St. Augustine’s Press

David Ramsay Steele, PhD, is a libertarian writer with a powerful underground reputation for producing caustic, entertaining, knowledgeable, and surprising arguments, often violently at odds with conventional thinking. For the first time, some of Dr. Steele’s “greatest hits” have been brought together in an anthology of provocative essays on a wide range of topics. The essays are divided into two parts, “More Popular than Scholarly” and “More Scholarly than Popular.” 

To those who think they know what George Orwell is all about, this book unpacks surprise after surprise. Orwell Your Orwell reveals an Orwell very different from the one most people think of. It gives an unexpected yet convincing picture of Orwell’s beliefs, every key point precisely documented.

The abortion debate has returned. More than forty years have passed since the landmark decision Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the United States. But the abortion debate continues to rage among ethicists and the influencers of society in politics, government, and the arts. Dave Sterrett’s Aborting Aristotle examines these essential differences philosophically, while investigating the naturalistic worldview about humanity that is frequently held by many of the scholarly defenders of abortion.

Relying exclusively on the texts, Professor Strauss analyzes and compares every seemingly casual utterance as well as the more formal statements to recover the true Socrates and to determine the character of political philosophy. He investigates its origins, possibilities, and intention against the nonphilosophical background from which it emerged.

Xenophon’s only true Socratic discourse, the Oeconomicus, is a dialogue between Socrates and a gentleman-farmer on the art of household management and the art of farming as practiced on a gentleman’s estate. It is generally acknowledged to be the oldest surviving work devoted to “economics,” and it constitutes the classic statement of “economic” thought in ancient Greece. The dialogue examines the roles of husband and wife in the household and the division of labor between them, and considers the duties of the farm steward and the housekeeper. It discusses the goals of efficient management and the means for attaining these goals.

This new compilation of Strauss's scattered work is invaluable for those interested in the political philosopher, to be sure. But it is also an important contribution to the field in general as well as the history of philosophy.  

Both an explanation and a spiritual guide to the season of Lent, from Ash Wednesday through Holy Week, including the Seven Last Words of Christ, Easter Vigil, and Easter Sunday.

A step-by-step excursion through the Mass. Fr. Stravinskas explains the parts of the Mass, giving scriptural references and explanations for the various actions and prayers. Each chapter ends with stud questions geared toward group discussion. Perfect for Bible study, theology class, or prayer group, or simply to deepen one’s own understanding of the Church’s highest form of prayer, the Eucharistic Sacrifice.

Contains a variety of weighty topics concerning the Catholic university in America as treated by practitioners in the field of higher education, including the Revs. Ian Ker, Stephen M. Fields, S.J., C. John McCloskey, Peter Stravinskas, and Profs. William Marshner, Alan Kors, and John Murray. It features a foreword and a conclusion by Archbishop Elden Francis Curtiss of Omaha and Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.

“The practice of celibacy has come under attack at various times in the past thirty years. The debates have sometimes obscured the great value celibacy is to the individual practitioner and to the Church. Father Stravinskas, completing the work of Kenneth Howell, has compiled an excellent presentation on the gift of celibacy from many different theological disciplines. The work addresses various aspects of the practice, from the scriptural and dogmatic, to the historical, spiritual, and practical. The work defends the practice of celibacy and highlights the benefits and fruits of the practice in the life of the Church. Clergy and laity, married andsingle, will find reading this book worthwhile both theologically and spiritually.” – Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua, Archbishop of Philadelphia.

The two Disputations of the present volume open the second part of Francisco Suárez's famous Disputationes metaphysicae. Marking a turn from being in general, the subject matter of metaphysics and the concern of the first part, Disputation 28, presents various divisions of being in general, whose members equate with God and creatures. Disputation 29, in an expressly metaphysical way that reflects Avicenna, demonstrates the existence of God, the principal member. The demonstration hinges on the principle, "Everything which comes to be, comes to be by another" and scales the ladder of the common analogous concept of being from lesser and lower being to a First Being. In the course of his argument, Suárez rejects any "physical" demonstration, which would employ the Aristotelian principle, "Everything which is moved is moved by another," in order to pass from motion to a First Mover. Other topics that he treats include, in Disputation 28, the analogy of being between God and creatures, and in Disputation 29, the fact that there is only one God who is the creator of all else.

The Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548–1617) was an eminent Catholic philosopher-theologian whose Disputationes Metaphysicae were first published in Spain in 1597 and came to be widely studied throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. The Disputationes Metaphysicae not only constituted the high point of sixteenth-century scholastic metaphysics but exercised a great influence on early modern philosophers such as Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz.

Introduction. Two Case Studies. Techniques, Aims and Risks: Tests to promote the health of mother and baby. Non-invasive tests. Invasive tests. Tests to detect babies with disabilities and enable abortion. Invasive tests: mother only. Invasive tests: both mother and child. A specialist test with therapeutic and nontherapeutic potential. The Church’s Teaching. A Critical Examination of the Arguments in Favour of Selective Abortion: Parental pity. Burden to society and the family. Down’s Syndrome. Burdens for parents. Inconsistent treatment. Prenatal Diagnosis — Social and Psychological Aspects: Possible psychological consequences. Ethical and social implications of prenatal diagnosis. Eugenic mentality. Conclusion. Further Reading. Glossary.

“The breath of Sutton’s analysis is vast. She draws on biological, medical, legal, and sociological information. The analysis also includes a review of Roman Catholic tradition concerning abortion and canonical penalties.” Kevin T. Fitzgerald, S.J., Theological Studies

As infertility rates among couples increase, so do the lengths to which people go to have children. In this booklet Agneta Sutton looks at the Church's teaching in the area of medically assisted conception, exploring the effects of modern treatments on the couple and the child.

French existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1883–1973) is one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. The central themes of his philosophy, which are developed with a blend of realism, concreteness, and common sense, continue to be relevant for the plight of humanity in the twentieth-first century. Marcel’s thought emphasizes: the attempt to safeguard the dignity and integrity of the human person by emphasizing the inadequacy of the materialistic life and the unavoidable human need for transcendence; the inability of philosophy to capture the profundity and depth of key human experiences, and so the need to find a deeper kind of reflection; the importance of the experience of inter-subjectivity, which Marcel believes is at the root of human fulfillment, and which also finds expression in the transcendent dimension of human experience, a dimension that cannot be denied without loss, and that often gives meaning to our most profound experiences. Marcel is also one of the few contemporary thinkers who manages to do justice to the subjectivity and individuality of the human person, while avoiding the relativism and skepticism that has tended to accompany these notions, and that has plagued contemporary philosophy after Heidegger. He makes an unwavering effort to challenge the moral relativism and spiritual nihilism of his French rival, Jean-Paul Sartre, and of other representative existentialist philosophers.

This book discusses some of those ethical and political questions that puzzled several of the great minds of the twentieth century, such as Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, Jacques Maritain, and John Finnis: the question of natural law and its relationship to a teaching of individual freedom and rights.

Alfred Edward Taylor (1869–1945), an international authority on Plato, here gives a useful introductory sketch of the life and thought of Hobbes. Constructed from the original texts of Hobbes and his contemporary biographers, as well as the later studies of Croom Robertson, Tönnies and Leslie Stephen, this accessible book also includes a brief account of Hobbes’s life.

“An admirable little book.” J. W. N. Watkins, in Hobbes’s System of Ideas.

The radical empiricism of William James was first formally presented in his seminal papers of 1904, “Does Consciousness Exist?” and “A World of Pure Experience.” In James’s view, pure experience was to serve as the source for psychology’s primary data, and radical empiricism was to launch an effective critique of experimentalism in psychology, a critique from which the problem of experimentalism within science could be addressed more broadly. This collection of papers presents James’s formal statements on radical empiricism and a representative sample of contemporary responses from psychologists and philosophers. With only a few exceptions, these responses indicate just how badly James was misread – psychologists ignoring the heart of James’s message and philosophers transforming James’s metaphysics into something quite unintelligible to the emerging generation of experimental psychologists.

The Long Night of the Watchman brings into English translation the writings of the renowned Czech anti-Communist dissident and Catholic thinker Vaclav Benda (1946-1999). An early signatory of Charter 77, the Czechoslovak human rights association, Benda would twice serve as a spokesman. He was a founding member of VONS (the Czech acronym for the Committee to Defend the Unjustly Persecuted) and served a four-year prison sentence for his dissident activities.

Contains a representative sample of writings by the Individualists and their critics, and also by some leading Victorian politicians who attempted to translate political theories into practical politics. The debates between these thinkers raise some fundamental issues about the nature of liberty and the role and limits of the State that remain with us still. Many present-day concerns, including the issues at stake between liberals and communitarians, are to be found prefigured in the pages of this collection.

A contemporary of David Hume, Reid was the chief figure in the group of philosophers constituting the Scottish school of common sense; he influenced Thomas Jefferson, and for the first dozen academic generations after the Revolutionary War, Reid’s philosophy served as a cornerstone of American education.

D.H. Tracy’s debut volume, winner of The New Criterion Poetry Prize, marks a major event in contemporary poetry. Janet’s Cottage collects the richly textured, highly musical poems that have become Tracy’s hallmark in America’s finest literary journals, including Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. Tracy brings buoyant wit and piercing intelligence to a range of poetic subjects, both intimate and domestic (“Janet’s Cottage”) and exotic and far-flung (“Impressions of the Tribeless”).

Focuses on general remarks on Hume’s life and philosophy, his Natural History of Religion, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, and his work on the immortality of the soul and suicide. Contributors include: William Warburton, Henry O’Connor, Thomas Hayter, Joseph Priestley, Joseph Milner, William Craven, and George Giles.

Containing the most important secondary literature, this work focuses on responses to Hume’s Essay on Miracles. The material included ranges from 1751 to 1883, and includes such authors as T. Rutherford, William Adams, John Leland, George Campbell, Rev. S. Vince, John Hollis, Rev. James Somerville, Dr. Wately, Rev. A. C. L. D’Arblay, Rev. Francis Kilvert, Malthus, Joseph Napier, Joseph Mazzinin Wheeler, Sir Edmund Beckett, James McCosh, and Huxley.

The iconic Endless Summer movie poster and artist John Van Hamersveld’s highly recognizable and sometimes psychedelic art began with the renowned color-saturated sunset and surfer poster for the 1966 movie. Inspired by a sunset photo of a beach in Orange County, it was destined to become an internationally recognized icon of Southern California’s surfing scene. His works include famous album covers for the Beatles and Rolling Stones, as well as concert posters for Jimi Hendrix and Cream.

Van Herpen scrutinizes modern European history and the post-modern man and offers the reader a compelling account of human freedom in politics, morality, and the ways in which history will or will not ever guide us into the future.

“Thanks to the skill of Father Nicholas Gregoris, the publication in English translation of Giocanni Velocci’s important work, Prayer in Newman, will bring before a wider audience a significant study. In a few pages are drawn together from Newman’s sermons and meditations, both Anglican and Catholic, his reflections on the life of prayer. Moreover, this little work reveals Newman himself to be a masterful teacher of the art of prayer and – most important – to be essentially a man of prayer. In Father Velocci’s admirable phrase, ‘prayer became the preferred occupation of Newman.’

The first study based entirely on primary sources of the Dutch academic reactions to Descartes's philosophy. 

Histories and biographies of Winston Churchill frequently mention his friends. Some comment on their importance but few explain their significance. Indeed, he rarely spoke of his friendships. However, his concern for friends and for friendship always seems to hover above, or in the background, of his statecraft and in his thinking about statecraft and politics. This book brings friendship into focus as a central component of Churchill’s understanding of politics and statesmanship.

Pope Benedict XVI once said of Dietrich von Hildebrand: “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.” Besides distinguishing himself by his heroic Christian witness against Nazism, he also distinguished himself as one of the greatest and most original Catholic thinkers of the twentieth century. His profound philosophical work on love, man and woman, sexuality, the heart and the emotions, the foundations of the moral life, natural and Christian virtues, the place of beauty in the life of persons, person and community have inspired and influenced many. But these contributions are still not known as they deserve to be.

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.

In this work Klaus Vondung explores the various forms in which the elevation of politics into the sphere of religion was expressed in the Third Reich: in the faith of committed National Socialists, in the party’s cult events which celebrated the “community of the people” as a “community of faith” and the Fuhrer as “savior”, and in the persecution of the Jews that was ‘justified’ in religious terms by demonizing Jews as the “evil enemies of humanity” responsible for the world’s ills.

This collection of essays centers itself on a perspective of the human pursuit of unity and perfection, directly or indirectly, as objectives of intellectual endeavors, existential ideals, as social or political outcomes, and in the case of National Socialism even as perverse aberrations. Vondung’s particular treatment of Voegelin’s work likewise establishes what the former identifies as a stand-out question of this study: Does the search of order in history show us the unity of the history of humankind?

The concept of nature has drawn criticism from many quarters, including the natural sciences, ethics, metaphysics and theology. In these essays, distinguished thomistic philosophers and theologians seek to recover nature for their disciplines. The volume contains extensive treatment of nature’s much disputed role in ethics, as well as its importance for the philosophy of science (including biology), philosophical anthropology, metaphysics, the philosophy of art, theology and other areas.

Back to the Drawing Board: The Future of the Pro-Life Movement is an unprecedented collection of thoughtful and sometimes painfully honest essays, evaluating the pro-life cause thirty years after Roe v. Wade. Contributing writers are the movement's most respected leaders, including Dr. James Dobson, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Nat Hentoff, Dr. Mildred Jefferson, Congressman Chris Smith, Phyllis Schlafly, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Paul Weyrich, and Jean Garton, among others. They are statesmen, scholars, doctors, lawyers, judges, activists and mothers. They are Evangelical Christian, Muslim, Atheist, Jewish, and Catholic. They are men and women, young and old, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican – and third party. Many are veterans, some are new; but all have labored in the effort, and care about its future.

Walsh’s study is based on a comparison of Hegel with Kant. Examining their methods, the scope of their ethical theories, and their views as to the content of ethics, he concludes that, while Hegel worked with a moral psychology very different from Kant’s, his ethical theory should not be dismissed for that reason. Walsh explains how Hegel sought in his own ethical theory to overcome the deficiencies of Kantian ethics, first in his early writings through the notion of a morality of love, and then in his mature system by means of the conception of “concrete ethics” (sittlichkeit).

In The Philosopher’s Enigma, Richard Watson explains to believers in temperate and readable prose why he and many others are not believers. His discussion is based on strict Augustinianism, the foundation of seriously argued Christianity. God is hidden – that is, the concept of God is unintelligible – as discussed at length by Leszek Kolakowski in his Religion If There Is No God (St. Augustine’s Press) – in the sense that there are no known rational arguments for God’s existence. Moreover, Augustine argues that finite human beings cannot understand God’s infinite perfections.

In his 54th year, Rene Descartes went to Stockholm at the invitation of Queen Christina. He caught pneumonia there and died on February 11, 1650. It is said that because Descartes refused to dance, Queen Christina charged him with writing the verses for a court ballet, La Naissance de la Paix. If Descartes did write the ballet, it would be the last work of his published during his lifetime. And because of its political content, it would be important as a guide for constructing Descartes’s political philosophy, which he certainly had but never published. And what a wonderful story! Alas, the evidence of Descartes’s authorship is virtually nonexistent. It reduces to the mere fact that he sent a copy of the published verses to a friend . . . in order, he said, to make the package heavier so it would not get lost. Almost certainly the ballet was written by Helie Poirier, a professional writer of French verse.

Watson’s book is the only study of solipsism by a professional philosopher, other than Santayana, in which solipsism is taken seriously as a threat to Modern Philosophy.

Includes the influential firstpublished critique of Malebranche’s Of the Search for the Truth by Simon Foucher, plus the translation of the long correspondence between Malebranche and Dortous de Mairan, which is the basis of Malebranche’s criticism of Spinoza.

Cooperation in evil or wrongdoing is one of the most perplexing areas in bioethics, both for those working in the field and those seeking their advice.  The papers collected in this book are written by philosophers, theologians and lawyers who have studied these problems and/or by those who have faced these problems in their own work in law, healthcare and research, and political campaigning. The volume includes both general treatments of the subject of cooperation and conscientious objection, and more specific treatments of topics such as voting to improve unjust laws, research on fetal/embryonic cells, and care of suicidal patients.  The book is offered as a guide to a field which is both of academic interest and of personal concern to those who face cooperation problems in their own lives and work.

Introduction. Background Science: Genes. Genetic disorders, ‘Preventing’ genetic disorders. Germline gene therapy. Somatic gene therapy. Genetic enhancement. Delivering genes. Risks and benefits. Cloning. Cloning for birth. Cloning for research/transplantation. Stem cell research. Catholic Teaching: Respecting the embryo. Non-therapeutic interventions. Respect for liberty. Designer babies. In vitro fertilization [UK]. Cloning. Family relationships. Enhancement. Genetic enhancement. Germ-line therapy: Moral concerns. Somatic therapy: Moral concerns. Conclusion. Further Reading. Glossary.

 What is influence and why might real influencers be those whose names we no longer remember? Ken Weisbrode embarks on an exploration to trace the most powerful strands of cultural and intellectual influence, and demonstrates it might not be what we think it is.

Since November’s election, conservative columnists have filled the op-ed pages with calls for a new conservative agenda. In The Next Conservatism, two of the conservative movement’s best-known thinkers, Paul M. Weyrich and William S. Lind, offer exactly that. More, they offer a new kind of conservative agenda, one that reaches far beyond politics to grapple with the sources of our nation’s cultural decay.

The first document enacted by the Second Vatican Council was its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, and the liturgical reform mandated by that document has probably had a greater impact on the average Catholic than any other action of the Council. That this liturgical reform has not in every respect been the unalloyed success hoped for by the Council Fathers, however, has only been grudgingly recognized. The liturgists and other Church officials responsible for implementing the reforms have had a vested interest in claiming success, even where there was evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, the many and sometimes abrupt liturgical changes made were bound to affect long-established modes of worship and devotion – not to speak of the drastic move from Latin to the vernacular which came shortly after the Council, and which necessarily entailed radical change in the Church’s worship.

What is the future of the Catholic Church in America? This book provides a very informed answer to this question by collecting the various addresses delivered at the 25th annual convention of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars on the subject of the "new springtime" of the Catholic faith so tirelessly preached by Pope John Paul II. The conference was keynoted by Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. – who at this point in his life is surely the dean of contemporary American Catholic theologians. His considered view of the Church's future ("the springtime") is ably supplemented by contributions from such veteran scholars as Elizabeth Fox-Genovese of Emory University and Robert P. George of Princeton, writing on the subject of women in the Church and religious liberty respectively. Younger figures such as Pia De Solenni of the Family Research Council and National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez add different perspectives, on women, again, and on how the Church is impacted by the modern media. Among other speakers is the president of the Catholic University of America dealing with Catholic higher education as it is encountered today. The book thus features an up-to-date take on where the Catholic Church is headed today provided by very knowledgeable observers.

This volume consists of the addresses delivered to the 22nd Annual Convention of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars held in Chicago in September 1999. Each chapter includes a discussion of one of the major themes related to the contemporary question of marriage and the common good expounded by a competent senior scholar, followed by a response on the same subject by a younger scholar. The end result is an in-depth treatment of several of the major issues that concern marriage and the family today.