Paul E. Sigmund – författare

Liberation theology originated in Catholic Latin America at the end of the 1960s in response to prevalent conditions of poverty and oppression. Its basic tenet was that it is the primary duty of the church to seek to promote social and economic justice. Since that time it has grown in influence, spreading to other areas of the Third World, along with bitter controversy about its ties to Marxist ideology and violent revolution. Drawing on both English and Spanish sources, this critical study examines the history, method, and doctrines of liberation theology. Sigmund considers the movement's origins in political circumstances in Latin America and provides case studies of its role in such events as the revolution and counter-revolution in Chile, and in the revolutionary movements in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Examining the thought of major liberation theologians, as well as the critical responses of the Vatican, Sigmund shows that liberation theology is a complex phenomenon, comprising a variety of kinds and degrees of radicalism. He discerns a general trend away from the Marxist rhetoric that has often characterized the movement in the past and towards the kind of grassroots populist reform typified by the Basic Christian Communities Movement.

The selections not only include St. Thomas Aquinas’s views on government, law, war, property, and sexual ethics, but also provide the theological, epistemological, and psychological background for his political and ethical thought, including the Five Proofs on the existence of God and Aquinas’s theories of knowledge, the soul, the purpose of man, and the order of the universe. Throughout the book, footnotes explain technical terms and historical, biblical, and classical references."Backgrounds and Sources" follows the text, with selections from the writings of Aristotle, St. Augustine, and Dionysius the Areopagite."Interpretations" traces Aquinas’s influence on medieval thought, on Roman Catholicism during the Renaissance, on early modern political thought (Richard Hooker and Francisco Suarez), on nineteenth-and twentieth-century papal social thought, and on contemporary Christian Democratic political parties in Europe and Latin America.The volume concludes with "Contemporary Problems in Thomistic Ethics", which contains eight analyses of the influence of Aquinas's thought on modern debates on war, contraception, and abortion.A Selected Bibliography is included.

Now available in paperback, this is the first English translation of the most important work of political thought of the fifteenth century. The Catholic Concordance is the first major treatise to argue for consent through representative councils as a major prerequisite for legitimate law and government, and is the most learned and original work associated with the conciliar movement in the late medieval church. Cusa's arguments influenced such thinkers as Luther, Bruno and Locke, and Professor Sigmund's introduction places his work in its full historical and philosophical context. The volume contains all the standard series features including a chronology, note on sources and bibliography, and as one of the earliest formulations of the view that political legitimacy rests on consent, The Catholic Concordance will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students of the history of European ideas.

Now available in paperback, this is the first English translation of the most important work of political thought of the fifteenth century. The Catholic Concordance is the first major treatise to argue for consent through representative councils as a major prerequisite for legitimate law and government, and is the most learned and original work associated with the conciliar movement in the late medieval church. Cusa's arguments influenced such thinkers as Luther, Bruno and Locke, and Professor Sigmund's introduction places his work in its full historical and philosophical context. The volume contains all the standard series features including a chronology, note on sources and bibliography, and as one of the earliest formulations of the view that political legitimacy rests on consent, The Catholic Concordance will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students of the history of European ideas.

Originally published in 1971 by Winthrop Publishers, Inc., this volume provides a discussion and analysis of the theory of natural law as it appears in contemporary political and social thought. This theory of natural law was used from the fifth century B.C. until the end of the eighteenth century to provide a universal, rational standard to determine the nature and limits of political obligation, the evaluation of competing forms of government, and the relation of law and politics to morals.