University of Notre Dame Press – serie

This book presents an analysis of classical Russian Populism, shown as an ideological structure within which many positions were possible. Walicki studies the confrontation of Populism and Marxism: changing attitudes toward Marxism in the Populist milieu and the controversy between Populists and Marxists over the future of Russia.The Controversy over Capitalism, available here in paper for the first time, reinterprets the ideology of Russian Populism. Andrzej Walicki argues that Populism is a reaction to the development of capitalism in Russia and a response to the capitalist economy and socialist ideologies of the West.

Contemporary Catholic higher education finds itself at a crucial crossroad. The issues are many and complex. How is the Catholic character of the university to be preserved and fostered while avoiding secularization on the one hand and insular sectarianism on the other? Must a majority of the faculty in a college or department be Catholic? How is Catholic to be defined in terms of culture, belief, or practice? What is the level of commitment to intellectual inquiry and the possibility of dissent that must be present on a Catholic campus? These are some of the issues that prompted Fr. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., to write a position paper and invite 29 distinguished members of the faculty and administration at the University of Notre Dame to address as they strive to envision and create a great Catholic university. The contributors explore these issues from a wide variety of religious and academic perspectives, and although their backgrounds and fields of study differ widely, they agree on a number of points. First, a great Catholic university must begin by being a great university that is also Catholic. Second, the catholicity, or universality, of a Catholic university fosters the centrality of philosophy and particularly theology as legitimate intellectual concerns, especially as they challenge the disintegration and turmoil of our modern predicament. Finally, how a Catholic university is seen as a community of service is also examined in both its intellectual and practical applications. Throughout, these essays describe a university community where reason and faith intersect and reinforce each other as they grapple with all the problems that face the transmission and growth of knowledge and the multiplication of new and complex moral problems.

Humanae Vitae, the 1968 papal encyclical on contraception, unleashed a flood of argument about church teaching authority and the extent to which the pope and the Roman doctrinal congregation claim preeminent authority over the teaching of bishops and theologians. John P. Boyle presents here the first book-length study that traces the historical and theological developments that produced official statements by the church about its own teaching authority and the assent owed to it, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Boyle suggests that in order to understand the official teaching of today we need to examine the history of such notions as "ordinary magisterium," "obsequium of the intellect and will," and "reception," backwards to their roots in post-Reformation Catholic theology and even further back to their medieval origin.Boyle begins by examining the origin of the term "ordinary magisterium," relying on materials from the Vatican Secret Archives. He describes the work of the nuncio in Munich and the curia in Rome which resulted in Pius IX's letter Tuas Libenter, which introduced "ordinary magisterium" into papal teaching. Boyle then summarizes various doctrinal questions about the magisterium, focusing on the epistemological issues relating to the magisterium and natural law. Boyle explores the term obsequium mentis et voluntatis used by the Second Vatican Council in Lumen Gentium for the assent owed to magisterial teaching. In the context of allowable dissent, he discusses the principle of probabilism. He then examines the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the 1990 CDF Instruction Donum Veritatis, which outlined the ecclesial role of the theologian. The volume ends with Boyle's thoughts on future trends in church teaching authority that will affect not only theologians but also the laity.Boyle presents the first book-length study tracing the historical and theological developments that produced official statements by the church about its own teaching authority and the assent owed to it.

The immense suffering caused by sin and evil within the modern world, especially in the light of the Holocaust, has had a profound impact on the contemporary understanding of God and his relationship to human suffering. Since the early part of this century there has been a growing consensus among theologians that God himself, within his divine nature, suffers in solidarity and love with those who suffer. This present theological position contradicts the traditional Christian understanding of almost two thousand years that God is impassible and so does not experience negative emotional states, such as suffering.Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M., resolutely challenges this contemporary view of God and suffering. Calling upon scripture, and the philosophical and theological tradition of the Fathers and Aquinas, Weinandy creatively and systematically addresses all of the contemporary concerns. He strongly advocates the incarnational truth that the Son of God actually does experience, as man, all that pertains to living an authentic human life, and so does indeed suffer.This book is both a challenge to much received contemporary philosophical and theological wisdom, and a scholarly, original, and refreshing account of the Christian Gospel. It is one of the most comprehensive Christian presentations of God and human suffering available today.

Enthusiasm, first published in 1950 by Ronald A. Knox, is the end product of thirty years of research and inspiration. In his perceptive and learned study Knox presents the personalities and religious philosophies of the various types of enthusiasts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the monatists; donatists; anabaptists; Quakers; Jansenism; quietism; methodism; and other movements.

Friendship and the Moral Life is not simply a theoretical argument about how moral theology might be done if it took friendship more seriously. Rather, the book exhibits how without friendship, our lives are morally not worth living. The book begins with a consideration of why a new model of the moral life is needed. Wadell then examines the ethics of Aristotle, who viewed the moral life as based on a specific understanding of the purpose of being human, with friendship being an important factor in enabling people to acquire virtues necessary for achieving this purpose. Through the thought of Augustine, Aelred of Reivaulx, and Karl Barth, the question is raised whether friendship is at odds with Christian love or whether their relation depends on one's narrative account of friendship. Thomas Aquinas' understanding of charity as friendship with God is examined to clarify this relationship.By locating friendship within the story of God's redemption through Christ, Wadell helps us see why friendship properly understood is integral to the Christian life and not at odds with it. Such a friendship draws us to love all others who seek God and teaches us not to restrict our concern to a special few in preferential love. The book closes by investigating how friendship as a model for the moral life might work in everyday life.

This classic of Christian apologetics seeks to persuade the skeptic that there are good reasons to believe in God even though it is impossible to understand the deity fully. First written over a century ago, the Grammar of Assent speaks as powerfully to us today as it did to its first readers. Because of the informal, non-technical character of Newman's work, it still retains its immediacy as an invaluable guide to the nature of religious belief. A new introduction by Nicholas Lash reviews the background of the Grammar, highlights its principal themes, and evaluates its philosophical originality.

Prior to the outbreak of World War II, nearly forty thousand German Catholics were involved in the German Catholic Peace League, a movement that caused many people in various countries to seriously reconsider the dimension of pacifism in their faith. During the course of the War, however, many of these same German Catholics raised no serious objection to serving in Germany's armies or swearing allegiance to Adolph Hitler.First published in 1962, German Catholics and Hitler's Wars created a furor, ultimately causing a serious reevaluation of church-state relationships and, in particular, of the morality of war. This work began as an attempt to understand the demise of the German Catholic Peace League. But because of various factors, including the destruction of vital records, Gordon C. Zahn began to consider the behavior of German Catholics in general and the evidence of their almost total conformity to the war demands of the Nazi regime. Using sociological analysis, he argues convincingly for the existence of a super-effective system of social controls, and of a selection between the competing values of Catholicism and nationalism. Although Zahn never speculates, conclusions are inescapable, chief among them that the traditional Catholic doctrine of the "just war" has ceased to be operative for Catholics in the modern world.

Experience Father Hesburgh's life story in his own words in God, Country, Notre Dame.As an adviser to presidents, special envoy to popes, theologian, author, educator, and activist, Father Hesburgh was considered the most influential priest in America for decades. His autobiography brings his phenomenal accomplishments to readers with his own voice and personal perspective. Father Hesburgh recounts his family history, describing the people who helped make him the man he became, as well as his own childhood and adolescence. He tells stories of his time at Notre Dame all the way to his retirement. "This is essentially a memory book," he explains in the acknowledgements, and there is no better way to get to know the incredible man he was and the legacy he created.

With exacting research and skillful analysis, the Cutlers revise the traditional explanations of the roots of anti-Semitism. They contend that the great outburst of anti-Semitism in Western Europe during the Middle Ages ... derived from primarily anti-Muslimism and the association of Jew with Muslim by medieval Christians.

Focusing on Mexican-American and Puerto Rican populations in Chicago, Latino Ethnic Consciousness documents the development of a collective Hispanic or Latino ethnic identity, distinct and separate from the national and cultural affiliations of Spanish-speaking groups. Author Felix Padilla explores the internal dynamics and external conditions, which have prompted this move past individual group boundaries to a broader ethnic identity.According to Padilla, the Latino ethnic identity develops from the cultural and structural similarities of two or more Spanish-speaking groups and often in response to common experiences of social inequality. In that ethnic identities have to a large extent been encouraged by the division of the labor market in America's industrial society, he argues that the Latino consciousness represents a situational ethnic identity which functions according to the needs of the groups. He describes how such conditions as poverty and racial discrimination have necessitated the assertion of a broader Latino ethnic consciousness and behavior, often more successful in social action than individual cultural or national associations.In case studies from the early 70s, Padilla examines Affirmative Action, the Spanish Coalition for Jobs—spurred by activist Hector Franco—and the Latino Institute, and their influence on the growth of Latino solidarity and mobilization in Chicago.In refining the concept of Latino and Hispanic and establishing its significance in society, Latino Ethnic Consciousness serves as an analytic framework for further study of ethnic change in America.

Focusing on Mexican-American and Puerto Rican populations in Chicago, Latino Ethnic Consciousness documents the development of a collective Hispanic or Latino ethnic identity, distinct and separate from the national and cultural affiliations of Spanish-speaking groups. Author Felix Padilla explores the internal dynamics and external conditions, which have prompted this move past individual group boundaries to a broader ethnic identity.According to Padilla, the Latino ethnic identity develops from the cultural and structural similarities of two or more Spanish-speaking groups and often in response to common experiences of social inequality. In that ethnic identities have to a large extent been encouraged by the division of the labor market in America's industrial society, he argues that the Latino consciousness represents a situational ethnic identity which functions according to the needs of the groups. He describes how such conditions as poverty and racial discrimination have necessitated the assertion of a broader Latino ethnic consciousness and behavior, often more successful in social action than individual cultural or national associations.In case studies from the early 70s, Padilla examines Affirmative Action, the Spanish Coalition for Jobs—spurred by activist Hector Franco—and the Latino Institute, and their influence on the growth of Latino solidarity and mobilization in Chicago.In refining the concept of Latino and Hispanic and establishing its significance in society, Latino Ethnic Consciousness serves as an analytic framework for further study of ethnic change in America.

According to Robert Rodes, liberation theology—with its concern for the individual's to respond to building God's kingdom; its demand that Christians align themselves with the oppressed and work to reform or dismantle unjust social structures; and its recognition of the Church as a sign of God's salvific and liberating purpose—gives to the pursuit of justice through law an eschatological significance independent of any immediate or predictable consequences. Rodes assigned new importance to laws that symbolize aspirations they cannot fully implement, and laws that confront destructive forces they cannot fully implement, and laws that confront destructive forces they cannot fully contain. He begins by briefly discussing the basic tenets of liberation theology and relates them to goals that traditional jurisprudence has assigned to law. In later chapters he develops agendas for ameliorating some of the major problems in contemporary American life, rootlessness, powerlessness. He addresses each in light of past perceptions, how a Christian should respond to them today, and how law can respond to them.

The essays in Modernity and Religion comprise the reflections of eight seminal thinkers on various aspects of the problems of modern thought and its attitude toward religion. By concentrating on the supposed chasms between modern thought and the assumptions of Christianity, the contributors do much more than show that modernity has failed by its own standards; they also demonstrate that there are truths about humans and their relations to others and to God that are necessary components of any epoch, past or present.Contributors include Louis Dupre, Francois-Xavier Guerra, Peter Koslowski, R. Emmet Kennedy, Jr.,Simon Green, James Hitchcock, Jude Dougherty, and Ernest Fortin.

In this work Alice Gallin, O.S.U., takes on questions of the identity of Catholic colleges and institutions—those that educate young lay men and women—from a broad historical perspective: How have these institutions acclimated themselves to the standards of American higher education since the 1960s and, at the same time, attempted to retain a distinctive Catholic mission?Catholic colleges and universities in the modern world are continually negotiating, questioning, and defining their Catholic identity with four major constituencies by no means always in harmony: the Roman Catholic Church, state and federal government, the broad American higher education community, and the internal constituencies of faculty, students, parents, and administration. As in her earlier study of governance change in seven Catholic colleges, one of Gallin's primary concerns is to demonstrate the complexity of the task, which rules out any simple interpretations or answers. Gallin describes the crucial impact of theological changes from Vatican II, the threat of exclusion from government funding for higher education after World War II, issues of academic freedom from the differing perspectives, the transformations in student bodies and faculty loyalties, and the struggle of Catholic colleges and universities to become respected memebers of the American higher education community. Of special interest will be her discussion of events leaading up to the issuance of Ex Corde Ecclesiae, on which debate continues. Written by a historian with a lifelong involvement in Catholic higher education, this work will evoke in readers both an appreciation of the challenges and a sense of ressponsibility for the future.

"Before us, several remote and now absurd wars." For Robin Gajdusek, these fields represent the first step toward resurrection as he retrieves a lost personal past through a writing catharsis which refocuses the vast battlefields of history into a singular voice. Resurrection, A War Journey is Gajdusek's dramatic account of a single week in mid-November 1944 which has taken him more than fifty years to wrestle into words.Part of Patton's Third Army in World War II, Gajdusek's unit was chosen to spearhead the first assault on the impenetrable fortifications of Metz, France, held by the Germans. Uniquely structured, Resurrection intertwines a variety of narrative forms to give voice to experience. Gajdusek's war memories awaken in his own poetry, short stories, discursive reflections, and sometimes, abortive essays, as well as in borrowed historical fragments.The remembering of war makes it real. His own physical and spiritual resurrection from lying near death in a shell hole to a miraculous recovery is an intense individual chronicle about the bonds of pain and suffering which intimately bind soldiers together while forcing each man into the isolation of his own mental journey. Once captured, Gajdusek finds himself among German soldiers too young or too old or too hideously wounded to be effective in the Nazi war machine. With only high school German, he makes poignant and life-saving connections with a few who seem, despite the horrors they have inflicted on each other, to understand their common humanity. Resurrection is a strong anti-war statement stemming from the only honest indicator, personal experience.

Book Four of the Summa Contra Gentiles examines what God has revealed through scripture, specifically the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the end of the world.The Summa Contra Gentiles is not merely the only complete summary of Christian doctrine that St. Thomas has written, but also a creative and even revolutionary work of Christian apologetics composed at the precise moment when Christian thought needed to be intellectually creative in order to master and assimilate the intelligence and wisdom of the Greeks and the Arabs. In the Summa Aquinas works to save and purify the thought of the Greeks and the Arabs in the higher light of Christian Revelation, confident that all that had been rational in the ancient philosophers and their followers would become more rational within Christianity.Book 1 of the Summa deals with God; Book 2, Creation; and Book 3, Providence.

Book Three, Part 1 of the Summa Contra Gentiles series is the first part of a treatise on the hierarchy of creation, the divine providence over all things, and man's relation to God.The Summa Contra Gentiles is not merely the only complete summary of Christian doctrine that St. Thomas has written, but also a creative and even revolutionary work of Christian apologetics composed at the precise moment when Christian thought needed to be intellectually creative in order to master and assimilate the intelligence and wisdom of the Greeks and the Arabs. In the Summa Aquinas works to save and purify the thought of the Greeks and the Arabs in the higher light of Christian Revelation, confident that all that had been rational in the ancient philosophers and their followers would become more rational within Christianity.Book 1 of the Summa deals with God; Book 2, Creation; and Book 4, Salvation.

Book Three, Part 2 of the Summa Contra Gentiles series is the second part of a treatise on the hierarchy of creation, the divine providence over all things, and man's relation to God.The Summa Contra Gentiles is not merely the only complete summary of Christian doctrine that St. Thomas has written, but also a creative and even revolutionary work of Christian apologetics composed at the precise moment when Christian thought needed to be intellectually creative in order to master and assimilate the intelligence and wisdom of the Greeks and the Arabs. In the Summa Aquinas works to save and purify the thought of the Greeks and the Arabs in the higher light of Christian Revelation, confident that all that had been rational in the ancient philosophers and their followers would become more rational within Christianity.Book 1 of the Summa deals with God; Book 2, Creation; and Book 4, Salvation.

In the Proslogion, St. Anselm presents a philosophical argument for the existence of God. Anselm's proof, known since the time of Kant as the ontological argument for the existence of God, has played an important role in the history of philosophy and has been incorporated in various forms into the systems of Descartes, Leibniz, Hegel, and others.Included in this edition of the Proslogion are Gaunilo's "A Reply on Behalf of the Fool" and St. Anselm's "The Author's Reply to Gaunilo." All three works are in the original Latin with English translation on facing pages. Professor Charlesworth's introduction provides a helpful discussion of the context of the Proslogion in the theological tradition and in Anselm's own thought and writing.

Though not a systematic theologian, Thomas Merton spent a lifetime writing in an immensely appealing way about the monastic tradition and mystical theology. One of the fundamental questions he examined was that of the self; for Merton the recovery of the true self is the "liberation of the image of God" in us. This study explores that process in the context of a few of Merton's works, showing his own development from "pious hostility" to the world to a more humbling acceptance of humanity. The first full-length appraisal of Merton as theologian, this is well written but contains a few too many abstract phrasessomething Merton in his best work eschewed.

Though not a systematic theologian, Thomas Merton spent a lifetime writing in an immensely appealing way about the monastic tradition and mystical theology. One of the fundamental questions he examined was that of the self; for Merton the recovery of the true self is the "liberation of the image of God" in us. This study explores that process in the context of a few of Merton's works, showing his own development from "pious hostility" to the world to a more humbling acceptance of humanity. The first full-length appraisal of Merton as theologian, this is well written but contains a few too many abstract phrasessomething Merton in his best work eschewed.

Delaney argues that the work of American philosopher Peirce (1839-1914) can best be understood as an investigation of the logic of science, the conditions for the possibility of science, and the speculative extrapolations from science.Charles S. Peirce is the most important figure in the history of American philosophy to date for several interrelated reasons. First, with regard to that intangible mix of abilities that philosophers are wont to identify as constituting a great philosophical mind—that combination of analytic acumen and imaginative vision—Peirce is clearly American's candidate for a place on the roster of the great philosophers. Given his expertise both in mathematics and the physical sciences, he possessed to an extraordinary degree those technical skills philosophers so prize, and he mobilized these in the service of a systematic vision of the workings of the human mind and its place in the cosmos.Secondly, the interaction of his personal character traits with the social expectations of the nineteenth century made of his life the kind of personal tragedy that proves continually fascinating. The association of genuine creative genius with personal failure is the stuff, if not always of legends, at least of enduring curiosity. Finally, the issues in the philosophy of science, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind that were central to his philosophical project just happen to the ones that are still on center stage on the contemporary philosophical scene. HIs reflections still speak direct to our questions and, given the ineradicable egocentrism of human enterprises, this assures him of our continued attention. —from the Preface

An argument for a re-evaluation of Jonathan Swift's place in 18th-century literary history. Combining history, biography and literary criticism, it sets out to restore his life and writing to their proper landscape, by emphasising the influence on Swift of his Irish involvements and environs.

A Short History of Ethics is a significant contribution written by one of the most important living philosophers. For the second edition Alasdair MacIntyre has included a new preface in which he examines his book "thirty years on" and considers its impact. It remains an important work, ideal for all students interested in ethics and morality.

Drawn from fifteen years of work, The Sorrows of Eros and Other Poems presents a rich selection of the verse of Henry Weinfield. Many of the poems contained here appear for the first time. The sensuous lyricism of the English tradition and the classic austerity of philosophical discourse are brought together in this poetry in a way that is unique in our times. A master of rhyme and meter, Weinfield's sonnets, tercets, and rhyme royal fall upon the ear with rare grace. Brilliantly allusive in their frames of reference, they are woven from the stuff of Dante, Shakespeare, and Shelley: Plato, Genesis, and the Book of Job. Yet Weinfield is also given to the kind of rigorous intellectual speculation that one usually associates with poets such as William Bronk or George Oppen, and a refined process of abstraction never fails to give the work an utterly contemporary edge. His subject matter is equally challenging; here are poems about political violence, the anomie of the postmodern city, the bittersweet disasters of the erotic life. Powerfully chastening, these poems nevertheless can comfort, charm, and delight; they are "The luminous and liquid solacings/ That language proffers against the void."

The Great Lakes exert a considerable influence on the weather of the surrounding area, causing fog, clouds, breezes, snowfall, and other "lake effects." This clearly written and profusely illustrated book explains the atmospheric processes underlying the characteristic weather patterns of the region, discusses the climatic history of the Great Lakes, and evaluates the role of air pollution and nuclear power plants.Weather and Climate of the Great Lakes Region, continues to be a popular textbook for introductory classes in meteorology and climatology.

Eugene Wildman's latest collection offers a wide-ranging tour of the final decades of the twentieth century. In a series of related stories, The World of Glass touches on the crucial issues and events that came to define and shape this period, including the corrosive impact of the Vietnam War. Through his protagonist, Todd White, Wildman explores the theme of spiritual isolation in a variety of gritty settings.Issues of identity also play a key role in Wildman's tightly-drawn stories, with look-alikes and the erotic attraction of the "Other" featured in pieces such as "Songbird," in which there are two Juliets, and in a sense a third, and "The Waning of the Middle Ages," in which a new tenant moves into Saul Bellow's old apartment. Wildman's stories are replete with the betrayal of love and lovers. The wounds inflicted by and for love haunt his characters, and yet they try vainly to hold on to love.The stories in The World of Glass, though classic in the deepest sense, are also, in their varied way, distinctive and contemporary. This first-rate collection is the work of a powerful and accomplished writer.

John Murray Spear was one of nineteenth-century America's most interesting characters. A leading social agitator against slavery and capital punishment, Spear also became the nation's most flamboyant spiritualist, inventor of "spirit machines," and advocate of free love. In his captivating biography, John Buescher brings to life Spear's superlatively odd story. While no photograph or engraving of Spear exists, and his letters and personal papers are scarce, Buescher recreates in this book a sympathetic, even heroic, figure who spent the most energetic decades of his career absent, in a sense, from his own life, displaced by other spirits.Born in 1804, John Murray Spear started his career as a Universalist minister. He later was a close colleague of William Lloyd Garrison and Theodore Parker in the abolitionist movement, an operator on the underground railroad in Boston, an influential leader in the effort to end the death penalty and to reform prison conditions, and a public advocate of the causes of pacifism, women's rights, labor reform, and socialism. Buescher chronicles Spear's work as an activist among the New England reformers and Transcendentalists such as Bronson Alcott, Lydia Maria Child, and Dorothea Dix.In mid-life Spear turned to the new revelation of spiritualism and came under the thrall of what he believed were spirit messages. Spear's spirits dictated that he and a small group of associates embark on plans for a perpetual motion machine, an electric ship propelled by psychic batteries, a vehicle that would levitate in the air, and a sewing machine that would work with no hands. As Buescher documents, Spear's spirit-guided efforts to harness technology to human liberation—sexual and otherwise—were far stranger than anyone outside his closest associates imagined, and were aimed at the eventual manufacturing of human beings and the improvement of the race. Buescher also examines the way in which Spear's story was minimized by his embarrassed fellow radicals. In the last years of his life, retired by the spirits and regarded by fellow Gilded Age progressives as a visitor from another age, if not another planet, Spear helped organize support for anarchist, socialist, peace, and labor causes. Buescher portrays Spear's life as an odd mixture of comic absurdity and serious foreshadowing of the future—for both good and ill—that provides us with a unique perspective on nineteenth-century American religious and social life.