New Releases by Josef Pieper

En términos flosófcos, un planteamiento sin crítica es un planteamiento estéril. Peor aún, superfuo. Lo más relevante de la contribución de Pieper se desgrana en este texto, por su capacidad comunicativa y su búsqueda de la verdad. Pieper hace fácil lo difícil, trata de descifrar el misterio con simplicidad, y en eso recuerda a Tomás de Aquino. Por eso su atractivo no deja de crecer. El descubrimiento de la realidad es un estudio sobre el fundamento de la ética. Incluye dos ensayos: "La realidad y el bien" y "La verdad de las cosas". El término "descubrir" alude a algo que merece ser visto tal cual es. Y el horizonte de la actividad humana es "la realidad", el ser. Por eso Tomás de Aquino fundamenta la moral en la aceptación de la verdad de las cosas. El bien, dice Pieper, "es lo conforme con la realidad", y tiene por ese motivo una profunda fuerza de irradiación.

Solo un trabajo lleno de sentido puede servir de fundamento para que prospere la fiesta. Por trabajo lleno de sentido entiende el autor el que es, a la vez, felicidad y fatiga, alegría y consumo de energía vital. Porque trabajar y celebrar una fiesta viven de la misma raíz, de manera que, si la una se apaga, la otra se seca. En este breve y lúcido ensayo Pieper reflexiona sobre la complementariedad y no contraposición entre trabajo y fiesta, subrayando la necesidad de conocer y aceptar la realidad, y recrearse en ella.

En un libro más cercano al lenguaje oral que al escrito, el autor reúne doce lecciones dirigidas a universitarios de todos los saberes, y les presenta con sencillez al Tomás de Aquino más pensador. Al tratarse de alguien que ha sido considerado durante siglos como el "Doctor universal" del cristianismo, describir su fisonomía intelectual parece indispensable, por su enorme aportación a los fundamentos de nuestra cultura. Sus páginas tratan cuestiones tan actuales como la importancia de respetar la argumentación contraria, la degeneración del discurso público, la enseñanza como forma de vida espiritual, la sobriedad del lenguaje como máxima apertura a la realidad, la coordinación entre lo natural y sabido con lo sobrenatural y creído, la secularidad, Occidente como proyecto histórico, la relación entre filosofía y teología, etc.

Unbeirrt durch wissenschaftliche Trends hat Josef Pieper es wie kein anderer verstanden, den ursprünglichen Sinn der antik-mittelalterlichen Tugendlehre erneut zugänglich zu machen und von seinen vielfältigen Missdeutungen klar zu unterscheiden. Seine Schriften zu den vier Kardinaltugenden Klugheit, Gerechtigkeit, Tapferkeit und Maß sowie den drei theologischen Tugenden Glaube, Hoffnung und Liebe werden hier erstmals in einem Band vorgelegt. Es gibt vermutlich keine andere Darstellung in diesem Jahrhundert, die in der Auslegung aller sieben Haupttugenden einen ebenso gründlichen wie umfassenden Einblick in die Fundamente der abendländisch-christlichen Lebenslehre gewährt.

Josef Pieper compreendeu como poucos o vínculo que há entre contemplação e visão artística. Para ele, a capacidade de assombrar-se diante da realidade física e amá-la, mais do que apenas vê-la, é parte essencial dos feitos dos grandes artistas, seja na esfera visual, musical ou literária. No entanto, para que todos tomem parte na experiência a que as grandes obras de arte nos convidam, é preciso que reaprendamos a abrir os olhos. E, como este breve livro nos revela, para chegarmos a esse ponto teremos de descobrir qual o real sentido do trabalho, o que faz conosco uma manifestação tão complexa como a música e para que podem servir as belas artes em tempos de indigência humana.

Après avoir magnifiquement traité des trois vertus théologales, Pieper s’est penché sur les vertus cardinales, chevaux puissants de ce quadrige antique qui emportait l’homme vers le bien et la réalisation du vrai. Or, dans la façon actuelle de penser, les vertus et leurs relations entre elles ne sont plus comprises — Pieper le démontre ici. Leur pratique ne peut alors qu’être dévoyée. Le bonheur nous échappe. C’est l’objet de ce livre de nous les restituer dans leur splendeur originelle et leur ordonnancement, qui sont au fondement de la pensée occidentale chrétienne. Cet ouvrage est l’un des plus grands succès de Pieper, grâce à la tournure si originale de sa pensée : une philosophie en prise sur le réel qui permet au lecteur de comprendre le monde, y compris dans son quotidien. Un maître livre pour aider à vivre. Introduction du frère Albert-Henri Kühlem, op. À PROPOS DE L''AUTEUR Josef Pieper (1904-1997) est probablement le plus grand philosophe catholique allemand et un des meilleurs connaisseurs de Platon, Aristote et saint Thomas d''Aquin. Ses nombreux livres font l''unanimité dans le monde laïc comme dans le monde religieux. Benoît XVI l''appelle son « docteur de l''Église personnel ». Et Hans Urs von Balthasar écrivait : « Nous sommes grandement redevables à Josef Pieper qu''il nous redise inlassablement dans ses considérations intempestives ce qui est le plus nécessaire à notre temps. »

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.

"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"--

Este libro recoge en un solo volumen monografías sobre cada una de las virtudes teologales y morales. Desde su publicación se ha convertido en un clásico, y su sólido estudio sobre los fundamentos de la Antropología y de la Ética ha suscitado el interés de numerosos lectores en todo el mundo. Su valor se extiende también al ámbito de la Teología moral, la Pedagogía, la Psicología, la Filosofía social y muchas otras ciencias humanas. Como dice su autor, la Ética es algo más que una doctrina sobre la acción del hombre, sobre lo permitido y lo prohibido; el punto de arranque es el ser del hombre, y así la Ética o Moral presenta un despliegue de las posibilidades humanas, y una doctrina sobre las virtudes y sobre la perfección o plenitud a la que puede y debe llegar el hombre.

Rund 50 Aufsätze um Wahrheit, Freiheit und die richtige Lebensführung versammelt dieses Lesebuch, und in jedem einzelnen ist Josef Pieper als Denker wie als Mensch ganz gegenwärtig.

Die in diesem Band zusammengefassten Arbeiten verstehen sich durchweg als »notgedrungene Klärungsversuche, provoziert durch ›die Schwierigkeit, heute zu glauben‹«. Sie sprechen von der Realität des Sakralen, von der »irdischen Kontemplation«, der möglichen Zukunft der Philosophie, der »Kunst, nicht zu verzweifeln«, vom Zusammenhang zwischen Missbrauch der Sprache und Missbrauch der Macht. Das Buch ist nicht nur geprägt durch die Überzeugung, der Mensch könne nicht bloß dadurch zu Schaden kommen, dass er den Anschluss an die Zukunft versäumt, sondern auch dadurch, dass er das Unentbehrliche verliert und vergisst. Dennoch träfe der Versuch, es in die Rubrik »konservativ« einzuordnen, am Kern der Sache vorbei.

In der Neuausgabe "Über die Liebe" von 1972 spricht Josef Pieper kritisch, wach, klärend in eine Zeit hinein, die in Sprache und Verhalten vom Eros zur forcierten Sexualität wechselte. Was Pieper an intellektuellen Mißverständnissen und gewalttätigem Umgang mit der Liebe aufzeigt, wie er an die Diagnose ein therapeutisches Erhellen und Umdenken anschließt, kurz wie er in die Freiheit des richtigen Liebens führt, kann in zehn meisterhaften Kapiteln mitvollzogen werden.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Zentrum unserer Kultur muss die Muße sein, nicht die Arbeit »Ein schmales, aber ein tiefes Buch: eindrucksvoll, ja erschreckend.« (New York Times) »Hier ist mit psychologischen und philosophischen Kategorien und der Sprachkraft eines großen Schriftstellers endlich die lange fällige Polemik gegen den modernen Götzen der Arbeit geschrieben.« (Joachim Günther) • Eines der wichtigsten und erfolgreichsten Bücher Josef Piepers • Vorwort von Kardinal Lehmann • 10. Todestag des großen Philosophen am 6.11.2007

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.

"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.

Qu''est-ce que le loisir ? Quel sens peut-il avoir aujourd''hui, dans notre société consommatrice de divertissement ? Platon et Aristote ont toujours vu dans le loisir, au sens de la skholè grecque (l''otium latin), un temps consacré à ce qui était pour eux la plus noble activité de l''homme : la contemplation du monde et des dieux. Ecrit au sortir de la guerre, alors que l''Europe était à reconstruire, cet essai met en lumière la nature véritable du loisir et sa part indispensable dans l''élaboration d''une société respectueuse de la personne humaine et de ses aspirations les plus profondes. Dans un monde qui a " fait du travail lui-même un culte ", face aux falsifications modernes du loisir avec ses " jours de fête artificiels fabriqués par les pouvoirs publics ", Josef Pieper rappelle que " c''est uniquement au sein du temps de fête que l''essence du loisir peut se déployer et s''accomplir. Séparé du domaine du culte, de sa célébration et de sa force de rayonnement, le loisir ne peut pas plus éclore que la fête ; sans lien avec le culte, le loisir devient oiseux et le travail inhumain. "