This book will appeal to professional scholars and graduate students with an interest in Aristotle’s ethics and in ethics generally. It proposes comprehensive interpretations of some difficult passages in Aristotle’s two major ethical works ( the Nicomachean Ethics and the Eudemian Ethics ). It brings to bear upon the analysis of human behavior passages in Aristotle’s logical works and in his Physics. It also draws connections among areas of particular interest to contemporary ethics: action theory, the analysis of practical reason, and virtue ethics.

Catholic education stands in need of renewal, for it too has experienced the consequences of the rupture of faith and reason in the modern period. Secularism affects Catholic schools as well as public ones when faith remains confined solely to a religion class or the celebration of the Mass. Our past provides a model of integration: the unity of divine revelations and the liberal arts and a life of wisdom that pursues what is truly highest. Modern people too often settle for less—little comforts and distractions—while the theologians, philosophers, and educators of the past spur us on to stop at nothing less than God’s invitation to enter his divine life. This first volume of the Adeodatus Handbook seeks to provide inspiration to return to the central vision of Catholic education: an integrated approach to the liberal arts that flows from God’s initiative toward us and is ordered toward eternal union with him. The essays of this volume unfold the narrative offered in this introduction in more detail. We consider them to be the most essential figures who have established the Catholic approach to education. Two of them, Plato and Aristotle, were pagan authors who formed the philosophical basis of the Catholic approach. The others, flowing from the Incarnation of the Son of God, appropriated the truths of nature contemplated by philosophy and drew them into a sacramental synthesis with the truths of divine revelation. There can be no genuine Christian education that does help the student to contemplate the whole of reality and to live a life of wisdom, rooted in the virtues that perfect human nature while ultimately receptive of the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. The majority of the figures addressed in this volume are canonized saints, pointing us to the priority of holiness in Catholic education. Education serves the ultimate aim of human life: our perfect happiness in the beatific vision. To reach this, we need the support of mentors and friends. This requires the concrete embodiment of Christian community within the home and school. It can also, however, flow from our communion with the great sainted educators of our heritage. We have inherited their legacy, and with their prayers and support, we have been tasked with continuing in our own age. We will not be able to replicate their efforts, but with the grace and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we can make our contribution in educating the youth, young adults, seminarians, and lay people of the Church of God.

A fresh history of nineteenth-century philosophy’s many ideas about secularization.
 
The secularization thesis, which held that religious belief would gradually yield to rationality, has been thoroughly debunked. What, then, can we learn from philosophers for whom the death of God seemed so imminent? In this book, Espen Hammer offers a sweeping analysis of secularization in nineteenth-century German philosophy, arguing that the persistence of religion (rather than its absence) animated this tradition. Hammer shows that Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche, each in their own way, sought to preserve and transform religion’s ethical and communal aspirations for modern life. A renewed appreciation for this tradition’s generous thought, Hammer argues, can help us chart a path through needlessly destructive conflicts between secularists and fundamentalists today.

Many contemporary discussions of religion take an absolute, intractable approach to belief and nonbelief that privileges faith and dogmatism while treating doubt as a threat to religious values. As Madhuri M. Yadlapati demonstrates, however, there is another way: a faith (or nonfaith) that embraces doubt and its potential for exploring both the depths and heights of spiritual reflection and speculation. Through three distinct discussions of faith, doubt, and hope, Yadlapati explores what it means to live creatively and responsibly in the everyday world as limited, imaginative, and questioning creatures. She begins with a perceptive survey of diverse faith experiences in Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Protestant Christianity and then narrows her focus to Protestant Christianity and Hinduism to explore how the great thinkers of those faiths have embraced doubt in the service of spiritual transcendence.

Yadlapati traces religious perspectives on trust, humility, belonging, commitment, and lively skepticism as they relate to faith and doubt. Drawing on various doctrines, scriptures, and the writings of great religious thinkers such as C. S. Lewis, Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, and Raimon Panikkar, Yadlapati demonstrates how doubt can serve to enhance faith, not hinder it. Defending the rich tapestry of faith and doubt against polarization, Against Dogmatism reveals an ecumenical middle way, a spiritual approach native to traditions in which faith and doubt are interwoven in constructive and dynamic ways.

The volume looks especially closely at Ruskin's changing attitudes to Catholicism. The son of a stoutly Bible-Protestant mother and a father politically opposed to the civil emancipation of Catholics, Ruskin found it increasingly difficult to combine his inherited anti-Catholicism with his appreciation of Byzantine-Venetian, Renaissance-humanist, and Franciscan-evangelical art and the program for living these contained or implied. The rumors in late life of his immanent conversion to Rome proved unfounded, but they were not implausible. All Great Art is Praise seeks to show why

In addition to being the sixth bishop of the Diocese of New York, Henry Codman Potter (1835-1908) was a prominent voice in the Social Gospel movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book, the first in-depth study of Potter's life and work, examines his career in the Episcopal church as well as the origins and legacy of his progressive social views.

As industrialization and urbanization spread in the nineteenth century, the Social Gospel movement sought to apply Christian teachings to effect improvements in the lives of the less fortunate. Potter was firmly in this tradition, concerning himself especially with issues of race, the place of women in society, questions of labor and capital, and what he called "political righteousness." Placing Potter against the wider backdrop of nineteenth-century American Protestantism, Bourgeois explores the experiences and influences that led him to espouse these socially conscious beliefs, to work for social reform, and to write such works as  Sermons of the City (1881) and The Citizen in His Relation to the Industrial Situation (1902).

In telling Potter's remarkable story, All Things Human stands as a valuable contribution to intellectual and religious history as well as an exploration of the ways in which religion and society interact.

Ambient Sufism is a study of the intertwined musical lives of several ritual communities in Tunisia that invoke the healing powers of long-deceased Muslim saints through music-driven trance rituals. Richard C. Jankowsky illuminates the virtually undocumented role of women and minorities in shaping the ritual musical landscape of the region, with case studies on men’s and women’s Sufi orders, Jewish and black Tunisian healing musical troupes, and the popular music of hard-drinking laborers, as well as the cohorts involved in mass-mediated staged spectacles of ritual that continue to inject ritual sounds into the public sphere. He uses the term “ambient Sufism” to illuminate these adjacent ritual practices, each serving as a musical, social, and devotional-therapeutic niche while contributing to a larger, shared ecology of practices surrounding and invoking the figures of saints. And he argues that ritual musical form—that is, the large-scale structuring of ritual through musical organization—has agency; that is, form is revealing and constitutive of experience and encourages particular subjectivities. Ambient Sufism promises many useful ideas for ethnomusicology, anthropology, Islamic and religious studies, and North African studies. 

In the growing field of early medieval texts in translation, this book presents the first full English translations of the Lives of Liutbirga of Wendhausen, the first anchoress in Saxony, and Hathumoda, the first abbess of Gandersheim.

We inhabit a time of crisis—totalitarianism, environmental collapse, and the unquestioned rule of neoliberal capitalism. Philosopher Jean Vioulac is invested in and worried by all of this, but his main concern lies with how these phenomena all represent a crisis within—and a threat to—thinking itself.         
In his first book to be translated into English, Vioulac radicalizes Heidegger’s understanding of truth as disclosure through the notion of truth as apocalypse. This “apocalypse of truth” works as an unveiling that reveals both the finitude and mystery of truth, allowing a full confrontation with truth-as-absence. Engaging with Heidegger, Marx, and St. Paul, as well as contemporary figures including Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Žižek, Vioulac’s book presents a subtle, masterful exposition of his analysis before culminating in a powerful vision of “the abyss of the deity.” Here, Vioulac articulates a portrait of Christianity as a religion of mourning, waiting for a god who has already passed by, a form of ever-present eschatology whose end has always already taken place. With a preface by Jean-Luc Marion, Apocalypse of Truth presents a major contemporary French thinker to English-speaking audiences for the first time.
 

When Nashville became a Catholic diocese in 1837, it was mostly an aspirational exercise. The few Catholics scattered throughout the state were ministered to only occasionally by missionary priests who traveled by horseback from Kentucky. It is believed that Hugh Rogan, who arrived in Middle Tennessee in 1780 after working as a surveyor for the Continental Army, did not see a priest for fifty years.

That all changed when the Italian-born Father Aloysius “Luigi” Orengo arrived in Nashville in 1848. He traveled all over the state, sleeping in the woods, using his saddle for a pillow, and eating cheese and crackers. He’s credited with building churches in Franklin, Columbia, Pulaski, East Nashville, Tracy City, Gallatin, Humboldt, Brownsville, Grand Junction, Covington, Jackson, and McEwen.

But as influential as he was, Father Orengo’s story remained untold—until now.

In Aquinas and the Cry of Rachel , John F. X. Knasas explores Thomas Aquinas's philosophical thinking about evil, and brings the results into discussion with the contemporary theodicies - philosophies of the problem of evil. It examines the relation of the human person and human nature to nature as a whole.

Generally speaking, possible philosophical accounts for evil are two kinds: cosmological or personal. The cosmological account has evils rebounding to the perfection of creation. The personal account would have evils suffered rebounding to the good of the sufferer. Knasas argues that for Aquinas no philosophical resolution of these two kinds of accounts
is possible. This argument is based upon Aquinas's understanding of the human as an intellector of analogical being. Such an understanding establishes two truths. First, the human is by nature only a principal part of the created whole. Second, there is the philosophically discernible possibility of supernatural elevation by the creator.

Hence, as far as philosophy can discern, evil may have a natural explanation or it may have a supernatural one. The Thomistic philosopher has no answer as to why evil exists because that philosopher discerns too many possible ones. In that respect, Aquinas's thinking on evil is similar to his thinking about the philosophical knowledge of the biblical
truth of the world's creation in time. Such a creation is one metaphysical possibility among others. Some authors that Aquinas and the Cry of Rachel considers are: Anthony Flew and Albert Camus, Jacques Maritain and Charles Journet, William Rowe, Marily McCord Adams, William Hasker, John Hick, David Ray Griffin, David Hume, Diogenes Allen, J. L. Mackie, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, Bruce Reichenbach,
Brian Davies, and Eleonore Stump.

Aquinas and the Platonist Tradition studies a variety of central topics to illustrate the pervasive influence of Platonism and Neoplatonism in the philosophy of St Thomas. The overall thesis is that Aquinas combined the transcendent impulse of Platonism with the natural sensibility of Aristotle; his deepest metaphysical intuitions are unmistakably Platonist. While Aquinas followed Aristotle in epistemology, his deeper insights were more in tune with Plato. Adopting Aristotle’s method, he provided a more secure foundation for positions that was more characteristic of Plato. Fran O'Rourke notes the fundamental unity of Plato and Aristotle fashioned by Aquinas at a deeper level. The opening chapter deals in broad strokes with themes common to Plato and St Thomas. Direct influence is not always evident (Aquinas had limited knowledge of Plato’s writings), rather a shared interest in profound philosophical questions, approached separately on converging paths. Subsequent chapters deal in detail with particular questions, relying frequently on indirect Neoplatonic sources and interpretations, in particular St Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, and the author of the Liber de Causis. Central topics include the immortality of the soul, the nature of beauty, the status of evil, the names of God, Aquinas’ debt to Pseudo-Dionysius in the understanding of being/existence (esse) as intensive power (virtus essendi), the knowledge of transcendent reality, and the nature and ontological status of angels. O'Rourke's method is to begin each topic with a close reading of relevant texts from the entire corpus thomisticum. There followed a comparison and contrast with earlier authors and references to later influences. Each essay concludes with an evaluation, frequently criticizing the arguments involved. The studies are not merely historical, but aim to show the abiding philosophical relevance of the Platonist and Thomistic thought. There is a dearth of extended studies of the Platonist/Neoplatonist heritage of Aquinas. Many books refer in a general way to these influences, but none in an extended or systematic manner. While this book is a collection of diverse essays, it has nevertheless a comprehensive unity. It presents many new insights regarding the fundamental significance of Platonist/Neoplatonist aspects of Aquinas’ thought.

A reflection on Christianity in Arab society.
 
This work explores the Christian faith in the current intercultural context of Arab societies. It argues that Arab Christianity seeks to express the Christian faith through openness to Muslim otherness, existential conviviality, and fraternal solidarity. In order to safeguard not only the physical existence of these communities but also and above all the relevance and richness of their message of life, the theological reflection presented here takes on a three-part task. First, it faithfully describes the sociopolitical and sociocultural reality of the historical integration of Arab Christian communities. Second, it reinterprets the content of the Christ event with reference to the challenge of Muslim otherness. And finally, it offers a path for conversion that involves a form not only of evangelical practice, designed to foster bonds of fraternal solidarity between the inhabitants of the Arab world but also of shared spiritual quest for moral and political commitment.
 

The distinguished Moroccan philosopher Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, in this summary of his own work, examines the status of Arab thought in the late twentieth century. Al-Jabri rejects what he calls the current polarization of Arab thought between an imported modernism that disregards Arab tradition and a fundamentalism that would reconstruct the present in the image of an idealized past.

Both past and present intellectual currents are examined. Al-Jabri first questions the current philosophical positions of the liberals, the Marxists, and the fundamentalists. Then he turns to history, exploring Arab philosophy in the tenth and twelfth centuries, a time of political and ideological struggle. In the writings of Ibn Hazm and Averroës, he identifies the beginnings of Arab rationalism, a rationalism he traces through the innovative fourteenth–century work of Ibn Khaldun.

Al-Jabri offers both Western readers and his own compatriots a radical new approach to Arab thought, one that finds in the past the roots of an open, critical rationalism which he sees as emerging in the Arab world today.

How religious institutions used landscapes and architecture to express their religious and social ideologies

The Archaeology of Protestant Landscapes focuses on three religious institutions in the US South in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: St. Paul’s Parish Church in coastal South Carolina, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in central Alabama, and Cane Hill College in Northwest Arkansas. Drawing from archaeological surveys and excavations, artifact analysis, archival research, geophysical testing, and architectural information on religious structures, Kimberly Pyszka offers case studies of these institutions, which were located in developing communities that varied socially, politically, and economically.

Pyszka uses these case studies to demonstrate that select religious institutions used and modified natural landscape features to create cultural landscapes to express their ideology, identity, goals, and social, religious, and political power. She notes that where those structures were constructed, how they sat on the landscape, their architectural style, and their overall visual appearance were well-considered decisions made by religious leaders to benefit their organizations, communities, and, sometimes, themselves.

Pyszka also uses these case studies to highlight the social roles that religious organizations played in the development of communities. She points to landscape decisions—specifically to how the architectural design of religious structures was used, intentionally or not, to unite people, often those of differing religious backgrounds—as contributing to the creation of a common identity among people living in new and still-growing settlements, aiding in community development. This book contributes to the growing body of work within historical archaeology on churches, churchyards, and cemeteries and to the increasing awareness among archaeologists of how these sites contribute to questions of identity, consumerism, trade, and colonialism.
 

A richly illustrated collection of essays on visual biblical interpretation

For centuries Christians have engaged their sacred texts as much through the visual as through the written word. Yet until recent decades, the academic disciplines of biblical studies and art history largely worked independently. This volume bridges that gap with the interdisciplinary work of biblical scholars and art historians. Focusing on the visualization of biblical characters from both the Old and New Testaments, essays illustrate the potential of such collaboration for a deeper understanding of the Bible and its visual reception. Contributions from Ian Boxall, James Clifton, David B. Gowler, Jonathan Homrighausen, Heidi J. Hornik, Jeff Jay, Christine E. Joynes, Yohana A. Junker, Meredith Munson, and Ela Nuțu foreground diverse cultural contexts and chronological periods for scholars and students of the Bible and art.

This book analyzes the different conceptions of authenticity that are behind conflicts over who and what should be recognized as authentically Jewish.  Although the concept of authenticity has been around for several centuries, it became a central focus for Jews since existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre raised the question in the 1940s. Building on the work of Sartre, later Jewish thinkers, philosophers, anthropologists, and cultural theorists, the book offers a model of Jewish authenticity that seeks to balance history and tradition, creative freedom and innovation, and the importance of recognition among different groups within an increasingly multicultural Jewish community.
 
Author Stuart Z. Charmé explores how debates over authenticity and struggles for recognition are a key to understanding a wide range of controversies between Orthodox and liberal Jews, Zionist and diaspora Jews, white Jews and Jews of color, as well as the status of intermarried and messianic Jews, and the impact of Jewish genetics.  In addition, it discusses how and when various cultural practices and traditions such as klezmer music, Israeli folk dance, Jewish yoga and meditation, and others are recognized as authentically Jewish, or not.
 

William Stevenson (1768-1857) was a pioneer itinerant Methodist preacher in the southwestern United States, who became the first Protestant of any denomination to preach within the bounds of what is now Texas. His Autobiography, a classic account of frontier and folk Methodism, was first published in serial form in the New Orleans Christian Advocate between March 13 and April 24, 1858. A typescript copy was sent to Bridwell Library in 1936, at the request of SMU President C. C. Selecman. Bridwell Library published the complete Autobiography in 2015, and Bridwell Press is pleased to bring this work to a new audience in 2024.