Download or read book A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart written by Josef Pieper and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Josef Pieper's account of the centrality and meaning of the virtues is a needed primer to teach us exactly the meaning and relationship of the virtues and how they relate to the faith and its own special virtues. Pieper's attention is ever to the particular virtue, its precise meaning, and to its contribution to the wholeness that constituted an ordered, active, and truthful human life. No better brief account of the virtues can be found. Pieper has long instructed us in these realities that need to be made operative in each life as it touches all else 'that is', as Pieper himself often puts it." — James V. Schall, S.J., Georgetown University "A fine and thought provoking examination of the relationship between the mind, heart, and moral life of the human person." — John Cardinal O'Connor, Archbishop of New York "Pieper's sentences are admirably constructed and his ideas are expressed with maximum clarity. He restores to philosophy what common sense obstinately tells us ought to be found there: wisdom and insight." — T. S. Eliot
Download or read book The Four Cardinal Virtues written by Josef Pieper and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 1990-03-31 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Four Cardinal Virtues, Joseph Pieper delivers a stimulating quartet of essays on the four cardinal virtues. He demonstrates the unsound overvaluation of moderation that has made contemporary morality a hollow convention and points out the true significance of the Christian virtues.
Download or read book Faith Hope Love written by Josef Pieper and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2011-07-07 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume, three separate books in one edition, is a collection of Josef Pieper's famous treatises on the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love. Each of these treatises was originally published as a separate work over a period of thirty-seven years, and here they are brought together in English for the first time. The first of the three that he wrote, On Hope, was written in 1934 in response to the general feeling of despair of those times. His "philosophical treatise" on Faith was derived from a series of lectures he gave in the late 1950s and early 1960s. His most difficult work, one that he struggled with for years - and almost abandoned - was his work On Love. Pieper now feels that this is the most important book he has written. He discusses not only the theological virtue of caritas-agape, but also of eros, sexuality, and even "love" of music and wine.
Download or read book Leisure written by Josef Pieper and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2009-09-11 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most important philosophy titles published in the twentieth century, Josef Pieper's Leisure, the Basis of Culture is more significant, even more crucial, today than it was when it first appeared more than fifty years ago. This edition also includes his work The Philosophical Act. Leisure is an attitude of the mind and a condition of the soul that fosters a capacity to perceive the reality of the world. Pieper shows that the Greeks and medieval Europeans, understood the great value and importance of leisure. He also points out that religion can be born only in leisure - a leisure that allows time for the contemplation of the nature of God. Leisure has been, and always will be, the first foundation of any culture. Pieper maintains that our bourgeois world of total labor has vanquished leisure, and issues a startling warning: Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for non-activity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture - and ourselves.
Download or read book Josef Pieper written by Josef Pieper and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2011-06-10 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreward by Hans Urs von Balthasar Near the end of a long career as one of the most widely read popular Thomistic philosophers of the twentieth century, Josef Pieper has himself compiled an anthology from all his works. He has selected the best and most representative passages and arranged them in an order that gives sense to the whole and aids in the understanding of each excerpt. Pieper's reputation rests on his remarkable ability to restate traditional wisdom in terms of contemporary problems. He is a philosopher who writes in the language of common sense, presenting involved issues in a clear, lucid and simple manner. Among his many well-known works included in this anthology are selections from Leisure: The Basis of Culture, The Four Cardinal Virtues, About Love, Belief and Faith, Happiness and Contemplation, and Scholasticism.
Download or read book Abuse of Language Abuse of Power written by Josef Pieper and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the great Catholic philosophers of our day reflects on the way language has been abused so that, instead of being a means of communicating the truth and entering more deeply into it, and of the acquisition of wisdom, it is being used to control people and manipulate them to achieve practical ends. Reality becomes intelligible through words. Man speaks so that through naming things, what is real may become intelligible. This mediating character of language, however, is being increasingly corrupted. Tyranny, propaganda, mass-media destroy and distort words. They offer us apparent realities whose fictive character threatens to become opaque. Josef Pieper shows with energetic zeal, but also with ascetical restraint, the path out of this dangerous situation. We are constrained to see things again as they are and from the truth thus grasped, to live and to work.
Download or read book Tending the Heart of Virtue written by Vigen Guroian and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Pinocchio to The Chronicles of Narnia to Charlotte's Web, classic children's tales have shaped generations of young people. In recent years, homeschoolers and new classical schools have put these masterpieces of children's literature at the center of their curricula. And these stories continue to be embraced by parents, students, and educators alike. In Tending the Heart of Virtue, Vigen Guroian illuminates the power of classic tales and their impact on the moral imagination. He demonstrates how these stories teach the virtues through vivid depictions of the struggle between good and evil, while he also unveils components of the good, the true, and the beautiful in plot and character. With clarity and elegance, Guroian reads deeply into the classic stories. He demonstrates how these stories challenge and enliven the moral imaginations of children. And he shows the reader how to get "inside" of classic stories and communicate their lessons to the child. For more than two decades Tending the Heart of Virtue has been embraced by parents, guardians, and teachers for whom the stories it discusses are not only beloved classics but repositories of moral wisdom. This new revised edition includes three new chapters and an expanded annotated bibliography in which Guroian interprets such stories as Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling, the Grimms' Cinderella, and John Ruskin's The King of the Golden River.
Download or read book The Heart of Virtue written by Donald DeMarco and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Heart of Virtue brings to life in an inspirational and memorable way what is at the core of every true moral virtue, namely, love. It presents twenty-eight different virtues, and reveals, through stories that personify these virtues, how love is expressed through care, courage, compassion, faith, hope, justice, prudence, temperance, wisdom, etc... It is a treatment of virtue that is both unique and original. It is unique in that twenty-eight distinct virtues are both illustrated in story form and explained through philosophical analysis. It is original in that many of the stories have never before appeared in print. The Heart of Virtue is a veritable liberal education in itself, bringing together in a carefully balanced and readable manner, distinguished personalities from diverse enterprises and periods of history. It literally sparkles with celebrities recruited from science and the arts, philosophy and theology, medicine and religion, stage and screen, sports and entertainment. But the book does not ignore the relatively unknown who provide several human interest stories that are both moving and unforgettable. The reader will be both astonished and edified by the determination of Winston Churchill, the compassion of Simone Weil, the courage of Edith Piaf, the humility of Charles Steinmetz, the patience of Walker Percy, the modesty of Flannery O'Connor, and the integrity of Jacques and Raissa Maritain.
Download or read book On Reading Well written by Karen Swallow Prior and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ★ Publishers Weekly starred review A Best Book of 2018 in Religion, Publishers Weekly Reading great literature well has the power to cultivate virtue, says acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior. In this book, she takes readers on a guided tour through works of great literature both ancient and modern, exploring twelve virtues that philosophers and theologians throughout history have identified as most essential for good character and the good life. Covering authors from Henry Fielding to Cormac McCarthy, Jane Austen to George Saunders, and Flannery O'Connor to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Prior explores some of the most compelling universal themes found in the pages of classic books, helping readers learn to love life, literature, and God through their encounters with great writing. The book includes end-of-chapter reflection questions geared toward book club discussions, original artwork throughout, and a foreword by Leland Ryken. The hardcover edition was named a Best Book of 2018 in Religion by Publishers Weekly. "[A] lively treatise on building character through books.'"--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Download or read book Ideas Have Consequences written by Richard M. Weaver and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A foundational text of the modern conservative movement, this 1948 philosophical treatise argues the decline of Western civilization and offers a remedy. Originally published in 1948, at the height of post–World War II optimism and confidence in collective security, Ideas Have Consequences uses “words hard as cannonballs” to present an unsparing diagnosis of the ills of the modern age. Widely read and debated at the time of its first publication, the book is now seen as one of the foundational texts of the modern conservative movement. In its pages, Richard M. Weaver argues that the decline of Western civilization resulted from the rising acceptance of relativism over absolute reality. In spite of increased knowledge, this retreat from the realist intellectual tradition has weakened the Western capacity to reason, with catastrophic consequences for social order and individual rights. But Weaver also offers a realistic remedy. These difficulties are the product not of necessity, but of intelligent choice. And, today, as decades ago, the remedy lies in the renewed acceptance of absolute reality and the recognition that ideas—like actions—have consequences. This expanded edition of the classic work contains a foreword by New Criterion editor Roger Kimball that offers insight into the rich intellectual and historical contexts of Weaver and his work and an afterword by Ted J. Smith III that relates the remarkable story of the book’s writing and publication. Praise for Ideas Have Consequences “A profound diagnosis of the sickness of our culture.” —Reinhold Niebuhr “Brilliantly written, daring, and radical. . . . It will shock, and philosophical shock is the beginning of wisdom.” —Paul Tillich “This deeply prophetic book not only launched the renaissance of philosophical conservatism in this country, but in the process gave us an armory of insights into the diseases besetting the national community that is as timely today as when it first appeared. [This] is one of the few authentic classics in the American political tradition.” —Robert Nisbet
Download or read book Shadow Sophia written by Celia E. Deane-Drummond and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-25 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do humans who seem to be exemplars of virtue also have the capacity to act in atrocious ways? What are the roots of tendencies for sin and evil? A popular assumption is that it is our animalistic natures that are responsible for human immorality and sin, while our moral nature curtails and contains such tendencies through human powers of freedom and higher reason. This book challenges such assumptions as being far too simplistic. Through a careful engagement with evolutionary and psychological literature, Celia Deane-Drummond argues that tendencies towards vice are, more often than not, distortions of the very virtues that are capable of making us good. After beginning with Augustine's classic theory of original sin, the book probes the philosophical implications of sin's origins in dialogue with the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Different vices are treated in both individual and collective settings in keeping with a multispecies approach. Areas covered include selfishness, pride, violence, anger, injustice, greed, envy, gluttony, deception, lying, lust, despair, anxiety, and sloth. The work of Thomas Aquinas helps to illuminate and clarify much of this discussion on vice, including those vices which are more distinctive for human persons in community with other beings. Such an approach amounts to a search for the shadow side of human nature, shadow sophia. Facing that shadow is part of a fuller understanding of what makes us human and thus this book is a contribution to both theological anthropology and theological ethics.
Download or read book The Concept of Sin written by Josef Pieper and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 2001 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "But this small work will interpret sin in its true - that is, serious - meaning. What will emerge from its analysis is the discovery that the concept of sin can still serve to unlock the mystery of existence, at least for a thinking that wants to press down to the very foundations.".
Download or read book The Human Wisdom of St Thomas written by Josef Pieper and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-13 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Josef Pieper has attached no commentary to the texts brought together in this breviary of the philosophy of St. Thomas, preferring that the reader should encounter them, “on his own”. His work has been one of selection, in which he has sought to assemble such passages as will provide an introduction to the form and design of the whole Thomistic system. Yet he has so ordered his texts as to impress upon the reader a special feature of St. Thomas’s thought, what he calls its double aspect: St. Thomas sees the whole scheme of reality ordered and penetrable by reason; yet the mystery of Being itself remains: “The effort of human thought has not been able to track down the essence of a single gnat.” Josef Pieper, one of the most highly regarded Thomistic philosophers of the twentieth century, wrote numerous philosophical works including Leisure: The Basis of Culture, Guide to Thomas Aquinas, Only the Lover Sings and many more.
Download or read book Virtues written by Susan Muto and published by Emmaus Road Publishing. This book was released on 2014 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author challenges the reader to examine their behavior and allow a Christian legacy of virtue to enrich the world by following in the footsteps of ancient, medieval, and modern masters of the spiritual life.
Download or read book Josef Pieper on the Spiritual Life written by Nathaniel A. Warne and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2023-03-15 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Warne’s original study provides an insightful analysis of the role of contemplation and creation in the thought of Josef Pieper, illustrating the importance of this practice to earthly happiness and human flourishing. What is the relationship between creation, contemplation, human flourishing, and moral development? Nathaniel Warne’s Josef Pieper on the Spiritual Life offers a sophisticated answer to this question through a systematic analysis of philosopher Josef Pieper’s (1904–1997) thought. Warne’s examination centers on the role of contemplation and creation in Pieper’s thinking, arguing that contemplation of the created order is a key feature of earthly happiness. By emphasizing the importance of contemplation, Pieper illustrates the deep interconnections between ethics, creation, and spirituality. For Warne, to posit a binary between the contemplative life and active life creates a false dichotomy. Following Pieper, Warne claims that theology and spirituality cannot be bracketed from ethics and social action—indeed, our lived experience in the world blurs the lines between these practices. Contemplation and action are closer together than are typically assumed, and they have important implications for both our spiritual development and our engagement with the world around us. Ultimately, Warne’s emphasis on creation and contemplation represents an attempt to resist a view of ethics and the spiritual life that is divorced from our environment. In response to this view, Warne argues that we need a renewed sense that creation and place are important for self-understanding. Contemplation of creation is, fundamentally, a form of communion with God—we thus need a more robust sense of how ethics and politics are rooted in God’s creative action. Taking Pieper as a guide, Warne’s study helps to deepen our thinking about these connections.
Download or read book Happiness and the Christian Moral Life written by Paul J. Wadell and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Happiness and the Christian Moral Life introduces students to Christian Ethics looking at ethics as a path to the "good life" and happiness, rather than a strict set of rules. Revisions and updates include lists of suggested readings and resources, new discussions of how technology shapes relationships, a more fully developed account of Augustine and happiness, and more.
Download or read book The Hope and Despair of Human Bioenhancement written by Paschal M. Corby and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2019-12-23 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hope and Despair of Human Bioenhancement is a virtual dialogue between Transhumanists of the “Oxford School” and the thought of Joseph Ratzinger. Set in the key of hope and despair, it considers whether or not the transhumanist interpretation of human limitations is correct, and whether their confidence in the methods of human enhancement, especially through biotechnology, corresponds to genuine hope. To this end, it investigates the philosophical foundations of transhumanism in modernity’s rejection of metaphysics, the triumph of positivism, and the universalism of the theory of evolution, which when applied to anthropology becomes the materialist reduction of the human person. Ratzinger calls into question this absolutization of positive reason and its limitation of hope to what human beings can produce, naming it a pathology of reason, a mutilation of human dignity, and a façade of a world without hope. In its place, he offers a richer concept of hope that acknowledges our contingence and limitations.
