St. Augustine’s Press

The Knower and the Known deals with some of the most controversial subjects in philosophy today: the relation of the mind and the body, the fundamental nature of the physical world, the existence of abstract entities, and the nature of knowledge and its relationship to human consciousness. In doing so, it draws on insights from both contemporary analytic philosophy of mind and phenomenology.

Written for his brother Benedictine monks around 1077, Anselm’s Proslogion is perhaps the best-known partially-read book of the Middle Ages. Many readers are familiar only with Anselm’s well-known argument for God’s existence in Chapters 2–4, which is often called the “ontological argument,” a misleading appellation coined centuries later by Immanuel Kant. In this argument Anselm begins with the thought of “something than which nothing greater is able to be thought,” and subsequently he leads the reader to see that such a reality necessarily exists and cannot be thought not to be. This argument – which is, to be sure, crucial to the work constitutes – but a small portion of the whole. 

The book revolves around the motivation and context of the American Founding and drives home its relevance to contemporary living. The Founders fought against tyranny that attempted to control their physical and spiritual lives. Unjust governance was deemed to be without authority. Aristocrats and commoners ultimately must answer to the Final Authority. These concepts are reflected in the Declaration of Independence: “all men are created equal and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights — that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Sandoz is not only a scholar, but a grandfather; his words will engender Liberty for future generations.

On the God of the Christians tries to explain how Christians conceive of the God whom they worship. No proof for His existence is offered, but simply a description of the Christian image of God.

For Pieper, the study of tradition is anything but antiquarian. He begins with a consideration of tradition in a changing world and is well aware of the need to confront the all-too-common perception that “tradition” is nowadays irrelevant. On the basis of his profound knowledge of the Western philosophical tradition from Plato and Aristotle through Augustine, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, and Descartes, to modern Existentialism and Marxism, Pieper is able to highlight the values established – and challenged – down through the centuries...

The essays in these two books were selected from Stanley Rosen’s career as a philosopher, scholar, and teacher over the last half of a century. They represent both the vast range of his learning in the most important philosophers of the tradition and the daring and penetration of his exploration of the fundamental philosophical questions. Yet the essays are written with an accessibility that is an expression of Rosen’s thesis that our ordinary experience and speech provides the only stable ground for understanding and evaluating extraordinary thought and experiences.

The essays in these two books were selected from Stanley Rosen’s career as a philosopher, scholar, and teacher over the last half of a century. They represent both the vast range of his learning in the most important philosophers of the tradition and the daring and penetration of his exploration of the fundamental philosophical questions. Yet the essays are written with an accessibility that is an expression of Rosen’s thesis that our ordinary experience and speech provides the only stable ground for understanding and evaluating extraordinary thought and experiences.

The European Enlightenment is a period that contributed concepts that continue to be authoritative in philosophical conversation, and defined the criteria for what is important in the endeavors of human thought even in our own day. Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy presents the questions that are responsible for a departure from Scholasticism and the dawn of modern philosophy. To understand Continental Philosophy, and the history that precedes the analytical tradition, one cannot overlook Descartes’ precedent.