Best Selling Books by Josef Pieper

Foreword by Hans Urs von Balthasar Near the end of a long career as one of the most widely read popular Thomistic philosophers of the twentieth century, Josef Pieper has himself compiled an anthology from all his works. He has selected the best and most representative passages and arranged them in an order that gives sense to the whole and aids in the understanding of each excerpt. Pieper''s reputation rests on his remarkable ability to restate traditional wisdom in terms of contemporary problems. He is a philosopher who writes in the language of common sense, presenting involved issues in a clear, lucid and simple manner. Among his many well-known works included in this anthology are selections from Leisure: The Basis of Culture, The Four Cardinal Virtues, About Love, Belief and Faith, Happiness and Contemplation, and Scholasticism. Below is a list of the selection titles: Human Authenticity The Two Sides of the Coin That Is Truth The Freedom of Philosophy and Its Adversaries Free Space in the World of Work Truths-Known and Believed The Reality of the Holy "Finis" Means Both End and Goal

One of the most important philosophy titles published in the twentieth century, Joseph Pieper''s Leisure, the Basis of Culture is more significant, even more crucial than it was when it first appeared fifty years ago. Pieper shows that Greeks understood and valued leisure, as did the medieval Europeans. He points out that religion can be born only in leisure. Leisure that allows time for the contemplation of the nature of God. Leisure has been, and always will be, the first foundation of any culture. He maintains that our bourgeois world of total labor has vanquished leisure, and issues a startling warning: Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for nonactivity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our cultureCand ourselves. These astonishing essays contradict all our pragmatic and puritanical conceptions about labor and leisure; Joseph Pieper demolishes the twentieth-century cult of Awork as he predicts its destructive consequences.

This is a work of rare prophetic brilliance by Josef Pieper, one of this century''s most profound and lucid expositors of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. This book was written to throw light on an ancient question that has vexed and tormented many. What is the nature of ""The End"" toward which, even now, the world and men are moving? No writer of our time is better equipped to answer that question than Pieper. He provides the most rigorous and sustained philosophical analysis, anchored to ""the primeval rock of theological pronouncement"", in order precisely to understand the finalities of time and history.

This volume, three separate books in one edition, is a collection of Josef Pieper''s famous treatises on the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love. Each of these treatises was originally published as a separate work over a period of thirty-seven years, and here they are brought together in English for the first time. The first of the three that he wrote, On Hope, was written in 1934 in response to the general feeling of despair of those times. His "philosophical treatise" on Faith was derived from a series of lectures he gave in the late 1950s and early 1960s. His most difficult work, one that he struggled with for years - and almost abandoned - was his work On Love. Pieper now feels that this is the most important book he has written. He discusses not only the theological virtue of caritas-agape, but also of eros, sexuality, and even "love" of music and wine.

ÊLiving the TruthÊincludes two other Pieper books:ÊTruth of All ThingsÊandÊReality and the Good. This volume presents illuminating treatises of Josef Pieper on Thomistic anthropology and on the principles of right human behavior based on anthropology. With his customary lucidity, Pieper shows how all reality is positioned between the mind of God and the mind of man and is the basis for both man''s unquenchable yearning and the measure of all man''s knowledge. He then develops the Thomistic position that reality is also the basis for the good and therefore the norm of conscience and ethical action. As Pieper himself expresses in part of the thesis of the second treatise, "An insight into the nature of the good as rooted in objective being, of itself compels us to carry it out in a definite human attitude, and it makes certain attitudes impossible." Josef Pieper was schooled in the Greek classics and the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. He also studied philosophy, law and sociology, and has been a professor at the University of Munster, Germany. His books have been widely praised by both the secular and religious press.

The popular and highly regarded Josef Pieper speaks of the necessity for human persons to be able to contemplate and appreciate beauty to develop their full humanity. Pieper expresses succinctly that the foundation of the human person in society is leisure, free time in which one can contemplate, be receptive to being and its beauty.

"But this small work will interpret sin in its true - that is, serious - meaning. What will emerge from its analysis is the discovery that the concept of sin can still serve to unlock the mystery of existence, at least for a thinking that wants to press down to the very foundations.".

"This is a masterpiece of a forgotten virtue by one of the great Christian philosophers of the twentieth century"--Publisher''s description.

This book is neither a deriding of the worldly "profane" nor a splitting up of reality into a supposedly unholy realm over against one which alone is consecrated to God. But something which threatens to be forgotten, to disappear from the memory of man is fixed upon here: namely, that in this world which is given us as our life''s environment, not only does the striving to take care of our daily needs possess an obvious right, as well the marketplace, the economy, scholarly research etc.; but in their very midst there is something in the fullest sense beyond our daily concerns: "God''s tent" among men, the sanctuary where, set off from the round of daily work, the bodily presence of the eternal Logos become man is honored and celebrated.

In these elegant and engaging essays, the internationally acclaimed Thomist, Josef Pieper, defines and defends philosophy as the search for and love of wisdom. True philosophy is not the work of joyless academics pondering over esoteric writings that have no relation to real life. Rather, the philosophical act, in which all reasonable men can participate, begins in wonder at what is, and gratitude for what is given, and ends in love. In his encyclical letter Fides et Ratio (On the Relationship between Faith and Reason), Pope John Paul II called for a revitalization of true philosophy, for man can find fulfillment ಜonly in choosing to enter the truth, to make a home under the shade of Wisdom and dwell there.ಝ Pieperಙs essays make the same ardent and convincing plea. Josef Pieper is renowned for having popularized the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, a brilliant student of St. Thomas who, in his own voluminous works, has made the deep thought of the ಜAngelic Doctorಝ more accessible and understandable to the modern reader.

The famous and popular Thomistic philosopher addresses the topic of hope from the perspective of human history and asks the questions: "Is man''s hope such that it can find any fulfillment in the field of human history?" And: "Is man''s human history such that it can give us any grounds not to despair?" Pieper looks at the movement of history, the idea of progress, man''s hope for a better future, and he counters the temptation to despair with a Christian philosophy of hope based on faith in divine providence and the compatibility of faith and reason.

One of the great Catholic philosophers of our day reflects on the way language has been abused so that, instead of being a means of communicating the truth and entering more deeply into it, and of the acquisition of wisdom, it is being used to control people and manipulate them to achieve practical ends. Reality becomes intelligible through words. Man speaks so that through naming things, what is real may become intelligible. This mediating character of language, however, is being increasingly corrupted. Tyranny, propaganda, mass-media destroy and distort words. They offer us apparent realities whose fictive character threatens to become opaque. Josef Pieper shows with energetic zeal, but also with ascetical restraint, the path out of this dangerous situation. We are constrained to see things again as they are and from the truth thus grasped, to live and to work.

"Josef Pieper''s account of the centrality and meaning of the virtues is a needed primer to teach us exactly the meaning and relationship of the virtues and how they relate to the faith and its own special virtues. Pieper''s attention is ever to the particular virtue, its precise meaning, and to its contribution to the wholeness that constituted an ordered, active, and truthful human life. No better brief account of the virtues can be found. Pieper has long instructed us in these realities that need to be made operative in each life as it touches all else ''that is'', as Pieper himself often puts it." — James V. Schall, S.J., Georgetown University "A fine and thought provoking examination of the relationship between the mind, heart, and moral life of the human person." — John Cardinal O''Connor, Archbishop of New York "Pieper''s sentences are admirably constructed and his ideas are expressed with maximum clarity. He restores to philosophy what common sense obstinately tells us ought to be found there: wisdom and insight." — T. S. Eliot

This book is an engagement between a great modern philosopher defending classical philosophy against an army of challengers to the very notion of philosophy as classically conceived. It is written very much in the spirit of the scholastic disputations in the medieval universities, which produced the great Summas: a mutual search for truth, a philosophical laboratory, a careful winnowing of each objection. Such objectivity is lamentably rare in contemporary philosophy. In order to combat modern misunderstandings of challenges to the classical concept of philosophy, Pieper shows us the unique and uniquely valuable thing philosophy is as conceived by his masters: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and above all, Aquinas. Along this path he scatters gems of insight, such as: art and religion as Philosophy''s defenders; the relationship between philosophy and science; philosophy as "seeing and saying"; and philosophy as rooted in meditation and loving contemplation. Pieper emphasizes that philosophy is something all human beings do, and should be the better for doing.

"The ultimate of human happiness is to be found in contemplation". In offering this proposition of Thomas Aquinas to our thought, Josef Pieper uses traditional wisdom in order to throw light on present-day reality and present-day psychological problems. What, in fact, does one pursue in pursuing happiness? What, in the consensus of the wisdom of the early Greeks, of Plato and Aristotle, of the New Testament, of Augustine and Aquinas, is that condition of perfect bliss toward which all life and effort tend by nature? In this profound and illuminating inquiry, Pieper considers the nature of contemplation, and the meaning and goal of life.

In The Four Cardinal Virtues, Joseph Pieper delivers a stimulating quartet of essays on the four cardinal virtues. He demonstrates the unsound overvaluation of moderation that has made contemporary morality a hollow convention and points out the true significance of the Christian virtues.

"During the last months of the war, Josef Pieper saw the realization of a long-cherished plan to escape from the "lethal chaos" that was the Germany of that time, "plucked," he writes, "as was Habakkuk, by the hair of his head . . . to be planted into a realm of the most peaceful seclusion, whose borders and exists were, of course, controlled by armed sentries." There he made contact with a friend close-by, who possessed an amazing library, and Pieper hit upon the idea of reading the letters of Goethe from that library. Soon, however, he decided to read the entire Weimar edition of fifty volumes, which were brought to him in sequence, two or three at a time." "It was precisely in the seclusion, the limitation, the silence of Goethe that made the strongest impact on Pieper. Here was modern Germany''s quintessential conversationalist intellectual, but the strength of his words came from the restraint behind them, even to the point of purposeful forgetting." --Book Jacket.

One of the great philosophers of the 20th Century, Josef Pieper, gives a penetrating introduction and guide to the life and works of perhaps the greatest philosopher ever, St. Thomas Aquinas. Pieper provides a biography of Aquinas, an overview of the 13th century he lived in, and a wonderful synthesis of his vast writings. Pieper shows how Aquinas reconciled the pragmatic thought of Aristotle with the Church, proving that realistic knowledge need not preclude belief in the spiritual realities of religion. According to Pieper, the marriage of faith and reason proposed by Aquinas in his great synthesis of a "theologically founded worldliness" was not merely one solution among many, but the great principle expressing the essence of the Christian West. Pieper reveals his extraordinary command of original sources and excellent secondary materials as he illuminates the thought of the great intellectual Doctor of the Church. "The purpose of these lectures is to sketch, against the background of his times and his life, a portrait of Thomas Aquinas as he truly concerns philosophical-minded persons today, not merely as a historical personage but as a thinker who has something to say to our own era. I earnestly hope that the speculative attitude which was Thomas'' most salient trait as Christianity''s "universal teacher" will emerge clearly and sharply from my exposition." - Josef Pieper

Josef Pieper has attached no commentary to the texts brought together in this breviary of the philosophy of St. Thomas, preferring that the reader should encounter them, “on his own”. His work has been one of selection, in which he has sought to assemble such passages as will provide an introduction to the form and design of the whole Thomistic system. Yet he has so ordered his texts as to impress upon the reader a special feature of St. Thomas’s thought, what he calls its double aspect: St. Thomas sees the whole scheme of reality ordered and penetrable by reason; yet the mystery of Being itself remains: “The effort of human thought has not been able to track down the essence of a single gnat.” Josef Pieper, one of the most highly regarded Thomistic philosophers of the twentieth century, wrote numerous philosophical works including Leisure: The Basis of Culture, Guide to Thomas Aquinas, Only the Lover Sings and many more.

"Original German titles: Vom Sinn der Tapferkeit and Zucht und Mass." Includes bibliographical references. Table of Contents: FORTITUDE -- Introduction -- Readiness to fall in battle -- Fortitude must not trust itself -- Endurance and attack -- Vital, moral, mystic fortitude -- TEMPERANCE -- Selfless self-preservation -- Chastity and unchastity -- Virginity -- On fasting -- The sense of touch -- Humility -- The power of wrath -- Disciplining the eyes -- The fruits of temperance.

"Original German titles: Ueber Thomas von Aquin [and] Philosophia negativa.".

"Cicero said philosophy was nothing but consideration of death. Augustine ''became a great question to myself'' upon the death of Alypius, the beloved companion of his youth. Montaigne wrote that ''to philosophize is to learn to die.'' Such formulations, especially when separated as these are by centuries, are reminders that death has probably always been the most powerful provoker of man''s serious thought--and ''What are the dimensions of death?'' his most human question. In Death and Immortality Josef Pieper explores with his customary philosophic artistry what we can know about dying and its implications. He makes judicious use of man''s thoughts, experience, and feelings about death and possible immortality from antiquity to the present. The view of death that emerges from his many-faceted investigation is that of a violent rending and destruction affecting the whole man--a destruction that Pieper believes can be best understood as just punishment because it seems to involve the painful and freeing elements that characterize the assumption of guilt."--front and back flaps.

"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 distinguishes between Platonic stones in which Plato crystallizes mythical fragments from the mere stories which contain them, and Platonic myths, in which he purifies the proper mythical elements, freeing them of the non-mythical elements which tend to obscure them.

Plato''s famous dialogue, the Phaedrus, was variously subtitled in antiquity: "On Beauty", "On Love", "On the Psyche". It is also concerned with the art of rhetoric, of thought and communication. Pieper, noted for the grace and clarity of his style, gives an illuminating and stimulating interpretation of the dialogue. Leaving the more recondite scholarly preoccupations aside, he concentrates on the content, bringing the actual situation in the dialogue -- Athens and its intellectuals engaged in spirited debate -- alive. Equally alive is the discussion of ideas, which are brought to bear on contemporary experience and made to prove the perennial validity of Socratic wisdom, and its power to excite the mind. The main thesis -- that in poetry and in love man is "beside himself", that is, divinely inspired -- is discussed with reference to modern poets, novelists, and modern psychology.