Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the foremost critics of liberalism. As an alternative to the abstract utilitarianism and emotivist relativism of liberal moral theory, he has proposed virtue-ethics and “tradition-constituted rationality.” As an alternative to the individualism and bureaucratization of liberal moral practice, he has proposed the practices and politics of local community. He has presented his anti-liberal moral and political vision in his great trilogy, After Virtue, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, in later (...) works such as Dependent Rational Animals, and in numerous articles, lectures, and interviews, and he has done so with…. (shrink)

This book examines three notable philosophers' attempts to solve the political problem of religious pluralism: John Rawls, Jacques Maritain, and Alasdair MacIntyre. Although many philosophers have grappled with this problem, what has not been sufficiently explored is the reciprocal relationship of foundational belief to political theory and political theory to political practice. Kozinski, using thorough research and a high level of philosophical discourse, deals with these issues directly and astutely demonstrates how any solution that does not incorporate both political philosophy (...) and political theology is doomed to fail. (shrink)

This book examines three notable philosophers' attempts to solve the political problem of religious pluralism: John Rawls, Jacques Maritain, and Alasdair MacIntyre. Although many philosophers have grappled with this problem, what has not been sufficiently explored is the reciprocal relationship of foundational belief to political theory and political theory to political practice. Kozinski, using thorough research and a high level of philosophical discourse, deals with these issues directly and astutely demonstrates how any solution that does not incorporate both political philosophy (...) and political theology is doomed to fail. (shrink)

When we hear the word logic, we tend to think of arguments, premises and conclusions, claims and evidence for claims. But this is only half of it. Arguments are made of words, and words are symbols or signs of concepts, the building blocks of human thought. The study of the concept, the most fundamental aspect of logic, was once an essential part of liberal education, and to aid in its recovery is the goal of this book. This is a must-have (...) for any introductory logic course. (shrink)

In Against Liberalism, Kekes successfully criticized liberalism by revealing its intrinsic contradictions and its utter detachment from reality. In A Case for Conservatism, however, Kekes unsuccessfully argues for the conservative position by banishing from it any trace of metaphysics, natural law, and theology, while constraining it to a Modernist framework and an empiricist, subjectivist methodology. Moreover, Kekesian conservatism contains some of the same basic contradictions and detachment from reality as the Rawlsian liberalism he criticizes.

“Strictly speaking, Descartes was not a philosopher; he was a sophist and a mytho-theologian. Furthermore, none of his historical descendants are philosophers. They are sophists and mytho-theologians”. Cartesian Nightmare is the first of three volumes constituting a radical reinterpretation of the history of philosophy wherein Descartes’s unimpeachable status as “the father of modern philosophy” is forcefully challenged. Building upon the work of Jacques Maritain in which Descartes is declared an “ideosophist,” Redpath argues that Descartes is not the father of modern (...) philosophy, or any philosophy, because he is, in fact, not a philosopher at all. (shrink)

A book with the sole intention of mediating the thought of G. K. Chesterton would seem unnecessary. Is not Chesterton himself known and loved precisely for his uncanny ability to mediate for us—through his utterly translucent prose—what often seems an incomprehensible and opaque universe? However, just as the multiple mediators in the Divine Comedy, the Virgin Mary, Lucia, Beatrice, Virgil, and St. Bernard, in virtue of whom Dante was finally proffered the visio Dei, did in no way dim his final (...) illumination, so also does Schall’s mediation of the light of Chesterton diminish none of its brightness. On the contrary, Schall’s reflections serve only to focus and intensify it. (shrink)

In The Peasant of the Garonne, Maritain criticizes the substitution of the simple word “common” for the pretentious word “communitarian,” remarking that “common is the right word; ‘communitarian’ is, in the present instance, a bastard word in which one find only [sic] because it sounds social-minded.” This example of the trend imperium that is modern education, using words to lead away from truth and toward desire, away from the common things of man and toward the private fancies of men, is (...) the pernicious path that Western education has been negotiating since Maritain’s time, when he first mapped out its crossroads. The inspiration for and thematic center of this collection of essays is the Yale University Terry Lectures of Jacques Maritain published in 1943 as Education at the Crossroads. Since this time higher education has traveled much farther down the dark path of sophistry, specialization, naturalism, and pragmatism. To turn us back to the crossroads is the intention of these writers, using St. Thomas and Jacques Maritain as guides. (shrink)

What is a book about the ideas of a self-identified journalist, whose targeted audience was the subscribers to a local newspaper, doing in a scholarly journal of metaphysics? The answer to this question is explained in this very book, in which G. K. Chesterton, the noted novelist, essayist, controversialist, and poet, is defended as a metaphysician as well. For Paine, Chesterton should not only be properly regarded as a philosopher, after the Angelic Doctor himself, but as the philosophical doctor for (...) diseased modern man. (shrink)