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The Other Solzhenitsyn
Telling the Truth about a Misunderstood Writer and Thinker
Daniel J. Mahoney
St. Augustine's Press, 2014
The great Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) is widely recognized as one of the most consequential human beings of the twentieth century. Through his writings and moral witness, he illumined the nature of totalitarianism and helped bring down an ‘evil empire.’ His courage and tenacity are acknowledged even by his fiercest critics. Yet the world-class novelist, historian, and philosopher (one uses the latter term in its capacious Russian sense) has largely been eclipsed by a caricature that has transformed a measured and self-critical patriot into a ferocious nationalist, a partisan of local self-government into a quasi-authoritarian, a man of faith and reason into a narrow-minded defender of Orthodoxy. The caricature, widely dispensed in the press, and too often taken for granted, gets in the way of a thoughtful and humane confrontation with the “other” Solzhenitsyn, the true Solzhenitsyn, who is a writer and thinker of the first rank and whose spirited defense of liberty is never divorced from moderation. It is to the recovery of this Solzhenitsyn that this book is dedicated.
This book above all explores philosophical, political, and moral themes in Solzhenitsyn’s two masterworks, The Gulag Archipelago and The Red Wheel, as well as in his great European novel In the First Circle. We see Solzhenitsyn as analyst of revolution, defender of the moral law, phenomenologist of ideological despotism, and advocate of “resisting evil with force.” Other chapters carefully explore Solzhenitsyn’s conception of patriotism, his dissection of ideological mendacity, and his controversial, but thoughtful and humane discussion of the “Jewish Question” in the Russian – and Soviet twentieth century. Some of Solzhenitsyn’s later writings, such as the “binary tales” that he wrote in the 1990s, are subject to critically appreciative analysis. And a long final chapter comments on Solzhenitsyn’s July 2007 Der Spiegel interview, his last word to Russia and the West. He is revealed to be a man of faith and freedom, a patriot but not a nationalist, and a principled advocate of self-government for Russia and the West.
  A final Appendix reproduces the beautiful Introduction (“The Gift of Incarnation”) that the author’s widow, Natalia Solzhenitsyn, wrote to the 2009 Russian abridgment of The Gulag Archipelago, a work that is now taught in Russian high schools.
 
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Recovering Politics, Civilization, and the Soul
Essays on Pierre Manent and Roger Scruton
Daniel J. Mahoney
St. Augustine's Press, 2022
The Western inheritance is under sustained theoretical and practical assault. Legitimate self-criticism has given way to nihilistic self-loathing and cultural, moral, and political repudiation is the order of the day. Yet, as Daniel J. Mahoney shows in this learned, eloquent, and provocative set of essays, two contemporary philosophic thinkers, Roger Scruton and Pierre Manent, have––separately and together––traced a path for the renewal of politics and practical reason, our civilized inheritance, the natural moral law, and the soul as the enduring site of self-conscious reflection, moral and civic agency, and mutual accountability. 

Both Scruton and Manent have repudiated the fashionable nihilism associated with the “thought of 1968” and the “Parisian nonsense machine,” and have shown that gratitude is the proper response of the human person to the “givenness of things.” Both defend the self-governing nation against reckless nationalism and the even more reckless temptation of supranational governance and post-political  democracy, what Manent suggestively calls a “kratos” without a “demos.” Both defend the secular state while taking aim at a radical secularism that rejects “the Christian mark” that is at the heart of our inheritance and that sustains the rich and necessary interpenetration of truth and liberty. Scruton’s more “cultural” perspective is indebted to Burke and Kant; Manent’s more political perspective draws on Aristotle, St. Thomas, Tocqueville, and Raymond Aron, among others. By highlighting their affinities, and reflecting on their instructive differences, Mahoney shows how, together, the English man of letters Scruton, and the French political philosopher Manent, guide us to the recovery of a horizon of thought and action animated by practical reason and the wellsprings of the human soul. They show us the humanizing path forward, but first we must make the necessary spiritual decision to repudiate repudiation once and for all.

“With sophisticated and profound scholarship, Daniel Mahoney deploys his elegant style to defend the soul of civilization. Through the writings of Pierre Manent and Roger Scruton, he charts a course through the political and philosophical turmoil of the present age, providing hope and light amid the prevailing darkness.”
— Mark Dooley, Irish philosopher, writer and journalist. Author of Conversations with Roger Scruton and Sir Roger's literary executor. 

“Mahoney's collection of essays does a marvelous job of contextualizing and explaining the vital work of these two philosophers. He's also an engaging and elegant writer.”
— Daniel DiSalvo, City Journal

“A series of reflective essays by Mahoney on the philosophical, theological, and political thinking of our best conservative theorists: Pierre Manent and the late Roger 
Scruton. Recovering Politics, Civilization, and the Soul expresses well what we need.” — Richard M. Reinsch II, National Review
 
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The Religion of Humanity
The Illusion of Our Times
Pierre Manent
St. Augustine's Press, 2022
"Is not modern democracy the finally-found form of the religion of Humanity?" (2007)

The Religion of Humanity: The Illusion of Our Time is the first anthology in any language of the writings of the contemporary French political philosopher, Pierre Manent, on “the religion of Humanity.” The striking phrase comes from nineteenth-century French thinker, Auguste Comte (1798–1857). Comte coined the phrase and indeed created an atheistic religion of a self-adoring Humanity.  In the aftermath of the Cold War, Manent observed victorious democracy interpreting itself in a similar framework. He took it upon himself to track this development, analyze it, and warn his fellow Europeans of its deleterious political, intellectual, moral, and spiritual effects. With conceptual precision and (most often) a sober tone, many contemporary sacred cows were gored.   But in addition to cursing the humanitarian darkness, he also lit many candles of judicious political, philosophical, moral, and spiritual analysis. This anthology is thus almost unique in its subject matter, and certainly unique in its treatment of the subject. It is a rarity and gem: a first-rate work of political philosophy.
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Homo Viator
Introduction to the Metaphysic of Hope
Gabriel Marcel
St. Augustine's Press, 2010

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Mystery Of Being Vol 1
Reflection & Mystery
Gabriel Marcel
St. Augustine's Press, 2001
The Mystery of Being contains the most systematic exposition of the philosophical thought of Gabriel Marcel, a convert to Catholicism and the most distinguished twentieth-century exponent of Christian existentialism. Its two volumes are the Gifford lectures which Marcel delivered in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1949 and 1950. Marcel's work fundamentally challenges most of the major positions of the atheistic existentialists (Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus), especially their belief in an absurd, meaningless, godless universe.
These volumes deal with almost all of the major themes of Marcel's thought: the nature of philosophy, our broken world, man's deep ontological need for being, i.e., for permanent eternal values, our incarnate bodily existence, primary and secondary reflection, participation, being in situation, the identity of the human self, intersubjectivity, mystery and problem, faith, hope, and the reality of God, and immortality.
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Man against Mass Society
Gabriel Marcel
St. Augustine's Press, 2008

The central theme of this important book is that we are paying the price of an arrogance that refuses to recognize mystery. The author invites the reader to enter into the argument that he holds with himself on a great number of problems. Written in the early 1950s, Marcel’s discussion of these topics are remarkably contemporary, e.g.:

* Our crisis is a metaphysical, not merely social, one.

* What a man is depends partly on what he thinks he is, and a materialistic philosophy turns men into things.

* Can a man be free except in a free country?

* Stoicism is no longer a workable philosophy because today pressure can be put on the mind as well as on the body.

* Technical progress is not evil in itself, but a technique is a means that, regarded as an end, can become either an idol or an excuse for self-idolatry. State control of scientific research, leading to a concentration on new means of destruction, is a calamity.

* Fanaticism is an opinion that refuses to argue, and so the fanatic is an enemy of truth.

* The kind of unification that science is bringing about today is really an ironing out of differences, but the only valuable kind of unity is one that implies a respect for differences.

* We must beware of thinking in terms of great numbers and so blinding ourselves to the reality of individual suffering. Our philosophical approach to being is made possible only by our practical approach to our neighbor.

* We must encourage the spirit of fraternity and distrust the kind of egalitarianism that is based on envy and resentment.

* No man however humble should feel that he cannot spread the light among his friends. No easy solution is offered, but the author conveys his own faith that ultimately love and intelligence will triumph.

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Thou Shall Not Die
Gabriel Marcel
St. Augustine's Press, 2009

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A Gabriel Marcel Reader
Gabriel Marcel
St. Augustine's Press, 2011

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The Invisible Threshold
Two Plays by Gabriel Marcel
Gabriel Marcel
St. Augustine's Press, 2018
French philosopher and dramatist, Gabriel Marcel (1888-1973), who belonged to the movement of French existentialism, is one of the most insightful thinkers of the twentieth century. Unlike some of his contemporaries who took existentialism in an atheistic, even nihilistic, direction, Marcel approaches human existence from a theistic perspective, and gives priority to the themes of hope, fidelity and faith in the human search for meaning in a challenging world. Author of seventeen major works of philosophy, Marcel also wrote more than thirty plays, including tragedies and comedies, many of which were staged in theaters in Paris, Germany, Belgium, England, Ireland and the United States. Marcel regarded dramatic art as having priority in both a chronological and an intellectual sense. His plays deal with challenging experiences and issues of contention that arise between people, especially families, in day-to-day life. Describing his own style as “post-Ibsen,” because it involves a sense of realism, depictions of passion and sincerity, and a sense of moral duty, Marcel’s plays rarely provide complete or settled answers to the difficulties they confront, but suggest possibilities both of interpretation and with regard to the choices on life’s journey. One of his aims is to allow audiences (and readers) not only to arrive at their own conclusions, but to feel the echo of the dramatic action in their own lives, and so provoke both insight and critical reflection on the dramas of existence. The plays in this new volume were written early in his career, and were published together under the title Le Seuil invisible (The Invisible Threshold) in 1913. The first play, Grace, explores the theme of religious conversion. The drama depicts a crisis between characters of genuine depth and sincerity, who are struggling with different interpretations of shared experiences. After a serious illness, Gerard, one of the main protagonists, undergoes a religious conversion, an experience which allows of two different and irreconcilable interpretations. The first is the interpretation of the scientific materialist; the second regards Gerard’s illness not as a cause but as an occasion to exercise the subject’s creative freedom. The play also raises the question of grace: the role that God may play in the choice of faith. Marcel asks us to consider the sincerity of our choices, and those attitudes and temptations that play a role in our motivations, in a profound dramatization of the experience of the religious as it emerges through challenging life situations. Similar themes are addressed but developed differently in the second play, The Sandcastle. Through the character of Moirans, this drama explores the confrontation between one’s beliefs and their consequences when faced with challenging family and social circumstances. The play asks us to think about what happens when our beliefs and theories, especially about religion, morality and politics, come up against situations in life that can test them. Marcel raises issues of moral character, commitment and sincerity, and introduces the role doubt plays in the way we form and hold our convictions. The springboard for the unfolding of the drama is Moirans’ egotism, and his growing realization of the difference between accepting Christianity in an intellectual and cultural sense, and a Christianity that is lived. This predicament then provokes his daughter, Clarisse, into some profound soul-searching of her own. Drama of this profundity offers audiences and readers a mirror that reflects their own problems, which leads to further awareness and understanding. Marcel’s dramatic works deal with the difficulties in acknowledging many of life’s most profound experiences, in reacting to them in an authentic way, and often illustrates our failures with regard to them. One of the major themes of both his dramatic and philosophical work is that life’s most profound, fulfilling experiences are being compromised more than ever in what he describes as the modern, broken world (le monde cassé), one unfortunately characterized by alienation, loss of meaning and feelings of despair. These new plays of Marcel’s, here translated into English for the first time, will appeal to all who are interested in the role of grace in everyday life, in the influence of culture on belief, the relationship between faith and reason, the choice of faith in a secular world, and the struggle between inauthentic and authentic existence. Marcel raises profound questions about these and related topics, but does not offer final answers. In his plays, he leaves that to us.
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Toward Another Kingdom
Two Dramas of the Darker Years
Gabriel Marcel
St. Augustine's Press, 2022
Maria Traub's translation of Gabriel Marcel's post-war plays is a window into the French philosopher's answer to his own signature questions regarding human existence. And as in the earlier collection of plays, The Invisible Threshold, the realism, passion and sincerity that frame conscience and moral duty in Marcel are most profoundly visible in the day-to-day of family life. Ideas never before presented theatrically emerge in Marcel's characters who struggle to understand their times and how best to live in them. Post-war life was as much a spiritual reckoning as it was a new society, and Marcel's treatment of introspection is a valuable key to his own work.

Marcel's dramas require characters to respond authentically and from their true selves. He thereby offers the vision of how individual compromises may build up to break the world and condemn, or, conversely, contribute to the discovery and meaning of relation and redemption. Traub's new translation will interest the player as much as the scholar, and Marcel's aptitude for theatrical writing is proven once again. His intellectual sensitivity creates characters that beckon performance, which is an added dimension to the presentation of the human condition.
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Descartes's Grey Ontology
Cartesian Science and Aristotelian Thought in the Regulae
Jean-Luc Marion
St. Augustine's Press, 2022

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Natural Law
Reflections On Theory & Practice
Jacques Maritain
St. Augustine's Press, 2001

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Mario Cuomo
The Myth and the Man
George J. Marlin
St. Augustine's Press, 2020
Among all the fifty-six men who have served as New York’s governor, none was more complicated, self-righteous, pugilistic, and exasperating than Mario Cuomo.

As governor, Mario Cuomo is remembered most for his advocacy of the “personally-opposed-but” position on abortion that led to confrontations with Catholic Church hierarchy, and for dithering about his presidential ambitions, that led the media to dub him the “Hamlet on the Hudson.” His political style reminded many of Machiavelli; Cuomo styled himself a successor to St. Thomas More.

In this political profile, George J. Marlin sets the record straight on Mario Cuomo.

Marlin traces Cuomo’s political rise and documents how and why he abandoned his public opposition to abortion to be elected New York’s chief executive.

In great detail, Marlin describes the protracted conflict between Cuomo and his church on abortion and refutes the governor’s claim that his “position on abortion is absolutely theologically sound.”

Marlin critiques Cuomo’s famous 1984 Democratic convention speech as nothing more than the usual high-toned partisan liberal bromides that offered little, if anything, that hadn’t been touted by his party for half a century.

The book also uncovers New York State’s fiscal, economic, and social decline during Cuomo’s 12 years as governor. It explains why voters repudiated Cuomo’s version of a welfare state when he sought a fourth term in 1994 and why, in the words of his son, Governor Andrew Cuomo, his father was “more accomplished as a speech-giver than as a governor.”

Marlin skillfully separates the Cuomo “Public Intellectual” myth from the political man.


Mario Cuomo, three times Governor of New York, an eloquent hard edged Catholic from Queens, dominated not only his home state but national liberal politics in the age of Reagan. Whether the subject was police or theology, Cuomo rhetorically overpowered the reporters who covered him.  But he’s finally met his match in George Marlin’s Mario Cuomo The Myth and the Man. Marlin’s extraordinary equipment; a former candidate for Mayor of N.Y.C., former executive director of the New York and New Jersey Port Authority, author of books on Catholic voters and the Archbishops of New York, has made him the ideal author of what’s sure to be seen as the definitive political biography of Mario Cuomo.  Fred Siegel, Author, The Prince of the City:  Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life and The Future Once Happened Here:  New York, D.C., L.A., and the Fate of America’s Big Cities.

“It’s easy to forget what an important and fascinating figure Mario Cuomo was during New York’s raucous political heyday of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, when the likes of Hugh Carey, Ed Koch, Al D’Amato, and Rudy Giuliani strode the political stage. Thankfully, George Marlin’s wonderful new Cuomo biography will help everyone remember both the good and bad of the remarkable man who served three terms as governor, turned down a seat on the Supreme Court and rejected the chance to run for President. Here are both Cuomo’s successes and failures — and of the latter there were many.  An important work that helps restore our collective memory. — Fredric U. Dicker, the New York Post’s longtime state editor and a TV and radio commentator, covered six governors during 40 years at the state Capitol in Albany.

George Marlin is virtually peerless in blending high principle with knowledge of street-level politics and the nuts-and-bolts of otherwise mundane governance to produce readable, yet deeply insightful, social and political portraits. Mario Cuomo: The Myth and the Man, examines in fine detail one of one of New York state’s most consequential, if also deeply flawed, 20th-century gubernatorial incumbencies. Plus, readers get a bonus: Insight into what shaped the career of Mario Cuomo’s Democratic superstar son, Andrew. Marlin has been in the trenches himself and thus can separate blarney from beefsteak – which this fine volume once again demonstrates. Bob McManus, Contributing Editor, The City Journal, was the New York Post’s Editorial Page Editor (2000-2013), and The Albany Times Union’s Executive City Editor (1975-1981).

“George Marlin not only captures the political life and journey of Mario Cuomo, but details his policy approach that led to the near demise of the Empire State. Fortunately, the Conservative Party of New York was there to carry the torch and provide the margin of victory for George Pataki ending the senior Cuomo’s reign.” Michael Long, State Chairman, Conservative Party of New York (1988-2019)
 
“For both better and worse, Mario Cuomo was the quintessential American Catholic politician of an entire postwar generation: ambitious, brilliant, articulate, serious about his faith, and flexible in how and where he applied it. George Marlin is a writer of considerable skill, and he uses here it to produce a provocative, absorbing portrait of the man and his career. Francis X. Maier, Senior Fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center
 
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Narcissist Nation
Reflections of a Blue-State Conservative
George J. Marlin
St. Augustine's Press, 2011

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After Pandemic, After Modernity
The Relational Revolution
Giulio Maspero
St. Augustine's Press, 2022
The global pandemic has levied a heavy toll on humanity, but in its wake appears a great opportunity. Amidst what he calls a crisis of modernity, Giulio Maspero points to a phenomenon that can be seen in plain sight. "The absence of personal relationships highlighted by the health crisis exposes the consequences of the modern matrix, which, having lost its Christian element, now risks transforming itself into a digital matrix, substantially configuring itself as a technognosis."   

Without Trinitarian framework ancient and new idols emerge, as the Covid-19 tragedies have shown. Yet post-pandemic must be a moment of clarity and realism, as we can see how necessary it is that humanity place itself in relation to something beyond. The post-modern journey, however, must be in the spirit of Christian humanism or else any so-called progress will no longer be unable to speak authentically of our humanity. That is to say, the relational dimension of human life will be erased right along with the other ills that plague our earth. 
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The Mystery of Communion
Giulio Maspero
St. Augustine's Press, 2020
Dr. Giulio Maspero is a priest, theologian and physicist who in this work embarks on a study of the Trinity––the Christian triune God––and in a single narrative pieces together the classical metaphysics, revealed truths and Patristic apologetic theology that directed the development of Trinitarian dogma. Maspero views the importance of this project from several perspectives. It connects us both exegetically and in fellowship to Christianity’s Jewish roots and the living God of shared Scripture. It introduces the reader to a deeper understanding of the historical development of the Trinity, which is especially engaging given the formidable minds and arguments involved in this history, particularly on the part of the Cappadocian Fathers: Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nanzianzus and Basil the Great. Maspero also notes that knowing the Trinity better will offer greater insight into papal descriptions of the human family as necessarily rooted in a Trinitarian foundation, a “communion of persons in the image of the union of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” 

An approach to Trinitarian theology often favors overly technical language, or undue triteness. Maspero succeeds in leading both scholar and student to see how the unfolding of the mystery of the Trinity and its dogmatic development is a discovery of the “mystery from which all true love flows” in history. This discovery is only possible because of God’s self-revelation and immanence––that is, his heart and his “within.” The revelation of his being wholly and eternally Father and Son and the Love between them has made a more complete unity know to humanity through the perfect unity of divine communion. The foundation of all being and reality is this communion of love, personal unity that is given in relation and not in spite of relation. After a career of studying theology and theoretical physics, Maspero is especially keen on emphasizing the radical nature of this concept. It is an extension of Greek philosophy but ripped open and assigned immeasurable new value in communion and relation. 

The brevity of this work limits the amount of citations and textual references given, and Maspero instead urges the reader to study the book alongside Scripture. His manner of writing respects the impossibility of speaking of God in his immanence, but he nonetheless carves out a place for the Trinity in the human intellect, a place where the Jewish and Christian God might be encountered. As Maspero observes, truth is found in the personal dimension, but “just as in the use of a map for a journey, the cognitive grasp of the Trinity is to prevent us from getting lost, to keep us from reducing and simplifying the Trinity into something we understand merely on a natural level.” A highlight of this work is Maspero’s reliance on Mary, Theotokos, in his presentation of Trinitarian theology, the person who first opened herself to this manner of thinking.
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Being Ethical
D. Q. McInerny
St. Augustine's Press, 2020
A hallmark of Western culture is a massive moral confusion, rendering the very idea of virtue “exotic and incomprehensible.” McInerny here drags the conversation back to the beginning, establishing the terms and the tools of what it means to think and to do what is moral. As he asserts, the virtuous life and the moral life are one and the same. To be moral is to be good, and the goodness of one’s acts reflects the fundamentals of thought placed in the service of a pursuit of a virtuous life. Why is the concept of a virtuous life so foreign to many? We do not know the basics of a moral life. As McInerny states, “To be good we have to know what that means.”

The two biggest judgments one will make during life pertain to knowing what is good, what is bad, and the difference between the two. This bleeds into a study of morality and ethics when it pertains to concrete acts, but in reality all aspects of our lives bear on these judgments. “Being ethical is not simply a state of mind, it is a state of being, a way of living one’s life that reflects the fundamental principles of ethics [...] [it is one] who lives in a certain way.” Nevertheless, the subject of this book focuses on ethics––namely, the goodness or badness of human acts. McInerny’s great reason for writing this work is to teach the reader that he or she cannot properly tackle ethical questions (even if they are not identified as such) if one is not himself or herself actually ethical (living virtuously).

Writing very much as a teacher of teachers, McInerny relies on the foundations of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, as well as his late brother, Ralph McInerny, to reiterate the principles of ethics that inform both thought and act. To speak of ethics, then, is to admit a commitment to virtue and how the theoretical distinction of good and bad is necessarily practical. Acting well will lead to thinking better, but McInerny notes that culture has lost sight of the former and thereby the coherency to address ethical questions. Being Ethical aims to correct this disconnect in forty-eight cogent lessons. 

Being Ethical is fundamentally intended to serve as a sequel to D. Q. McInerny’s Being Logical (Random House, 2004), which has remained in print and has been translated into six languages. Its style lends itself to being used as a textbook in liberal studies. More generally, it is a refreshing presentation of this topic and timely and timeless exhortation to readers of the necessity of a love of virtue for ethical thought. For friends and students of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Ralph McInerny, this book bears a style and manner that is both familiar and much loved.
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Being Philosophical
D. Q. McInerny
St. Augustine's Press, 2023
Everyone must become a philosopher. The alternate is to forego living a human life, or as D. Q. McInerny illustrates, to run while choosing to be hamstrung. But not all philosophizing is equal, and it requires discipline and systematic study. In "creative impatience with ignorance" and "an unswerving commitment to the truth," one can be confident he is at least moving in the right direction toward genuine philosophy.

But most importantly, philosophy requires teachers. To philosophize is, after all, to be an eternal student, a person who even while instructing others relies on the guidance found in the 'fertile' human wisdom cultivated throughout the ages. And the most fecund of all philosophy, according to McInerny, is that contained in Aristotelian-Thomism. His concise and thorough defense of the philosophical life and its lodestar, Thomism, must be read as deliberately as it was written. For McInerny makes a bold claim: if one is truly serious about philosophizing, an encounter with the essentials of Thomism is fundamental and indicates a path for the human mind unlike anything other systems or traditions of thought can offer. 

This book begins with logic and is followed by introductions to the philosophy of nature, philosophical psychology, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, metaphysics and natural theology. It is a companion for students of all ages who have yet to spend quality time with Thomas Aquinas. And it is a real delight to do so in the company of McInerny, who in Being Ethical (2019) has already proven himself to be the affable and able teacher every thinking person longs to meet along the course of his search for truth. 
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Good Knights
Ralph McInerny
St. Augustine's Press, 2010

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Some Catholic Writers
Ralph McInerny
St. Augustine's Press, 2007

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Shouting Softly
Lines on Law, Literature, and Culture
Allen Mendenhall
St. Augustine's Press, 2020
In Shouting Softly, literary lawyer and proud Southerner Allen Mendenhall provides valuable insights into perennial questions about the fundamental features of civil society. His expansive commentaries and criticism on law, literature, and culture reveal an abiding commitment to ordered liberty, the decentralization and diffusion of power, bottom-up and localized forms of voluntary governance, time-tested wisdom, and aesthetic sensibility. This vigorous work cautions against hubris and misguided certitude, predicating its arresting arguments on the proposition that human reason, however awesome and inspiring, is limited and fallible. Covering a wide range of issues and historical figures, Mendenhall espouses conservative yet melioristic approaches to complex subjects, rebutting the hollow claims and fashionable theories that captivate ‘purposefully’ leftist law and humanities faculties across the United States. His is the measured voice of a book-loving polymath who appreciates beauty, imagination, humility, clarity, cooperation, and sound argumentation.

The work is given in three parts. The first section on law explores legal minds, rules and commentary on seminal jurisprudence. The second part explores literature and the influence of the writer and the disconcerting truths stories often seek to convey. Thirdly, Mendenhall delves into culture and the more obvious situations wherein we gain insight into our manner of living, and here Mendenhall exudes a Southern accent that in no way compromises his universal bearings. One of the highlights is his echo of Larry Seidentop’s question: “If we in the West do not understand the moral depth of our own tradition, how can we hope to shape the conversation of mankind?” This is all the more meaningful given that Mendenhall is a member of the Millennial generation, and part of the intellectual minority who sees the urgency of “a studied appreciation for nuanced story and linguistic narrative.” 
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Communication Culture in a Digital Age
Being Seriously Relational
Cristian Mendoza
St. Augustine's Press, 2023
Why are human beings so attracted to information and communication technologies? Developments in this field have formed new social networks around these technologies and that seem to compete with pre-existing structures in human lives. Cristian Mendoza and Lluís Clavell confront this phenomenon and its effect on human happiness, but have no desire to condemn the trajectory of human reliance on communication technology. Rather, they see an opportunity to explore human nature at greater depths. Only in this way can our use of technology properly support human activity and not sabotage our grasp of reality. 

Mendoza and Clavell's treatment of this topic renders an important philosophical conversation about digital realities and how they can actually make human life more human. This book provides a framework for using human attraction to information and communication tech for human benefit. It can be done! The authors apply the work of old and new masters to help open the new horizons of communication technology wherein human beings can flourish.
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John Stuart Mill
Articles, Columns, Reviews and Translations of Plato's Dialogues
John Stuart Mill
St. Augustine's Press, 2021
This is the second volume, following the well-received edition of Mill’s writing essential to understanding the liberal tradition. His commentary on a full spectrum of issues gives further insight into the strengths and vulnerabilities of liberal democratic theory in practice. Rare and difficult to locate material is here brought to attention and made available. 

The contribution of Mill’s most authoritative biographer, Nicholas Capaldi, is a singular and unmatched highlight. The tenor of St. Augustine’s Press volumed on Mill is distinct in its intention to place his work in the framework of political philosophy and the conversation of the viability of liberalism as a tradition of thought. 
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John Stuart Mill
On Democracy, Freedom and Government & Other Selected Writings
John Stuart Mill
St. Augustine's Press, 2019
In addition to “On Liberty” and “On Representative Government,” this new selection of Mill’s writings includes, among others, a number of less known of his writings, such as: “Civilization,” “Perfectibility,” “The Negro Question,” “On Education,” “On Aristocracy,” “On Marriage,” “On Free Press,” “Socialism,” Mill’s review of Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” his letters to Tocqueville, and several other writings.

If one can use a somewhat exaggerated language, Mill’s writings are to liberal-democracy what Marx and Engels’ writings were to Communism. Both systems gave expression to 19th century man’s longing for equality and justice, both promised to liberate him from the shackles of oppression, authority and tradition. Instead of liberating man, Communism created the most brutal system in human history, and its spectacular fall in 1989 is one of history’s greatest events. Western world today shows that liberal-democracy is no longer a benign doctrine, which advocates free market, minimum state and individual liberties, but, like Communism, is an all-encompassing ideology which forces an individual to abdicate his freedom and soul in favor of a Communist-like collective.

As many critics of real Socialism could see the seeds of totalitarianism in the writings of Marx and Engels, so one can see the seeds of liberal totalitarianism in Mill’s writings. This new edition is intended to help readers to understand why democratic-liberalism came so close to its 19th century ideological rival.
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front cover of Herman Melville's Ship of State
Herman Melville's Ship of State
Will Morrisey
St. Augustine's Press, 2020
William Morrisey unravels Melville’s “loomings” of the great whale, showing them to be important threads of politics and theories of governance. The Young America of Melville’s day valorized popular sovereignty such that moral law suppressed by the majority rule was bringing America to state of being that could only then be ruled by the mightiest of the mighty––the great Leviathan, who reigns in the boundless chaotic sea separated from “stable land.” The force of the created world and the necessary ordering achieved through conquest are dominating themes of Melville’s great tale, but as Morrisey observes approaching the great whale, ruler of the untamable seas, is for captain (ruler) an opportunity to destroy it. But for the sailor (the ruled) being close to the white whale is a moment for understanding, and in turn of being understood. Yet in what sense is being seen, for human beings of moral bearings, not also an impulse to self-impose? “The modern Ishmael wants to see, not to kill, perhaps to be seen, and surely not to be killed. Americans too need to come to terms with the white whale, if they are to perceive reality as it is without bringing destruction upon themselves.” Is Melville proposing an utterly new philosophy of ruler and ruled, of a proper gauge of the immeasurable chaos that is nature?

“Does Melville also intend to be a founder in the ‘New World’?” Morrisey’s study is a compelling look at the early political moments of a new nation, but one that at the time perceived itself as already aging and maturing in the process of political voyage and adventure. Dangers lie ahead, Melville seems to warn, and in his disenchantment of the vigor of the Young America he once endorsed he tells the story of what really happens when democracy is idealized and the surrounding waters of chaos are thereby veiled; and yet also of what happens when one would seek to command the chaos only to transform into the unpredictably destructive prey he pursues, especially under the guise of moral outrage. 

Melville, like Ishmael, urges a new vision of both God and nature, and challenges the notion of rule in all its expressions. Americans, the people of the New World, are invited to be unafraid, but also careful. In wandering as on the open waters one wonders, beyond civic boundaries and conventions, and in that wonder one may finally come face to face with what is good and grand––but in beholding the great white whale, can one resist the urge to conquest, now that he is likewise by the leviathan beholden? Is the rule of man and the coronation of a specific dialectic of power an untenable victory, given that “‘Nature is nobody’s ally’: it wounds or kills any person or nation that violates it, impartially”? 

Morrisey writes with lucidity and weaves together elements of history, literature, politics and perhaps his own affinity for Ishmael’s passenger spirit to reveal just how broad and boundless of a narrative Melville’s Moby Dick truly is.
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front cover of Shakespeare’s Politic Comedy
Shakespeare’s Politic Comedy
Will Morrisey
St. Augustine's Press, 2022
Will Morrisey again considers the political dimensions of literary classics, as previously seen in Melville’s Ship of State (2019). His attention to Shakespeare’s comedies is a reader’s and playgoer’s delight. 

INTRODUCTORY NOTE: The Politic Character of Shakespeare’s Comedy
PART ONE: THREE REGIMES: OLIGARCHY, ARISTOCRACY, MONARCHY
Chapter One: Shakespearean Comedy: Two Points on the Compass
Chapter Two: Gentlemen and Gentlemanliness
Chapter Three: Royal Dreaming

PART TWO: THE RULE OF LAW
Chapter Four: Comic Errors, Legal Slapstick
Chapter Five: What Will You?

PART THREE: THE COMEDY OF MORALS
Chapter Six: Taming Our Shrewishness
Chapter Seven: What Does Shakespeare Mean When He Says, “As You Like It”?

PART FOUR: THE COMEDY OF POLITICS
Chapter Eight: Is All Well That Ends Well?
Chapter Nine: The Geopolitics of Love
Chapter Ten: The Wisest Beholder

SHAKESPEARE’S POLITIC MERRIMENT
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front cover of Moling in Meditation
Moling in Meditation
A Psalter for an Early Irish Monk
Paul Murray
St. Augustine's Press, 2021
These quiet, surprising, amazing poems deliver to the reader fresh contact with wisdom for life––lessons we should have known had we paused a little more and looked, things we may have known and lost track of, insights we perhaps sense and now can finally grasp with these words of Moling––of Paul Murray––sharing with us his thoughts, his prayers, his stories of struggle and grace. These poems are “the hidden lost language of the soul” revealed.
Jeremy Driscoll, O.S.B. Abbot of Mount Angel Abbey
 
Paul Murray’s poetry is always a miracle of compression and economy without ever seeming sparse or austere. These luminous meditative pieces have the richness that comes from an intent focus on the everyday and the material as carrying immeasurable grace.
Rowan Williams, Former Archbishop of Canterbury

The present work contains poems and meditations voiced by Paul Murray for Moling, an Irish monk and poet of the 7th century. In the Irish tradition, Moling is the figure who most resembles St Francis of Assisi. He is a man, a saint, whose presence resists linear history, who yet walks toward us in wonder and myth. In Moling in Meditation, the poems, though quiet in their form and expression, represent nevertheless a fresh and, at times, bold exploration of states of soul and psyche which, in almost every age, accompany the spiritual journey. 
 
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