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This volume is a collection of thirteen essays written by the late Francis Slade, a contemporary philosopher who has made an original contribution to political philosophy through the clarity of distinction he achieves between the modern state and the natural city/civitas/polis. Slade’s distinction between these two political forms is made in terms of their differing relation to philosophy. The city, as the political form belonging properly to human nature, exists independently of philosophical thought; the form of the state, on the other hand, with its genesis in the deliberate and creative design of philosophical thought, is dependent on philosophy for its coming to be. Slade’s distinction illuminates the radical transformation in what philosophy understood itself to be that occurs with advent of modernity: the contemplative philosophy of premodernity is displaced in favor of modern philosophy’s active generation of ideal forms, of which the state is an instance. Philosophy is transformed by the erasure of the distinction between theoria and praxis. And it is a differing view of nature that underlies the two versions of philosophy Slade presents in these essays: the givenness of ends as constitutive of natural things is at the heart of the issue. Slade’s work thus has important consequences for the recovery of natural things in their ordinary givenness, a givenness overwhelmed into obscurity by the dominance of the various forms of philosophical idealism and their remarkably successful imposition on nature. Slade’s essays point to the “theological” stance (improperly) adopted by modern idealism, as it constructs a stance from outside nature which confounds the philosophic voice that originally and properly voices what is from within nature. These essays are introduced by the distinguished philosopher, Robert Sokolowski, a long-time friend of Francis Slade, whom Sokolowski gratefully acknowledges as having had a significant influence on his thought.

A "brisk and entertaining" (Wall Street Journal) journey into the mystery behind why the forbidden fruit became an apple, upending an explanation that stood for centuries.
 
How did the apple, unmentioned by the Bible, become the dominant symbol of temptation, sin, and the Fall? Temptation Transformed pursues this mystery across art and religious history, uncovering where, when, and why the forbidden fruit became an apple.
 
Azzan Yadin-Israel reveals that Eden’s fruit, once thought to be a fig or a grape, first appears as an apple in twelfth-century French art. He then traces this image back to its source in medieval storytelling. Though scholars often blame theologians for the apple, accounts of the Fall written in commonly spoken languages—French, German, and English—influenced a broader audience than cloistered Latin commentators. Azzan Yadin-Israel shows that, over time, the words for “fruit” in these languages narrowed until an apple in the Garden became self-evident. A wide-ranging study of early Christian thought, Renaissance art, and medieval languages, Temptation Transformed offers an eye-opening revisionist history of a central religious icon.

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.

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.

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.
 

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.

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.

The Breeze Behind the Breeze calls up a world on the edge of a revelation, where the unseen furtively and fervently composes the seen. Unexpected emotions arise in the flow of a poetry that slides between the surreal and the real, from a search for a lost dog in Cincinnati to sunken continents, a rehab clinic to an Egyptian tomb, and onward into the life to come. From a breeze behind a breeze comes word of celestial origins and earthly motions. Drawing on a range of aesthetic and spiritual traditions, Joseph Donahue asks us to consider the world behind the world we see, a world revealed in vivid particulars, in various voices, and in dreams that propose we begin, end, and perhaps continue in an ever-expanding cosmos.

Singing master Durham Hills created The Cashaway Psalmody to give as a wedding present in 1770. A collection of tenor melody parts for 152 tunes and sixty-three texts, the Psalmody is the only surviving tunebook from the colonial-era South and one of the oldest sacred music manuscripts from the Carolinas. It is all the more remarkable for its sophistication: no similar document of the period matches Hills's level of musical expertise, reportorial reach, and calligraphic skill.

Stephen A. Marini, discoverer of The Cashaway Psalmody, offers the fascinating story of the tunebook and its many meanings. From its musical, literary, and religious origins in England, he moves on to the life of Durham Hills; how Carolina communities used the book; and the Psalmody's significance in understanding how ritual song—transmitted via transatlantic music, lyrics, and sacred singing—shaped the era's development. Marini also uses close musical and textual analyses to provide a critical study that offers music historians and musicologists valuable insights on the Pslamody and its period.

Meticulous in presentation and interdisciplinary in scope, The Cashaway Psalmody unlocks an important source for understanding life in the Lower South in the eighteenth century.

The Chigi Codex makes available for the first time a critical edition and comprehensive study of a late fifteenth-century anthology of sacred musical works.

Compiled between 1500 and 1504, The Chigi Codex contains the complete contents of an extraordinary illuminated manuscript, an anthology of forty polyphonic masses and motets associated with the royal courts of France and Burgundy. This edition includes nearly the complete oeuvre of Johannes Ockeghem, five motets by Johannes Regis, and compositions by Josquin des Prez, Henricus Isaac, Antoine Busnoys, Pierre de la Rue, Jean Mouton, Alexander Agricola, and others. Twelve works are unique to The Chigi Codex; seven motets were added by a Spanish scribe after 1515. The complete contents are presented here with transcriptions of the music accessible to musicians today, with a critical commentary on the music and concordant sources. The Codex transmits works that were copied in manuscripts and prints throughout Europe later in the sixteenth century.

In addition to its monumental repertory, The Chigi Codex includes notable works of visual art in the double-folio openings of thirty-six works with miniature paintings, coats of arms, inhabited capitals, family mottos, bizarre creatures, and colorful borders, all in the famed Ghent-Bruges style. Herbert Kellman discusses these as well as the history of the Codex and its long journey from its original patron, the Burgundian seigneur Philippe Bouton, to the Spanish families Folch de Cardona and Fernández de Córdoba, and finally to Rome and to the library of Fabio Chigi, Pope Alexander VII. The Chigi library is now an important part of the Vatican Library.  

Making the manuscript accessible to the public and musicians, this edition of The Chigi Codex supports the study, performance, and understanding of its music and art in the musical, cultural, and historical contexts of its creation.

A study of the Christian philosophy of Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), an influential, creative, and prolific writer. He was widely recognized as one of the most prominent Catholic intellectuals during his own lifetime and was widely seen as a spokesman for the Thomistic revival. This study aims to present Maritain’s thought as a dynamic and coherent philosophy in its own right. This is the only book in English to present Maritain’s philosophy on the full range of topics upon which he wrote. It focusses on Maritain as a twentieth-century philosopher, rather than an interpreter of Aquinas. Accordingly, this book presents Maritain’s philosophy in its own context. Finally, this work is also attentive to the religious context of Maritain’s philosophy and highlights his overlooked contributions to theology and other areas of philosophy that are informed by his theological commitments, e.g. mysticism, ecclesiology, education and philosophy of history. Accordingly, The Christian Philosophy of Jacques Maritain aims at providing the reader with a comprehensive presentation of Maritain’s thought and a clear vision of his philosophy as a whole.

The story of one of this country's major religious movements is told through the spiritual odyssey of one of its prominent spokesmen. 

When Homer Hailey sparked controversy within Churches of Christ congregations over his stand on divorce and remarriage, he spoke to a movement already sundered. Historian David Edwin Harrell tells Hailey's story as a means of presenting the larger drama of faith and feuding within those churches.

A nondenominational movement of autonomous congregations, Churches of Christ have been among the fastest-growing religious bodies in the 20th century. Throughout the movement's history, church leaders debated issues ranging from missionary societies to the use of instrumental music in worship. Although some disagreements affected only the ties between congregations, others led to the creation of three distinct groups calling themselves Churches of Christ identified by their sociological and theological positions. 

This book shows how the story of the Churches of Christ is reflected by Homer Hailey, a preacher, educator, and author whose life puts in perspective the personal journeys traveled by members in this century. Writing from the perspective of the non-institutional wing within the movement, Harrell avoids mainstream biases to describe the various dissenting views as fully and fairly as possible.

Combining institutional history and biography, Harrell's book is the first to bring the story of the Churches of Christ to century's end. It provides new insight into how this movement realigned itself and shows how one man's career reflected a century of spiritual growth and change for the church as a whole.

 

In The Coloniality of the Secular, An Yountae investigates the collusive ties between the modern concepts of the secular, religion, race, and coloniality in the Americas. Drawing on the work of Édouard Glissant, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Sylvia Wynter, and Enrique Dussel, An maps the intersections of revolutionary non-Western thought with religious ideas to show how decoloniality redefines the sacred as an integral part of its liberation vision. He examines these thinkers’ rejection of colonial religions and interrogates the narrow conception of religion that confines it within colonial power structures. An explores decoloniality’s conception of the sacred in relation to revolutionary violence, gender, creolization, and racial phenomenology, demonstrating its potential for reshaping religious paradigms. Pointing out that the secular has been pivotal to regulating racial hierarchies under colonialism, he advocates for a broader understanding of religion that captures the fundamental ideas that drive decolonial thinking. By examining how decolonial theory incorporates the sacred into its vision of liberation, An invites readers to rethink the transformative power of decoloniality and religion to build a hopeful future.

The Complementarity of Women and Men provides a Catholic Christian case that men and women are in certain respects quite different but also have a positive, synergistic complementary relationship. Although differences and their mutually supporting relationships are focused on throughout the volume, men and women are assumed to have equal dignity and value. This underlying interpretation comes from the familiar, basic theological position in Genesis that both sexes were made in the image of God. After a cogent philosophical introduction to complementary differences by J. Budziszewski, this position is developed from theological, philosophical, and historical perspectives by Sr. Prudence Allen. Next Deborah Savage, building upon the writings of St. John Paul II, gives a strong theological basis for complementarity. This is followed by Elizabeth Lev’s chapter presenting new and surprising art history evidence from the paintings of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel supporting the complementarity interpretation. A final chapter by Paul Vitz documents and summarizes the scientific evidence supporting sexual difference and complementarity in the disciplines of psychology and neuroscience. As a consequence of both the individual chapters and the integrated understanding they present The Complementarity of Women and Men is a significant contribution to the important, complex, contemporary debate about men, women, sex, and gender.

In November 1952, newly elected US president Dwight D. Eisenhower nominated Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) as his Secretary of Agriculture. This was an unusual move. For nearly a decade, Benson had been a sitting apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had been for nearly a decade. Benson’s church duties occupied his full attention and energy.

Shortly after Benson’s nomination as agricultural secretary, the FBI began keeping a routine file on him, as they did other prominent Americans slated for Eisenhower’s cabinet. Filled with letters, memoranda, newspaper clippings, speeches, published writings, and other items, the file spans Benson’s eight-year tenure with the administration and well beyond. Some of the documents date past the Eisenhower era and even into Benson’s years as president of the LDS Church (1985–94).  The material not only deals with Benson’s life and political views, but his association with the John Birch Society, its leaders, and even threats made against his life in the late 1980s. The 570-page dossier is as much a revelation about the workings of the FBI as about the man they were investigating.

We live in an era defined by a sense of separation, even in the midst of networked connectivity. As cultural climates sour and divisive political structures spread, we are left wondering about our ties to each other. Consequently, there is no better time than now to reconsider ideas of unity.

In The Ethics of Oneness, Jeremy David Engels reads the Bhagavad Gita alongside the works of American thinkers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. Drawing on this rich combination of traditions, Engels presents the notion that individuals are fundamentally interconnected in their shared divinity. In other words, everything is one. If the lessons of oneness are taken to heart, particularly as they were expressed and celebrated by Whitman, and the ethical challenges of oneness considered seriously, Engels thinks it is possible to counter the pervasive and problematic American ideals of hierarchy, exclusion, violence, and domination. 
 

The Eucharist in Modern Philosophy is one of the last books written by the renowned Jesuit philosopher Xavier Tilliette (1921-2018), and the first to be translated into English. Jonathan Martin Ciraulo, the translator, also provides an introduction to the thought of Tilliette and the content of this book, while Cyril O’Regan provides the foreword, noting the particular intellectual characteristics of Tilliette and his analysis of eucharistic philosophies. In addition to being known as one of the foremost experts on the German Idealist Friedrich Schelling, Tilliette wrote voluminously on the relationship between modern philosophy and theology, particularly concerning the way in which Christology is central to the development of modern philosophy. In this volume, he extends that project to look at how various philosophers, such as Descartes, Leibniz, Hegel, Blondel, and Marion, as well as poets and mystics, such as de Chardin, Simone Weil, and Paul Claudel, thought extensively about the question of the Eucharist. The result is an enormous diversity of Eucharistic thought, from Descartes’ attempt to justify transubstantiation in light of his philosophical revolution, to Feuerbach’s supposed exposure of the contradiction inherent to sacramentality, to Antonio Rosmini’s eucharistic piety and speculation, to Maurice Blondel’s recovery and expansion of Leibniz’s notion of the substantial bond. Tilliette shows that this philosophical conversation about the Eucharist is a living tradition, as the aporias and failures of one generation provide stimulus for all that follows. Much of the work is largely historical, showing in great detail the context of each particular eucharistic philosophy, but Tilliette also evaluates the relative fruitfulness of the various eucharistic theories for philosophy, theology, and the life of the Church. This book demonstrates that the Eucharist has been, and will likely continue to be, a major impetus for philosophical reflection.

At the heart of Tolkienian fantasy is “recovery,” a “cleaning of the windows” of our perception that we may learn to see the world again in all its strange and bewildering beauty. And, for Tolkien, to recover the world anew is to recover a sense of the world as a meaningful act of creation by a living and loving Creator. How does Tolkien accomplish this? Through “sub-creation” or mythopoeia, the “fashioning of myth.” For it is in creating an imaginary world ourselves through poetry, fairy-story and myth that we come to “see” our “primary world” as itself an act of creation. In short, mythopoetic creation, far from being “lies breathed through silver,” uncovers for us the truth of our world as a story of creation. This book is the first sustained attempt to show not only the centrality of recovery to Tolkien’s fantasy but the way in which his fantasy affects that primal recovery in every reader. In doing so, this book not only reveals the marvelous philosophical and theological riches that underlie Tolkien’s fantasy but shows how his mythopoetic fiction allows the recovery and enactment of these riches in our own lives. In these pages we learn how Tolkien’s fantasy addresses fundamental problems such as the relation of language to reality, the nature of evil, the distinction between time and eternity and its relation to death and immortality, the paradox of necessity and free will in human action and the grounds for providential hope in a “happy ending.” Indeed, The Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien shows how for Tolkien fantasy has within itself a healing power through which intellectual, moral and existential paradoxes are resolved and our intellectual and perceptual faculties are made whole again so that they may participate with renewed vigor in the life-giving work of creation of every sort.

The rootless Jew, wandering disconnected from history, homeland, and nature, was often  the target of early twentieth-century nationalist rhetoric aimed against modern culture. But following World War II, a number of prominent French philosophers recast this maligned figure in positive terms, and in so doing transformed postwar conceptions of politics and identity.

Sarah Hammerschlag explores this figure of the Jew from its prewar usage to its resuscitation by Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Blanchot, and Jacques Derrida. Sartre and Levinas idealized the Jew’s rootlessness in order to rethink the foundations of political identity. Blanchot and Derrida, in turn, used the figure of the Jew to call into question the very nature of group identification. By chronicling this evolution in thinking, Hammerschlag ultimately reveals how the figural Jew can function as a critical mechanism that exposes the political dangers of mythic allegiance, whether couched in universalizing or particularizing terms.

Both an intellectual history and a philosophical argument, The Figural Jew will set the agenda for all further consideration of Jewish identity, modern Jewish thought, and continental philosophy.

The Fittingness of the Incarnation collects David Braine's best unpublished philosophical and theological essays. The essays contained herein are representative of Braine's careful, rich and distinctive work. As one of the more interesting philosophers of his generation, David Braine offered a realist account of the world - God's existence, the human person, and language - through his major works, and these essays help follow through on some of those thoughts, explain underlying metaphysical or epistemological principles, and we see many of these applied in his theological essays. Additionally, the book includes Braine's plans for books on the realism of St. Thomas Aquinas, which helps us see again his vision for a unified philosophical account, and the Incarnation, which shows how Braine's philosophical anthropology informs. Altogether, the book contributes the final papers of David Braine to the fields at large.

Poetry that serves as a broad collection of historical incidents and considers how we weigh and value events.

Named for a sura of the Quran, The Gathering is an epic in cantos that indiscriminately records deeds and events that have taken place on this earth. Its speaker—a nearly omniscient archivist—is propelled by a force more elemental than causation to visit moments and subjects, moving swiftly through thoughts, physiologies, and environments. Under an imperative to record everything encountered—however small, cruel, or sad—the archivist must grant radically equal weight to each thing. Yet as these entries accumulate, a strange significance accrues, and the negligible seems necessary. Each mundane fragment of life finds consolation. What was, was; what happened, got to happen.

Robert H. Schuller’s ministry—including the architectural wonder of the Crystal Cathedral and the polished television broadcast of Hour of Power—cast a broad shadow over American Christianity. Pastors flocked to Southern California to learn Schuller’s techniques. The President of United States invited him sit prominently next to the First Lady at the State of the Union Address. Muhammad Ali asked for the pastor’s autograph. It seemed as if Schuller may have started a second Reformation. And then it all went away. As Schuller’s ministry wrestled with internal turmoil and bankruptcy, his emulators—including Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and Joel Osteen— nurtured megachurches that seemed to sweep away the Crystal Cathedral as a relic of the twentieth century. How did it come to this?

Certainly, all churches depend on a mix of constituents, charisma, and capital, yet the size and ambition of large churches like Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral exert enormous organizational pressures to continue the flow of people committed to the congregation, to reinforce the spark of charismatic excitement generated by high-profile pastors, and to develop fresh flows of capital funding for maintenance of old projects and launching new initiatives. The constant attention to expand constituencies, boost charisma, and stimulate capital among megachurches produces an especially burdensome strain on their leaders. By orienting an approach to the collapse of the Crystal Cathedral on these three core elements—constituency, charisma, and capital—The Glass Church demonstrates how congregational fragility is greatly accentuated in larger churches, a notion we label megachurch strain, such that the threat of implosion is significantly accentuated by any failures to properly calibrate the inter-relationship among these elements.

The classic translation of this most important medieval Jewish text, presented in one volume for the first time.

The twelfth-century Judeo-Arabic text The Guide of the Perplexed is a monument of rabbinical exegesis and one of the most important works in the history of Jewish thought. Written by Moses ben Maimon,commonly known as Maimonides, the Guide aims to liberate people from the perplexities that arise from an understanding of the Bible based only on its literal meaning.

Shlomo Pines’s translation has served students and scholars for decades, and it is presented here, with Leo Strauss’s influential introduction, in one volume for the first time.

A comprehensive overview of Hajj, one of the central pillars of Islam.

Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage consists of twenty-seven essays addressing objects in the remarkable collection of Nasser David Khalili. The collection features more than five thousand objects relating to the arts of pilgrimage, from the eighth century to today, and includes Qur’ans, illustrated manuscripts, rare books, scientific instruments, textiles, coins, paintings, prints, and photo-postcards, as well as archival material, unique historical documents, and examples of the work of some of the earliest Muslim photographers of Hajj. Together the essays collected in Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage provide a comprehensive overview of Hajj, illustrating the religious, spiritual, cultural, and artistic aspects of pilgrimage to the Holy Sanctuaries of Islam and the cosmopolitan nature of Hajj itself. Each essay is written by a prominent specialist in the field and beautifully illustrated with full-color images of objects from the collection, some of which have never been seen in print before. Taking readers from the early history of Islam to the fascinating story of the Western view of Muslim pilgrimage, these essays will transform our perception of Hajj.
 

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.

While many revere von Hildebrand as a religious author, few realize that he was a philosopher of great stature and importance. Those who knew von Hildebrand as philosopher held him in the highest esteem. Louis Bouyer, for example, once said that “von Hildebrand was the most important Catholic philosopher in Europe between the two world wars.” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger expressed even greater esteem when he said: “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.”

The Heart is an accessible yet important philosophical contribution to the understanding of the human person. In this work von Hildebrand is concerned with rehabilitating the affective life of the human person. He thinks that for too long philosophers have held it in suspicion and thought of it as embedded in the body and hence as being much inferior to intellect and will. In reality, he argues, the heart, the center of affectivity, has many different levels, including an eminently personal level; at this level affectivity is just as important a form of personal life as intellect and will. Von Hildebrand develops the idea that properly personal affectivity, far than tending away from an objective relation to being, is in fact one major way in which we transcend ourselves and give being its due. Von Hildebrand also developed the important idea that the heart “in many respects is more the real self of the person than his intellect or will.”

At the same time, the author shows full realism about the possible deformities of affective life; he offers rich analyses of what he calls affective atrophy and affective hypertrophy. The second half of The Heart offers a remarkable analysis of the affectivity of the God-Man.