger to put forward a new gnosis organized as a substitute of metaphysics and of Christian theology as well.

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This book presents a correspondence between two friends who disagree about how to answer the question, “What does it mean to be a Christian?” Crosby argues that Christians understand themselves as hearing a definitive word of revelation spoken by God and intended for all human beings. But Betty sees Christianity as one of several options, usually the preferred way for those born in the faith, but no more unique or special than Hinduism or Buddhism. It is a debate over the kind of initiative the Christian God takes, or does not take, toward human beings. Throughout the debate Crosby alleges that Betty’s God is a very finite god, an all-too-human god, and for that very reason is something different from the God venerated by Christians, while Betty maintains that his theism remains within the Christian orbit and is a much needed corrective to a religion with exclusivist tendencies.The debate between the two friends is presented here in the form of a correspondence they conducted over a period of two years (and did not originally intend for publication). It has undergone very little editing and revision; the authors have wanted to preserve the spontaneous give and take of their exchange. Together they have produced a work of philosophical dialogue that is unusually fruitful in its ability to clarify some fundamental issues of religion.

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Where Did I Come From? Where Am I Going? How Do I Get There? is a complete course on Catholicism, featuring concise, reader-friendly, relevant prose. Straight answers are tailored for today’s generation. Topics addressed include: Can I know anything? Can I know what God is like? How am I really in the image and likeness of God? What about my conscience? Am I a gift to others? What about my freedom? Is any sexual activity OK before marriage? Do we have to keep Grandma on a feeding tube forever? This book adapts a wildly successful high-school curriculum developed by Charles E. Rice, who taught for years at an Indiana high school in addition to his storied career at Notre Dame Law School. This classroom-tested curriculum has had life-changing effects. Rice’s students, who took the course in the late 1970s and early 1980s, credit this course for keeping them Catholic, while their peers turned to Zen, politics, or drugs in their search for ultimate meaning. Rice, with the valuable assistance of co-author and philosopher Theresa Farnan, updates this curriculum by incorporating the Catechism and the personalist philosophy of John Paul II into the timeless wisdom of the Church. Today’s young Catholics admire the faith more than ever, but need clear answers about what it is and who they are. The straight answers found in this book are a sure antidote to the confusion of the culture of death. The revised second edition contains expanded material from Pope Benedict XVI, the Catechism of the Catholic Church and other sources. The second edition, as did the first, has received the Imprimatur from Most Rev. John M. D’Arcy, bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend. The second edition has also received from the Office for the Catechism of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops a Declaration of Conformity, certifying that it is in conformity with the Catechism. The second edition is therefore included in the USCCB’s Conformity Listing of Catechetical Texts and is officially approved for use in Catholic schools and educational programs.

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Pieper collects his contributions to radio programs and to a number of journals and periodicals. The book also includes a selection of notes and comments. The contributions fall into two main groups: the period which encompasses the immediate pre-war period as well as the war period itself, and the post-war period up to 1953.The reader becomes witness, first, to Pieper’s problems with the National Socialist regime and, second, to his problems with the ensuing challenges to religious life as it is exposed to increasing secularization.As with his later works, Pieper draws on traditional wisdom which, for him, dates back to Plato and Aristotle, and in these contributions we also see his early preoccupation with the wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas. The normal boundaries between philosophy and theology are here not clearly drawn. Pieper is preoccupied with the mystery of our world and its importance as a source of symbols signifying deeper levels of reality. He sees the sacraments as achieving their fundamental effect from divine intervention, but he also highlights the need for careful observance of the rituals, so that their meaning is not obscured. Proper execution of the sacrament should enable the faithful to enjoy the existential fruits of their participation in the ritual. This work manifests the organic cohesion of Pieper’s thinking, and it reflects his profound awareness of the role to be played not so much by the professional (academic) philosopher as by the existential Philosophizer.

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The work of St. Bartholomew of Braga, O.P. (1514–1590) appears here in English for the first time despite its long and enduring influence in ecclesiastical circles. His meditations on the office of pastor have provided critical insight bishops since their initial circulation and have helped form the most famous among them, including Bartholomew's proteges Charles Borromeo. Pope Paul VI ordered a copy of Bartholomew's work to be distributed among the Catholic bishops at the Second Vatican Council. Donald Prudlo's translation situates St. Bartholomew of the Martyrs in his historical context as a lynchpin of Catholic Reform and affirms him as a figurehead of pastoral administration even in our own times.

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Romano Guardini described Rainer Maria Rilke as the “poet who had things of such importance to say about the end of our own age [and] was also a prophet of things to come.” The complexity of Rilke is, then, “highly relevant to modern Man.” Decades after Guardini’s assessment, the reader who rediscovers Rilke will find a depth of mind and soul that display a profundity the post-modern reader only thinks he possesses. In an expanded collection of Rilke’s sonnets, Rick Anthony Furtak not only makes this lyrical masterpiece accessible to the English reader, but he proves himself a master of sorts as well. His introduction that elaborates on Rilke’s marriage of vision and voice, intention and enigma, haunted companionship and abandonment is a stand-alone marvel for the reader. Furtak’s praised translation of Sonnets to Orpheus (University of Chicago Press, 2008) is surpassed in this much broader collection of verse that also includes the original German text. It is Furtak’s great achievement that Rilke resonates with the contemporary reader, who uncertain and searching wants to believe that the vision of existence can mirror much more than his own consciousness. In his feat of rendering Rilke in English, contextualizing the philosophical meanings of verse, and presenting literary romanticism, Furtak provides a formidable contribution to the vindication of true poetic voice.

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“In giving these meditations, my desire was to explain the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius; I was not attempting to present pious meditations and theological considerations, no matter how useful they may be. I attempted to give these meditations on the Spiritual Exercises the kind of theological foundation that my listeners had the right to expect, without falling into the kind of theological investigations that really have nothing directly to contribute to the purpose of spiritual exercises.” These words are used by the author who is probably the greatest theologian the Catholic Church has produced in recent centuries. He brings his enormous learning and his unequaled theological acumen to bear on what is probably one of the most influential spiritual works of Roman Catholicism. The combination is as fascinating as it is important. The subject matter is, of course, very controversial. Has St. Ignatius anything to say for modern Christians? Jesuits the world over maintain that he has, others suggest that his writing is totally confined to a particular, and unfortunate, period of Church history. Karl Rahner has been compelled to write with a force and simplicity we do not usually associate with him. Here is a compelling series of meditations which take us out of the stodgy surroundings of so much Christian spirituality, and certainly one of Rahner’s greatest works.

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What if we could overhear a conversation in the afterlife between Socrates and Machiavelli, in which Machiavelli has to submit to an Oxford tutorial style examination of his book conducted by Socrates using his famous method of cross-examination? How might the conversation go? This imaginative thought-experiment makes for both imaginative drama and a good lesson in logic, in moral and political philosophy, in “how to read a book,” and in the history of early modern thought.

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The poetry of Spending the Winter is musical and structured, whimsical and piercing, begging to be read aloud when one is not laughing or arrested by an image that hooks the heart. “Poems so severely beautiful that they become unforgettable after one reading,” writes one poet. “A throwback to a time when lovers of poetry…looked for poetry of depth, wit, and craft from the likes of Auden and Larkin,” adds another. With sections of comedy that show his wit, translations that echo his vast reading, and formalist poetry that reveal his craft, Bottum aims, in the way few poets these days do, at memorable lines and heart-stopping images as he seeks the deep stuff of human experience: God and birth and death—the beautiful and terrifying finitude of life. “We do with words what little words can do,” he writes. But in Spending the Winter, Joseph Bottum shows that words can do far more than a little. “Poems so severely beautiful that they become unforgettable after one reading. . . . If you’re a reader who loves poetry whatever mood it’s in, just open Spending the Winter anywhere to find poems that hurt, enlighten, and delight.” —Rhina P. Espaillat, author of Rehearsing Absence and winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize “Joseph Bottum is a brilliant formalist, and to read him is to enter the world of the tried-and-true classics, all achieved with an amazingly contemporary ring. His Spending the Winter is a delight. Here is a poetry of elegy, humor, wit, political savvy, and vast learning.” —Paul Mariani, author The Great Wheel and winner of the John Ciardi Award “Joseph Bottum’s Spending the Winter is a throwback to a time when lovers of poetry outside the literary establishment looked for poetry of depth, wit, and craft from the likes of Auden and Larkin. This is poetry from another age—an age when we expected intellectual, religious, and literary significance from our verse.” —A.M. Juster, author of Wonder and Wrath and winner of the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize “Spending the Winter is a word-lover’s dream: Joseph Bottum’s poems pierce, probe, dazzle, and delight. They will open the eyes of your soul.” —Karen Swallow Prior, author of On Reading Well “When reading Spending the Winter, I recalled C.S. Lewis’s description of joy as a wanting for something that is beyond this world. There’s a sense in these poems that things around us are fleeting, yet for that reason, the poems ask us to pay all the more attention.” —Jessica Hooten Wilson, author of Giving the Devil his Due

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The concern in this essay is for our age as one suffering an intellectual severance between our response to existential reality in which the beauty of a created particular thing is divorced from the Cause of that thing's existence. The separation speaks of a deracination of homo viator - the person on his way. It is a consequence of what may be called the Modernist Ideology of the Self, by which the ideological reduction of reality usurps the mystery of soul into the concept of self. This severance of beauty from Beauty, implying the general dislocation of homo viator, is seen as the separation of grace from nature. Montgomery considers Tolstoy as representative of the Modernist man, confused by an intellectual climate that isolates the person from the self. Tolstoy, in is romancing of reality, becomes so burdened by his sense of guilt in being seduced into the scandal of beauty that he is almost overwhelmed by despair. This compared with Friedrich Schiller, whose romanticism encompasses not only the romanticism of the West but also the East, adopts Kant's philosophy to justify feeling, not as Tolstoy would (elevating it at the expense of reason), but by intensifying a severe reason as a gnostic ploy to gain power over feeling. Against these two, Montgomery casts St. Thomas as the one who would restore the givenness of reality and provide an authentic vision of the good, the true, and the beautiful, to recover an ordinate and vital intent governing homo viator in his quest for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

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Hilaire Belloc was a man of many parts. Half English, half French, with an American wife, Belloc was a man who thought and traveled widely. He was the best essayist in the English language. His historical studies covered much of European history. He wrote a book on America, another on Paris, another on the Servile State. He sailed his boat The Nona around England and into the Island of Patmos. He walked to Rome and, with his four companions, through Sussex. While he did so, he thought, reflected, laughed, wondered. He was a born Catholic. He saw the depths of European civilization in its classical and Christian heritage, as well as in their being lost. Bellow saw Islam as an abiding power. His books on walking are classic. He walked much of Europe, England, France, Italy, Spain, and North Africa. His insight into people was extraordinary. He wrote verses for children, poetry, studies of English kings and French cardinals. He was prolific. He had a son killed in World War I and another in World War II. He had many friends; his friendships with Chesterton and Baring were lasting and profound. When we “remember” Belloc, we remember much of what we are, much of what we ought to be. Belloc was something of a sad man, yet he laughed and sang and was in many ways irrepressible. Reading Belloc is both a delight and an education. He belonged to a tradition of letters that was never narrow but knew that to see something small, one had to see the whole picture, both human and divine. We remember Belloc to find out who we are and who we ought to be – men who sing and laugh and wonder about the mystery of things given to us.

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What is influence and why might real influencers be those whose names we no longer remember? Ken Weisbrode embarks on an exploration to trace the most powerful strands of cultural and intellectual influence, and demonstrates it might not be what we think it is. "The influencer is a person who made an art of absence in the trade of cultural and sometimes political capital. The ones in this book represent a range of vocations, from politics to diplomacy to novel-writing, but almost all were cultural entrepreneurs. They were not puppet masters, gray eminences, unsung heroes, or Svengalis––although one or two have been portrayed thus. Rather, their influence is spread by virtue of their willful disappearance, of its perpetuation of a new language and cultural standard, and of their many conscious and unconscious imitators. The reason they had such influence was precisely because a part of their method was to be less visible in order to watch their ideas, habits, and styles proliferate without their names necessarily being affixed. […] Yet, to understand such a modus operandi is necessary today when the proliferation of social media influencers are squandering cultural capital so quickly by the simultaneous promotion of their products, above all, themselves."

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The European Enlightenment is a period that contributed concepts that continue to be authoritative in philosophical conversation, and defined the criteria for what is important in the endeavors of human thought even in our own day. Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy presents the questions that are responsible for a departure from Scholasticism and the dawn of modern philosophy. To understand Continental Philosophy, and the history that precedes the analytical tradition, one cannot overlook Descartes’ precedent. Even into the eighteenth century philosophical bearings were considered a prerequisite to culture. But to understand the transition of philosophy into the keeping of the universities, one cannot sidestep Descartes’ union of philosophy to science. But not only this – in its beginnings, it must be noted that this chapter of the Enlightenment contains one of the most meaningful convergences of God and science. Despite the success or failure of Descartes’ conclusions of innate ideas and the undoubtability of kmo God, the attempt and its commitments define a significant displacement of both faith and reason (even mathematics) that provides the context for recognizing, for example, the likes of Kant and Newton in the fullness of their own projects. Emanuala Scribano’s guide to the reading of the Meditations is both a critical treatment of the content of this text as well as an historical overview of the philosophical climate and conversation of Descartes’ contemporaries. It is an accurate presentation of Descartes’ motivation and immediate influence on the culture, and in particular those aspects which succeeded in altering theology, philosophy, and physics simultaneously. Scribano provides rich references to the Scholastic and Platonic traditions in order to better characterize the way in which nuances of thought lead to momentous shifts in general theory and the construction of concepts. Descartes tries to found an untouchable science, but one that also defends the existence of God. Hence, it is not enough to look forward from Descartes, but also behind to the patrimony of human enterprise in what regards satisfying the need of both gnosis and episteme. Scribano’s commentary is especially helpful for those already familiar with Aquinas and Aristotle, as she employs frequent juxtapositions between these and Descartes’ divergences. Beyond the general interest and scholarship, this book is especially helpful for any liberal arts curriculum that engages original text. It assists the reader in constructing the progression and consequences of Descartes’ thought and provides a bibliography and notes that introduce the reader to the larger body of Cartesian literature. Nevertheless, Scribano’s emphasis is on the concepts and notions proper to Descartes and the novelties of his project. One might say she vindicates Descartes’ attempt without defending him. The reader is shown Descartes’ positive contribution well enough that he might disagree, or reconsider the negative reputation of his work based solely on its consequences. The book is accessible though not compromised in its clarity. It is essential for students who seek to understand Descartes in all his integrity and historical claims. As Scribano writes, “[Descartes’] is a strange adventure of human thought,” and indispensable to a comprehensive understanding of one of the most formidable trends in human intellectual history.

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During more than a half century at the University of Notre Dame, Dr. Ralph McInerny’s legendary achievements include writing more than 50 non-fiction books in philosophy, medieval studies, and theology, as well as more than 90 novels, including the Father Dowling Murder Mystery series. This volume offers personal reflections on the man himself and what he meant to so many over his rich life of teaching, writing, and contributing to the life of the mind. Alasdair MacIntyre, Cardinal Francis George, Ralph’s brother D.Q. McInerny, Michael Novak, John Haldane, Joseph Bottum, Thomas De Konick, Jude P. Dougherty, Gerard V. Bradley, Fr. Marvin O’Connell, and many others (see below) aim to capture some of the ‘more’ that was McInerny, a more that cannot be captured by any curriculum vitae, even one as impressive as Ralph’s. The stories, anecdotes, and reflections in this volume give us various snapshots of the man that cannot be found in news accounts, press releases, or academic evaluations. A person as great as Ralph should not live merely in memory, so some record such as this volume written his friends, colleagues, and former students becomes appropriate. Also included is a full list of all the books – fiction and non-fiction – authored by McInerny as well as enumeration of his forty-eight doctoral students and their dissertations completed under his direction. Finally, the collection is rounded out by five contributions by McInerny himself: a poem about his late wife Connie, a scholarly article “Why I Am a Thomist,” a popular essay, “Mementoes Never Die,” an early Roger Knight mystery entitled “Dust Abhors a Vacuum,” as well as his last written words.

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The purpose of this little book is to answer certain questions that many people have about the nature of death. Most people feel that there is something wrong about death. We all want to live a happy life and we do not want to die. Life is experienced as something very good and we want to preserve it. But the reality is that man is by nature mortal, which means that he is destined to die sooner or later. The fact is that we begin to die the moment we are conceived in our mother’s womb. Man is unlike all other animals, because he has a soul endowed with intelligence and free will. Because man’s soul is spiritual, it is immortal. Death is the separation of that soul from the body; the body decays and returns to the dust from which it was taken, but the soul continues to live and is in the hands of God. But what happens to the soul after death? There are two possibilities—heaven or hell. We know from divine revelation and from the infallible teaching of the Church that the soul after death goes immediately to heaven (perhaps first for a time to purgatory to be totally cleansed and sanctified), or immediately to hell, a state or place of eternal misery. The next life is a life without time—it is a perpetual now, with no before and after. It has a beginning but not end. It is also unchangeable, that is, souls in heaven are there forever and they cannot lose it; souls in hell are there forever and they can never be freed from it. This is a very serious and certain reality for each one of us. The most important thing we will ever do is to die, and to die in the state of God’s grace so that we are his friends and will be admitted to his presence, which is what is meant by heaven. Therefore we must prepare ourselves to die in the grace of God, which is our ticket to heaven. We do that by doing God’s will for us, which means to keep his commandments, especially to love God above all things and practice love of neighbor. This short book will help people think about their death and how important it is for their permanent happiness. It will help them to arrange their life in such a way that they will live it as God wants them to live it and so ultimately obtain eternal life with God because: “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9).

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Even before ISIS launched its ultra-violent campaign targeting Iraqi Christians in the summer of 2014, Pope Francis proclaimed that the current wave of Christian persecution in the Middle East is worse than the suffering inflicted on believers in the centuries of the early Church. Since the Arab Spring and the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011, which have thrown the region into utter chaos, Muslim extremists have killed thousands of Christians every year, while destroying and desecrating countless churches. Christian communities in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt have been hardest hit. In his new book, author and political commentator George J. Marlin, chairman of Aid to the Church in Need-USA – an agency under the guidance of the Pope that supports the persecuted and suffering Church around the world – describes the sharp rise in Christian persecution in the Middle East. After brief narratives on the rise of Christianity, Islam, and terrorism in the Middle East, Marlin documents country by country, acts of twenty-first century Christian persecution that is nearing a bloody climax that could produce the unthinkable: a Middle East without Christians and the destruction of an ancient patrimony that has been a vital link to the very birth of Christianity.

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Professor John F. Boyle’s lecture, Master Thomas Aquinas and the Fullness of Life, is a piece that combines a profoundly personal element – the experience of someone who has chosen St. Thomas as his own teacher and master – with the learnedness of one of the most respected contemporary American scholars of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. What we are offered in Professor Boyle’s lecture is not the kind of arid and lifeless speculation that is sometimes – albeit mistakenly – associated with Aquinas’s own style. Boyle emphasizes that Aquinas was far from being a “brain on a stick,” a theologian and thinker so deeply immersed in speculation as to lose sight of the real world, and indeed of what matters in the real world. For what matters in the real world is life, and our ability to conduct this life is a way that is in accordance with the deepest longings of human nature. Boyle demonstrates, with both learning and wit, that it is precisely this life, in its fullness, to which St. Thomas endeavors to lead his students through his teaching. This life has its roots in the humble operations of living that we share with creatures such as plants and animals; it rises to the properly human level in the selfdirection of which we are capable through intellect and will, and which enables us to form ourselves morally in habits that become “second natures” for us; and it is perfectedin the supernatural life of faith in which Christ becomes our teacher and master, who leads us to eternal life with his Father. With Master Boyle through Master Thomas to the Master: that could be the motto of this Aquinas Lecture, which was delivered at the University of Dallas on January 28, 2013. Although the University of Dallas has hosted an annual Aquinas Lecture since 1982, Master Thomas Aquinas and the Fullness of Life is the first to be made available in this new series.

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The Long Night of the Watchman brings into English translation the writings of the renowned Czech anti-Communist dissident and Catholic thinker Vaclav Benda (1946-1999). An early signatory of Charter 77, the Czechoslovak human rights association, Benda would twice serve as a spokesman. He was a founding member of VONS (the Czech acronym for the Committee to Defend the Unjustly Persecuted) and served a four-year prison sentence for his dissident activities. Benda was a keen analyst of Communist totalitarianism who was heavily involved in many facets of resistance. The writings collected in this volume thus offer a unique perspective on life under a Communist regime. Readers are given eyewitness accounts of crucial, yet little known events such the Christian pilgrimage to Velehrad in 1985. We are also transported back into Benda’s workplace as the repercussions of his signing of Charter 77 unfold. And Benda’s extended reflections on topics such as the family and totalitarianism and the fate of the Catholicism under Communism display his subtle and exacting mind. The volume is divided into three sections. “Reflections” is comprised of relatively brief texts usually prompted by some event or action, while “Reports and Defenses” is made up of short documents written for a specific purpose and often related to the regular work of Charter 77. The middle section, “Essays and Inquiries,” contains Benda’s longer pieces of a more philosophical character. With The Long Night of the Watchman, Vaclav Benda’s deeply humane voice and his unbending mind come to the attention of English readers. Index

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George Green is a pop-culture Juvenal, whose satiric strain is both trenchant and elegiac. The poems in Lord Byron’s Foot move deftly between the back alleys of Trieste and the parking lots of his hometown in Pennsylvania, be­tween Chichester Cathedral and the downtown streets and parks of Manhattan where he has lived for three decades. Green’s range and depth of knowledge in these technically accomplished poems might be intimidating if not for the disarming delight and pas­sion with which he engages his material and the bizarrely rau­cous humor in which the poetry often revels. Lord Byron’s Foot is the twelfth winner of the annual New Crite­rion Poetry Prize. The New Cri­terion is recognized as one of the foremost contemporary venues for poetry that pays close atten­tion to form. Building upon its commitment to serious poetry, The New Criterion established this annual prize in 2000.

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James Rhodes’ Plato is a playwright. And a mystic. In his famous “Seventh Letter” Plato had stated that the essence of his thought couldn’t be put into writing and hence he hadn’t done so. This is the self-interpretation of a mystic, Rhodes concludes. But then, two eminent questions arise: Why, then, did Plato write at all? And, how have his writings—his dialogues—to be understood, that is to be read? Plato intended, Rhodes argues, to direct the souls of those who entered into his dialogues toward the Good, the sun of truth. As “truth” cannot be taught but only experienced (the mystic dimension), Plato makes the readers of his dialogues enter into the dramas—or “plays” (according to Rhodes)—that are formed by the dialogues in the mode of a most sophisticated philosophic artistry. You encounter one aporia after another, doubts heaped upon doubts, hypotheses searchingly tested. It’s a purifying experience to which you are submitted in following the play, and the hope is, as Rhodes formulates. “that our souls will bring forth beautiful things by the end of the process.” As befits a political philosopher, James Rhodes focuses his study on the question of political leadership. That is to say: true political leadership. The highly original response he provides is very practical. And at the same deeply congenial to the “mystical” art of Plato, the playwright. This book will be a landmark in the field of studies on Plato.

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The Knower and the Known deals with some of the most controversial subjects in philosophy today: the relation of the mind and the body, the fundamental nature of the physical world, the existence of abstract entities, and the nature of knowledge and its relationship to human consciousness. In doing so, it draws on insights from both contemporary analytic philosophy of mind and phenomenology. The book argues that the fact that reality is understandable and is explicable by the proposition that consciousness is ontologically more fundamental than the physical. It argues at length that no physicalist theory of the mind can succeed. Although body and consciousness are intimately woven together, for knowledge to be possible, consciousness must be founded on immaterial selves. Abstracta such as universals are real, but are best understood not as independent entities but as ideal objects in the mind of God. The Knower and the Known argues at length that no physicalist theory of the mind can succeed. Parrish challenges the sometimes quite surprising theories of the physicalists with rigorous logic, concluding his masterpiece with the only explanation left to us. In the end, what makes most sense, what is most logical, is classical theism – The Knower, who knows it all – because, after all, He made it. The Knower and the Known concludes by bringing the different parts of reality together. External reality is understandable because it is the product of the God’s mind, and human beings can grasp that intelligibility, both in physical reality and abstractly, because our minds are finite analogs of the divine mind.

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In addition to “On Liberty” and “On Representative Government,” this new selection of Mill’s writings includes, among others, a number of less known of his writings, such as: “Civilization,” “Perfectibility,” “The Negro Question,” “On Education,” “On Aristocracy,” “On Marriage,” “On Free Press,” “Socialism,” Mill’s review of Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” his letters to Tocqueville, and several other writings. If one can use a somewhat exaggerated language, Mill’s writings are to liberal-democracy what Marx and Engels’ writings were to Communism. Both systems gave expression to 19th century man’s longing for equality and justice, both promised to liberate him from the shackles of oppression, authority and tradition. Instead of liberating man, Communism created the most brutal system in human history, and its spectacular fall in 1989 is one of history’s greatest events. Western world today shows that liberal-democracy is no longer a benign doctrine, which advocates free market, minimum state and individual liberties, but, like Communism, is an all-encompassing ideology which forces an individual to abdicate his freedom and soul in favor of a Communist-like collective. As many critics of real Socialism could see the seeds of totalitarianism in the writings of Marx and Engels, so one can see the seeds of liberal totalitarianism in Mill’s writings. This new edition is intended to help readers to understand why democratic-liberalism came so close to its 19th century ideological rival.

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