Search results for ""Author Christopher M. Cullen""
The Catholic University of America Press Maritain and America
Jacques Maritain was one of the leading French and Thomist philosophers of the twentieth century. He was particularly fond of America and its political experiment in liberal democracy. He taught at four American universities and came to know the young republic first hand. ""Maritain and America"" explores the engagement of his thought with the American political experiment in representative democracy and the culture of liberal individualism that it has fostered. The book begins with a consideration of the sources for the American founding - English common law, Protestant Christianity, Lockean natural rights theory - and then proceeds to examine the American political order from the perspective of various philosophers in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas. These scholars are concerned with, among other things, the relationship of natural law and natural rights, understandings of the common good, and achieving unity in a pluralist society. One set of essays discusses America's unique settlements between faith and reason and between church and state. Another set explores the philosophy of personalism, one of the most notable projects that Thomists, such as Maritain, have undertaken in order to provide a metaphysical understanding of the human person that can both provide a foundation for natural rights and yet be open to a transcendent order of goodness. Other scholars take up the task of developing a theory of tolerance (in the context of a pluralist society) that is grounded in a common quest for wisdom and truth. The final section applies Thomistic ethics in the context of contemporary American society.
£25.65
The Catholic University of America Press The Discovery of Being and Thomas Aquinas: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives
While there has been agreement among followers of Aquinas that being insofar as it is being (being qua being) is the subject of metaphysics, there is not agreement on how this being qua being is to be understood, nor on how we come to know the being that is the object of metaphysical investigation. The topic of what being is, as the object of the science of metaphysics, and how to account for the “discovery” of the being of metaphysics have emerged as central problems for the contemporary retrieval of Aquinas and for the larger project of post-Leonine Thomism in general. This lack of agreement has hampered the retrieval of Aquinas’s metaphysics.The collection of essays within The Discovery of Being and Thomas Aquinas is divided into three major parts: the first set of essays concerns the foundation of metaphysics within Thomism; the second set exemplifies the use of metaphysics in fundamental philosophical issues within Thomism; and the third set employs metaphysics in central theological issues. The Discovery of Being and Thomas Aquinas allows major scholars of the different types of Thomism to engage in a full-scale defense of their position, as well as expanding Thomistic metaphysics to the discipline of theology in important ways.
£75.00
