Since antiquity the Phaedo has been considered the source of the twin pillars of Platonism - the theory of ideas and the immortality of the soul. Tracing the movement of the argument through the work as a whole, Burger is led to a radical rethinking of those doctrines. That movement is indicated by the structure of the dialogue, divided in two halves by a central interlude in which Socrates warns against the great danger of misology, loss of trust in human reason. The discussion that follows, with that danger in mind, brings about a transformation in the understanding of knowledge, the ideas, the soul, death, and immortality. With this second sailing, as Socrates calls it, the Platonism presented in the Phaedo emerges as precisely the target of which the dialogue is a critique.

This revised and expanded edition includes a new Preface, The Death of Socrates and the Post-Socratic Schools, and an essay, On Plato's Euthyphro.

This is a comprehensive study of the Phaedo, thoroughly researched, and sparkling with insights into the text. - Paul Woodruff, University of Texas

Burger has a wonderfully fertile mind and supports her imaginative thesis with a close reading, extremely sensitive to nuance. - Jerome Schiller, The Journal of the History of Philosophy 1986

On Plato's Euthyphro presents a more thoughtful and careful analysis of the dialogue than any previous full-length commentary. -- Lewis Fallis, Interpretation 2016

The central contention of the New Atheism of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens is that there has for several centuries been a war between science and religion, that religion has been steadily losing that war, and that at this point in human history a completely secular scientific account of the world has been worked out in such thorough and convincing detail that there is no longer any reason why a rational and educated person should find the claims of any religion the least bit worthy of attention.

But as Edward Feser argues inThe Last Superstition, in fact there is not, and never has been, any war between science and religion at all. There has instead been a conflict between two entirely philosophical conceptions of the natural order: on the one hand, the classical teleological vision of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, on which purpose or goal-directedness is as inherent a feature of the physical world as mass or electric charge; and the modern mechanical vision of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, according to which the physical world is comprised of nothing more than purposeless, meaningless particles in motion. As it happens, on the classical teleological picture, the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the natural-law conception of morality are rationally unavoidable. Modern atheism and secularism have thus always crucially depended for their rational credentials on the insinuation that the modern, mechanical picture of the world has somehow been established by science. Yet this modern mechanical picture has never been established by science, and cannot be, for it is not a scientific theory in the first place but merely a philosophical interpretation of science. Moreover, as Feser shows, the philosophical arguments in its favor given by the early modern philosophers were notable only for being surprisingly weak. The true reasons for its popularity were then, and are now, primarily political: It was a tool by which the intellectual foundations of ecclesiastical authority could be undermined and the way opened toward a new secular and liberal social order oriented toward commerce and technology. So as to further these political ends, it was simply stipulated, by fiat as it were, that no theory inconsistent with the mechanical picture of the world would be allowed to count as scientific. As the centuries have worn on and historical memory has dimmed, this act of dogmatic stipulation has falsely come to be remembered as a discovery.

However, not only is this modern philosophical picture rationally unfounded, it is demonstrably false. For the mechanical conception of the natural world, when worked out consistently, absurdly entails that rationality, and indeed the human mind itself, are illusory. The so-called scientific worldview championed by the New Atheists thus inevitably undermines its own rational foundations; and into the bargain (and contrary to the moralistic posturing of the New Atheists) it undermines the foundations of any possible morality as well. By contrast, and as The Last Superstition demonstrates, the classical teleological picture of nature can be seen to find powerful confirmation in developments from contemporary philosophy, biology, and physics; moreover, morality and reason itself cannot possibly be made sense of apart from it. The teleological vision of the ancients and medievals is thereby rationally vindicated - and with it the religious worldview they based upon it.

The collaboration between a future pope and young prelate is transformed into profound friendship when circumstances thrust Joseph Ratzinger into the Apostolic Palace, even as he expected to be released in retirement to his beloved Bavaria. Monsignor Georg Gänswein never left his side, and witnessed one of the most influential people of this century conduct his papacy on both sides of the curtain. From his appointment as private secretary in 2003, which was meant to be temporary, until the abdication of the pope in 2013 and subsequent years as emeritus, Monsignor Gänswein walked the same steps and weathered the same storms as his dear friend, the Roman Pontiff Benedict XVI. Here he offers the truth regarding the man and the papacy as a spiritual testament of a pope whose formidable legacy is often subject to unfounded characterizations of rigidity and secrecy.

Written with the involvement of the regarded Vaticanista Saverio Gaeta, Mons. Gänswein offers an account of a particular decade in history and confronts false claims of intrigue and cover-up (Vatileaks, the Orlandi abduction case, the sexual abuse scandal, among other issues) to tell the real story of a pope who faced a changing landscape and a public who largely misunderstood him and his style of governance. Here we meet one of the most affable and intellectually formidable popes the Catholic Church has ever known, and a priest who might also be considered a prophet of the post-modern age. Gänswein brilliantly contextualizes many of Benedict's most poignant theological positions, and in giving us a sense of their origin reveals that Benedict seamlessly lived everything he promulgated. His faith was the single bulwark upon which his personality as both teacher and leader were built. No biography has yet to establish the integrity and heart of Joseph Ratzinger as well as his friend, Georg Gänswein, does here.

As a spiritual testament more than just a journalistic exposé, Gänswein provides something only he can give--namely, the candid intelligence and sanctity witnessed up close. This is a remarkable and singular contribution to the history of the papacy and the record of the life of a saint. As Gänswein asserts, knowing this man is to encounter heroic virtue and an invitation to meet God, the greatest lover of mankind. Pope Benedict's own friendship with God will continue to provide warmth for as long as there are people on this earth who believe.

This new edition of The Heart (out of print for nearly 30 years) is the flagship volume in a series of Dietrich von Hildebrand's works to be published by St. Augustine's Press in collaboration with the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project. Founded in 2004, the Legacy Project exists in the first place to translate the many German writings of von Hildebrand into English.

While many revere von Hildebrand as a religious author, few realize that he was a philosopher of great stature and importance. Those who knew von Hildebrand as philosopher held him in the highest esteem. Louis Bouyer, for example, once said that von Hildebrand was the most important Catholic philosopher in Europe between the two world wars. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger expressed even greater esteem when he said: I am personally convinced that, when, at some time in the future, the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time.

The Heart is an accessible yet important philosophical contribution to the understanding of the human person. In this work von Hildebrand is concerned with rehabilitating the affective life of the human person. He thinks that for too long philosophers have held it in suspicion and thought of it as embedded in the body and hence as being much inferior to intellect and will. In reality, he argues, the heart, the center of affectivity, has many different levels, including an eminently personal level; at this level affectivity is just as important a form of personal life as intellect and will. Von Hildebrand develops the idea that properly personal affectivity, far than tending away from an objective relation to being, is in fact one major way in which we transcend ourselves and give being its due. Von Hildebrand also developed the important idea that the heart in many respects is more the real self of the person than his intellect or will.

At the same time, the author shows full realism about the possible deformities of affective life; he offers rich analyses of what he calls affective atrophy and affective hypertrophy. The second half of The Heart offers a remarkable analysis of the affectivity of the God-Man.

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?

This new series of scholarly reflections on the interpretation of Socratic philosophy is an inviting combination of intuition and meticulous analysis. Ryszard Legutko provides the reader a monumental service in his confrontation of the most important and influential literature written on the subject to date. He likewise opens the conversation to European contributions and renders Socrates truly a figurehead of future philosophy far beyond being a pillar in ancient thought.
Legutko argues that Socrates was systematic, and his moral views were ultimately grounded in his theory of knowledge that was composed of logically connected propositions (logoi). Reading Plato, Legutko's intuition that Socrates was quite the opposite of the quirky, ironic, and enigmatic character is supported by his demonstration of Socrates' consistency, unity, and hierarchy of thought. He extends Socrates' coherency to a criticism of the democratic mind, framing him even less as a random spit-fire and more the grounded observer. Socrates, argues Letgutko, is well aware of the importance of general concepts and he intended to free these concepts from democratic distortions and give them firm and independent foundations.
In short, 'the way of the gadfly' is a beautiful and precise exploration of order that seeks to be changed by the awareness of this order, and how to wield concepts apart from the motives of arrogance and chaos--neither of which represent nature, and therefore are foreign to the way of the gadfly.

In My Early Life, Churchill describes his education and his experience in four wars on three continents as a young officer and newspaper correspondent, including his cavalry charge against the Dervishes at Omdurman in the Sudan and his capture and escape from a Boer prisoner of war camp in South Africa. He explains how he wrote his first five books and launched his political career before taking his seat in the House of Commons at twenty-six. By the time he wrote this book, the First World War had ushered in many changes, not all of them good, and Churchill perceived a low spirit in his countrymen. He thinks a time may come when young Britons will need more love of adventure, and adventure for adventure's sake, which his early life exemplifies, and he offers the new generation his own story of youthful endeavour to encourage and rekindle the spirited part of their souls. Giving an account of his own life is a summons to young people who are drifting in an eddy of mass effects to surmount their fear of death, aiming to stir up unselfish endeavor in them. Lest anyone mistake his intention in writing the book, he dedicates it TO A NEW GENERATION.

This edition of My Early Life includes The Dream. This short story was first mooted at a family meal at Churchill's country house at Chartwell in late November 1947, in the company of Winston and Clementine Churchill's children, Diana and Randolph. Diana asked her father, if he could conjure up anyone, who would fill an empty chair in the dining room. He replied that he would choose to dine with his own father, Lord Randolph Churchill, who had died more than fifty years earlier. He went on to describe a story he meant to write, based on a dream in which Lord Randolph returned to his son's painting studio to inquire what had occurred in the intervening half-century. Encouraged by his family's enthusiasm, Churchill wrote the story soon afterwards but, after revising it, set it aside to be published later. This Private Article, as he styled it, first appeared a year after his death in the Sunday Telegraph, January 30, 1966, which described it as his last story--locked away in a box for years--now published for the first time. By permission of Churchill College, it is reprinted, with explanatory editorial notes, as a fitting epilogue to Churchill's autobiography.

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.

For over thirty years, Joseph Bottum has been writing widely acclaimed Christmas essays, columns, short stories, and carols for American magazines and newspapers. Now, for the first time, St. Augustine's Press has gathered a selection of these classic pieces--with a vast range across the Christmas spectrum.

There's the comic: Tinsel. No one needs tinsel. Even the word is a tinselly kind of word. There's the sentimental: Her hair was the same thin shade of gray as the weather-beaten pickets of the fence around her frozen garden. There's the reminiscent: Christmas was books, and books Christmas, in those days now mostly washed down to the cold sea. Along the way, there's the theological, the learned, the mystical, and the musical.

Tastefulness is just small-mindedness pretending to be art, he writes in praise of mad and cluttered holidays. Christmas will not be defined by our failures to apply its lessons and carols, he explains about Yuletide poetry. To see these essays and short stories gathered in one place--in a beautiful illustrated edition from St. Augustine's Press--is to see the whole of the vision that Joseph Bottum has been painting for decades: a picture of Christmas as a thin place in the wall between the natural and the numinous, where a burning grace slips into a cold winter world.

Looking at Jesus as a complete human being and philosopher, explores the most radical revolution in the history of philosophy--the differences Jesus made to metaphysics, epistemology, anthropology, and philosophical ethics and politics.

In ordinary conversation, including among the educated, the word sin rarely gets mentioned except when one is trying to be coy or facetious. As Thomas Mann once said, sin is nowadays an amusing word used only when one is trying to get a laugh.

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.

Needless to say, such an effort will require a kind of mining energy of an archeologist of ideas who knows how to recover what was once known (or at least suspected) from time immemorial but has now been forgotten. But Josef Pieper does more than bring to bear on this issue his famous powers of excavation; he also makes meaningful the concept of sin to the ways of thinking and speaking of our time.

Readers of his work already know Pieper as an extraordinarily fitting master in this art of making the wisdom of the ages a living reality today. And in this work he brings Plato, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas into a living dialogue with T. S. Eliot, Andre Gide, even with Jean-Paul Sartre. As he shows in this powerful work, none of these writers leaves any doubt that the fact of sin is central: It is the willful denial of one's own life-ground, a denial that alone rightly bears the name of sin. Paradoxically, this reality is both willed and yet also pre-given, that is, both adventitious and yet somehow innate to our existence -- a paradox which, next to the mystery of existence itself, is the most impenetrable mystery of all.

Paul Voss and Donald Prudlo trace Western attitudes to money, merchants, and the market through 3,000 years of history. They focus their attention on one person in particular, Omobono of Cremona (1117-1197), as an axial figure in the wholesale reappraisal of the value of business, entrepreneurship, and white-collar work in Christian Europe. More precisely, Voss and Prudlo examine the evolution of the mentality of wealth and economics in the Catholic Church, beginning from the Scriptural disdain for material pursuits and moving to the eventually declared sainthood of Omobono, a lay merchant living amid the hectic rhythm of a life of business. As the authors note, His story resonates today with an unexpected poignancy for the contribution it makes to the pressing issues of economic justice, free markets, work-life balance, the 'theology of work, ' and Catholic history. The reconstruction of the socio-theological perspective of wealth is a fascinating contribution to contemporary attempts to reconcile culture, capitalism, and the common good. Omobono stands as the first lay individual proposed by the Catholic Church as a model of heroic virtue, and thought him commercial life came thereby also to be 'canonized' as a possible path to sanctity.

Voss and Prudlo provide a rich resource for readers concerned with the proper aims and boundaries of a life in the world of commerce, the nature of work, the ethics of profit, the problem of money-lending, the virtues needed for moral capitalism, and the tension between otium and negotium. Voss and Prudlo have accumulated a veritable trove of primary text materials relating to the life of Omobono, and provide translations and commentary to complete their analysis. This fascinating account crosses the threshold of pure history and stimulates inquiry in the fields of philosophy, economics, and theology.

What is real and what is noble, as well as what is deranged and wrong, can often be stated briefly. Nietzsche was famous for his succinct aphorisms and epigrams. Aquinas in one of his responses could manage to state clearly what he held to be true. Ultimately, all of our thought needs to be so refined and concentrated that we can see the point. So these are brief essays and they are largely of a philosophical hue. They touch on things worth thinking about. Indeed, often they consider things we really need to think about if our lives are to make sense.

The advantage of a collection of essays is that it is free to talk about many things. It can speak of them in a learned way or in an amused and humorous way. As Chesterton said, there is no necessary conflict between what is true and what is funny. Oftentimes, the greatest things we learn are through laughter, even laughter at ourselves and our own foibles and faults.

So these essays are brief. And they are largely of philosophical import. At first sight, taxing beer may seem to have no serious principle, except perhaps for the brewer and the consumer. But wherever there is reality, we can find something to learn.

Each of these essays begins with the proposition on--this is a classical form of essay in the English language. Belloc, one the essay's greatest masters, wrote a book simply entitled ON--and several other books with that introductory ON to begin it. The word has the advantage of focusing our attention on some idea, place, book, person, or reality that we happen to come across and notice, then notice again, then wonder about.

These essays are relatively short, often lightsome, hopefully always with a consideration that illumines the world through the mind of the reader. These essays are written in the spirit that the things we encounter provoke us, our minds. We need to come to terms, to understand what we come across in our pathways through this world. Often the best way to know what we observe or confront is to write about it, preferably briefly and with some philosophical insight. This is what we do here.

In this stimulating and still-timely study, Josef Pieper takes up a theme of paramount importance to his thinking - that festivals belong by rights among the great topics of philosophical discussion. As he develops his theory of festivity, the modern age comes under close and painful scrutiny. It is obvious that we no longer know what festivity is, namely, the celebration of existence under various symbols

Pieper exposes the pseudo-festivals, in their harmless and their sinister forms: traditional feasts contaminated by commercialism; artificial holidays created in the interest of merchandisers; holidays by coercion, decreed by dictators the world over; festivals as military demonstrations; holidays empty of significance. And lastly we are given the apocalyptic vision of a nihilistic world which would seek its release not in festivities but in destruction.

Formulated with Pieper's customary clarity and elegance, enhanced by brilliantly chosen quotations, this is an illuminating contribution to the understanding of traditional and contemporary experience.

Savrola is Winston Churchill's first major literary effort and his only full-length work of fiction.
Published in 1900, the novel's subtitle, Savrola contains the seeds of Churchill's exceptional talents as a statesman, a political philosopher, and a man of literature. The ambition of Savrola to rule foreshadows Churchill's own career as the greatest democratic leader of the past
century. He sketches a model of the education needed for modern statesmanship and describes the kind of rhetoric that appeals to a modern democratic people, all in a style that anticipates his later Nobel Prize for Literature.
This edition of Savrola contains extensive introductory materials, notes, an appendix, and is lavishly illustrated with reproductions of the André Collot woodcuts made for a limited French edition.

Dakin Matthews is an acclaimed actor, whose relationship with the stage and lyrical performance has made him keenly aware of the splendor and meaningfulness of Thomas Aquinas' often overlooked verse. The 'songs of Aquinas' are treasuries of theological wisdom but also serve to stir the mind to participate in prayer with as much zeal as the heart and mouth. Matthews offers an introduction to Aquinas and his main objectives for writing, and then relates the more serious theological treatises to the style and purposes of his verse. It is a full but never overwhelming immersion in Thomistic thought, as well as a brilliant guide to Medieval Latin and the art of translation.

Matthews' particular attention is given to Lauda Sion, and he breaks it down, verse by verse, providing an analysis of the Latin text and commentary on its poetic structure, but also illuminates the doctrinal references to Aquinas' other scholarly works and Scripture. His approach is both technical and intermittently personal, and as such this book might serve as a two-week source of daily meditations.

The Alleluias of the Mind is a wonderful contribution to the body of Thomistic commentary and will appear before the close of the 750th anniversary of the death of Thomas Aquinas. It is also a wonderful complement to the year devoted to Eucharistic revival in the American Catholic Church.

The Federalist Papers offers an expansive vision of the American Constitution and the original sense of the federal character of the American government. What is contained in these eternally studied arguments is a complex construction of American federalism, and approaching this body of work with its full context in view is necessary but often difficult to achieve. Harvey Flaumenhaft has therefore provided readers with a unique, visual resource to be used as a companion to the primary text written centuries ago.
As Flaumenhaft suggests, use of The Federalist is only truly of service when students see the full picture; ripping a few lines from it to make one's own point is not representative of the elaborately structured whole. He has drawn up a kind of unpacked proof for the arguments made in The Federalist, and seeks to help readers see the structure in that sequence if they examine a depiction in which the copious items are spatially arranged to show their complex relations of subordination, coordination, and dependence. [...] The reader with this visual aid can better discern how the clear but elaborate structure fits together.
Flaumenhaft includes two further documents after giving them the same treatment--namely, the table of claims of authorship of papers in The Federalist, and the Articles of Confederation. The latter is important as it is precisely this document that the Constitutions of the United States was meant to replace. This is an important guide to early American history studies, American government, and political thought taken more broadly. Flaumenhaft's interdisciplinary use of geometric dissection is a daring and unorthodox invitation to see The Federalist like never before. The visual rendering of this dense and critically important collection of papers is furthermore a key tool in bringing younger students to a deeper appreciation of its purpose and accomplishment.

This edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream takes the comedy seriously. Like my previous Hackett editions, it gives full weight to Shakespeare's dramatic setting, which other editors (and scholars) almost always ignore or at least fail adequately to consider. Ancient Athens is the core, not the mere background, of Midsummer Night's Dream. As we shall see, Shakespeare focuses, in particular, on the love of the beautiful and the triumph of learning and art, along with the rise of democracy, which, as Pericles' famously claims, are the hallmarks of Athens. 'We are lovers of the beautiful with thrift, and lovers of wisdom without softness' (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 2.40.1). [...]
Failure to consider classical Athens as central to Midsummer Night's Dream will cause a reader to miss not only the play's remarkable substance, but much of its sparkling comedy as well. Far from impeding the play's humor, focusing on Athens helps to bring out multi-layers of comedy that Shakespeare put there.

​​One of the most studied and critiqued documents of the papal magisterium is largely spoken of with regards to moral theology and the refutation of modern error. Yet Adrian Reimers points out that, as affirmed by this encyclical, the moral life is itself a realm of love and freedom, a place of intimacy with the Creator as much as interaction with others. Reimers is eager to show that the Encyclical is more innovative than it looks, just as morality is not just about the correction of error. It is not content to defend the traditional positions; it traces the paths of a profound renewal in the presentation of Catholic morality. We would gladly say that it performs a kind of discreet revolution in the conception of Christian morality, affecting the very bases that support it.
The publication of Veritatis Splendor met with vigorous opposition and even rejection within the Catholic theological community. But in Veritatis Splendor John Paul II addresses these contemporary conceptions, including dissention, coming to grips with the roots of the modern errors that have resulted in the loss of transcendence. However, the scope of Veritatis Splendor is far broader than evil and judgment of sin. The pope addresses such issues as conscience, intrinsically evil acts, and the theory of fundamental freedom. Inevitably, these discussions revolve around how to conceive the nature of the human act and the conception of natural law.
This present work examines this encyclical against the backdrop of the philosophers with whom Karol Wojtyla engaged in his own philosophical project. Of central concern to Wojtyla throughout his career were the nature and prerogatives of the human person. Among his most frequent modern interlocutors were David Hume, Immanuel Kant, the utilitarian school, and Max Scheler. The program of Wojtyla's philosophical corpus is to present an alternative account of the human person to that which has marked the post-Enlightenment world. Having shared in the sufferings of his native Poland under the Nazi occupation and then as a scholar working in Communist Poland, Wojtyla was keenly aware of the forms of materialism which formed the environment of his own life and work. He offers not only his own analyses but also provides a model for engaging with the contemporary culture.
Veritatis Splendor is a timeless examination of human, personal acts that challenges the post-modern conception of morality, love, and freedom. Reimers reorients this presentation for contemporary readers and invites readers who may have missed this foundational treatment to incorporate it into the questions and issues of our own times.