Goodreads’ “Year In Books” — 9,501 pages; 28 books finished (with many still partially read). Not one audible book.

As to my 280% reading challenge score I admit to copying my friend Jeff Miller’s practice of setting the bar low (10 books), thereby ensuring a consistent record of success and personal gratification.

(I probably would have read more, but 2024 was likewise a record year for creativity with the most art I’ve ever drawn).

Planned reading for 2025, Lord-willing:

• Definitely more Herbert McCabe (Dominican priest / philosopher who I happily discovered this year) and revisiting Jacques Maritain;
• Short stories by Leon Bloy; A Canticle for Leibowitz (my reading of which is long-overdue), and Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah (hopefully in time for the release of the film); Arthur C Clarke (Rendezvous with Rama, also with film in development by Denis Villeneuve); Ian McDonald (Chaga); a novel by Annie Proulx (Barkskins); finishing Pekka Hämäläinen’s North American history Indigenous Continent; putting a hopeful dent into more history by Jacques Barzun and Paul Johnson; and recently picked up Walter Isaacson’s biography of Albert Einstein.

So that's on my "to do" list for next year ... if anything, I'm ambitious. =)

Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination: Volume I

Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination: Volume 1: The Modern Redefinition of Tongues
by Philip E. Blosser (Author), Charles A. Sullivan (Author).

In three carefully researched volumes, this ground-breaking study examines the gift of tongues through 2,000 years of church history. Starting in the present and working back in time, these volumes consider (1) the modern redefinition of "tongues" as a private prayer language; (2) the church's perennial understanding of "tongues" as ordinary human languages; and (3) the Corinthian "tongues," which, in light of Jewish liturgical tradition, turn out to have been a foreign liturgical language (Hebrew or Aramaic) requiring bilingual interpreters. In the first volume, the authors establish that modern glossolalia, far from being a supernatural gift enjoyed by certain believers since the time of Pentecost and undergoing a resurgence in modern times, has no precedent in church life prior to the nineteenth century. They discuss why German theologians, responding to the Irvingite revival, coined the term "glossolalia" in the 1830s; why Pentecostals between 1906-8 quietly began redefining "tongues" to mean a heavenly language unintelligible to human beings but pleasing to God, instead of foreign languages useful for evangelism; why Protestant cessationists believed miraculous tongues had ceased; and why interpolated idioms like "unknown tongues" in Protestant Bibles were aimed originally at Rome's use of Latin.

Reviews & Discussion

• Book Review: Blosser & Sullivan's Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination. Unam Sanctamcatholicam 09/03/23.
• The Modern Redefinition of Tongues feat. Philip Blosser & Charles Sullivan YouTube 09/03/23.

Remembering Paul Johnson (1928-2023)

Remembering Paul Johnson

• Paul Johnson, Prolific Historian Prized by Conservatives, Dies at 94 New York Times 01/12/23.
• Paul Johnson, prolific journalist and historian who started on the Left but became a champion of the Right – obituary The Telegraph 01/12/23.
• Paul Johnson, friend of Israel and the Jews, dies at 94 The Jewish Chronicle 01/15/23.
• On the Writer Paul Johnson (1928–2023 National Review:

  William F. Buckley Jr. wrote that Johnson was liable to be underrated, or taken for granted, because he was so routinely excellent. “His performances are unvaryingly (boringly?) extraordinary,” he wrote. WFB went on to say that Johnson had had “as productive a literary-analytical career as any in modern times.” And he said that in 1994, when Johnson had about 20 more writing years in him.

• Remembering Paul Johnson, the Historian of Human Dignity, by Hans Zeiger. Public Discourse 01/23/23. Underlying Paul Johnson’s historical writing was the sense that people possess an innate dignity. To Johnson, history was the story of people—flawed, creative, reasoning, exceptional—with the capacity for incredible achievement. People, he thought, were made with a purpose, and that meant history has a purpose.
• Knowledge and Verve: Remembering Paul Johnson, by Theodore Dalrymple. City Journal 1/13/23:
  Johnson liked nothing more than to infuriate by means of iconoclastic polemic. His book Intellectuals (1988) provided potted biographies of such revered figures as Rousseau, Marx, and Tolstoy, demonstrating what rotters they all were in their personal lives. This was not exactly an exercise in scientific method, but it was good fun and gave pleasure to those who distrust intellectual gurus. It also gave rise to insinuations that Johnson himself did not always quite live up to the moral ideals that he so fiercely propounded in public.

  He coined striking phrases—Hitler’s views, for example, were “the syphilis of antisemitism in its tertiary phase”—and he could never be accused of mealy-mouthedness. His views, though somewhat changeable, were expressed with vigor approaching dogmatism, though they were always well-informed. You knew where you stood with him.

  It is customary to say of remarkable men that we shall not see their like again. Whatever may be the case with other remarkable men, this is likely to be true of Paul Johnson. It is unlikely that anyone will tackle so huge a range of subjects again with such knowledge and verve.

• The World of Paul Johnson Book and Film Globe 06/01/23. "The late historian didn’t have a lot of friends on the left, but his popular histories help explain the present day."
• Paul Johnson: A Great Man of Letters The Catholic Herald 01/01/23:

  ... He had his undeniable faults, of which irascibility was just one, but he was also exemplary in his hard work (few people could write so quickly and eloquently), his diligence (the reading undertaken for his work and his range of reference was remarkable); his loyalty to his friends and his devotion to his children and grandchildren. His son Daniel is a prominent Catholic journalist (and writes in this edition). He was a Defender of the Faith; there are few of his calibre now.

  At his funeral, the opening hymn was, unexpectedly, “To Be a Pilgrim”, the words for which are based on John Bunyan, the anti-Catholic Puritan. It might seem a curious choice until we consider the words: “Hobgoblin nor foul fiend can daunt his spirit/ He knows he at the end shall life inherit”. That summed Paul Johnson up: may it be so for him.

• Paul Johnson and the fate of conservatism, by Dominic Green. 06/19/23:

  ... Johnson did as much as any writer to spread the ideal Western civilization, and especially Judeo-Christian civilization, in the U.S. These ideas have little purchase in Britain. Johnson’s son Daniel is one of their few advocates, and he, too, finds more receptive audiences abroad. Like Roger Scruton, Paul Johnson found that Americans supposedly a frivolous and unthinking people, are more interested in ideas than the British are. It is telling that Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2006, but he was not appointed a Companion of the British Empire until 2013.

A bit of humor from Jacques Maritain (Reflections on America, 1958), commenting on the faux-optimism that is often mandated in the American workplace. Perhaps not so apropos in this day and age, where dourness prevails (what with the pandemic and all), but nonetheless elicited a chuckle:

The yearning to make life tolerable is best revealed, it seems to me, in the American smile. You meet on American streets smiling faces, which plunge you into a stream of quite general and anonymous good feeling. Of course, there is an immense part of illusion, of ritually accepted illusion, in the universal benignancy thus displayed.

I had a dentist in a small town whose nurses were so well trained that you were dazzled by their radiant smiles and their unshakeable optimism. Finally you came to think, in a kind of daydream, that the fact of dying in the midst of these happy smiles and the angel wings of these white, immaculate uniforms, would be a pure pleasure, a moment of no consequence. Relax, take it easy, it's nothing. Thereafter, you would enjoy the cleanness and happiness of the funeral home, and the chattering of your friends around your embalmed corpse.

l left this dentist, in order to protect within my mind the Christian idea of death.

Hans Boersma on George Orwell's 1984

Reading 1984 is medicine for souls like mine that have, perhaps unwittingly, accommodated to the militant secularism that engulfs today’s world—whether the conformity takes the shape of sipping hot chocolate in a Gothic apse or some other form. Here are some reasons why we might read 1984 as an act of penance. Among the salutary reminders that Orwell’s classic novel offers are the following:

• The past is not the object of our own construction. Totalitarian regimes attempt to alter the past, changing lies into truths by means of newspeak and doublethink. “All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly as often as was necessary.”
• Language is closely tied to our most basic beliefs. Change or eliminate vocabulary, and you change the cultural mindset: “In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.”
• We dare not give up on objective reality. After much torture and self-examination, Winston, the protagonist, genuinely admits that two plus two make five. A key axiom, which our culture is in danger of eradicating, is Orwell’s conviction that “freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
• Nominalism has totalitarianism as its logical end point. If universals do not exist, we are thrown back upon ourselves, which means that truth equals power. As Winston’s interrogator puts it: “You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable.” Even our inmost thoughts and convictions are subject to totalitarian control. Winston doesn’t initially believe this (“the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable”), but in the end, he submits every aspect of his will and intellect to the Party’s control.

-- Hans Boersma, First Things 12/31/21.

Edward Baring, "Converts To The Real: Catholicism and the Making of Continental Philosophy"

Converts To The Real: Catholicism and the Making of Continental Philosophy
Edward Baring. Harvard University Press; 1st edition (May 1, 2019). 504 pages.

In the most wide-ranging history of phenomenology since Herbert Spiegelberg’s The Phenomenological Movement over fifty years ago, Baring uncovers a new and unexpected force—Catholic intellectuals—behind the growth of phenomenology in the early twentieth century, and makes the case for the movement’s catalytic intellectual and social impact.

Of all modern schools of thought, phenomenology has the strongest claim to the mantle of “continental” philosophy. In the first half of the twentieth century, phenomenology expanded from a few German towns into a movement spanning Europe. Edward Baring shows that credit for this prodigious growth goes to a surprising group of early enthusiasts: Catholic intellectuals. Placing phenomenology in historical context, Baring reveals the enduring influence of Catholicism in twentieth-century intellectual thought.

Converts to the Real argues that Catholic scholars allied with phenomenology because they thought it mapped a path out of modern idealism—which they associated with Protestantism and secularization—and back to Catholic metaphysics. Seeing in this unfulfilled promise a bridge to Europe’s secular academy, Catholics set to work extending phenomenology’s reach, writing many of the first phenomenological publications in languages other than German and organizing the first international conferences on phenomenology. The Church even helped rescue Edmund Husserl’s papers from Nazi Germany in 1938. But phenomenology proved to be an unreliable ally, and in debates over its meaning and development, Catholic intellectuals contemplated the ways it might threaten the faith. As a result, Catholics showed that phenomenology could be useful for secular projects, and encouraged its adoption by the philosophical establishment in countries across Europe and beyond.

Baring traces the resonances of these Catholic debates in postwar Europe. From existentialism, through the phenomenology of Paul Ricoeur and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, to the speculative realism of the present, European thought bears the mark of Catholicism, the original continental philosophy.

Reviews and Discussion

• Edward Baring: Converts to the Real Interview with Kristof K.P. Vanhoutte (Basel, Switzerland) Monday, December 21, 2020. Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. [Podcast]
• The Dangerous Alliances Between Catholicism and Phenomenology, by Edward Baring. [Adapted excerpt].
• Phenomenology's Influence in the West, by Graham Mcaleer. Law and Liberty 10/28/19.
• Getting to the Root, by Martyn Wendell Jones. Hedgehog Review Fall 2019 "Baring introduces a community of thinkers whose contributions have been obscured."
• God of the Continental Philosophers, by Sarah Shortall. Commonweal March 2020.
• Catholicism and the Making of Continental Philosophy, by Michael Gubser. Churchlife Journal 06/04/20.
• What Is Continental Philosophy? An Interview with Edward Baring, by Jonathan Catlin. Journal of the History of Ideas 05/11/20.
• Is Catholicism a Religion?, by Elad Lapidot. Phenomenological Reviews
• A Profound And Sweeping Look At Twentieth-Century Philosophy, by Jude Dougherty. The Wanderer Press 06/11/19.

Goodreads 2020 - Highlights of Another Year in Reading

Surprised I met my GoodReads challenge this year, since up to this point my most efficient reading time is the 1.5 hours to/from work on the subway -- I slacked off a bit March-May as the pandemic hit but as I adjusted to the present circumstances I turned to late-night reading.

Perhaps as a means of escape from the pandemic I picked up more fiction than usual, and discovered some intriguing new authors along the way.

If anybody reading this uses GoodReads feel free to look me up and friend me -- I'm always curious what others in my audience are reading!

Personal highlights:

• Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - comprehensive and definitive examination of the subject. I found him to be very fair: critical where criticism is certainly warranted, likewise credit where credit's due (Lincoln's position on slavery evolved over the course of his presidency).
• Thomas Merton, The Living Bread - meditations on the Eucharist.
• Emery de Gall, O Lord, I Seek Your Countenance: Explorations and Discoveries in Pope Benedict XVI -- very substantial work of Ratzinger scholarship, especially his chapter discussing Ratzinger's contributions as peritus to Vatican II.
• Edward T. Oakes, SJ A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies -- an exploration of theological dilemmas such as nature and grace, free will and predestination, experience and divinization; sin and justification; original sin and evolution. I like Oakes' for the breadth of his own reading (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) which he makes ample use of.
• Fr. Garrigou Lagrange, The Essence & Topicality of Thomism -- a treasure ... the bad rap he gets among the Ressourcement theologians is, at least in my mind, undeserved.
• Stuart Walton, The Devil's Dinner - an informative "biological, gastronomical, and cultural history" of the chili pepper. The first two chapters alone on the origins of the chile pepper in South/Central America and its subsequent introduction -- by way of Portuguese trading -- to the entire world (India, Thailand, China, et al., each continent or country giving its own culinary spin to its use) is worth the read alone. Very informative.
• William Faulkner, Light in August. I went on a Hemingway binge a few years ago. Lately I've been on a Faulkner binge, intending to read his works along with a biography on my list for 2021). Faulkner can be very dense at times, with odd syntax and a "stream-of-consciousness" style (ex. The Sound and the Fury), but I found this one more readily accessible.

Some new discoveries:

• John Le Carre - spurred by the news of the author's passing this year, I had enjoyed various movie adaptations of Le Carre's work (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; A Most Wanted Man) and decided to read the whole series featuring his character "George Smiley". Knocked out the first two this year, Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality.
• Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows -- a Russian novelist whose work was introduced as a source to Timothy Snyder's magnificent Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010). This is Vasily Grossman's unfinished and final novel, written after the Soviet police seized his earlier work and left him to write alone. It's about a prisoner returning to Moscow from the Gulag after 30 years and readjusting to the world around him, together with an account of the Ukranian terror-famine of 1932-33. (I now want to read his suppressed masterpiece Life and Fate, an epic account of World War II).
• Ian McGuire, The North Water - oddly enough, I spotted the literary vocalist Neil Fallon (of the American rock band Clutch) reading this in a video tour of the band's bus, figured "why not check it out?" -- a delightful, gritty romp of mystery, murder and arctic survival in 1859. McGuire has a unique and visceral way with words. I'd like to read more of his novels in the new year.

Flannery O'Connor on Ernest Hemingway

The Catholic fiction writer has very little high-powered "Catholic" fiction to influence him except that written by these three [Bloy, Bernanos, Mauriac] and Greene. But at some point reading them reaches the place of diminishing returns and you get more benefit from reading someone like Hemingway, where there is apparently a hunger for a Catholic completeness in life.

-- Flannery O'Connor. January 16, 1956. The Habit of Being

* * *

The man was hungry for everything so
why not God? Wine by the bottle, beer by
the case, fresh-bled bull roasted on a spit,
fish dragged from the sea on a thin pole
wielded by a man mad for its wet meat.
He wanted it all and got it. But it
could not be enough. Wife after wife
tried hard to satisfy his starved heart.
What made him close to happy was his art.
The daily dalliance with the blank page
was where he sought you out, trying to name
what he lacked at the center of his lone-
ly soul, an agon he loved and hated,
the one hunger that could not be sated.

-- Angela Alaimo O'Donnell, Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery O'Connor.

It can happen that an individual posseses that objective holiness of mission and authority and yet has no subjective holiness. This is a grave misfortune, dangerously obscuring the Church's mission. But the Church as a whole can never fail to possess both gifts at the same time. This equally applies to the Church in its visible aspect. Consequently it will not do to divide the Catholic Church into two churches, an emperical Church with her authority, and her ascertainable membership, and an invisible Church of the saints, whose number is known only to God.

Augustine saw very clearly that the visible bearer of the power of the keys cannot receive a sinner back into the Communio Sanctorum; without he forgiveness (together with God) of the Church and the saints, which the Song of Songs calls the "one dove." But he does not draw the same conclusion as that Augustinian friar, Luther, namely, that only the Church of the saints with its "priesthood of all believers" has the true power of the keys. In Augustine the tension persists: Christ's Church has objective and subjective holiness, but they coincide, perfectly only in Christ, the Church's head.

- Hans Urs von Balthasar, In the Fullness of Faith: On the Centrality of the Distinctively Catholic.

Reading Timothy Snyder's "Bloodlands"

I was a bit late in the game in terms of reading Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Undoubtedly, I would consider this one of the most important and moving books I have read this year. I found it an outstanding work of history, and perhaps (in terms of content) one of the most horrifying and disturbing books I have ever read as well.

One of the things that struck me in reading this work is the manner in which the victims themselves can so easily lose their humanity, becoming "just another statistic" -- both in the view of the perpetrators themselves (ex. the effort to meet Stalin's quotas during the Great Purge) but also in my own experience as a reader, as one's mind is repeatedly forced to reckon with Snyder's citation after citation of casualties and bodycounts:

Mass violence of a sort never before seen in history was visited upon this region. The victims were chiefly Jews, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, Russians, and Balts, the people native to these lands. The fourteen million were murdered over the course of only twelve years, between 1933 and 1945, while both Hitler and Stalin were in power. Though their homelands became battlefields midway through this period, these people were all victims of murderous policy rather than casualties of war.

The Second World War was the most lethal conflict in history, and about half of the soldiers who perished on all of its battlefields in the world died here, in this same region, in the bloodlands. Yet not a single one of the fourteen million murdered was a soldier on active duty. Most were women, children, and the aged; none was bearing weapons; many had been stripped of their possessions, including their clothes.

I find this to be a common experience of reading military history -- the dissolution of individual human life into the background of statistics: the numbers of casualties so huge in nature that the mind recoils and is simply left reeling in its attempt to grapple with the sheer horror of it. (To the author's credit, what makes me appreciate this book even more is Snyder's insistence and dogged efforts to acknowledge the humanity of the victims, by virtue of detailing their individual experiences and testimonies, often right up until the point of their death).

This makes for very grim reading indeed. There are accounts of acts of cruelty, or simply acts of suffering and tragedy, transcending whatever fiction could ever convey. This was a very difficult book to read, and yet, I would consider this book fundamental reading for an integral understanding of what happened during those times. Moreover, — lest we forget — it is just the kind of book I wish could be foisted on every generation as "required reading", especially those possessing an overly-optimistic (deluded) conception of human nature, a naive faith in human progress, or even a perception of themselves (or their generation) as being more socio-politically "enlightened" than the past. The history of Europe's Bloodlands stands as a warning to never underestimate man’s capacity to abandon all sense of humanity and commit acts of abominable evil, in the cold pursuit of ideological progress.

Related Discussion

These are a few of the subsequent discussions of Snyder's book that I've found intriguing. I'll likely supplement this post with additional links as I come across more.

• A Tragic Sense of History. DarwinCatholic 09/18/14. Responding to Daniel Lazar's article in The Jacobin which (predictably) takes strong exception to Snyder's presentation of Soviet history
• The Charnel Continent, by Istvan Deak. 12/20/10. "This is an important book. I have never seen a book like it. But even Snyder does not broach the problem of explanation. Why was there was so much savagery in the bloodlands?"
• Unshared Histories: Timothy Snyder's "Bloodlands", by Menachem Kaiser. Los Angeles Review of Books 10/16/12.
• The Worst of the Madness, by ANne Applebaum. New York Review of Books November 2010:

  Snyder’s original contribution is to treat all of these episodes — the Ukrainian famine, the Holocaust, Stalin’s mass executions, the planned starvation of Soviet POWs, postwar ethnic cleansing — as different facets of the same phenomenon. […] Yet Snyder does not exactly compare the two systems either. His intention, rather, is to show that the two systems committed the same kinds of crimes at the same times and in the same places, that they aided and abetted one another, and above all that their interaction with one another led to more mass killing than either might have carried out alone.

• The Diplomat of Shoah History, by David Mikics. The Tablet 07/26/12. Does Yale historian Timothy Snyder absolve Eastern Europe of special complicity in the Holocaust?
  • In Defense of Bloodlands, by Timothy Snyder. The Tablet 08/03/12. The Yale historian explains his masterwork and its transnational narrative of the Holocaust.
  • The Last Salvo, by David Mikics. The Tablet 08/03/12. Mikics Replies to Snyder.

"The Madness of Crowds" by Douglas Murray

Douglas Murray's The Madness of Crowds is perhaps a little too reliant on lengthy anecdotes from current events, scene-by-scene (or blow-by-blow) transcriptions of televised traumas and social media skirmishes, such that those familiar with some of the incidents related my be tempted to skip over some pages. Nevertheless, I believe this stands is one of the best analyses of the functional incoherence of the phenomenon of intersectionality, with its competing oppressions [and/or] victimhood of race, sex and gender which to Murray "grinds hideously and noisily both against each other and within ourselves."

Murray mines the world of television talk shows, Facebook frenzies, Twitter-storms, and other locuses of current events to depict our times -- where a misconstrued word or phrase or action can become tinder for blame and resentment; where what might be an ordinary differing of opinions all-to-quickly escalates into the deaf shouts of a vengeance-thirsty mob; where daily life and social interaction is rife with "impossibility problems" (i.e., in the observation of Mark Lilla, one simultaneously demands "you must understand me" AND "you cannot understand me"); where life has been reduced to a "endless zero-sum game between different groups vying for oppressed status, [robbing] us of time and energy for the conversations and thinking that we do need to do."

That this cultural phenomenon has all the characteristics of what was erstwhile reviled in religion -- the zealous hounding of heretics, the establishment of campus inquisitions -- has not gone unnoticed to Murray ("A fixed set of virtues are being celebrated. And a fixed set of prepositions are being set up"). In this case, however, the claims advanced and to which everyone is expected to give assent are themselves a recipe for madness:

As anyone who has lived under totalitarianism can attest, there is something demeaning and eventually soul-destroying about being expected to go along with claims you do not believe to be true and cannot hold to be true. If the believe is that all people should be regarded as having equal value and be accorded to equal dignity, then that may be all well and good. If you are asked to believe that there are no differences between homosexuality and heterosexuality, men and women, racism and anti-racism, then this will in time drive you to distraction. That distraction -- or crowd madness -- is something we are in the middle of and something we need to try and find our way out from.

Murray's book is long in the diagnosis -- but worth reading for his keen ability to identify what is amiss. At the same time it comes up short on a prescription, perhaps impeded in part because Murray suspects those engaged in the fomenting the madness may not necessarily be in search of a cure (capitalizing as they are in the perpetuation of grievances) or otherwise chasing after a utopian dream. After all, muses Murray: "the most likely explanation of human motivations in the future is that people will broadly go on behaving as they have done throughout history, that they will continue exhibiting the same impulses, frailties, passions and envy that have propelled the species up to now."

One of the strongest chapters (if only a brief interlude) is on the necessity of forgiveness in societal relations and civic health -- culling from Hannah Arendt ("without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover"). Murray points out how society's capacity to forgive has diminished, hampered by the all-encompassing memory of social media, where one's sins are no longer confined to the community (where they might fade over time, or be negated by further acts of reconciliation) but instead rendered transparent and timeless on a global scale, for all eternity.

For it is the tendency of social media to bolster the trench-digging and doubling down on positions -- "when someone is face to face with another person it is far harder to reduce them to one thing that they have said, or strip them of all characteristics except one." Murray reminds us that it was not too long ago that Alexis de Tocqueville observed (in his travels in the 1830's), that one of the strengths of the United States was the capacity of the American citizenry to resolve their differences in face-to-face encounters, remedying disputes before the intervention of higher authority was needed. These days, it seems we are rushing headlong in the other direction -- thanks in large part to social media's ability to erase barriers between the private and public, past and present. To counter this, Murray asks if in fact the "spirit of generosity can be extended any more widely" in interpreting the remarks of others, and to counter the headlong rush to "politicize everything" by doing precisely the opposite:

"Of all the ways in which people can find meaning in their lives, politics -- let alone politics on such a scale -- is one of the unhappiest. Politics may be an important aspect of our lives, but as a source of personal meaning it is disastrous. Not just because the ambitions it strives after nearly always go unachieved, but because finding purpose in politics laces politics with a passion -- including a rage -- that perverts the whole enterprise. If two people are in disagreement about something important, they may disagree as amicably as they like if it is just a matter of getting to the truth or the most amenable option. But if one party finds their whole purpose in life to reside in some aspect of that disagreement, then the chances of amicability fade fast and the likelihood of reaching any truth recedes."

* * *

Samuel Gregg: "Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization"

Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization
by Samuel Gregg.
Gateway Editions (June 25, 2019). 256 pgs.

The genius of Western civilization is its unique synthesis of reason and faith. But today that synthesis is under attack—from the East by radical Islam (faith without reason) and from within the West itself by aggressive secularism (reason without faith). The stakes are incalculably high.

The naïve and increasingly common assumption that reason and faith are incompatible is simply at odds with the facts of history. The revelation in the Hebrew Scriptures of a reasonable Creator imbued Judaism and Christianity with a conviction that the world is intelligible, leading to the flowering of reason and the invention of science in the West. It was no accident that the Enlightenment took place in the culture formed by the Jewish and Christian faiths.

We can all see that faith without reason is benighted at best, fanatical and violent at worst. But too many forget that reason, stripped of faith, is subject to its own pathologies. A supposedly autonomous reason easily sinks into fanaticism, stifling dissent as bigoted and irrational and devouring the humane civilization fostered by the integration of reason and faith. The blood-soaked history of the twentieth century attests to the totalitarian forces unleashed by corrupted reason.

But Samuel Gregg does more than lament the intellectual and spiritual ruin caused by the divorce of reason and faith. He shows that each of these foundational principles corrects the other’s excesses and enhances our comprehension of the truth in a continuous renewal of civilization. By recovering this balance, we can avoid a suicidal winner-take-all conflict between reason and faith and a future that will respect neither.

Reviews and Discussion

• Review by Reviewed by Rev. Ben Johnson. TransAtlantic Blog Acton Institute. 8/16/19.
• All Is Not Lost: Reason, Faith, & Western Civilization, by Fr. Dwight Longenecker. The Imaginative Conservative 07/30/19:

  Samuel Gregg is to be congratulated for writing a concise, accessible, and clear explanation of our present situation. His book is uncluttered with intellectual jargon, academic posturing, and obscure argumentation. It’s the kind of book that should be required reading for any liberal arts college student because it gives the historical background that explains where we are today and why. This sort of book provides the context and matrix for current trends in philosophy, politics, economics, the arts, media, religion, and popular culture.

• Reason, faith, and the pursuit of wisdom, by Phil Lawler. Catholic Culture 08/09/19.
• The Logos of Western Civilization: A Conversation with Sam Gregg (Podcast). Law and Liberty 08/16/19.
• Samuel Gregg: Discussion w/ John J. Miller National Review 07/08/19.
• The Struggle for Western Civilization – Conversations with Mark Bauerlein Ricochet

Here and There

• Five Insights Christianity Brings to Politics, by Michael Matheson Miller. Law and Liberty 05/29/19:

  The relationship between Christianity and politics is a complex one. The Church has played a mixed role in the history of political liberty to be sure. At times it has suppressed political, religious and economic liberty. Yet despite that, and unserious caricatures of history from secularists like Steven Pinker, Christianity has been one of the most important forces for liberty and the idea of a limited state. Though Christianity is not a political program it nevertheless gives us a certain way of thinking about the state and the role of politics. ...

  

• Remembering an Aristotelian Radical: Henry Veatch and Rational Man, by Douglas B. Rasmussen, Douglas J. Den Uyl. Law and Liberty 09/09/18:

  Veatch often remarked that there is a difference between having what it takes to live well and living well. Though he certainly would not dismiss empirical studies of human flourishing that attempt to measure the development of the capabilities people need for flourishing, he would rightly insist on a difference between the development of people’s capabilities and the exercise of their own practical wisdom. It is the deployment of the latter that is central to what constitutes one’s flourishing.

  In sum, we can say that Veatch has offered in Rational Man and his other works a way of understanding ethics that celebrates both the individual and the importance of the self-perfecting life. This celebration is based on his thorough-going realism -- a realism that rejects the temptation to make reality simply a human construction but also a realism that holds that human knowing, achievement, and flourishing are possible, if we will but exercise those virtues that make us rational animals.

• Edward Feser notes the passing of philosopher and theologian Norman Geisler (1932-2019):

  I am sorry to report that philosopher and theologian Norman Geisler has died. Geisler stood out as a Protestant who took a broadly Thomist approach to philosophy and theology, and as an evangelical who vigorously defended the classical theist conception of God against the currently fashionable anthropomorphism he aptly labeled “neo-theism” (and which Brian Davies calls “theistic personalism”). Those of us who sympathize with these commitments are in his debt.

• Widening Gyres, by Brian Kemple. The Agonist. While I admit sites like Quillette remain guilty pleasures (inasmuch as they advance a free and reasonable exchange of ideas in the face of fideistic oppression) there is something lacking in the greater scheme of things, and Brian Kemple nails it in this essay:

  Yet despite their adoration of reason, these “Reasonabilists” are in truth no more than “reasonablish,” I say somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Clearly, they are not so unreasonable as the raving social justice ideologues they rightly lambast, nor are they lost in the clouds of Gnosticism and mystical superstition that they readily attribute to pre-modern thought.[12] But the fact that they cling adamantly to this caricature of pre-modern beliefs reveals the limits of their reason. A critical examination of the true contours of pre-modern society would show it to be no less and, in some instances, a great deal more reasonable than the thinking that came to prevail through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and perhaps therefore induce reflection upon the modernist principles which they have uncritically taken for granted. [...]

  Indeed, ignorance of history is not only a hallmark of the Enlightenment and its contemporary advocates, but a deliberately cultivated shortcoming. Rather than engage with the whole system of scholasticism, men such as Descartes, Cudworth, More, and Leibniz extracted points for criticism that, once deprived of context, appear absurd. Likewise, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau emphasized an interpretation of history and society whose preoccupation with practical economics, technology, and politics relied on a caricature of the intellectual heritage of the Middle Ages. They thereby skipped over many details of life proper to the period, when the questions of philosophy were intertwined with the life of faith. The closeness of the Christian religion to philosophy shows how integral Christendom was to European culture, especially in the embrace and promotion of classical learning.[31] Truly, having the Enlightenment and its heirs as the only source of learning for understanding the Middle Ages would be like having Aristophanes as the only source for understanding Socrates.

• Anselm's Account of Satisfaction Siris 04/14/19:

  There has been some discussion recently of this interview with Elizabeth Johnson; it was actually done late last year, but has been getting more attention now, since 'tis the season. Much of the interview is more a matter of provocative phrasing than substantially wrong claims, but some of it goes very awry. And pretty much all of the discussion of Anselm on satisfaction in Cur Deus Homo, is wrong. It's wrong in entirely avoidable ways; but, I find, ways that are often not avoided, so it is worthwhile to say a few things about them. ...

• The Last Modernist: The Legacy of Jacques Barzun, by David Warren. The Imaginative Conservative 04/04/19:

  Barzun was “civil” as well as civilized, yet never pusillanimous. A large part of his work consisted of serenely articulated anger, focused chiefly upon the teaching profession. The phenomenon that is glibly called today “political correctness” — a far stronger term is needed to convey the stench of it — has been a feature of North American intellectual life for a long time. It is in fact the contemporary expression of the Puritan theological outlook, that landed with the Mayflower; and it has everything to do with cults of specialization, and with heresies (i.e. deceitful half-truths) both within and beyond the formal perimeter of religion.

• Legutko: Enemy Of The Politruks, by Rod Dreher. The American Conservative 04/23/19. An interview with scholar and statesman Ryszard Legutko, whom in April 2019, after traveling to Vermont from Poland, was abruptly disinvited from a speaking engagement at Middlebury College after its administration decided that it could not guarantee his safety:

  [Rod Dreher] It seems to me that the way you were treated at Middlebury vindicates much of The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies. If so, please explain how.

  The book is about how liberal democracy tends to develop the qualities that were characteristic of communism: pervasive politicization, ideological zeal, aggressive social engineering, vulgarity, a belief in inevitability of progress, destruction of family, the omnipresent rule of ideological correctness, severe restriction of intellectual inquiry, etc. All of these I remember from my young days in communism, and all these I have been observing, with a growing sense of alarm, in today’s liberal democracy. In the heyday of the communist rule it was customary that the communist students disrupted the lectures of old “bourgeois” professors, accusing them of having reactionary views, of trying to corrupt the young minds with idealist philosophy, and of being at the service of imperialist forces. Why teach Aristotle who despised women and defended slavery? Why teach Plato whom Lenin derided as the author of “super-stupid metaphysics of ideas”? Why teach Saint Thomas Aquinas, who was propagating anti-scientific superstition? Why teach Descartes who in his notion of cogito completely ignored the class struggle?

  The professors were abused and humiliated. Heckling and caterwauling were a standard weapon of the militant students then, and they are a standard weapon of the militant students today.

  Each time the results are the same: certain authors are stigmatized, certain arguments cannot be raised, and certain questions must not be asked. Both then and now the ideological hooligans live in the illusion that they open new perspectives and tear down the existing barricades. In fact, they are doing the opposite: they help to legitimize intellectual vulgarity and intimidate all courageous and independent thinking. They reinforce this feature of all ideological regimes, which George Orwell called "thought crimes."

• Peak Woke Philosophy, by Daniel A. Kaufman The Electric Agora, commenting on a recent skirmish over gender-related politics and academic freedom:

  The essential thing to realize is that woke philosophy isn’t philosophy at all, but politics by another name. Philosophy, for the most part, is conducted by way of arguments and aspires to relative dispassion and (in the modern era) is largely an intellectual endeavor, the purpose of which is to raise tough, serious questions with regard to a highly diverse set of topics. It’s mode is essentially critical. The aim is not to win or to feel good about oneself or to obtain a particular policy outcome or to identify and punish wrongdoers of one stripe or another. These are the aims of social and political activism and agitprop. And yet, this is what woke philosophy is all about: specifically, the advancement and establishment of contemporary identitarian politics within the profession and the society at large.

  On a related note, Brien Leiter of Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog is keeping tabs on the internecine debate within the halls of philosophy.

  Salvador Dalí’s Illustrations for The Bible (1963):

  ... These are not his first religious subjects; he had always referenced big scenes and broad themes in Catholicism. But the illustrations represent a deeper engagement with the primary text—105 paintings in all, each based on select passages from the Latin Vulgate Bible. Published by Rizzoli in 1969, Biblia Sacra (The Sacred Bible) was commissioned by Dalí’s friend, Dr. Guiseppe Albareto, a devout Catholic whose intention “for this massive undertaking,” writes the Lockport St. Gallery, “was to bring the artist back to his religious roots.” Whatever effect that might have had, Dalí approaches the project with the same diligence evident in his other illustrations—he takes artistic risks while making a sincere effort to stay close to the spirit of the text. If he did this work for the money, he earned it.

  

• Slut Shaming in the Adoration Chapel, by Larry Denninger. A Catholic Misfit 08/09/19. -- Or, how NOT to be a Catholic.

• The Alt-Left Media Landscape, Ray Suarez (WBUR Podcast). "It’s not just the alt-right. A vibrant alt-left media landscape is peddling conspiracies to politicians and news consumers alike."

• Leonard Cohen’s Cocktail Recipe: Learn How to Make "The Red Needle" OpenCulture 08/07/19.

• Lastly, a bit of humor: Here’s an Actual Nightmare: Naomi Wolf Learning On-Air That Her Book Is Wrong (NYMag)

"The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism", by Thomas J. White

The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism
by Thomas Joseph White.
The Catholic University of America Press (August 4, 2017). 328 pages.

The Light of Christ provides an accessible presentation of Catholicism that is grounded in traditional theology, but engaged with a host of contemporary questions or objections. Inspired by the theologies of Irenaeus, Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman, and rooted in a post-Vatican II context, Fr. Thomas Joseph White presents major doctrines of the Christian religion in a way that is comprehensible for non-specialists: knowledge of God, the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the atonement, the sacraments and the moral life, eschatology and prayer.

At the same time, The Light of Christ also addresses topics such as evolution, the modern historical study of Jesus and the Bible, and objections to Catholic moral teaching. Touching on the concerns of contemporary readers, Fr. White examines questions such as whether Christianity is compatible with the findings of the modern sciences, do historical Jesus studies disrupt or confirm the teaching of the faith, and does history confirm the antiquity of Catholic claims.

This book serves as an excellent introduction for young professionals with no specialized background in theology who are interested in learning more about Catholicism, or as an introduction to Catholic theology. It will also serve as a helpful text for theology courses in a university context.

As Fr. White states in the book's introduction: "This is a book that offers itself as a companion. I do not presume to argue the reader into the truths of the Catholic faith, though I will make arguments. My goal is to make explicit in a few broad strokes the shape of Catholicism. I hope to outline its inherent intelligibility or form as a mystery that is at once visible and invisible, ancient and contemporary, mystical and reasonable."

Fr. White is the director of the Thomistic Institute at the Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D.C., and author of many books, including Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Thomistic Study in Natural Theology, The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology, and Exodus Theological Commentary. He is co-editor of the academic journal Nova et Vetera and in 2011 was appointed an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Related

• The Light of Christ: A Conversation with Thomas J. White, OP - Thomas Joseph White, O.P., joins First Things editor R. R. Reno in a conversation about his new book. 10/13/17.
• The Light of Christ is far more than an "Introduction", by James V. Schall. Catholic World Report 10/6/17: "Fr. Thomas Joseph White’s new book is an erudite, rich, and accessible guide to Catholicism that demonstrates in the inner cohesion and profound logic of the Faith."
• A Review of Fr. Thomas Joseph White’s The Light of Christ, by Casey Chalk. Called to Communion 11/20/17.
• [Counterpoint]: A Life, Not a Grammar: The Limits of Theology, by Paul J. Griffiths, Commonweal 03/01/18. "A form of life isn’t the kind of thing that can be introduced by elucidating its grammar."
• A Searcher Discovers Thomas Aquinas The Public Discourse 11/12/18.

Paul Johnson's "Mozart: A Life"

I'm what you probably call mostly illiterate when it comes to classical music -- I an't read a sheet of music; never learned to play a musical instrument, have no appreciation beyond whether I personally enjoy it or not. So when it comes to reading a book like Johnson's "Mozart" I was not prepared to enjoy Paul Johnson's Mozart: A Life (2013) as much as I did.

One is naturally informed that "Mozart was a genius, yadda yadda yadda ..." -- the strength of Johnson's biographical portrayal is that, in the brief space he has (the book is only 162 pages), he effectively communicates an understanding of precisely WHY Mozart is considered a genius -- and why people love his work. Some impressive observations:

• Mozart's earliest compositions were done when he was five
• His musical personality began to emerge at the age of eight; by eight or nine he "played all keyboard instruments, reading at sight, even including the organ, though his small size raised difficulties with the foot pedals";
• by ten or eleven he was already an accomplished musician with an admirable familiarity with most orchestral instruments. (One notable exception was the harp, which he could not play).
• By the age of twelve Mozart was a mature composer -- from which point on there was "never a month, scarcely a week, when he did not produce a substantial score"
• The sheer volume of his work is phenomenal. Franz Liszt once remarked the Mozart actually composed more bars than a trained copyist could write in a lifetime

Mozart "had a highly personal approach to music. He associated each instrument with particular people he knew who were especially good at playing it, and wrote with them -- or often one of them -- in mind. Nothing pleased him more than an intimate talk with a player about his instrument, what it could do or not do, and what it could be MADE to do by a masterful player." Johnson ventures into great detail regarding the nature and challenges of the instruments that Mozart worked with, such as the organ, the violin, the viola, the flute, the clarinet, and other horned, reed and timpany instruments. (The most fascinating for me being the bassoon, as I had no idea just how delicate it was).

One gets a genuine sense of Mozart's personality. He could treat with utmost seriousness those things one ought to treat with gravity (his Catholic faith and the Last Things, writing to his father: "I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity (you know what I mean) of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness") but also possessed a robust sense of humor and a joy in life.

"Gay himself by nature, he saw no reason why people should not enjoy a little innocent pleasure, or not-so-innocent pleasure, for that matter. He might conduct a Stations of the Cross in the morning [...], or a Stabat Mater, a similar service centering on the Virgin Mary, or even a requiem, then turn to and arrange a riotous set of German dances in the afternoon.

Mozart loved and appreciated jokes, and was fond of inserting into his works segments that were literally impossible for instrumentalists to play.

What I found particularly beneficial is Johnson's sympathetic treatment of various figures in Mozart's life, particularly his father, his sister, and his friendships with other composers of his day (Bach, Hayden). Thankfully, Johnson also address various historical myths that have sprung up regarding Mozart's life, from what are relatively benign (ex. that he "disliked the flute") to those that are more pernicious. Concerning the unfavorable portrayals of his wife, Constanze he concludes the following:

The truth, so far as I can judge, is that Constanze was always a good wife and mother, ran the household well, but was out of action a large part of the time, either pregnant or nursing or in Baden in desperate attempts to regain her health and strength. Nor was Mozart a bad husband.

and of their financial difficulties, a subject which it seems is often over-emphasized:

Indebtedness was almost a universal habit among married couples in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ... [despite being in debt] his total liabilities never exceeded his assets. At his death, his debts were small by prevailing standards and were rapidly cleared from current income.

and of the negative portrayals of his father, Leopold Mozart:

We have been taught to see Leopold Mozart as a bossy, overpossessive and tyrannical figure, eager to control every aspect of his son's life down to the smallest detail.. There is something to this, but in may ways he was an admirable father, who sacrificed his own promising career as performer and composer entirely in order to promote his son's and who behaved in many ways with heroic unselfishness.

and of course Salieri, villified in Peter Shaffer's play and in the 1984 cinematic adaptation Amadeus:

The story that he was poisoned is a complete fantasy, and the naming of Salieri as the murderer is a gross libel on that hardworking and innocent man."

Johnson's own appreciation of classical music is on display, as he employs a number of musical terms that had me thumbing the dictionary, though not overwhelmingly so. Had I a better grasp of musical terminology I would have better understood certain segments of this book, but my own personal impediments aside, I found this one of the most thrilling books I've read this year. To such an extent that I'm now motivated to spend the coming year to seriously investigating Mozart's many works (and not just those I'm familiar with).

Walker Percy, Philosopher

Walker Percy, Philosopher
by Leslie Marsh (editor).
Palgrave Macmillan; 1st ed. (July 31, 2018)

Though Walker Percy is best known as a novelist, he was first and foremost a philosopher. This collection offers a sustained examination of key aspects to his more technical philosophy (primarily semiotics and the philosophy of language) as well as some of his lesser known philosophical interests, including the philosophy of place and dislocation. Contributors expound upon Percy’s multifaceted philosophy, an invitation to literature and theology scholars as well as to philosophers who may not be familiar with the philosophical underpinnings of his work.

Related

• Walker Percy Online

Benedict XVI: His Life and Thought, by Elio Guerriero

Benedict XVI: His Life and Thought
by Elio Guerriero.
Ignatius Pr (November 6, 2018). 715 pgs.

In these pages Benedict XVI shares his story for the first time since his retirement from the papacy. Joseph Ratzinger is widely recognized as one of the most brilliant theologians and spiritual leaders of our time. Born in Germany in 1929, he lived through Nazism, war, and Communism, like John Paul II, who after his surprising election in 1978, insisted on having Ratzinger at his side for his whole twenty-seven-year pontificate.

When Ratzinger was elected Pope in 2005, he took the name Benedict XVI. He opened a path of purification for the Roman Catholic Church at a time when it was shaken by financial and sexual scandals. He has repeatedly said that Europe must return to its Christian roots and build a new humanism for the twenty-first century.

Benedict XVI was misunderstood by many, and in 2013, he astonished the world by resigning from the papacy. Many saw this gesture as a sign of the decline of Catholicism, but it was the opposite: it was a seed sown in the hope of bringing the Church a younger, more vigorous leadership in the face of so many daunting challenges.

Elio Guerriero, who for many years has had an ongoing relationship with the Pope Emeritus, presents a thorough, well-rounded portrait of the brilliant intellectual and humble man of the Church whom many more have come to love and respect since his resignation. This book includes a Foreword by Pope Francis, and contains the first interview of Benedict XVI since the end of his pontificate.

Elio Guerriero, theologian, philosopher, and historian, is the longtime director of Communio, and editorial manager at Jaca Book and Edizioni San Paolo. He edited the Italian edition of the History of the Church directed by A. Jedin. His other books include Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Drama of God, and Saint Giana Molla: Wife, Mother, and Doctor.

Exploring Aquinas with the help of Reinhard Hutter

In Dust Bound for Heaven: Explorations in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas, pp. 20-25, Reinhard Hutter provides an immensely helpful and insightful list of books for those interested in further explorations of St. Thomas Aquinas:

For those readers who come as neophytes to the thought of Thomas, the following invitation to further explorations should serve as a beginner’s guide to his philosophy and theology, a beginner’s guide that gradually progresses to some more substantive and demanding interpretations of Thomas that are most helpful. For those readers already more advanced in their encounter with Thomas’s teaching and for those who would call themselves Thomists, the more demanding among the following list of studies simply indicate among a much larger body of Aquinas scholarship those works to which I am most gratefully indebted.

The best popular introduction to Thomas’s life and work remains G. K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas (2009) and the best recent scholarly introduction is Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas, Volume 1: The Person and His Work (2005). For a lovely, accessible, yet still profound paraphrase of the Summa theologiae in pocket size, the reader might turn to Walter Farrell, O.P., and Martin J. Healy, My Way of Life: Pocket Edition of St. Thomas: The Summa Simplified for Everyone (1952).

The most accessible and concise introduction to Thomas’s philosophy is Edward Feser, Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide (2009), to Thomas’s theology is Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering, Knowing the Love of Christ: An Introduction to the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (2002), to Thomas’s ethics is Paul Wadell, The Primacy of Love: An Introduction to the Ethics of Thomas Aquinas (1992), and to Thomas’s masterwork, the Summa theologiae, is Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Aquinas’s Summa: Background, Structure, and Reception (2005). An exceedingly helpful resource to Thomas’s theology for beginners is Joseph P. Wawrykow, The Westminster Handbook to Thomas Aquinas (2005). Those readers who want to get an exposure to Thomas’s theology under the guidance of leading contemporary Aquinas scholars should turn to The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, edited by Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow (2005). For a brief, concise, and lucid account of the remarkable history of reception, interpretation, defense, and application of Thomas’s thought in the course of the more than seven centuries since his death, students of Thomas should turn to Romanus Cessario, O.P., A Short History of Thomism (2005). For a useful guide into various aspects of Thomas’s philosophical thought that organizes his theology, the beginner might turn to The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, edited by Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump (1993). For a first introduction into Thomas’s metaphysics that is as accessible as it is lucid, one can hardly do better than to avail oneself of W. Norris Clarke, S.J., The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (2001).

For a balanced and lucid overview of and solid introduction to all topics treated in the Summa theologiae, the student of Thomas’s thought might first want to consult Brian Davies, O.P., The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (1992). However, the reader who is looking for guides to the most central treatises of Thomas’s masterpiece will find excellent guidance from the following studies, which are not listed alphabetically but along the lines of the order of teaching (ordo disciplinae) the Summa theologiae unfolds.

On the First Part of the Summa:

• The Hackett Aquinas: The Treatise on the Divine Nature. Summa Theologiae I, 1-13 (2006)
• Rudi te Velde, Aquinas on God: The “Divine Science” of the Summa Theologiae (2006)
• Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., The One God: A Commentary on the First Part of St. Thomas’ Theological Summa (1943)
• Matthew Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology (2004)
• Gilles Emery, O.P., The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (2010)
• Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., The Trinity and God the Creator: Commentary on St. Thomas’ Theological Summa I, 27-119 (1952)
• Robert E. Brennan, O.P., Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophic Analysis of the Nature of Man (1941)
• Pia Francesca de Solenni, A Hermeneutic of Aquinas’s Mens through a Sexually Differentiated Epistemology: Toward the Understanding of Woman as Imago Dei (2000)
• Bernard Lonergan, S.J., Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas (2000)
• Jacques Maritain, God and the Permission of Evil (1966)
• Herbert McCabe, O.P., God and Evil in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (2010)

On the First of the Second Part of the Summa:

• Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Sources of Christian Ethics (1995)
• Denis J. M. Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good: Reason and Human Happiness in Aquinas’s Moral Science (1997)
• Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Beatitude: A Commentary on Thomas’ Theological Summa I-II, 1-54 (1956)
• Ralph McInerny, Ethica Thomistica: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (1982)
• Steven A. Long, The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act (2007)
• Stephen L. Brock, Action and Conduct: Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action (1998)
• Nicholas E. Lombardo, O.P., The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion (2010)
• George P. Klubertanz, S.J., Habits and Virtues: A Philosophical Analysis (1965)
• Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (1965)
• Romanus Cessario, O.P., The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics (2008)
• Fulvio di Blasi, God and the Natural Law: A Rereading of Thomas Aquinas (2006)
• Jean Porter, Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law (2005)
• Charles Journet, The Meaning of Grace (1960)
• Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Grace: Commentary on the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas, I-II, 109-114 (2010)
• Joseph P. Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action: “Merit” in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (1995)

On the Second of the Second Part of the Summa:

• Stephen J. Pope (ed.), The Ethics of Aquinas (2002)
• Lawrence Dewan, O.P., Wisdom, Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics (2008)
• Romanus Cessario, O.P., Christian Faith and the Theological Life (1996)
• Romanus Cessario, O.P., The Virtues, Or, the Examined Life (2002)
• Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., The Theological Virtues, Volume 1: On Faith (1965)
• Michael Sherwin, O.P., By Knowledge and by Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (2004)
• Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love (1997)
• Hans Urs von Balthasar, Thomas und die Charismatik: Kommentar zu Thomas von Aquin, Summa Theologica II-II 171-182, besondere Gnadengaben und die zwei Wege menschlichen Lebens (1996).

On the Third Part of the Summa:

• Romanus Cessario, O.P., Christian Satisfaction in Aquinas (1982)
• Paul Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (2009)
• Matthew Levering, Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple: Salvation according to Thomas Aquinas (2002)
• Reginald Garrigou Lagrange, O.P., Christ the Saviour: A Commentary on the Third Part of the Theological Summa of St. Thomas
• Coleman E. O’Neill, O.P., Meeting Christ in the Sacraments (2002)
• Abbot Vonier, O.S.B., A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist (2003-2004)
• Charles Journet, The Mass: The Presence of the Sacrifice of the Cross (2008)

To assist the reader in grasping Aquinas' philosophy (without which his theology "cannot be adequately understood, let alone appreciated"), Hutter offers the following recommendations:

The most thorough historical-genetic treatment of Thomas’s philosophy is John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (2000). The best account to see Thomas’ metaphysics concretely at work in a conceptual reconstruction of its main moves would be Lawrence Dewan, O.P., Form and Being (2006). Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (2003), offers an excellent treatment of Thomas’s thought, primarily his philosophy, but also aspects of his theology, that is directed to a readership influenced by analytic philosophy and the natural sciences. Inspired by an Aristotelian-Thomist integration of natural philosophy and metaphysics, Benedict M. Ashley, O.P., in his opus magnum, The Way toward Wisdom: An Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Introduction to Metaphysics (2006), offers an impressive demonstration of how the pursuit of philosophical wisdom along the lines of Thomas — metaphysics as meta-science — allows a comprehensive vision of all human sciences in a coherent and expansive framework. Jacques Maritain’s earlier and in many ways unsurpassed classic, Distinguish to Unite or The Degrees of Knowledge (1995), offers an even more expansive framework of Thomist epistemology: from the knowledge conveyed by the senses to natural philosophy and natural science, from there to metaphysical knowledge and theological knowledge, and finally to mystical knowledge. And in order to find out why indeed Thomism as a coherent intellectual tradition of philosophical discourse and inquiry proves superior to modern and postmodern modes of such discourse and inquiry, one cannot do better than turn to think through the argument advanced in what has become a classic in a very brief time: Alasdair MacIntyre’s Gifford Lectures, Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry: Tradition, Encyclopaedia, Genealogy (1990). Another set of expanded Gifford Lectures offers a brilliant and spirited defense of Thomas’s understanding of philosophical wisdom. No other recent work will help the interested reader better to understand why natural theology was absolutely indispensable to Thomas’s overall theological project than Ralph McInerny, Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers (2006). For a contemporary restatement of Thomas’s natural theology that addresses and rebuts the criticisms against natural theology raised by Kant and Heidegger, one best turns to the lucidly argued book by Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology (2009).

Those who want to find out — contrary to recent rumors — why Thomas’s philosophy is far from dead but intensely engaged by contemporary analytic philosophers might want to consult John Haldane (ed.), Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in Thomistic and Analytic Traditions (2002), John P. O’Callaghan, Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn: Toward a More Perfect Form of Existence (2003), Craig Paterson and Matthew Pugh, Analytical Thomism (2006), and David S. Oderberg, Real Essentialism (2007). For an instructive and very broad-minded Thomist engagement of philosophy as presently practiced in America, one might turn to Thomas Hibbs, Aquinas, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion: Metaphysics and Practice (2007), and for learning to appreciate the ongoing relevance of Thomas’s doctrine of natural law for contemporary political and legal theory and for the practice of law-making, the reader will profit immensely from Russell Hittinger, The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a PostChristian World (2003) and from J. Budziszewski, The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction (2009).

For those readers who are interested to find out how Thomas’s theology inspires and informs the work of contemporary theologians, they might want to turn to Ressourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments, and the Moral Life, edited by Reinhard Hütter and Matthew Levering (2010) and to The Analogy of Being: Invention of the Antichrist or the Wisdom of God?, edited by Thomas Joseph White, O.P. (2011).

By the time the reader has reached this point of the introduction it might have dawned upon him or her that this kind of invitation to a deeper exploration of Thomas’s philosophical and theological thought might presuppose a more encompassing intellectual reorientation and reeducation. Such a reader is well advised to take advantage of two rather unique books, one as precious as the other: A. G. Sertillanges, O.P., The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods (1980), and Josef Pieper, Leisure — The Basis of Culture (1998).

He looked at me and smiled.

"You understand but you do not love God."

No."

"You do not love Him at all?" he asked.

"I am afraid of Him in the night sometimes."

"You should love Him."

"I don't love much."

"Yes," he said. "You do. What you tell me about in the nights. That is not love. That is only passion and lust. When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve."

"I don't love."

"You will. I know you will. Then you will be happy."

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms

Conscience: Phenomena and Theories, by Hendrik Stoker

Conscience: Phenomena and Theories
by Hendrik Stoker (Author), Philip E Blosser (Translator).

Conscience: Phenomena and Theories was first published in German in 1925 as a dissertation by Hendrik G. Stoker under the title Das Gewissen: Erscheinungsformen und Theorien. It was received with acclaim by philosophers at the time, including Stoker’s dissertation mentor Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, and Herbert Spielberg, as quite possibly the single most comprehensive philosophical treatment of conscience and as a major contribution in the phenomenological tradition.

Stoker’s study offers a detailed historical survey of the concept of conscience from ancient times through the Middle Ages up to more modern thinkers, including Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, and Cardinal Newman. Stoker analyzes not only the concept of conscience in academic theory but also various types of theories of conscience. His work offers insightful discussions of problems and theories related to the genesis, reliability, and validity of conscience. In particular, Stoker analyzes the moral, spiritual, and psychological phenomena connected with bad conscience, which in turn illuminate the concept of conscience.

The book is deeply informed by the traditions of western Christianity. Available for the first time in an accessible English translation, with an introduction by its translator and editor, Philip E. Blosser, it promises to be of interest to philosophers, especially in Christian philosophy and phenomenology, and also to all those interested in moral and religious psychology, ethics, religion, and theology.

* * * "The scholarship is solid and amazing, displaying a sound knowledge of related literature reflected in notes and wide-ranging references. Stoker was on the forefront of knowledge about the leading figures of various fields of study. His exposition on the ideas and conceptions of the leading intellectuals of his time is impressive and in many instances could serve as a brief orientation in the views of the authors discussed by him." — Danie Strauss, North-West University

"Few subjects are more important today that the question regarding the nature of moral conscience and its origin, development, reliability, and validity in a person’s life. In this profoundly original and significant work, the late South African philosopher Hendrik Stoker (1899–1993) addresses this question in a masterly way—a point highlighted by philosophers Martin Heidegger and Max Scheler—that is of relevance not only to scholars in the areas of moral and religious psychology and philosophical anthropology but also to theologians, epistemologists, and those interested in moral issues generally. Translator Philip Blosser, who also wrote an illuminating introduction to Stoker’s thought in this English translation of Stoker’s 1925 German work, should be congratulated for retrieving Stoker’s unfortunately neglected study of conscience. May this eminently accessible and readable work be enthusiastically received for its contribution to a crucially important subject." — Eduardo Echeverria, author of Divine Election: A Catholic Orientation in Dogmatic and Ecumenical Perspective

"Blosser's scholarship is excellent. He has done the tedious work, important to scholars, of correcting Stoker’s references to his source literature when they are in error regarding date or place of publication. The text is quite readable: it is stylistically up-to-date, and the description of obscure but important phenomena is clear." — Eugene Kelly, New York Institute of Technology

"There are books that get more attention than they deserve, and there are books that, due to unfortunate historical contingencies, suffer unjust neglect. Stoker’s Conscience is one of the latter. Though Scheler and Heidegger recognized the significance of Stoker’s book when it first appeared in 1925, it did not get the reception that it merited. Philip Blosser has done an important work of retrieval by translating this work and making it available again. Everyone interested in the primordial human phenomenon of conscience has something to learn from Stoker. Notre Dame Press has given us a major new resource for a fundamental issue of philosophy.” — John Crosby, Franciscan University of Steubenville

ISBN: 978-0-268-10317-0
420 pages
Publication Year: 2018