Philosophy

Abuse of Language--Abuse of Power

Josef Pieper

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.

"Who but Josef Pieper could span the distance between Plato and ourselves, the mid-fourth century B.C. and these waning years of the twentieth century, and enable us to hear the criticism of the Sophists as a contemporary rebuke? Pieper transcends the academy and enters the Academy. He is wise." -- Ralph McInerny, University of Notre Dame

60 pp, Sewn Softcover, $7.95 . . . ALAP-P (ISBN 0-89870-362X)
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Divine Madness

An Interpretation of Plato's Thought - Josef Pieper

The popular Thomistic philosopher focuses on the thesis of Plato, which at first sight appears strange and unrealistic, that those experiences that advance human life to its true fullness are bestowed on us only during a ``god-given'' state of ``being-beside-oneself''. This thesis is then confronted with our contemporary and psychoanalytical knowledge of man's nature, as well as with the Christian conception of man's existence, thus revealing its amazing unexpected relevance.

59 pp, Sewn Softcover, $7.95, DIM-P (ISBN 0-89870-5576)
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Faith, Hope, Love

Josef Pieper

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.

Josef Pieper, perhaps the most popular Thomist philosopher of the twentieth century, was schooled in the Greek classics and the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. He also studied philosophy, law, and sociology, and he has been a professor at the University of Munster, West Germany. His numerous books have been widely praised by both the secular and religious press.

304 pp, Sewn Softcover, $19.75, FHL-P, ISBN 0-89870-623-8
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Guide to Thomas Aquinas

Josef Pieper

One of the great philosophers of the 20th Century, Josef Pieper, gives a penetrating introduction and guide to the life and works of perhaps the greatest philosopher ever, St. Thomas Aquinas. Pieper provides a biography of Aquinas, an overview of the 13th century he lived in, and a wonderful synthesis of his vast writings. Pieper shows how Aquinas reconciled the pragmatic thought of Aristotle with the Church, proving that realistic knowledge need not preclude belief in the spiritual realities of religion. According to Pieper, the marriage of faith and reason proposed by Aquinas in his great synthesis of a "theologically founded worldliness" was not merely one solution among many, but *the* great principle expressing the essence of the Christian West. Pieper reveals his extraordinary command of original sources and excellent secondary materials as he illuminates the thought of the great intellectual Doctor of the Church.

"The purpose of these lectures is to sketch, against the background of his times and his life, a portrait of Thomas Aquinas as he truly concerns philosophical-minded persons today, not merely as a historical personage but as a thinker who has something to say to our own era. I earnestly hope that the speculative attitude which was Thomas' most salient trait as Christianity's `universal teacher' will emerge clearly and sharply from my exposition." -- Josef Pieper

"One of the best introductions to the thought of Saint Thomas by one of the leading figures in the Thomistic revival." -- Ralph McInerny, University of Notre Dame

182 pp, Sewn Softcover, $16.95, GTA-P (ISBN 0-89870-3190)
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Hope and History

Josef Pieper

The famous and popular Thomistic philosopher addresses the topic of hope from the perspective of human history and asks the questions: ``Is man's hope such that it can find any fulfillment in the field of human history?'' And: ``Is man's human history such that it can give us any grounds not to despair?'' Pieper looks at the movement of history, the idea of progress, man's hope for a better future, and he counters the temptation to despair with a Christian philosophy of hope based on faith in divine providence and the compatibility of faith and reason.

112 pp, Sewn Softcover, $12.95, HH-P (ISBN 0-89870-4650)
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In Defense of Philosophy
Classical Wisdom Stands Up to Modern Challenges

Josef Pieper

This book is an engagement between a great modern philosopher defending classical philosophy against an army of challengers to the very notion of philosophy as classically conceived. It is written very much in the spirit of the "scholastic disputations" in the medieval universities, which produced the great Summas: a mutual search for truth, a philosophical laboratory, a careful winnowing of each objection. Such objectivity is lamentably rare in contemporary philosophy.

In order to combat modern misunderstandings of challenges to the classical concept of philosophy, Pieper shows us the unique and uniquely valuable thing philosophy is as conceived by his masters: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and above all, Aquinas. Along this path he scatters gems of insight, such as: art and religion as Philosophy's defenders; the relationship between philosophy and science; philosophy as "seeing and saying"; and philosophy as rooted in meditation and loving contemplation. Pieper emphasizes that philosophy is something all human beings do, and should be the better for doing.

128 pp, Sewn Softcover, $12.95, IDP-P (ISBN 0-89870-3972)
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In Search of the Sacred
Contributions to An Answer

Josef Pieper

This book is neither a deriding of the worldly "profane" nor a splitting up of reality into a supposedly unholy realm over against one which alone is consecrated to God. But something which threatens to be forgotten, to disappear from the memory of man is fixed upon here: namely, that in this world which is given us as our life's environment, not only does the striving to take care of our daily needs possess an obvious right, as well the marketplace, the economy, scholarly research etc.; but in their very midst there is something in the fullest sense "beyond" our daily concerns: "God's tent" among men, the sanctuary where, set off from the round of daily work, the bodily presence of the eternal Logos become man is honored and celebrated.

"We must in the liturgy retrieve the dimension of the sacred." -- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

"Josef Pieper is proof that some grow wise as well as old. This book is typical of the deceptively modest meditations that have won him a world-wide audience. `Is nothing sacred anymore?' is a plaintive question often heard. Pieper enables us to see what a thoroughly secularized culture has lost and at the same time he draws attention to the Church, the altar, the Eucharist." -- Ralph McInerny, University of Notre Dame

"Josef Pieper's profound insights are impressive and even formidable." -- New York Times Book Review

PARTIAL LIST OF CONTENTS

-- The Sacred and Its Negation

-- Man's Poverty and Richness

-- What Makes a Priest?

-- What Makes a Building a Church?

-- Making the Sacred Tangible

-- To Be "Contemporary"

136 pp, Sewn Softcover, $11.95, ISS-P (ISBN 0-89870-3018)
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Josef Pieper: An Anthology

Edited by Josef Pieper

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.

254 pp, Sewn Softcover, $16.95, JPA-P (ISBN 0-89870-2267)
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Living the Truth

Josef Pieper

This volume presents illuminating treatises of Josef Pieper on Thomistic anthropology and on the principles of right human behavior based on anthropology.

With his customary lucidity, Pieper shows how all reality is positioned between the mind of God and the mind of man and is the basis for both man's unquenchable yearning and the measure of all man's knowledge. He then develops the Thomistic position that reality is also the basis for the good and therefore the norm of conscience and ethical action. As Pieper himself expresses in part of the thesis of the second treatise, "An insight into the nature of the good as rooted in objective being, of itself compels us to carry it out in a definite human attitude, and it makes certain attitudes impossible."

Josef Pieper was schooled in the Greek classics and the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. He also studied philosophy, law and sociology, and has been a professor at the University of Munster, Germany. His books have been widely praised by both the secular and religious press.

Partial List of Contents

-- Reality as the Measure of Cognition

-- The Identity of Mind and Reality

-- Knowledge and Truth

-- The Structure of Moral Action

-- Objectivity as an Ethical Attitude

-- From Plato to Francis Bacon

-- Thomas Aquinas: All That Is, Is True

-- The Nature of Knowledge

-- All Things Are Veiled and Unfathomable

-- The Unquenchable Yearning of Man

160 pp, Sewn Softcover, $16.95, LTT-P (ISBN 0-89870-2615)
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The Nature and Mission of Theology

by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Cardinal Ratzinger wrote this book in response to the dialogue going on today concerning theology and the clarification of its methods, its mission and its limits which he thinks has become urgent. Ratzinger states: "To do theology--as the Magisterium understands theology--it is not sufficient merely to calcualte how much religion can reasonably be expected of man and to utilize bits and pieces of the Christian tradition accordingly. Theology is born when the arbitrary judgment of reason encounters a limit, in that we discover something which we have not excogitated ourselves but which has been revealed to us. For this reason, not every religious theory has the right to label itself as Christian or Catholic theology simply because it wishes to do so; whoever would lay claim to this title is obligated to accept as meaningful the prior given which goes along with it."

134 pp, Sewn Softcover, $14.95, NMT-P (ISBN 0-89870-538X)
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On Hope

Josef Pieper

This is a masterpiece of a forgotten virtue by one of the great Christian philosophers of the twentieth century.

96 pp, Sewn Softcover, $12.95, OH-P (ISBN 0-89870-0671)
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Only the Lover Sings
Art and Contemplation

Josef Pieper

The popular and highly regarded Pieper speaks of the necessity for human persons to be able to contemplate and appreciate beauty to develop their full humanity. Pieper expresses succinctly that the foundation of the human person in society is leisure, free time in which one can contemplate, be receptive to being and its beauty.

"Joy is more profound than sadness, and our capacity to delight in what is mostly determines what we are. Josef Pieper's welcome guidance on leisure, festivity, and contemplation is the most secure and most exciting way to arrive at, and to delight in, the truth in things. Pieper teaches us through music, sculpture, and poetry to see the luminous beauty that reflects an origin deeper than themselves."

-- James V. Schall, S.J., Georgetown University

60 pp, Sewn Softcover, $9.95, OLS-P (ISBN 0-89870-3026)
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Book:
The Apostolate of Holy Motherhood
By S.T.D. Mark I. Miraville
Published in 1991, Riehle Foundation (Milford, OH)
Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint — Apparitions and miracles — United States.
Jesus Christ — Apparitions and miracles — United States.
Motherhood — Religious aspects — Catholic Church.

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THE BOOK OF DESTINY By Fr. H.B. Kramer
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