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Thomas Pfau's study of images and visual experience is a tour de force linking Platonic metaphysics to modern phenomenology and probing literary, philosophical, and theological accounts of visual experience from Plato to Rilke.Incomprehensible Certainty presents a sustained reflection on the nature of images and the phenomenology of visual experience. Taking the "e;image"e; (eikon) as the essential medium of art and literature and as foundational for the intuitive ways in which we make contact with our "e;lifeworld,"e; Thomas Pfau draws in equal measure on Platonic metaphysics and modern phenomenology to advance a series of interlocking claims. First, Pfau shows that, beginning with Plato's later dialogues, being and appearance came to be understood as ontologically distinct from (but no longer opposed to) one another. Second, in contrast to the idol that is typically gazed at and visually consumed as an object of desire, this study positions the image as a medium whose intrinsic abundance and excess reveal to us its metaphysical function-namely, as the visible analogue of an invisible, numinous reality. Finally, the interpretations unfolded in this book (from Plato, Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, John Damascene via Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, and Nicholas of Cusa to modern writers and artists such as Goethe, Ruskin, Turner, Hopkins, Cezanne, and Rilke) affirm the essential complementarity of image and word, visual intuition and hermeneutic practice, in theology, philosophy, and literature. Like Pfau's previous book, Minding the Modern, Incomprehensible Certainty is a major work. With over fifty illustrations, the book will interest students and scholars of philosophy, theology, literature, and art history.

This eagerly awaited study brings to completion Louis Dupre's planned trilogy on European culture during the modern epoch. Demonstrating remarkable erudition and sweeping breadth, The Quest of the Absolute analyzes Romanticism as a unique cultural phenomenon and a spiritual revolution. Dupre philosophically reflects on its attempts to recapture the past and transform the present in a movement that is partly a return to premodern culture and partly a violent protest against it. Following an introduction on the historical origins of the Romantic Movement, Dupre examines the principal Romantic poets of England (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats), Germany (Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Holderlin), and France (Lamartine, de Vigny, Hugo), all of whom, from different perspectives, pursued an absolute ideal. In the chapters of the second part, he concentrates on the critical principles of Romantic aesthetics, the Romantic image of the person as reflected in the novel, and Romantic ethical and political theories. In the chapters of the third, more speculative, part, he investigates the comprehensive syntheses of romantic thought in history, philosophy, and theology.

Presenting with moving insight the relations between man, as a person and as an individual, and the society of which he is a part, Maritain's treatment of a lasting topic speaks to this generation as well as those to come. Maritain employs the personalism rooted in Aquinas's doctrine to distinguish between social philosophy centered in the dignity of the human person and that centered in the primacy of the individual and the private good.

In Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, Michael Walzer revises and extends the arguments in his influential Spheres of Justice, framing his ideas about justice, social criticism, and national identity in light of the new political world that has arisen in the past three decades. Walzer focuses on two different but interrelated kinds of moral argument: maximalist and minimalist, thick and thin, local and universal. This new edition has a new preface and afterword, written by the author, describing how the reasoning of the book connects with arguments he made in Just and Unjust Wars about the morality of warfare.Walzer's highly literate and fascinating blend of philosophy and historical analysis will appeal not only to those interested in the polemics surrounding Spheres of Justice and Just and Unjust Wars but also to intelligent readers who are more concerned with getting the arguments right.

In his Treatise on the Virtues, Aquinas discusses the character and function of habit; the essence, subject, cause, and meaning of virtue; and the separate intellectual, moral, cardinal, and theological virtues. His work constitutes one of the most thorough and incisive accounts of virtue in the history of Christian philosophy. John Oesterle's accurate and elegant translation makes this enduring work readily accessible to the modern reader.

The Treatise on Happiness and the accompanying Treatise on Human Acts comprise the first twenty-one questions of I-II of the Summa Theologiae. From his careful consideration of what true happiness is, to his comprehensive discussion of how it can be attained, St. Thomas Aquinas offers a challenging and classic statement of the goals of human life, both ultimate and proximate. This translation presents in accurate, consistent, contemporary English the great Christian thinker's enduring contributions on the subject of man's happiness.

This anthology represents the first large-scale attempt to present--and draw some morals and predictions from--the complex history of the concept of matter from Thales and Plato down to Marx and Heisenberg.The Concept of Matter is a collection of twenty-seven papers, each by a philosopher or scientist whose particular contribution to the dialogue on the concept is well known and here summarized and extended. From the symposium held in the fall of 1961 at the University of Notre Dame, Father McMullin has included not only the revised versions of those twenty-seven papers, but also an edited selection of comments and interchanges at the symposium itself--the dialogues of a distinguished gathering, some of the world's greatest scholars.The discussions bridge the concept of matter from the Greek and medieval interpretations through the transformation of the concept of matter into the redefinition of the concept of mass, to finally the dematerialization of matter by "modern science."A study of the evolution of this crucial concept illuminates the interrelation between the philosophical and the scientific approaches tto Nature which can be more thoroughly grasped in terms of the development and constantly changing views towards related concepts like matter and mass.Contributors: C. Lejewski, L. Esliek, J. Fitzgerland, J. Owens, N. Luyten, E. McMullin, A. Wolter, M. Fisk, M. B. Hall, C. Taliaferro, M. B. Hesse, C. Mast, J. Smith, A.R. Caponigri, N. Lobkowiez, K. Sayre, R. Rorty, R. Johann, N.R. Hnason, A.E. Woodruff, C. Misner.

This anthology represents the first large-scale attempt to present--and draw some morals and predictions from--the complex history of the concept of matter from Thales and Plato down to Marx and Heisenberg.The Concept of Matter is a collection of twenty-seven papers, each by a philosopher or scientist whose particular contribution to the dialogue on the concept is well known and here summarized and extended. From the symposium held in the fall of 1961 at the University of Notre Dame, Father McMullin has included not only the revised versions of those twenty-seven papers, but also an edited selection of comments and interchanges at the symposium itself--the dialogues of a distinguished gathering, some of the world's greatest scholars.The discussions bridge the concept of matter from the Greek and medieval interpretations through the transformation of the concept of matter into the redefinition of the concept of mass, to finally the dematerialization of matter by "modern science."A study of the evolution of this crucial concept illuminates the interrelation between the philosophical and the scientific approaches tto Nature which can be more thoroughly grasped in terms of the development and constantly changing views towards related concepts like matter and mass.Contributors: C. Lejewski, L. Esliek, J. Fitzgerland, J. Owens, N. Luyten, E. McMullin, A. Wolter, M. Fisk, M. B. Hall, C. Taliaferro, M. B. Hesse, C. Mast, J. Smith, A.R. Caponigri, N. Lobkowiez, K. Sayre, R. Rorty, R. Johann, N.R. Hnason, A.E. Woodruff, C. Misner.

Over the past decade Latinos in this country have become a large, significant, and growing political constituency. The 28 essays in this anthology explore the significance of this growth in both local and national politics, assessing the degree to which its potential power is being actualized and discussing its impact on policy formation. Attention is given for the first time to the political status of all three major Latino groups in the United States-Mexican-American, Cuban, and Puerto Rican.F. Chris Garcia has selected the most timely essays available and provides an introduction to the volume, as well as introductions to each group of articles. The first essays examine the environmental setting, especially the history and demography, in which Latino politics operates. Political input activities employed in the 1980s is then explored, focusing on electoral means including the expression of needs through interest-group organizations. How the system responds is seen next through Latino representation in the legislatures and bureaucracies of government. Also treated is the formulation and promulgation of public policy in education, employment, and public services. The concluding essay stress styles and strategies for future Latino political involvement.Together the selections from Latinos and the Political System comprise a comprehensive and penetrating picture of the Latino political situation and its place within the United States political system. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars in Latino studies courses and ethnic studies courses, as well as all those interested in ethnic/race relations and American politics.

Renowned historian Andrzej Walicki here challenges the conventional understanding of the rise of nationalism and the nation-building process in East-Central Europe.Arguing that the views advanced by Hans Kohn and others are marred by an inadequate knowledge of Polish history and thought, Walicki examines the emerging nationalism of the eighteenth century in a comparative perspective. He shows how Poland, the largest state in East-Central Europe, developed a modem national consciousness and, in fact, a political nationalism earlier and more successfully than has generally been acknowledged.Walicki presents his case by examining the main currents of Polish thought in the Enlightenment from Noble Republicanism to the development of the progressive constitution of May 3, 1791. A final chapter analyzes the ideas of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the leader of the Polish uprising of 1794, showing him as an ideologist of "new republicanism" and a bridge between the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. This chapter will be of particular interest to readers familiar with Kosciuszko as a hero of the American Revolution.

This comprehensive study offers the first book-length examination of the influence of modernism on the intellectual life of the American Catholic community at the beginning of the twentieth century. R. Scott Appleby chronicles the story from 1895, when American Catholic priest John Zahm attempted to reconcile post-Darwinian theories of evolution with Catholic theism, to 1910, when former priest and radical Modernist William L. Sullivan published his Letters to His Holiness Pope Pius X, repudiating Roman authority.Appleby focuses on the ways in which certain priests, scientists, and scholars approached the vital topics of the day-human evolution, the salience of democratic principles and institutions for the vitality of Catholicism, the role of the will and intellect in the assent of faith-by appropriating the insights of the European Catholic Modernists. The Americans probed beyond the limits of the dominant Roman neo-scholasticism and retrieved models, images, and concepts from the apostolic and early medieval eras of church history. As the first experiment with a pluralism of methods and sources in American Catholic theology and philosophy, Appleby argues this was also an attempt to construct a viable Catholic apologetics that would speak to the experiences of American citizens. Because this enterprise resembled that of the condemned Europeans, the Americans also fell under a cloud of suspicion and original research was suspended for a generation.

Paul Scherz explores the ethical challenges raised by precision medicine and its focus on medical risk as opposed to current disease. Genetic technologies and artificial intelligence are rapidly changing the landscape of medical practice and patient care. In the emerging field of precision medicine, a patient's risk factors-especially genetic risk factors-are incorporated into an all-encompassing plan to prevent future disease. But identifying at-risk individuals through technologies such as wearable devices and direct-to-consumer genetic sequencing can undermine the overall experience of health. The potential for overdiagnosis and overtreatment grows as patients are prescribed medications and receive prophylactic surgeries that carry inherent risks. Also, as the medical industry shifts its attention from individuals to trends in the general population, the one-to-one practitioner-patient relationship becomes strained. Using the lens of virtue ethics and theological bioethics, The Ethics of Precision Medicine offers suggestions for better implementing precision medicine to treat those currently suffering from or at high risk of disease, while also recognizing that effectively preventing disease depends, ultimately, on addressing the social determinants of health. The book provides a new perspective on the problems of contemporary healthcare, proposing practical steps that individuals and institutions can take to ensure that the advanced technologies of precision medicine can be used to promote human flourishing.

This book explores the life, mission, and writings of martyred Salvadorian archbishop St. Óscar Romero in the light of contemporary work for justice and human developmentMany historians, theologians, and scholars point to St. Óscar Romero as one of the most perceptive, creative, and challenging interpreters of Catholic social teaching in the post-Vatican II period, while also recognizing the foundational importance of Catholic social teaching in his thought and ministry. Editor Todd Walatka brings together fourteen leading scholars on both Romero and Catholic social teaching, combining essays that contextualize Romero's engagement historically and focus on the challenges facing Christian communities today. The result is a timely, engaging collection of the most rigorous scholarly engagement with Romero and Catholic social teaching to date. Contributors: Ana María Pineda, R.S.M., Michael E. Lee, Matthew Philipp Whelan, Jon Sobrino, S.J., Edgardo Colón-Emeric, David M. Lantigua, Leo Guardado, Stephen J. Pope, Kevin F. Burke, S.J., José Henríquez Leiva, Meghan J. Clark, Elizabeth O'Donnell Gandolfo, Rubén Rosario Rodríguez, Peter Casarella, and Todd Walatka

A highly readable introduction to Christian apologetics that joins contemporary analytic philosophy with modern biblical scholarship. In this book, Paul Herrick presents the basics of classical Christian apologetics in the form of an inference to the best explanation argument that builds from the book's first chapter to its last. Drawing on contemporary philosophy, logic, and biblical scholarship, Herrick incorporates thoughts from Socrates, Plato, Thomas Aquinas, and C. S. Lewis, as well as scholars such as William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, Richard Swinburne, and Craig Blomberg, to present a multifaceted argument for the Christian faith. With sections on the Socratic method, the Christian examination of conscience, the Big Bang, miracles, the historical reliability of the New Testament, the resurrection of Christ, and more, this book promises to be useful intellectually and spiritually for seekers, doubters, and those already in the faith.

This powerful exploration of spiritual longing is the story of two parallel journeys. One is the author's account of his five-day riverboat trip up the Amazon and his discovery of the tiny Church of the Poor Devil, whose members revealed a spiritual wealth in the midst of abject poverty. The other is Dunne's own spiritual quest and his "passing over" from a personal religion concerned with the satisfaction of his individual needs to the religion of the poor. In sharing the life of the church's people and their transcendence of the misery of their human condition, Dunne experiences a greater awareness of the human essence, which redirects his relation of material needs and brings him to a "oneness" with humanity and himself. The story of this journey becomes a compelling metaphor for Christianity.At a religious festival, Dunne witnesses the people's rejoicing in a simplicity that encourages them to follow the heart's desire for God. An awareness of God's presence frees them from the complex, material concerns that so soften beget despair. By acknowledging the truth of human misery and the heart's desire, Dunne believes we too can walk vertically through a horizontal world governed by materialism and misunderstanding, and thus, find our place at the intersection of time and eternity.

The seven provocative essays that comprise Beyond Individualism reflect on the American religious tradition in order to discover in it an ethical alternative to the ideology of individualism.The contributors include Donald L. Gelpi, Stephen C. Rowntree, Drew Christiansen, Frank M. Oppenheim, John M. Staudenmaier, Carl F. Starkloff, and John R. Stacer. They provide an interdisciplinary approach to their criticism of individualism and suggest unique strategies for counteracting the moral and social fragmentation that such an ethos motivates. The first essay argues that a contemporary theology of conversion points the way beyond the moral impasses of individualism, including those encountered in family life. It is followed by a piece that ponders romantic and marital love from a philosophical standpoint. The next section argues that recent papal teaching about the common good provides an alternative to an individualistic politics of self-interest. The fourth essay addresses many of the issues raised in the first three from the standpoint of Josiah Royce's philosophy of community. The next article examines technology's capacity to create and impose values that both undermine community and foster individualism. And the last two essays explore some of the moral consequences of commitment to the human community's common good by examining the treatment of Native Americans in the United States and, in the latter essay, William Ernest Hocking's reflections on global political responsibility.Throughout, these accessible essays exhibit thematic unity and consistency. They can be read by all inquisitive readers as a discussion on our national character or can be used as a companion volume for courses on American culture along with Habits of the Heart.

If suffering is one hallmark of the human condition, another is the virtue of compassion, which disposes persons to suffer the pain of others as partly their own. In Choosing to Feel, Diana Fritz Cates draws on an Aristotelian-Thomistic foundation to develop an original theory of compassion as she explores how persons are able-and why they would want-to deliberately orient themselves toward the co-suffering of another person's pain. Cates opens with an account of virtue which examines what it means to choose to feel a passion according to the measure of practical wisdom. She goes on to explore the nature of friendship and some of the impact that Christian faith can have on one's view of self and others. Cates then integrates her view of virtue, friendship, and compassion in a way that specifies what someone who is good at being compassionate does and does not choose to feel as someone who intentionally binds him or herself to other persons. The book focuses primarily on the com pas passion that persons feel toward friends, but it culminates in an analysis of compassion for strangers and enemies. Throughout, Choosing to Feel promotes conceptual clarity and depth of understanding regarding what compassion is, how it can be cultivated, and why it should be cultivated as part of a full human life. Scholars and students of religious, theological, and philosophical ethics will appreciate this study for its unique combination of rigorous philosophical analysis and attentiveness to the complexities of lived moral experience.

This collection brings together ten of Nobel Prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's most memorable and consequential speeches, delivered in the West and in Russia between 1972 and 1997.Following his exile from the USSR in 1974, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lived and traveled in the West for twenty years before the fall of Communism allowed him to return home to Russia. The majority of the speeches collected in this volume straddle this period of exile, contemplating the materialism prevalent worldwide--forcibly imposed in the socialist East, freely chosen in the capitalist West--and searching for humanity's possible paths forward. In beautiful yet haunting and prophetic prose, Solzhenitsyn explores the mysterious purpose of art, the two-edged nature of limitless freedom, the decline of faith in favor of legalistic secularism, and--perhaps most centrally--the power of literature, art, and culture to elevate the human spirit.These annotated speeches, including the timeless Nobel Lecture and Harvard Address, have been rendered in English by skilled translators, including Solzhenitsyn's sons. The volume includes an introduction to the speeches, brief background information about each speech, and a timeline of the key dates in Solzhenitsyn's life.

For a human being to exist, does it require an immaterial mind, a physical body, a functioning brain, a soul?Is there a shared nature common to all human beings? What essential qualities might define this nature? These questions are among the most widely discussed topics in the history of philosophy and remain subjects of perennial interest and controversy. The Nature of Human Persons offers a metaphysical investigation of the composition of the human essence.Jason Eberl also considers the criterion of identity for a developing human being--that is, what is required for a human being to continue existing as a person despite undergoing physical and psychological changes over time? Eberl places Thomas Aquinas's account of human nature into direct comparison with several prominent contemporary theories: substance dualism, emergentism, animalism, constitutionalism, four-dimensionalism, and embodied mind theory. These theories inform conclusions regarding when human beings first come into existence (at conception, during gestation, or after birth), how we ought to define death for human beings, and whether (and if so how) human beings may survive death. Ultimately, The Nature of Human Persons argues that the Thomistic account of human nature addresses the matters of human nature and survival more holistically than other theories and offers a cohesive portrait of one's continued existence from conception through life to death and beyond.