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This edition is the first that treats Hamlet as the work of a philosophical poet concerned with knowing the nature of the world, particularly the human world. Where conventional editions lift the play out of its specific setting and analyze it in the light of the social, cultural, and political circumstances of Elizabethan England, Jan Blits takes the play's dramatic setting of early Renaissance Denmark as indispensable to understanding its rich meaning. In providing notations and commentary on Hamlet, Blits sets aside the historicist principle or prejudice, pervasive throughout literary studies today. Blits, by contrast, strives to understand the play entirely on its own terms. He inflicts no literary or philosophic theory--no parochial professional preconceptions--upon the play. Instead, he aims to be fully receptive to what Shakespeare wrote and try to draw out of the play the substance that he deliberately put into it. His treatment of Horatio is particularly stunning in this regard. Though they differ from each other, there are two generally trustworthy texts of Hamlet--namely, the Second Quarto (1604-5) and the Folio (1623). Blits does not consult the First Quarto (1603), which contains a much different dialogue, some different character names, and omits some famous passages. Blits points out important variations and refrains from pronouncing which are clearly right or wrong. He omits references to secondary works (including his own) as distractions from the play itself. The Bibliography lists many primary and secondary readings that readers will find helpful. He follows the line-numbering of the New Cambridge Shakespeare Edition, edited by Philips Edwards. Teachers and students of Shakespeare will find a valuable resource in Blits' new edition of Hamlet, which brings readers as close to the mind and heart of the real Shakespeare as possible and remains untouched by the fingerprints of literary theory and other mechanisms unknown and inconsequential to Shakespeare. This is also an indispensable tool in helping teachers in one of the greatest challenges of the classical classroom--namely, how to teach Shakespeare?

Paul Seaton's Public Philosophy and Patriotism: The Declaration and Us is a very countercultural book. It advances the provocative thesis that not only is the Declaration worthy of our study today, but its principles and way of thinking about politics can and should be used to judge us and our politics today. That's countercultural. While conservatives still have a warm place for the document in their hearts, one rarely hears them apply it to today's debates. Progressives tend to take two contradictory tacks toward the founding document: on one hand, it's the negligible product of hypocritical white males, on another, it limns the "ideals" and "values" of the American project that History is charged with fulfilling. Neither of these views takes the document intellectually seriously. Jefferson, however, articulated a different view when he called the Declaration "an expression of the American mind" at the time of the Revolution. Here was a self-conscious, self-confident American mind, ready to take on the world. Taking his cue from Jefferson, Seaton takes the Declaration seriously. He takes it seriously as the expression of a mind that confidently judged despotic designs, but also grasped the principles of free government and free and reasonable politics and looked forward to a country embodying them. Seaton argues that both these dimensions of Declaration political thought are applicable today. He does so in an interesting way. For a number of years, he penned a Fourth of July essay on "the Declaration and Us" for the Law & Liberty website. On that occasion, he provided an exposition of some theme of the Declaration and applied it to a contemporary debate or issue. Over the years, they added up to a rather full exposition of the document, as well as an ongoing commentary on American political life. With this collection, the essentials of the Declaration's view of politics are laid bare, and significant threats to freedom-loving Americans are identified. This is the bold claim and aim of this unique book. At the beginning and end of the collection, Seaton makes a point of dating the completion of the manuscript on April 18th. When the curious reader looks up the date, he finds that it is the date when Paul Revere undertook his famous ride. In this way, the author indicates his judgment of the dire circumstances in which we live today and the patriotic models to which he hearkens. In the form of an explication de texte, this collection is a call to arms against today's enemies of ordered liberty.

The Conquistador with His Pants Down: David Ramsay Steele's Legendary Lost Lectures assembles fourteen of the penetrating, provocative presentations by this controversial libertarian speaker and writer. The targets of Steele's acerbic and witty criticisms include Scott Adams, Mattias Desmet, Sigmund Freud, Sam Harris, Karl Marx, George Orwell, Jordan Peterson, Ayn Rand, and all things conventionally Wokish. Steele's heroes encompass Immanuel Kant, Robert Michels, Ludwig von Mises, Dexter Morgan, Karl Popper, and all who, howsoever confusedly, come down on the side of liberty, truth, and unsocial justice. "Why Do We See Lysenko-Type Mass Delusions in Western Democracies?" We've learned enough to know that Global Warming Catastrophism and the mass homicide of the Covid "vaccines" are totalitarian insanities. But can Mattias Desmet's theory fully account for these recurring outbreaks of mass psychosis? "Here's Why There Can Never Be a Marxist Revolution" There are two irrefutable reasons why genuine Marxism can never succeed. But failed fake Marxism is a real threat to all of us, especially the working class. "The Five Times George Orwell Changed His Mind" We can best understand George Orwell's thinking by looking at the five occasions when he underwent a major change in his political outlook. "The Most Evil Man in History" Ayn Rand and her slavish worshipers depict Immanuel Kant as the Fountainhead of Evil. But in point of fact, Kant was a far greater friend of liberty and objective truth than the muddleheaded Miss Rand could ever be. "Sam Harris and How to Spot Dangerous Ideas" Sam Harris made his fame and his fortune by claiming that suicide bombings occur because of what the Quran tells Muslims. But the truth is that suicide bombings--by Muslims, atheists, and, yes, Christians--occur because they are the most cost-effective means for militarily weak populations to hit back against oppressive foreign occupation. "Dexter the Busy Bee" The serial killer Dexter Morgan confers a huge social benefit by deleting bad guys, illustrating the point made by Dr. Bernard Mandeville, that viciously-motivated behavior may give us a valuable public outcome. "The Conquistador with His Pants Down" Dr. Sigmund Freud, who likened himself to a conquistador, marketed a deceptive story about what his patients had told him. This false tale has been thoroughly exposed, and the slippery doctor doesn't come out smelling like a rose. "Dr. Peterson! Clean Up Your Theory!" Jordan Peterson is a teller of stories and of stories about stories. But his stories about stories are provably false, and his interpretations of the stories are no more than Rorschach patterns for his own subjective fantasies. "Is It a Fact that Facts Don't Matter?" Scott Adams denigrates truth, yet he continually appeals to facts. And the fact is that truth is a powerful influence in human affairs. "An Inconceivably Humble Defense of the Inconceivably Holy Book" In the year 112,075, humankind has recovered from the latest Ice Age and founded a new religion based on an ancient book. You'll be surprised what our future descendants make of this charming tale recovered from our time. "Some Second Thoughts on Atheism" The author of Atheism Explained comes back to look again at this messy topic and mop up some of the mess. David Ramsay Steele is the author of The Mystery of Fascism: David Ramsay Steele's Greatest Hits (2019), Orwell Your Orwell: A Worldview on the Slab (2017), Therapy Breakthrough: Why Some Psychotherapies Work Better than Others (with Michael R. Edelstein and Richard K. Kujoth, 2013), Atheism Explained: From Folly to Philosophy (2008), Three Minute Therapy: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life (with Michael R. Edelstein, 1997), and From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation (1992). Rave Reviews of Dr. Steele's earlier books: The Mystery of Fascism "From Mussolini to The Matrix, from vegetarianism to mental illness, Steele's relentless logic jolts us awake." --Thomas E. Woods, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History Orwell Your Orwell "an absolutely dazzling book on Orwell, casting a brilliant new light, not just on Orwell himself, but on the entire intellectual history of our time." --Yuri Maltsev, editor of Requiem for Marx Therapy Breakthrough "Prepare to embark upon a rollicking yet highly informative journey through the intense world of psychotherapy!" --Debbie Joffe Ellis, author of How to Hug a Porcupine Atheism Explained "Covers essentially all the arguments for and against God, in science, philosophy, and theology, with sympathy for the believer's views even as they are shown to be untenable," --Victor J. Stenger, author of God and the Atom Three Minute Therapy "Of all the books that explain REBT in simple, clear, and highly usable form, Three Minute Therapy is one of the very best." --Albert Ellis, founder of REBT From Marx to Mises "a well written and tightly argued defense of Mises's position that does much to dispel the 'mystery' of the socialist calculation debate." --Mark Blaug, Economic Journal

Everyone must become a philosopher. The alternate is to forego living a human life, or as D. Q. McInerny illustrates, to run while choosing to be hamstrung. But not all philosophizing is equal, and it requires discipline and systematic study. In "creative impatience with ignorance" and "an unswerving commitment to the truth," one can be confident he is at least moving in the right direction toward genuine philosophy. But most importantly, philosophy requires teachers. To philosophize is, after all, to be an eternal student, a person who even while instructing others relies on the guidance found in the 'fertile' human wisdom cultivated throughout the ages. And the most fecund of all philosophy, according to McInerny, is that contained in Aristotelian-Thomism. His concise and thorough defense of the philosophical life and its lodestar, Thomism, must be read as deliberately as it was written. For McInerny makes a bold claim: if one is truly serious about philosophizing, an encounter with the essentials of Thomism is fundamental and indicates a path for the human mind unlike anything other systems or traditions of thought can offer. This book begins with logic and is followed by introductions to the philosophy of nature, philosophical psychology, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, metaphysics and natural theology. It is a companion for students of all ages who have yet to spend quality time with Thomas Aquinas. And it is a real delight to do so in the company of McInerny, who in Being Ethical (2019) has already proven himself to be the affable and able teacher every thinking person longs to meet along the course of his search for truth.

This book aims to respond to the need for explanation in the formation and care of souls by addressing the consonance and individuality in human nature, and the ways in which ordering in personality and psychology are not inhibiting, but potentially liberating and necessary for self-identity. Francisco Insa draws ffrom his medical and theological background, which includes both clinical and pastoral experience, to address all those responsible for the formation of others--including partents, teachers, priests, spiritual directors--and enables them to confront their roles as formators with greater insight and confidence. --Book cover.

"Consonant with its commitment to publish seminal works in the field of canon law, St. Augustine's Press is pleased to make available the first volume in a series that will undoubtedly endure as a masterpiece of scholarship. Carlos Josâe Errâazuriz, Professor of Canon Law at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross (Rome) has provided a comprehensive and insightful treatment of rights, justice, and law in the Catholic Church, beginning with the most basic questions regarding the essence of these realities. His responses exhibit the perspective of that which is just in the Church, which consists of ecclesial juridical goods: the Word of God, the sacraments, the freedom of the children of God, and sacred potestas. This work vindicates the institution of law, but also addresses the "spontaneity" of just freedom proper to what has been instituted by Christ. Errâazuriz presents more than the current Code of Canon Law. He instills a realistic perspective of right and law in the Church, and in so doing fills a massive gap in English scholarship. No introduction to canon law available in English rivals Errâazuriz's description of justice in the Church and its relationship with communion and sacramentality. Volume I is comprised of the first three chapters of the original, Corso fondamentale sul diritto nella Chiesa (in two volumes, Giuffráe: Milan, 2009 and 2017): "Rights, Justice and Law in the Church," "Canon Law in History," and "The Configuration of Rights and Law in the Church." Volume one of Prof. Carlos J. Errâazuriz's monumental treatment of canon law establishes that law in the Catholic Church is properly understood as that which is just. In the second volume, he moves to the foremost protagonist in this arena-namely, the human person. The human person is the primary holder of rights and obligations in the Church, destined for the salvation merited by Christ. The salvific goods constituted by the Word of God and the sacraments are fundamental aspects of juridical relationships and life in the Church."--

This is a posthumously published collection of Nalin Ranasinghe's sharp analyses of Shakespeare's five heavy dramas: Hamlet, King John, Julius Caesar, King Lear, and Antony and Cleopatra. True to form, Ranasinghe serves up philosophical and literary genius for the reader's benefit and delight. "I will try to claim that Shakespeare offers an esoteric vindication of the human soul itself, not merely poetry, against the looming backdrop of the Counter-Reformation in Europe and the Puritan perversion of English Anglicanism. Neither the Scholasticism of the former nor the fundamentalism of the latter had any sympathy for the claims of men like Bottom or the Bastard to see beyond the confines of scripture and sacred social structures. While poetry could indulge in metaphysical fantasy, it could not take on the status quo without the assistance of more learned allies; this Shakespeare seems to do by his re-telling of Classical and English history. As disingenuous as Bottom (or Erasmus) in this artful use of ignorance and folly to conceal his serious goals, Shakespeare is thus tying poetry to history and giving us an alternate, if playful, account of Western Civilization."

""Is not modern democracy the finally-found form of the religion of Humanity?" (2007) The Religion of Humanity: The Illusion of Our Times is the first anthology in any language of the writings of the contemporary French political philosopher, Pierre Manent, on "the religion of Humanity." The striking phrase comes from nineteenth-century French thinker, Auguste Comte (1798-1857). Comte coined the phrase and indeed created an atheistic religion of a self-adoring Humanity. In the aftermath of the Cold War, Manent observed victorious democracy interpreting itself in a similar framework. He took it upon himself to track this development, analyze it, and warn his fellow Europeans of its deleterious political, intellectual, moral, and spiritual effects. With conceptual precision and (most often) a sober tone, many contemporary sacred cows were gored. But in addition to cursing the humanitarian darkness, he also lit many candles of judicious political, philosophical, moral, and spiritual analysis. This anthology is thus almost unique in its subject matter, and certainly unique in its treatment of the subject. It is a rarity and gem: a first-rate work of political philosophy"--

"What is influence and why might real influencers be those whose names we no longer remember? Ken Weisbrode embarks on an exploration to trace the most powerful strands of cultural and intellectual influence, and demonstrates it might not be what we think it is. "The influencer is a person who made an art of absence in the trade of cultural and sometimes political capital. The ones in this book represent a range of vocations, from politics to diplomacy to novel-writing, but almost all were cultural entrepreneurs. They were not puppet masters, gray eminences, unsung heroes, or Svengalis--although one or two have been portrayed thus. Rather, their influence is spread by virtue of their willful disappearance, of its perpetuation of a new language and cultural standard, and of their many conscious and unconscious imitators. The reason they had such influence was precisely because a part of their method was to be less visible in order to watch their ideas, habits, and styles proliferate without their names necessarily being affixed. [...] Yet, to understand such a modus operandi is necessary today when the proliferation of social media influencers are squandering cultural capital so quickly by the simultaneous promotion of their products, above all, themselves.""-- Provided by publisher.

Modern history has not been neutral in telling the story of religion. Since it presumes the centrality of human motives and machinations as the one and only means of explicating the unfolding of 'events', it has helped set the terms for what counts as a viable motive and what does not, and this is evident in the systematic unmasking of religion as only really ever about 'something else'. By distilling more substantive/primary economic, political or other kinds of motives from the detritus of 'religion', the latter is thus consigned to the past as the primitive husk of more substantive and rational ways of thinking and acting. As a set of historical case studies, the essays collected here forgo that tendency, and suggest different possibilities for conceptualizing the fate of religion in the modern world. They chart a different course, one of faith and self-assertion. The essays take up a variety of episodes from modern European and American history and explore, from various angles, three interrelated themes: 'public religion', and the role of Catholicism as a determined critic of modernity; religion as an impetus for innovation; and the tendency to reduce religion to culture.

To say that On Hunting is a book on fox hunting is like saying that Moby-Dick is a whaling yarn. Modern people are as given to loving, fearing, fleeing, and pursuing other species as were their hunter-gatherer forebears. And in fox hunting, they join together with their most ancient friends among the animals, to pursue an ancient enemy. The feelings stirred by hunting are explored by Scruton, in a book that is both illuminating and deeply personal. Drawing on his own experiences of hunting and offering a delightful portrait of the people and animals who take part in it, Scruton introduces the reader to the mysteries of country life. His book is a plea for tolerance toward a sport in which the love of animals prevails over the pursuit of them, and in which Nature herself is the center of the drama. Among the most dramatic and ironic discoveries that On Hunting offers the typical American reader is that hunting is about a love and respect for animals, rather than a blood-thirsty hatred of them, and that the sport, far from being limited to an upper-class, old-monied aristocracy, is really one promoting an egalitarian meritocracy.

"The Tribulations of Sophia was the last of âEtienne Gilson's books to appear during his lifetime (1967). French readers would have recognized the title's echo of a nineteenth century children's book by the Countess of Sâegur, the Misfortunes of Sophia. Its disobedient protagonist, young Sophia (of whom the American Dennis the Menace was to be a very pale imitation) is the cause of a sequence of minor domestic catastrophes. One wonders if Gilson is proposing that the Catholic intellectual world of his day is fraught with her descendants. The heart of the book is entitled, "Three Lectures on Thomism and its Current Situation." During the Second Vatican Council and its immediate aftermath, the status of Thomism in Catholic intellectual circles and institutions was vigorously challenged. Once again, the problem of Thomism emerges: What is Thomism and where does it belong? Gilson's devotion to elaborating the nature of Christian philosophy compels him to confront this question head-on. Indeed, because Gilson approaches Thomism as the veritable model for Christian philosophy he cannot ignore the attempts to suppress or supplant it. And yet this section also contains a fourth lecture on Teilhard de Chardin, whom Gilson knew and held in high esteem. Was Teilhard's thought to become the new Christian philosophy and theology? Was it even appropriate to label his thought as proper philosophy and theology? The second, somewhat shorter, portion of the book wrestles with the theme of dialogue that was very much in vogue in the 1960s. The central figure here is the French Marxist Roger Garaudy, internationally known for his call to dialogue with Christians. Gilson denies any possibility of such a dialogue, and certainly any usefulness in it. "I regret to say-not having myself any of the virtues of a skilled dialoguer, which are not to listen to what is being said and to take it in a sense that makes it easy to refute. It is a chimerical hope that there should be two people who proceed otherwise." But specifically on the point of Christian and Marxist dialogue, from the massive ideological, bestial corpus of Marxism Gilson carves out its fundamental need for the world and serves it back to Garaudy, but without garnish, for among Marxists each has his own particular manner of impoverishing the concept of man. What might be called the postscript of the book, "Wandering Amid the Ruins," shares some of Gilson's own experiences and unease in the unsettled situation of the Catholic Church at that time. "The Council was the work of truly supernatural courage. For more than three centuries the Church was harshly blamed for not having taken the initiative to make necessary reforms in the sixteenth century." Yet Gilson laments that perhaps the manner of enacting reform is confused and not in all cases simply intent on reversing the trends of empty churches and the vocations drought. Perhaps we have not understood the Council at all. Gilson's kind but clear description of the turmoil in Catholic teaching and thought is for the reader essential to any understanding of the tension and transitions of this period of history"--

Winston Churchill wrote five books before he was elected to Parliament at the age of twenty-five. The most impressive of these books, The River War tells the story of Britain's arduous and risky campaign to reconquer the Sudan at the end of the nineteenth century. More than half a century of subjection to Egypt had ended a decade earlier when Sudanese Dervishes rebelled against foreign rule and killed Britain's envoy Charles Gordon at his palace in Khartoum in 1885. Political Islam collided with European imperialism. Herbert Kitchener's Anglo-Egyptian army, advancing hundreds of miles south along the Nile through the Sahara Desert, defeated the Dervish army at the battle of Omdurman on September 2, 1898. Churchill, an ambitious young cavalry officer serving with his regiment in India, had already published newspaper columns and a book about fighting on the Afghan frontier. He yearned to join Kitchener's campaign. But the general, afraid of what he would write about it, refused to have him. Churchill returned to London. With help from his mother and the prime minister, he managed to get himself attached to an English cavalry regiment sent to strengthen Kitchener's army. Hurriedly travelling to Egypt, Churchill rushed upriver to Khartoum, catching up with Kitchener's army just in time to take part in the climactic battle. That day he charged with the 21st Lancers in the most dangerous fighting against the Dervish host. He wrote fifteen dispatches for the Morning Post in London. As Kitchener had expected, Churchill's dispatches and his subsequent book were highly controversial. The precocious officer, having earlier seen war on two other continents, showed a cool independence of his commanding officer. He even resigned from the army to be free to write the book as he pleased. He gave Kitchener credit for his victory but found much to criticize in his character and campaign. Churchill's book, far from being just a military history, told the whole story of the Egyptian conquest of the Sudan and the Dervishes' rebellion against imperial rule. The young author was remarkably even-handed, showing sympathy for the founder of the rebellion, Muhammad Ahmed, and for his successor the Khalifa Abdullahi, whom Kitchener had defeated. He considered how the war in northeast Africa affected British politics at home, fit into the geopolitical rivalry between Britain and France, and abruptly thrust the vast Sudan, with the largest territory in Africa, into an uncertain future in Britain's orbit. In November 1899, The River War was published in "two massive volumes, my magnum opus (up to date), upon which I had lavished a whole year of my life," as Churchill recalled later in his autobiography. The book had twenty-six chapters, five appendices, dozens of illustrations, and colored maps. Three years later, in 1902, it was shortened to fit into one volume. Seven whole chapters, and parts of every other chapter, disappeared in the abridgment. Many maps and most illustrations were also dropped. Since then the abridged edition has been reprinted regularly, and eventually it was even abridged further. But the full two-volume book, which is rare and expensive, was never published again--until now. St. Augustine's Press, in collaboration with the International Churchill Society, brings back to print in two handsome volumes The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan unabridged, for the first time since 1902. Every chapter and appendix from the first edition has been restored. All the maps are in it, in their original colors, with all the illustrations by Churchill's brother officer Angus McNeill. More than thirty years in the making, under the editorship of James W. Muller, this new edition of The River War will be the definitive one for all time. The whole book is printed in two colors, in black and red type, to show what Churchill originally wrote and how it was abridged or altered later. For the first time, a new appendix reproduces Churchill's Sudan dispatches as he wrote them, before they were edited by the Morning Post. Other new appendices reprint Churchill's subsequent writings on the Sudan. Thousands of new footnotes have been added to the book by the editor, identifying Churchill's references to people, places, writings, and events unfamiliar to readers today. Professor Muller's new introduction explains how the book fits into Churchill's career as a writer and an aspiring politician. He examines the statesman's early thoughts about war, race, religion, and imperialism, which are still our political challenges in the twenty-first century. Half a century after The River War appeared, this book was one of a handful of his works singled out by the Swedish Academy when it awarded Churchill the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. Now, once again, its reader can follow Churchill back to the war he fought on the Nile, beginning with the words of his youngest daughter. Before she died, Mary Soames wrote a new foreword, published here, which concludes that "In this splendid new edition...we have, in effect, the whole history of The River War as Winston Churchill wrote it--and it makes memorable reading."

Originally published: New Haven: Yale University Press, c1999.

"As Alasdair MacIntyre notes in the preface, the work of Pinckaers attracted strongand fully justified notice in this country with the publication in English of his TheSources of Christian Ethics. As Pinckaers himself notes in the text, excellently translatedby Michael Sherwin, the interest should in no way be limited to RomanCatholics. Morality recasts the earlier book in an argument that is both lower andupper case 'catholic, ' and is accessible to readers and teachers outside the limitedcircle of moral theologians and academic ethicists. Pinckaers contends thatChristian morality is not first of all about obligations but about happiness, understandingthat the happiness of union with God is our natural destiny made possibleby grace. The Sermon on the Mount is at the center of an approach to moralitythat turns on the distinction between 'freedom for excellence' and 'freedom ofindifference, ' the former understood as human flourishing and the latter as a 'neutral'capacity to choose between controversies. The proposal of Morality is thoroughlyChrist-centered, humanistic, and faithful to the magisterial teaching of theChurch. Warmly recommended."First Things "If you want to have the experience of reflecting on Catholic morality as thoughyou were reading about it for the first time, treat yourself to Father ServaisPinckaers' Morality: The Catholic View. He has recovered the classical view of themoral life as the quest for happiness and has presented it with disarming simplicity.Bringing us back to the Sermon on the Mount and Romans 12-15, the writingsof Augustine and Aquinas, and the theme of natural law, he has freed those textsfrom the layers of legalism which has hidden their liberating, spiritual powers formoral living. By distinguishing freedom of indifference from freedom for excellence, he has restored a wise vision of freedom. No one has shown better the roleof virtues as building blocks for morality. Catechists need to read this book."Rev. Alfred McBride, O.Praem., Professor of Homilectics and Catechetics at BlessedPope John XXIII Seminary, Weston, Massachusetts "Father Pinckaers has given us a masterful exposition of Christian living. The clarityand brevity of his presentation - captured well by the translator - make this bookideal for classroom and parish use. "Readers will find the historical and systematic observations very informative."Romanus Cessario, St. John's Seminary, Brighton, Massachusetts

No better guide over the thousand-year period called the Middle Ages could be found than Josef Pieper. In this amazing tour de monde medievale, he moves easily back and forth between the figures and the doctrines that made medieval philosophy unique in Western thought. After reflecting on the invidious implications of the phrase "Middle Ages," Pieper turns to the fascinating personality of Boethius whose contribution to prison literature, The Consolation of Philosophy, is second only to the Bible in the number of manuscript copies. The Neo-Platonic figures - Dionysius and Eriugena - are the occasion for a discussion of negative theology. The treatment of Anselm of Canterbury's proof of God's existence involves later voices, e.g., Kant. Like other historians, Pieper is enamored of the twelfth century, which is regularly eclipsed by accounts of the thirteenth century. Pieper does justice to both. His account of the rivalry between Peter Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux is masterful, nor does he fail to give John of Salisbury the space he deserves. The account is broken by the gradual replacement of the synthesis of faith and reason that had been achieved in the early Middle Ages by a new one that made use of Aristotle. Pieper gives a thorough and lively account of the struggle between Aristotelians and anti-Aristotelians, and the famous condemnations that put the effort of Saint Thomas Aquinas at risk. But the Summa theologiae is regarded by Pieper as the unique achievement of the period. If the early centuries, the medieval period, can be seen as moving toward the thirteenth and Thomas's unique achievement, subsequent centuries saw the decline of scholasticism and theappearance of harbingers of modern philosophy. The book closes with Pieper's thoughts on the permanent philosophical and theological significance of scholasticism and the Middle Ages. Once again, wearing his learning lightly, writing with a clarity that delights, Josef Pieper has taken the field from stuffier and more extended accounts.

Although Aristotle's Poetics is the most frequently read of his works, philosophers and political theorists have, for the most part, left analysis of the text to literary critics and classicists. In this book Michael Davis argues convincingly that in addition to teaching us something about poetry, Poetics contains an understanding of the common structure of human action and human thought that connects it to Aristotle's other writings on politics and morality. Davis demonstrates that the duality of Poetics reaches out to the philosopher, writer, and political theorist and shows the importance of the ideal in our imaginings of and goals for the future.