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Metafisica della Conoscenza e Politica in S. Tommaso d’Aquino was originally published in Bologna in 1985 by the Centro Studi Europa Orientale. This English translation has been prepared with the explicit permission and encouragement of Buttiglione. The work grew from a series of lectures Buttiglione gave on the relationship between metaphysics, knowledge, and politics based on a critical reading of Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics and other relevant texts. His aim was to advance Thomistic thinking by incorporating the insights of modern philosophy on subjectivity and relationality. In addition to its primary audience of philosophers, theologians, and political theorists, the book surprisingly enjoyed a wide general readership in Italy at the time of its publication. It represented an exciting attempt to harmonize medieval philosophy and the insights of personalism that had already had a deep impact on European intellectual life. Buttiglione was able to describe this attempt in a way accessible to a general readership, and in a way that confronted the political challenges Italy had been confronting for the last forty years. Now, thirty-five years after the book’s initial publication, the conclusions Buttiglione draws from reading Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Politics––and the connections he makes between philosophy, theology, and political theory––are more relevant than ever. He argues that the traditional definition of “person” as rationalis naturae individua substantia––an individual substance or substrate (hypokeimenon) of a rational nature––“lacks that certain element that makes Augustine’s approach to personhood so appealing.” Hence Aquinas’s definition “is left wanting since it fails to elaborate on the crucial aspect of interpersonal relationship.” The ingenuous way in which Buttiglione enlivens Thomistic political thinking with personalist philosophy helps to explain not only why free societies are more stable, tolerant, and respectful of human rights than totalitarian states, but theocratic ones as well. Only by raising the interpersonal aspects of political society to an ontological level—indeed, only by affirming and esteeming the self-transcendence of the human person as evidenced through ontological analysis—do the personal relationships that root and enliven the human person also lead to a realistic, dynamic, and convincing vision of the person’s real existence. Buttiglione was startlingly prescient of the problems we confront at the beginning of the third millennium. This book will spark new discussions as it explains the importance of both the medieval tradition and twentieth-century personalism. The book also draws on a wide range of secondary sources unavailable to English readers that I and will have the unique ability to introduce readers to the “Italian” way of relating speculative and political philosophy in a relatively slim volume.

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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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