God, Philosophy, Universities

MacIntyre is the master craftsman of the guild of the Catholic philosophical tradition; we are his apprentices, and studying his masterful narration of this tradition's history...is our first task. * Modern Age * There is a prophetic quality to much of the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, a quality present in his new book, God, Philosophy, Universities. . . . MacIntyre has offered a framework for moral discourse that tries to reconcile the claims of historicism with the need for objectivity. . . . MacIntyre brought us along on an extraordinary intellectual journey. * Commonweal Magazine * Fascinating. * Logos: Journal Of Eastern Christian Studies * While not a work of academic philosophyMacIntyre intends it for undergraduate seniors and first-year graduate studentsthis book can profitably be read by any reader of First Things. In fact, it should be so read, as either an introduction or a refresher to the great tradition, and then passed on to a friend. * First Things * Without ostentation he displays his great learning, pointing out, almost in passing, that what many an undergraduate thinks is the height of modern philosophy was actually knocked out by Augustine more than a millennium beforehand. * Comment Magazine: Cardus * MacIntyre incorporates . . . his view that modern university education has become fragmented and absent of any inquiry into the relationship between the disciplines, leaving little place for theology or philosophy. * Publishers Weekly * One could not wish for a better statement of either the nature and promise of Catholic philosophy or its perilous position in the contemporary university. * Theology * This compact book will be very useful to undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars of the philosophy of religions, and for clergy. Highly recommended. * CHOICE * MacIntyre has offered a book that serves its intended non-specialist audience well. He explains the Catholic philosophical tradition in a way that will be accessible to intelligent readers and shows how the tradition truly is philosophical. MacIntyre's contributions are welcome and go some distance to showing how theism is ultimately more satisfying from a strictly philosophical standpoint. A useful starting point for those many students and lay people who have been denied the very sort of education that MacIntyre here espouses, including and especially within our Catholic universities. * American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly * MacIntyre indicts the university for its lack of integration, the disconnections among the disciplines, and the intellectual disregard of one discipline for another. * The Chronicle Review * Alasdair MacIntyre, one of the worlds leading moral philosophers and author of the classic volume After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, would give academic theology a central role. In his most recent book, God, Philosophy, Universities, he appeals to John Henry Newmans The Idea of a University (1854) to argue that philosophy, and its close ally, theology, make a university what it should be a 'universe' of knowledge. Universities today, MacIntyre complains, keep their disciplines separate. Hence students are being trained up for specialised job opportunities rather than for life, while research programmes fail to make connections across the broad span of neighbouring subjects. He advocates that theology should listen to, and be in constant conversation with, every other academic discipline if universities are to fulfil their function as places where students and teachers explore what it means to be human. * Financial Times * MacIntyre thinks that lay Catholics, especially those engaged in current controversies that make philosophical claims, should know something about the history and tradition of Catholic philosophy. His account pivots on St. Thomas Aquinas, of course. Before him are Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Islamic and Jewish influences, and other topics. * Research Book News * Beau

Alasdair MacIntyre is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He has written 16 books, including After Virtue, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, A Short History of Ethics, and, more recently, Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913-1922.

Introduction God, philosophy, Universities Chapter 1 God Chapter 2 Philosophy Chapter 3 God and philosophy Chapter 4 God, philosophy, universities Prologues to the Catholic philosophical tradition Chapter 5 Augustine Chapter 6 Boethius, PseudoDionysius, Anselm Chapter 7 The Islamic and Jewish prologue to Catholic philosophy Chapter 8 The genesis of the Catholic philosophical tradition Aquinas and after Chapter 9 Aquinas: philosophy and our knowledge of God Chapter 10 Aquinas: philosophy and the life of practice Chapter 11 Aquinas: God, philosophy, universities Chapter 12 After Aquinas: Scotus and Ockham The threshold of modern philosophy Chapter 13 From scholasticism to scepticism Chapter 14 Descartes, Pascal, and Arnauld Modernity Chapter 15 The Catholic absence from philosophy and the Catholic return to philosophy 1700-1850 Chapter 16 Newman: God, philosophy, universities Chapter 17 From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio Chapter 18 Fides et Ratio: the Catholic philosophical tradition redefined Chapter 19 Now: Universities, philosophy, God Index About the Author