Dan Farrelly - Böcker

This volume, the original version of which was published in 1988, brings to a close the autobiographical writings of a modern Christian philosopher who lived through the two World Wars and the ecclesiastical upheaval in the Catholic Church in the context of the Second Vatican Council. What stamps this philosopher throughout the course of his life – with all its social and political uncertainties – is his constant dedication to truth and his manifest unswerving integrity.Themes with which the reader of his previous works would be well acquainted recur in this volume. The dedicated Catholic philosopher, who preferred his independence as a trainer of teachers to the less independent role of a professor in a Catholic university, was quite prepared to criticize developments in the Church which resulted from Vatican II. In his defense of the sacred, which he deemed threatened by popularizing trends in the Church, he criticized what he saw as the watered down language in modern German translations of Church liturgical texts; the growing preference for secular garb; and the compromising developments which saw the sacramental signs – surrounding baptism, for instance – being reduced to such an extent that they no longer had the power to signify their sacred meaning even to a well-intentioned congregation.A great lover of the philosophy of Plato, Augustine, and Aquinas – among many others –, Pieper highlighted the need for living a life of truth. He did not consider truth to be merely something abstract but as something to be lived existentially. While he could explain his philosophy in clear rational terms, something which especially stood to him in his post-war lectures to eager students who were hungry for intellectual guidance and leadership, the great interest of his philosophy was, possibly, his preoccupation with mystery – that which impinges on our inner lives but frustrates all our attempts to account for it in purely rational terms.As a philosopher – one might say a Christian philosopher – Pieper seems to have observed the traditional boundaries drawn between philosophy and theology. His generation was exposed to the modernist debates in the Church. It would have been deemed heretical to say that the Divine could be grasped by our purely human thought processes – access to the Divine being only possible through faith and grace. Pieper was no heretic. But he was also not altogether conservative. In fact, his philosophy, closely allied to existentialism – despite his care, for instance, to distance himself from the negative existentialism of Sartre – focused on the individual’s inner existential grasp of the most profound reality. Truth is to be found within us, even if it remains a mystery. What lies beyond death is, for the individual, the ultimate mystery.

Volume 2 of Josef Pieper’s three-part autobiography is here presented for the first time in English translation. The volume represents not just a simple continuation of a seamless story. The first volume dealt with Pieper’s life from his birth in 1904 to the time of World War 2. The current volume deals with the post-war years, 1945–1964, offering a personal documentation of the institutional rubble through which an emerging academic and philosopher had to find his way. This included finding work, re-establishing himself in the family home, completing his academic education, and beginning to teach philosophy in a climate of despair and disillusionment. In this context, the quintessential Pieper emerges. His positive philosophy of being, firmly based on Plato and Thomas Aquinas, finds extraordinary resonance with students, who flock to his lectures in surprising numbers — seeking and finding a positive way forward. His dedication to training teachers sees him declining higher academic posts in Germany in favor of work which, though less lucrative and more obscure, he considered more fruitful. These years are also marked by his fiercely independent stance over against the Catholic hierarchy — despite his staunch adherence to the tradition values of Christianity. His popularity as a philosopher and teacher quickly spread to America, where he was invited to teach at famous universities. His fame led to further travels — to Switzerland, England, France, Spain, India, China, Saigon, and Thailand. Such travels enriched his thinking and nourished the open-mindedness of the Western philosopher.

Josef Pieper’s readers become accustomed to the clarity of thought and expression in his writing—in combination with the impression he gives of being profoundly in touch with fundamentals. His conceptual clarity emerges from his awareness of basic human experience.This book began life in 1933 as a small book produced in a sociological research institute and was encumbered, not surprisingly, with unwieldy academic jargon. It took on a new life as a result of a challenging statement by Max Frisch, who, in 1976, stated that establishing peace in the world required the transformation of society into a community.Amazed by the naivety of Frisch’s claim, Pieper set about defining three types of social interaction and describing how they function. 1. The community is an intimate grouping based on mutual affirmation of its members what they share in common. The family is an example. 2. Society is the sphere we enter on leaving the intimate circle in which we live. Here, tact, etiquette and contract come into play for the protection of one another’s privacy. 3. Organization is the sphere dominated by usefulness of the individual.Pieper is particularly concerned about the cog in the wheel mentality of certain political regimes. The book is a characteristic example of the philosopher’s concern with political reality.

Josef Pieper’s readers become accustomed to the clarity of thought and expression in his writing—in combination with the impression he gives of being profoundly in touch with fundamentals. His conceptual clarity emerges from his awareness of basic human experience.This book began life in 1933 as a small book produced in a sociological research institute and was encumbered, not surprisingly, with unwieldy academic jargon. It took on a new life as a result of a challenging statement by Max Frisch, who, in 1976, stated that establishing peace in the world required the transformation of society into a community.Amazed by the naivety of Frisch’s claim, Pieper set about defining three types of social interaction and describing how they function. 1. The community is an intimate grouping based on mutual affirmation of its members what they share in common. The family is an example. 2. Society is the sphere we enter on leaving the intimate circle in which we live. Here, tact, etiquette and contract come into play for the protection of one another’s privacy. 3. Organization is the sphere dominated by usefulness of the individual.Pieper is particularly concerned about the cog in the wheel mentality of certain political regimes. The book is a characteristic example of the philosopher’s concern with political reality.

Pieper collects his contributions to radio programs and to a number of journals and periodicals. The book also includes a selection of notes and comments. The contributions fall into two main groups: the period which encompasses the immediate pre-war period as well as the war period itself, and the post-war period up to 1953.The reader becomes witness, first, to Pieper’s problems with the National Socialist regime and, second, to his problems with the ensuing challenges to religious life as it is exposed to increasing secularization.As with his later works, Pieper draws on traditional wisdom which, for him, dates back to Plato and Aristotle, and in these contributions we also see his early preoccupation with the wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas. The normal boundaries between philosophy and theology are here not clearly drawn. Pieper is preoccupied with the mystery of our world and its importance as a source of symbols signifying deeper levels of reality. He sees the sacraments as achieving their fundamental effect from divine intervention, but he also highlights the need for careful observance of the rituals, so that their meaning is not obscured. Proper execution of the sacrament should enable the faithful to enjoy the existential fruits of their participation in the ritual.  This work manifests the organic cohesion of Pieper’s thinking, and it reflects his profound awareness of the role to be played not so much by the professional (academic) philosopher as by the existential Philosophizer.

IT IS CLEAR THAT, IF THE PLAY IS TO LIVE, it must live largely off the dialogue, and that the dialogue has to be based on psychological tensions which are recognisable as part of our modern life. The production of Goethe's play has to guarantee that the plot gathers momentum and that the tension mounts to an almost unbearable degree for Iphigenie when she sings the song of the fates at the end of Act Four. Faced with the dilemma of betraying Thoas or destroying the Greeks, tempted to despair of the gods - to curse them an accept that her family is cursed - Iphigenie is a breaking point. This is no cold, marble statue, Greek or otherwise.