In The Achievement of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Matthew Levering has written a book for theologically educated readers who mistrust von Balthasar or who mistrust von Balthasar’s critics. The book shows that von Balthasar’s critics can and should benefit both from the rich and wide-ranging conversations that mark his trilogy and from the critical and constructive engagement with German philosophical modernity offered by the trilogy. In addition, Levering hopes to show that those who mistrust von Balthasar’s critics need to be more Balthasarian in their response to criticisms of the Swiss theologian.

This study constitutes the first-ever definitive account of the life and work of Irish modernist poets Thomas MacGreevy, Brian Coffey, and Denis Devlin. Apprenticed to the likes of W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett, all three writers worked at the center of modernist letters in England, France, and the United States, but did so from a distinctive perspective. All three writers wrote with a deep commitment to the intellectual life of Catholicism and saw the new movement in the arts as making possible for the first time a rich sacramental expression of the divine beauty in aesthetic form. MacGreevy spent his life trying to voice the Augustinian vision he found in The City of God. Coffey, a student of neo-Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain, married scholastic thought and a densely wrought poetics to give form and solution to the alienation of modern life. Devlin contemplated the world with the eyes of Montaigne and the heart of Pascal as he searched for a poetry that could realize the divine presence in the experience of the modern person. Taken together, MacGreevy, Coffey, and Devlin exemplify the modern Catholic intellectual seeking to engage the modern world on its own terms while drawing the age toward fulfillment within the mystery and splendor of the Church. They stand apart from their Irish contemporaries for their religious seriousness and cosmopolitan openness of European modernism. They lay bare the theological potencies of modern art and do so with a sophistication and insight distinctive to themselves. Although MacGreevy, Coffey, and Devlin have received considerable critical attention in the past, this is the first book to study their work comprehensively, from MacGreevy’s early poems and essays on Joyce and Eliot to Coffey’s essays in the neo-scholastic philosophy of science, and on to Devlin’s late poetic attempts to realize Dante’s divine vision in a Europe shattered by war and modern doubt.

In recent years American conservatism has found a new voice, a new way of picking up the political pieces left in the wake of liberal policies. But what seems innovative, Eugene Genovese shows us, may in fact have very old roots. Tracing a certain strain of conservatism to its sources in a rich southern tradition, his book introduces a revealing perspective on the politics of our day. As much a work of political and moral philosophy as one of history, The Southern Tradition is based on the intellectual journey of one of the most influential historians of the late twentieth century.To appreciate the tradition of southern conservatism, Genovese tells us, we must first understand the relation of southern thought to politics. Toward this end, he presents a historical overview that identifies the tenets, sensibilities, and attitudes of the southern-conservative world view. With these conditions in mind, he considers such political and constitutional issues as state rights, concurrent majority, and the nature and locus of political power in a constitutional republic. Of special interest are the southern-conservative critiques of equality and democracy, and of the Leviathan state in its liberal, socialist, and fascist forms. Genovese examines these critiques in light of the specific concept of property that has been central to southern social and political thought.Not only does this book illuminate a political tradition grounded in the writings of John Randolph and John C. Calhoun, but it shows how this lineage has been augmented by powerful literary figures such as Allen Tate, Lewis Simpson, and Robert Penn Warren. Genovese here reconstitutes the historical canon, re-envisions the strengths and weaknesses of the conservative tradition, and broadens the spectrum of political debate for our time.