Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays

By Charles Taylor, 405 pages, hup.harvard.edu.

McGill philosophy professor Taylor shows how western Christianity became too moralistic and legalistic at the expense of the transcendent dimension. 

He points to the French village priest's strong opposition to Brazilian-like carnival Catholicism, whereby dancing, drinking, and certain other excesses took place on saints days and other Catholic celebrations. In their zeal to take the dancing out of the Catholic holy day, they ended up taking Catholicism out of the village. 

Nineteenth-century Protestants did the same: They shamed young men for their rowdy lifestyles of drinking, gambling, and womanizing, rather than inspiring them with the transcendent view of Christ's resurrection. Men, put off, turned away en masse from the churches. Catholic priests did the same shaming act on young men, and turned the confessional into the most feared or avoided place, with men increasingly shunning it.

The more Christianity moralized in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, the more it feminized and left little place for men. Rather than preaching and inspiring the fear of God, a most masculine spiritual practice, Christian leaders, Taylor argues convincingly, established "polite" Christianity. To be a Christian was to be a part of polite society, especially in the English version of religion. This was when Christ began to be taken out of Christianity, replaced by "proper behavior."

Readers get a clear sense of how secularism developed out of this. Incensed by the meddling of the parish priest in France, the French eventually went from a strong religious revival in the mid-nineteenth-century to severely restricting the Church in education and the rest of the public arena, something they call laicite, a bedrock of modern French political life to this day.

A second kind of secularism developed, mostly in America and other western countries when people turned the excessive moralism of the churches against the churches themselves. They condemned the crusades and every other real or imagined sin of the church. They portrayed religious people as zealous, violent idiots. Ironically, these secularists followed the churches' habit of restricting the vertical, or transcendent, dimensions, but did so even more eagerly than the churches themselves.

Despite the failings of the churches, Taylor refuses to let atheist moralists off the hook. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and countless other utopian tyrants put their ideals into humanity, rather than finding them from a higher revelation. When humans could not measure up to their ideals, these politicians slaughtered millions.

Taylor cautions against the current liberal and conservative tendency in politics to "cultivate" anger. Anger has become a kind of spirituality, whereby the angered, righteous person feels resentment and entitlement. 

Feminism and a host of other ideologies use this to motivate their members. Yet, given the tendency of anger to cause violence, Taylor warns that a return to a higher, transcendent source is more important than ever.

Taylor is optimistic. Secularism has freed the churches to return to their roots, something that he regards as essential. Now that churches have had their hold on the public arena greatly weakened, they can return to cultivating the transcendent within each of its members.

The Geography of Good and Evil: Philosophical Investigations

Andreas Kinneging, 285 pages, ISI Books.

"The central issue ... is the classical question of the good life – for the individual but also for society," writes Kinneging in this exploration of why the modern materialist-utilitarian concept of life is bad, and why we need to relearn the traditional art of living.

The Geography of Good and Evil rejects the social sciences' utopian search for all the answers, and relies on tradition's teaching of the virtues. Kinneging believes that we today need a better understanding of the ancient discussion of what constitutes the good life.

This concept is far superior to the victim-oriented, individualist routine of modern Western society, which is undermining our entire civilization as we live on the dwindling spiritual capital of the past. Today's superficial "public discourse on various momentous topics," such as "the debate on values, ... does not rise above the level of clichés."

The traditional approach takes the important issues much more seriously, and are needed so we can go beyond clichés. The tradition-based society is much more serious than the our superficially-playful society, which focuses on Hollywood gossip and politicians defined by their shiny speeches.

The virtues most helpful to getting us out of the current spiritual, social, and economic morass come from 2 sources, the ancient Greeks and the ancient Christians. Thus Kinneging takes a fresh look at the marriage of ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew-Christian thought that was so integral to the subsequent development of the West, and which the Enlightenment and Romantics rejected.

From the Greeks we have the sense of honor, which focused on externals. The honor-bound individual closely identifies with his community, which he serves. Trust is integral to this system, since everyone in the community depends on everyone else for their life and death. The greatest sin is to betray one's group.

Contemporary society has no notion of honor because we have little notion of community. This lack of connectedness is closely related to the changed view of the virtues, which The Geography of Good and Evil shows very well. For both the Greeks and the Christians, reason tempered the passions.

The Enlightenment upended this, asserting that we could and should change the world to suit our desires. The social sciences took on this approach, and challenged tradition as the seat of society's wisdom. Morality, at this point, became instrumental, Kinneging notes. Morality "serves rather than stands above the desires. Inner struggle in the sense of a superior part of the self – reason – supervising and calling to account an inferior part – the desires – has no room in this view."

While this discussion is necessarily heavy, it goes to the heart of what Pope Benedict XVI has been saying for decades: that we must orient our lives according to eternal virtues rather than according to the me-mentality.

The importance of community far outweighs the importance of individual desire. We must reject the current rights language, which so often degenerates into victim/compensation jargon, and return to the duty-bound view. In this vision, when something goes wrong, rather than blaming others and holding them accountable, I first ask myself if I have been amiss, and I hold myself accountable to others.

The Geography of Good and Evil is well worth the effort, even though it can be an academic, challenging read.

Neither Beast Nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person

By Gilbert Meilaender, 118 pages, Encounter Books.

Humans are "strange, in-between sort of creatures," Mailaender argues, and this gives us our unique dignity. We are lower than God yet higher than animals. This leads to creative and ethical tension. Anytime we make ourselves into God, we take on ethical questions and power that overwhelm us.

Our relationship to death is of paramount importance, since death is the ultimate “No!” to our claims to divinity. We do not live forever. Death gives a finality to life, and a commonality to all humans. When we fail to acknowledge this defining aspect of the human condition, we begin to think we are gods. We try to master life and creation, and become like god ourselves.

Only God can choose when we live and die, yet we try to deny our Creator this power. We want to live forever. One of the major thrusts of contemporary medical science is the attempt to relentlessly push our death into the future. Mailaender reminds us of the importance of death: "Our ability to remain interested and engaged in life depends upon our knowledge that it will end."

In other words, our attempts to play god actually make us less than human, as we lose sight of the importance of our moral decisions and the sacredness and urgency of life. Mailaender explains well how this hurts our dignity. He warns that we must stop seeing death as evil, and start seeing it as a part of life – as a part of divinely-ordained life.

Neither Beast Nor God thus adds to the chorus of voices opposing the Culture of Death. We have been enraptured with the power of science and technology for so long that we have lost the sense of enchantment that should come automatically to us as humans. Life should be enchanting, but when we ask too much, it becomes empty.

The God-given life-cycle is itself a spiritual journey, Mailaender makes clear. The various stages of life, including childhood, are good in and of themselves, and we should have no agenda for each stage. Children should be allowed to grow at a healthy pace, rather than pushed into every sort of activity and schooling that will ensure a big career. We also need to respect the aging process as a significant part of the journey towards God:

"It is aging that keeps us from imagining that everything our hearts desire could be given through more of the same kind of life. And it is aging, wearing down, that enables us to cultivate within ourselves the capacity for self-giving and self-sacrifice that makes place for those who come after us."

Neither Beast Nor God offers a traditionalist view of the individual, community, and religion. Mailaender calls for us to be loyal to friends and family, since only by being responsible for our actions towards those closest to us can we hope to love humanity. Responsibility and loyalty give depth and a sacred sense to our love for humanity. Without these goods, in fact, love of the world is empty and impotent.

Christian & Western Thought: A History of Philosophers, Ideas, and Movements

By Alan G. Padgett and Steve Wilkens, 388 pages, Intervarsity Press.

This vast survey of twentieth-century Western secular and Christian thought gives the feeling that philosophy, having long ago shelved its Christian guide, is drifting and pointless. It no longer believes in anything, even in itself, as witnessed by thinkers such as Richard Rorty, who advocated an American pragmatism critical of any claims to truth.

In dealing with the succession of tragedies to hit the Western world in the last century, including 2 world wars and the deepening loss of faith, philosophers seem to have gone in circles, discarding much of tradition, including previous philosophical insights.

Christian & Western Thought shows how philosophers seem to have specialized in the same transient way of thinking that motors consumerism and marketing. They have become less serious and more faddish. Some thinkers, such as Jean Paul Sartre, pop stars in their day, quickly fell from the popular and academic imagination, to be replaced by the next round of thinkers hoping to cast aside Western civilization in another supposedly novel way.

Rather than the love of wisdom, philo-sophia, we have an anti-wisdom, a constant attempt at “correcting” the civilization in which philosophers no longer believe. Padgett and Wilkens keenly identify this “loss of the center” and “sense of anarchy” in philosophy.

The Frenchman Henri Bergson (1859-1941), the most famous philosopher of his day, has largely been forgotten. Influenced by Edmund Husserl, he tried to combine science with a vague post-Christian spirituality, as noted by Padgett and Wilkens:

“By intuition we grasp the dynamic, temporal aspect of reality which mathematics and science are incapable of communicating. This intuition is qualitative, while intelligence is quantitative. Intuition grants us knowledge of the most basic aspect of reality: its constant flux.”

This grew into the existentialism of other thinkers, but in its own right attempted to make sense of a world profoundly and rapidly changed by science and technology. People looked less and less to Christianity for answers, and fused science, philosophy, and spirituality. Bergson's thought, foreshadowing twentieth-century philosophy, contains an uneasiness with scientific and industrial progress, which led him to identify other forms of knowledge besides scientific without having to return to the old Christian model.

Philosophers such as the Englishman Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) rejected the all-encompassing German-inspired philosophical systems of the nineteenth century and turned to the close analysis of language, “to the circumstances in which truth can be expressed,” Padgett and Wilkens note. Russell was a famous atheist, penning the essay, “Why I Am Not a Christian” in 1927.

Yet he couldn't escape the need for certainty, and chose logic, math, and science to replace God. He limited his thinking about the world to one possibility, a rational, scientific worldview that did not consider any higher or spiritual forms of thinking. This typifies most of the century's philosophers.

Russell also attacked religion from a moral perspective, claiming that belief slows progress in scientific knowledge and in ethics, pointing to the Church's condemnation of Galileo and to the Crusades. These ideas eventually became widespread among the general public, and dominate the intellectual landscape today through the writings of such atheists as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. Russell (like Dawkins) refused to admit that science had been used for evil, especially in his century.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), widely remembered for his adherence to Nazism, has often been called the father of existentialism, though he disliked other existentialists. Influenced by his Catholic upbringing, he focused on Being in his writings, coming to the now-widespread belief that “Neither philosophy nor science is pure, abstract or neutral.” This challenged Russell's hopes for certainty in the sciences and logic.

This limited view of the sciences led Heidegger to a more spiritual search for the truth, but one that followed the Western emphasis on the individual. For Heidegger, “there is no 'generic' form of being.... Rather, each person owns their particular way of life, their own Dasein, within the manifold possibilities for human Being.”

Christianity & Western Thought is at its best in simplifying the complex, abstract, easily misunderstood thinking of philosophers such as Heidegger.

Heidegger also turned to the notion of authenticity, something that Sartre and other existentialists would likewise do. As individuals, we are confronted with choices that make us authentic or inauthentic: We either follow the herd or become our own independent person.

This idea led Sartre to dwell on the fearsome notion that we are alone in the universe and that freedom means that there is no true essence to being. Thus, modern philosophy reaches an absurd degree of separation between the individual and society, to the point where British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would, years later, remark, “There is no society,” and where Sartre himself had written, “Hell is other people.”

Unhinged from the truth of its Christian past, Western philosophy also unhinged the individual from society and tradition, something sketched out quite well in Christianity & Western Thought. The book concludes with the French deconstructionists Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.

Foucault saw illegitimate power coursing through history, rather than seeing structures that maintain community. Society's very institutions were about power alone, the hospital and the prison looking similar because they are both power institutions. Following Nietzsche and the “will to power” mentality, “Foucault makes the radical claim that divisions between truth and untruth, good and evil, pleasure and unhappiness, are always already implicit systems of power and individuation,” the authors note.

Padgett and Wilkens offer readers a good analysis of the modern/post-modern drift into nihilism and the fragmentation of culture at its highest levels.

Christianity & Western Thought includes much on the Christian perspective, including those theologians such as Karl Barth and Karl Rahner, who were at pains to speak to modern philosophy in their own theological reflections. While Padgett and Wilkens include a section on Thomistic theologians, such as Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, they give this discussion short shrift, considering how important John Paul II's Fides et ratio has become to modern Catholic thinking. Catholic thinking just might end up being the ticket out of the West's intellectual morass, and needs to be developed further.

Except for this too-limited view of the wealth of Catholic philosophy in the century, the book is a hearty introduction to a most important, influential topic.

Christian & Western Thought: A History of Philosophers, Ideas, and Movements

By Alan G. Padgett and Steve Wilkens, 388 pages, Intervarsity Press.

In Christian & Western Thought, Padgett and Wilkens show that twentieth-century philosophy was deeply marked by the violence of 2 world wars and the rejection of the Christian past. The violent political and economic anarchy led many thinkers to reject any wide-ranging belief system. Skepticism of religion and philosophy itself became the byword.

Early in the century many philosophers, such as members of the Vienna School, adhered to scientism, according to which, "Science is the best, or only, form of rational knowledge," Padgett and Wilkens write. This group also believed in logic as a "pure instrument" to analyze language.

This exemplifies how philosophy became more and more enamored, even obsessed, with humans, and less concerned about God, eternal truth, and the meaning of creation and of life itself. These overarching questions were rejected for human-related concerns such as the relationship between language and reality.

Throughout the twentieth century, the scientific outlook influenced the way people thought. The social sciences, such as sociology and psychology, claimed to be sciences. They asserted that humans are a scientific rather than metaphysical subject to be studied like any other thing from nature. Philosophy led the way in the objectification of humans, though many Catholic thinkers such as Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson opposed this.

Christian & Western Thought gives a sneak peak at Catholic thought, especially Thomism, though the book's authors are unfortunately more enamored with secular thinkers. A longer discussion of papal thinking, such as John Paul II's Fides et ratio, which explores the tension between faith and reason, would have enriched the analysis.

The 2 world wars led to a drastic change in thinking. The French philosopher Albert Camus based his outlook on the belief that life is absurd; our only choice is rebellion. Like many thinkers of the century, he rejected the Enlightenment's idea that reason and science could solve all our problems, as Padgett and Wilkens note:

"Absurdity is what happens when this irrational world is inhabited by humans who attempt to subject it to rational thought. Our reason strives for understanding and unity, and the world thwarts this desire."

Christian & Western Thought sketches Martin Heidegger's life and philosophy quite well. Heidegger illustrates the struggles of philosophy, especially in its relationship with the tumultuous twentieth century. He joined the Nazis, probably fully aware of their murderous program, and saw himself as its spiritual or philosophical mind. He struggled throughout the 1930s with their violence, and later claimed that he knew nothing of their real plans. After the war, he isolated himself in his mountain chalet, focusing on mysticism and writing dense, unclear works.

Yet at bottom his concerns were the same as many: he rejected the technological reordering of society. First his solution was Nazism, and then withdrawal from academia and the world. In both decisions, we see the hopelessness of a philosopher who has rejected his society's Christian roots, which is an undercurrent of much of the philosophy discussed in Christian & Western Thought.

Reason, Faith, and Tradition: Explorations in Catholic Theology

By Martin C. Albl, 402 pages, Saint Mary's Press.

Albl shows how philosophy is critical to explaining Catholic theology. Bad philosophy can harm the Church's message just as much as bad theology can. Modern secular philosophy, he notes, starves itself intellectually by cutting itself off from the transcendent. It has rejected God and believes that the materialist universe is all there is – hence the term "materialism."

While Catholic thinkers believe that God gave humans freedom, materialists often believe in determinism, which claims that human actions and feelings are determined by brain biochemistry. They have no spiritual or ethical meaning.

This philosophy believes that "nothing is sacred," questioning all authority including the Church and scripture. Albl argues that this is faulty, and that such thinking damages the proclamation of the gospel. Only after this beginning does he get into Catholic theology proper.

Albl introduces Catholic theology with this philosophical landscape in mind. He addresses the many criticisms the Church often faces, such as the atheist criticism that theology relies too much on authority. He shows that scientists themselves depend on their own traditions and authorities, and that new theories must break through the old guard to gain acceptance. The Big Bang theory took a long time to get accepted because its opponents feared that it left room for a Creator.

Albl shows how Catholicism, through its belief in a rational universe with a rational Creator, opened the way to science and empirical study. Thus clerics opposed astrology and alchemy as superstitions because they were not rational enough.

Reason, Faith, and Tradition examines how reason is nourished by the transcendent through the Church's natural law tradition. The Church claims that the truth is written on every human heart. We all have a sense of right and wrong even without revelation. We can discover this though reasoned examination of the conscience:

"Natural ethical laws are simply guidelines that correspond with our human nature; our reason allows us to recognize these rules."

Albl demonstrates how the faith is reasonable, though we have to believe first. A miracle, then, is a break in the normal functioning of nature's laws. But many miracles, including Jesus' healing miracles, acted to restore the normal, natural functioning of something. Jesus making the blind see is a restoration of the natural functioning of the eyes. Miracles therefore restore nature to its rightful state. In this sense, a miracle can be accepted with the eyes of faith as reasonable, and not only as a superstitious or fideistic belief. Miracles reasonably fit into God's providential care of humans and of all creation.

Albl handles the challenging question of the trinity with precision, clearly explaining the relationship between the 3 persons of the trinity after first explaining what theologians mean by "person." He also distinguishes between the "economic trinity" and the "immanent trinity." The former regards the persons of the trinity as they relate to humans and creation, while the latter examines how the persons of the trinity relate to one another, with no reference to humans or creation.

While Reason, Faith, and Tradition may at first seem like an overly-challenging read, because of Albl's adherence to the clarity and simple explanations of good philosophy, it is good for people of many levels of theological understanding.

Brooklyn Existentialism: Voices from the Stoop

By Arthur DiClementi and Nino Langiulli, 220 pages, Fidelity Press.

Brooklyn Existentialism offers an alternative, traditional outlook on life that opposes the current Culture of Death. DiClementi and Langiulli examine the background philosophy to much current practice in education and psychology that we hear on a daily basis, such as role playing in counseling. They see this as opposing the notion of the truth and the formation of a solid individual identity.

While the social sciences have offered many insights about humans and society, DiClementi and Langiulli argue that traditional wisdom, based on religion, family, and simple hard work, offers a much more humane, workable, and straightforward path.

The authors examine the post-World War II Frankfurt School of social scientists, who led the culture wars against the Church in Europe. One member, Wilhelm Reich, advocated the use of sex to pry people away from the Church and traditional Western wisdom. Sex was “the best instrument to use for social control and revolution,” Reich wrote. DiClementi and Langiulli conclude: “Feed their vices and control their lives. This is the deepest meaning of pornography.”

American social scientists, such as Alfred Kinsey, also used sexuality. He tried to make normal the sex lives of prostitutes, pedophiles, prisoners, and other sexually-confused people. He used research on these groups to make judgments about the sexuality of wider society.

Many of the common anti-Catholic “gotchas” come from these thinkers. One Frankfurter, Theodore Adorno, believed that fascism was the result of Catholicism, which has become a persistent belief in Western countries. Yet another persistent belief propagated by social scientists was that the Church opposes science, as supposedly proved by the trial of Galileo. Yet DiClementi and Langiulli argue:

“The circumstances of the trial are more often exaggerated than retold accurately in order to create the popular belief that science stands for truth and knowledge whereas faith stands for superstition and credulity.”

Brooklyn Existentialism challenges educational theory, calling it ideological manipulation: “The cultural battle lines are drawn at the school house door. Bad ideas assault the pursuit of the common good in the guise of innovative reform.” They note that much of the rhetoric surrounding liberty is really nonsense.

DiClementi and Langiulli are unapologetically pro tradition because of the West's historic search for the truth. The results of multiculturalism, which leaves students ignorant of this Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian heritage, results in moral chaos:

“Cut off from this tradition, students are set adrift – on a sea of cultural relativism – a worldview that encourages them to satisfy their immediate desires and explore their narrow interests while dismissing the development of character, responsibility, and intelligence. Propaganda and indoctrination replace education.”

Instead of spending the book examining the high-falutin' philosophy of these theorists, the authors make practical connections to their Brooklyn neighborhood and therefore to everyday living. They condemn the current vulgarity and lack of manners, and see its roots in the philosophy of individualism and the need to accomplish great things in life. The result, when people don't know their limitations, is bitterness and a sense of victimhood. DiClementi and Langiulli offer a sense of tradition, family, and community instead.

The Priority of Christ: Toward a Postliberal Catholicism

By Robert Barron, 352 pages, Brazos Press.

The Priority of Christ unearths the Bible's rich complexity by employing Christian and Thomistic doctrine in its critique of modern philosophy. This Thomism establishes God as the primary being, and humans as secondary beings. Not only are we therefore dependent on God, but the more we live our lives as how our creator intends us to act, the freer we become.

Contrary to the modern secular attitude that God and religion threaten liberty, Barron argues that human freedom increases rather than decreases with fidelity to God: “Thus, in this context, the human will of Jesus is most itself precisely when it enters into a coinherent harmony with the noncompetitive and noncontrastively transcendent divine will....And it is this move that strengthens him for the fight against those powers which operate out of a metaphysical misalignment.”

Barron's discussion is so powerful because he identifies and discusses the psychological, spiritual, and social meanings of the tense, emotional passages of the mystery of Jesus' betrayal. He concludes: “When a dysfunctional group is bent on scapegoating, it is utterly indifferent to questions of truth or falsity, for all it wants is a victim.”

Barron's following words show how the gospel condemns our modern world, as they bring to mind the rivalry and competitiveness of our society: The “violent pseudocommunity is sustained by negative mimesis, each person looking rivalrously at the desire of the others. The positive, redeemed community, on the other hand, is animated by a positive mimesis, people learning how to desire by imitating the wholesome desire of those around them.”

The Priority of Christ directly challenges modern ways of thinking. Barron claims, for example, that modern philosophy ties its own hands by figuring out ahead of time the limits of possible knowledge. He suggests that a better way is to approach knowledge in a more open-ended, possibly more ambitious way by seeking knowledge through the Bible and in particular the knowledge of the resurrection.

He asks the vital question of whether Christians think differently – do they have a different way of reasoning? Do Christians come to know Christ after a long intellectual journey, or “does that awareness condition all modes of their intellection from the beginning?”

The Priority of Christ adopts the holistic, integrating tendency of Christian tradition, showing the shallowness of modern thought's fragmentation of the world. The modern breakdown has been occasioned by the utilitarian, materialist mindset that the Church so strongly opposes. Barron offers theological, philosophical, and psychological understanding of the current situation.

In Defense of Atheism: The Case Against Christianity Judaism, and Islam

By Michel Onfray, hardcover 219 pages.

French writer Michael Onfray wants a return to the good old Enlightenment values of reason-based anti-religion. Onfray cannot imagine how reason can co-exist with a religious viewpoint. Religion is for the nutty and the stupid who must, to be religious, reject an intelligent life.

No higher, alternative, or spiritual thinking occurs in our brain. “Thus, no learning occurs while standing at the Wailing Wall or while the Muslim is performing his five daily prayers. He prays, he recites the responses, he exercises his memory but not his intelligence.” The long and rich Christian spiritual tradition, including that of Benedictine and Cistercian monks, holds no intellectual value for the author.

In fact, given the elegance of this Catholic tradition, his rejection of religion is, echoing many of his ilk, rather crude: “The community is marked rather by the triumph of parrotlike repetition and the recycling of fables, with the help of well-oiled machinery that repeats but never innovates, which solicits not the intelligence but the memory.” His discussion is really a series of sweeping generalizations, one after the other, without any documentary or even anecdotal or case study evidence besides cheat-notes-based references to the various movers and shakers of monotheism.

The evidence that he does offer is often skewed, half-true, or just plain incorrect (but always incendiary): “The partnership of the church and Nazism likewise aimed at extermination of a race reconfigured for the purposes of the cause into a people of God-killers.” Only ignorant dimwits believe such nonsense.

He skews the evidence by jumping from one sweeping generalization or supposedly God-inspired historical outrage to another in the matter of a couple of paragraphs. His five paragraphs examining the Catholic church's involvement in the Rwanda massacre of the Tutsis by the Hutus, naturally highlights the murderous actions of priests and nuns, followed by the supposed Catholic cover-up and use of church property to protect murderers.

No doubt, many thousands of Catholics behaved badly during this massacre, but why not mention the thousands of people who gave their lives or otherwise tried to stop the violence precisely because of their faith? And why not highlight the racial tensions and the Belgian-French involvement as causes for the violence?

Stacking up a series of events, and condemning the Catholic church or individual believers as responsible, seems more like propaganda than a serious discussion on the merits of establishing an atheistic theology. If such a theology must be established only by condemning with half-truths the age-old monotheistic religions, then perhaps such an undertaking is unworthy of our attention. Onfray seems to prove that atheism cannot stand on its own, but must forever be a juvenile reaction against its parent religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Atheism's whole identity is a childish, reactionary, negative, and blaming identity.

Thus when the author does try to stand his atheism on its own two feet, he quickly lapses back into his old ways: The work of “restored mental health ... requires philosophy. Not faith, belief, fables, but reason and properly directed thought. We must fight against obscurantism, that fertile loam of all religions, with the weapons of the Western rationalist tradition.”

And again: “The God of philosophers often enters into conflict with the God of Abraham, Jesus, and Muhammed. First because the former proceeds from intelligence, reason, deduction, argument, and second because the latter proposes instead dogma, revelation, and obedience.”

Onfray's mediocrity parallels the mediocrity of atheism in general (sorry for my own sweeping generalization). Like many such thinkers, he sounds like a recycled Nietzschean, without, of course, the panache and unparalleled Sturm und Drang of the great nihilist. Onfray-as-Nietzsche sounds forced and childish:

“God was not content with that one prohibition on the forbidden fruit. Ever since, he has revealed himself to us only through taboos. The monotheist religions live exclusively by prescriptions and constraints.”

Who can argue with that?

Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam

By Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger / Benedict XVI and Marcello Pera, 159 pages, Basic Books, trasnlated by Michael F. Moore.

“The world is filled with concern but also with hypocrisy. Hypocrisy on the part of people who see no evil and speak no evil to avoid becoming involved; who see no evil and speak no evil to avoid appearing rude; who proclaim half-truths and imply the rest, to avoid assuming responsibility. These are the paralyzing consequences of the 'political' correctness ... that I reject.”

Italian philosopher and secularist Marcello Pera spoke the above words at a speech in 2004 at Rome's Pontifical Lateran University. The next day then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger addressed the Italian Senate over similar issues. The coincidence led to an exchange of letters and the publication of Without Roots, originally in Italian.

Both men directly confront the origins of Western civilization's present spiritual crisis. Though they come from different angles, secular and Catholic, they arrive at strikingly similar diagnoses and answers.

Ratzinger takes a historical-centred approach, while Pera offers a brilliant analysis of the philosophical basis of Europe's (and to a lesser extent America's) rejection of its Judeo-Christian beginnings. Pera sees this religious genealogy as the core to Europe's culture, past and present, and worries about a civilization that has turned away from itself.

Specifically, he worries about Islam, and the fact that in the face of a repeated call to jihad against the West, Europe impotently stands still, frozen in fear much as it did at Munich against Hitler. “I affirm the principles of tolerance, peaceful coexistence, and respect that are characteristic of the West today,” he writes. “However, if someone refuses to reciprocate these principles and declares hostility or a jihad against us, I believe that we must acknowledge that this person is our adversary. In short, I reject the self-censorship of the West.”

Pera investigates the logic to this self-censorship. He analyzes “relativism,” a syndrome of intellectual and academic dispositions that includes “postmodernism,” “deconstruction,” “post-enlightenment,” and “weak thought.”

Relativism asserts the equality of the world's cultures but, in the great tradition of Orwell, claims that some cultures are more equal than others. European elites scorn their own heritage, especially as it pertains to Christianity, and reverence anything from other cultures. This has led to the impotence described above concerning Islamic threats of violence. It has also resulted in the lack of Europe's demographic vitality.

Pera admits to the logic of relativism's beginnings -- “the existence of a plurality of values” in a globalized, multicultural world – and then carefully lays out subsequent errors committed by relativism's practitioners, “in particular, the conclusion that sets of values, such as cultures and civilizations, cannot be judged by comparison to one another.”

Such comparisons are healthy, Pera states, since they only need dialogue and the willingness to listen to another's criticism. Contrary to relativism's claims, such comparisons do not require a “meta-criteria” to which both cultures adhere (a meta-criteria is an overarching criteria or set of values to which everyone can agree).

Pera's sense of urgency makes his short analysis all the more penetrating and relevant to the current cultural standoff among Western feminists, Western conservatives, and Muslims. He believes that the roots to this relativism-inspired standoff “is grounded not so much in tolerance as in acquiescence, more focused on decline than on the force of conviction, progress, and mission,” which were, he continues, “once typical of Christianity, Europe, and the West.”

Pera suggests a “non-denominational Christian religion,” for Europe, justified by Europe's Christian heritage. It “would have more monasteries than central churches, more monks that articulate and communicate than church officials, more practitioners than preachers.”

Ratzinger for his part suggests that the success or even existence of this civil religion “presupposes the existence of convinced minorities that have 'discovered the pearl' and live it in a manner that is also convincing to others.”

He offers us hope with this idea of “creative minorities” living in a sea of secularism. He avoids divisive language and denies that the gulf between the two groups is impossibly wide. “Secular people are not a rigid block,” he claims.

With the following words, we get a sense of Ratzinger's belief in the human dignity of such secularists, who themselves are worth the effort of evangelization and witness to the truth by Christians: “Very often they are people who passionately seek the truth, who are pained by the lack of truth in humankind.”

Pera and Ratzinger in Without Roots make a good pair when analyzing relativism and the spiritual decline of the West, because their words not only analyze the causes of the current malaise, but offer hope and vigor for present and future action. Commitment to Christianity is dignified and can make a difference.

Le pari personnaliste

By E-Martin Meunier, 369 pages, Editions Fides.

Le pari personnaliste is an excellent and deep-running introduction to the theological and especially philosophical events leading up to Vatican II. For those of us used to the left-wing versus right-wing scorecard account of the Council, this book is a welcome analysis.

The author is an academic so the reading is demanding and presupposes some familiarity with philosophical terms and modern intellectual history. The book details things from the perspective of personalism, which we often associate with phenomenology.

The latter philosophy, begun by Edmund Husserl and continued by Saint Edith Stein among others, represented a reaction against the grandiose and increasingly atmospheric philosophies of post-Kantian Germany. Husserl called philosophy back “to the things themselves.” Personalism grew out of this, and advocated among other things the dignity of the person. It attracted many Catholic thinkers including Jacques Maritain and Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II.

The book's strongpoint is that it concentrates on one or up to a few significant thinkers at a time, including Emmanuel Mounier and Maritain. The author's scholarly bent makes each chapter an excellent, in-depth introduction to each of these writers, all of whom had significant impacts, direct or indirect, on the thought of Vatican II itself.

The author also situates these thinkers in the anti-Catholic, secular and scientist thought of the nineteenth century: “Of course, the office of the pope had already begun, at the end of the century [au mitan du siecle], a critique of the principles of liberalism and socialist doctrines, but for various reasons having as much to do with institutional structures as with political problems that occupied papal diplomacy, the magisterium had not yet taken the time to develop the outlines of a philosophy that could guide its positions when faced with the era's tendencies.” [my translation] (53)

Le pari personaliste ends with an analysis of the aftereffects of the liberal Catholic deconstruction of theology and tradition in the post-conciliar decades. In dealing with the counter-conversation to this deconstruction, Meunier defines Cardinal Ratzinger, as a “pessimist when it comes to the human condition, [who] sees the truth as something to receive as a whole, and not as something to create.” The Cardinal accused a renegade personalism of wrecking havoc to “the internal order of the church,” and to sexuality and marriage. (332)

The importance of Le pari personaliste comes from the fact that Catholics cannot understand a given theologian or theological stream without understanding the underlying philosophy. No one will understand Pope John Paul II or Vatican II without understanding not only neo-Thomism but also personalism.

Professor Meunier arrives at some negative conclusions about the Catholic future because of the baby-boom generation's failure to create true community and refusal to see employment in the federal government, for example, as service to the country rather than as a self-oriented career. His point is that this way of thinking has also infected the Church.

He concludes, however, by remarking on the hope that Catholics have in the clear-thinking of Pope Benedict XVI: “If post-Vatican II Catholicism focused on the primacy of the person, on the incarnation, and on engagement, the Ratzinger way [le style Ratzinger] focuses above all 'on the ancient mystery: creation, original sin, redemption.'”

Living Beauty: The Art of Liturgy

By Alejandro Garcia-Rivera and Thomas Scirghi, Rowman Littlefield, 200 pages.

This dense, sophisticated theological read covers many current and twentieth-century areas related to liturgical practice and theory. The authors adopt the concept of “ressourcement,” an approach developed by twentieth-century French theologians that heavily influenced Vatican II.

The authors also look to the more recent past and current academic outlooks by examining postmodern thought, which leads them to discuss some philosophical basics of the Church:

“[Jean-Luc] Marion feels that the very nature of God has been compromised by theologies, such as Thomism, that see God as ipsum esse, or Being itself. God cannot be conceptualized, Marion insists, and any attempt to do so is idolatrous. Thus, God cannot be conceived in terms of Being. God is beyond such conception. God is God without being.”

This sort of book represents the kind of theology that will influence the Church's present and future leaders because it deals not only with atheistic materialism, but with the philosophical underpinnings of this ideology and with how Catholic thinkers can respond.

Unfortunately, the average Catholic reader will not have the education or training to understand reflections like the following:

“If in modernity, the issue was whether the invisible made visible was an illusion of superstitious premodern thought, then, in postmodernity, the issue is whether the visible is truly the invisible it purports to be. It is this issue that liturgy must take up if it is to render divine Mystery.”

A rewarding read, but best left to the professors.

Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason

By Russell Shorto, 299 pages hardcover, Doubleday, $30.00.

A missing skull, the French Revolution, the development of the modern museum, and a possibly re-discovered skull all fit together in the story of the building of Cartesian-based modern knowledge. Part-detective story, part-history of philosophy, Descartes' Bones weaves together fascinating historical episodes of individuals and nascent modern institutions with the evolution of science and Western thought.

The great philosopher Rene Descartes died in Stockholm and was buried there in a regal ceremony, only to be dug up a few decades later at the request of the French government, who had the bones brought to France and re-interred in Paris.

In parallel with this story, Shorto discusses Descartes' philosophical method as the foundation of modern thinking, the legs on which science, technology, and democracy stand. Cartesian philosophy uses “methodological doubt” to question every piece of received knowledge and to replace received wisdom with reason.

While most contemporary thinkers place a big space between science and faith, Shorto goes to pains to explain that Descartes was a faithful son of the Church who believed that his duality of mind and matter would actually place faith and science into 2 separate realms of understanding. Shorto shows how the modern scientific-secular takeover of the world and religion's decline was not Descartes' intention at all. In other words, don't blame Descartes, blame (perhaps) Cartesian philosophers.

Soon after the publication of Discours de la Methode, Europe's religious and intellectual movers and shakers felt threatened by the new philosophy because their own thought was based on Aristotelian philosophy and on accepting rather than doubting received knowledge. Naturally, the Church had a lot at stake, Shorto notes: “Aristotle's orientation of knowledge was teleological, which made it easy for the Scholastics to adapt it to conform with a Christian view of creation, so that as the chain of life-forms proceeded from the simplest organisms to more complex ones it also reflected a spiritual hierarchy. In the eighteenth century this system began to lose its usefulness.”

Descartes' Bones gives us a short-and-sweet discussion on the ins and outs of Aristotelian thinking, especially regarding the universe's structure. Aristotle and subsequent science believed that everything was made up of 4 elements, earth, water, fire, and air. By the time of Descartes, this thinking was exhausted, but only great minds like that of the French philosopher could see that.

Descartes aimed with his methodological doubt to rebuild knowledge from the ground up, something that the scientists of the seventeenth century immediately perceived. Public lectures on Cartesian philosophy, even while the philosopher was still alive, were rancorous, potentially violent affairs, with university careers being made or destroyed by taking a side.

Cartesianism spread quickly in the decades following the publication of the short, easy to read Discours de la Methode, and 1 of the great hallmarks of the modern era sprang up -- the belief in progress and future well-being. Cartesians believed that the new thinking, especially when channeled into science, would allow humans to live to the biblical 120 years and would enable the creation of all sorts of fantastic machines as well as give new understandings of the very nature of the universe. Best of all, this was all just around the corner.

Shorto's discussion of the French Revolution focuses on the personalities relevant to the growth of Cartesian-based science and the runaround over Descartes' lost remains. In this discussion Descartes' Bones is particularly effective at explaining the characteristics of modern thinking. Museums were developed, for instance, because many parts of society had by then moved from a God-based to a human-based world view, and so statues and alter pieces could be taken from churches and presented as isolated artistic or cultural artifacts devoid of religious meaning.

One church, a new Ste. Genevieve, under construction at the time of the Revolution, was turned into the Pantheon, where the Revolutionaries wanted to house the remains of those people on whose thinking the Revolution was based. After intermittent debate, it was decided that Descartes' remains were to be put there alongside Voltaire, Rousseau, and other great thinkers.

Yet Shorto reflects on the emptiness of the Pantheon: “In redesigning it so, architecturally replacing faith with reason as a source of worship, the revolutionaries created a unique monument, and visiting it today gives a feel not only for their motivation but for its naiveté and hollowness. The strangeness comes sweeping over you the moment you enter: the vastness is almost as laughable as the idea of dedicating a building to 'great men' and 'fame.' It sounds lampoonable, vacuous. Scenes from myth and French history are painted on the walls, but there is nothing in between. ... Maybe the oddest thing is the unyielding lack of adornment, the painstaking absence of religious motif in a sanctuary devoted to the dead. In a place like this the idea is driven home to you that reason alone is an empty vessel.”

This book gives an added dimension to the current hodgepodge of atheistic, pro-science books trying to convince people of the backwardness of religion. Shorto's book offers a more elegant view of the faith and reason dialectic, showing reason's drawbacks when it is unaccompanied by a spiritual viewpoint:

“Liberty, equality, democracy – all were offspring of the cogito and the orientation of humanity around reason,” Shorto notes, before citing David Hume's warning that it should not be used as the basis for morality: “reason, he knew, could be put to the most unreasonable pursuits. As a tool it can build a new society, but it can also kill and maim, and misusing it – through naïve belief or duplicity – is one of the tropes of modern history.”

Ultimately Shorto believes in the possibility that the materialist-spiritual split in the West, so dominated by the materialists, can be healed only by the heart, something that would not be totally foreign to Descartes the Catholic.

Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue 1913-1922

By Alasdair MacIntyre, 195 pages, Roman Littlefield.

Alasdair MacIntyre's demanding examination of the early years of Saint Edith Stein, philosopher and Carmelite who was murdered by the Nazis, does more than just introduce her philosophical thought. It introduces the entire intellectual and German cultural environment out of which she came. One interesting note is Stein's support of Germany fighting World War One, which many German intellectuals regarded as a defense of Kultur against “French cynicism” and British commercialism.

More than simply analyzing the relevant philosophy, Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue paints the background of personalities with which Stein came into contact, such as the brilliant phenomenologist and personalist, Max Scheler:

Scheler “was not yet a Catholic, but already in 1913-1914 he was impressed by the Catholic conception of the universe and made Stein's mind aware of possibilities that she had not so far entertained. But she was repelled by Scheler himself. Scheler, while teaching at Munich between 1907 and 1910, had elaborated his own version of phenomenology and claimed sincerely and passionately that, insofar as his positions coincided with those of Husserl, they had been arrived at independently. Yet in fact Scheler had almost certainly become acquainted with Husserl's basic positions in conversations that had taken place much earlier.”

MacIntyre thus offers us an idea of the interactions among leading philosophical lights as well as the processes that led to their intellectual discoveries. The rest of the book deals with Stein's early career as a philosopher and her thought.

Ecumenism & Philosophy: Philosophical Questions for a Renewal of Dialogue

By Charles Morerod, O.P., 199 pages, Sapientia Press.

Ecumenism & Philosophy advocates a more mature ecumenism, where we can go beyond the nice-guy formalities that Vatican II seemingly encouraged and where we emphasized common ground. Father Morerod believes that if Christians are to move beyond the stagnant waters of contemporary ecumenism, we must start to discuss the divisive issues.

He also believes that ecumenism has been held back by its focus on theological issues, and that Christians must begin to address philosophical undercurrents. He argues that these latter problems contributed significantly to the lasting divisions in Western Christianity, with a significant issue being the Protestant aversion to philosophy:

“The Reformation, however, was immediately opposed to philosophy. Starting with his very first skirmishes with the representatives of Rome, Luther demanded that all argument unfold from Scripture alone. Since then, ecumenical dialogue with Protestantism has carefully avoided the forbidden ground of philosophy, and remains content to argue essentially on the basis of Scripture and history.”

Father Morerod, then, succeeds in giving the reader a historical sense of the Protestant-Catholic split in its philosophical dimensions. Given that the book is rather academic, the author grounds his discussion with three chapters on the meaning of dialogue for philosophers of science such as Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, and Paul Feyerabend. This dicsussion gives ecumenists a sensible model for their own dialogue and helps all Christians see the importance of philosophy to knowledge, including both science and theology.

The heart of Ecumenism & Philosophy discusses the Reformation's underlying philosophy, and thereby some of the basic suppositions of the reformers such as Luther and Calvin. The author argues that Luther's theology of justification, which went to the heart of the Reformation itself, stood on underlying metaphysical currents that the German reformer, because he disregarded philosophy so much, refused to acknowledge.

Ultimately, the author believes that Catholicism and Protestantism are just as much two differing metaphysical systems as anything else: “St. Thomas linked theology to metaphysics; Luther explicitly rejected metaphysics, but simply ends up creating another metaphysics from this rejection. Yet both had the same intention: to safeguard the transcendence of God.”

Father Morerod's basic questions about the relationship between the Catholic and Protestant orientations towards philosophy reflects his stated intention of highlighting the differences rather than similarities between the two Christian systems:

“Is it a scandalous intrusion of philosophy into the domain of faith to propose an approach to theology starting from metaphysics? First of all, no one can avoid philosophical presuppositions, and the more seriously the theologian takes them, the more he is free of them.”

Ecumenism & Philosophy asks Protestants to admit the inevitability of philosophy's intrusion into theology so that they can more completely undertake ecumenical dialogue with Catholics.

John Paul II & St. Thomas Aquinas

Edited by Michael Dauphinais & Matthew Levering, 259 pages hardcover, Sapientia Press.

John Paul II & St. Thomas Aquinas is a collection of scholarly essays by different authors. It makes a very important contribution to the understanding of John Paul II's teachings. One writer in the book notes that the encyclical Evangelium vitae “with its biblically centered argumentation, draws upon Aquinas's theology of law at the very hinge of its discussion.”

Avery Dulles writes that in Love and Responsibility, John Paul's pre-papal book on sexuality, “From Aquinas he takes over the idea that love is ordered to that which is objectively true and good. He formulates a personalistic norm to the effect that one may never use other persons as means to an end...Wojtyla grounds this principle in the metaphysical insight that the person has inviolable intrinsic dignity.”

Dulles thus highlights the bridges that John Paul made between Thomism and personalism. This is important because central to Catholic thinking is the constant connection of its theology and traditional philosophical methods with modern ways of thinking. John Paul succeeded in tying a medieval thinker, Thomas Aquinas, with a most modern philosophy.

Pope John Paul II was schooled in the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas and the centuries of development of the philosopher's thought, known as Thomism or neo-scholasticism. The pontiff was also schooled in more recent philosophy, especially personalism, which emphasized the importance and dignity of the human individual, though personalism often differs from Western individualism by often emphasizing spiritual values over materialistic ones.

Thus the late pontiff's writings are usually a mix of Thomism and personalism. He emphasizes the eternal, unchanging truths of the Church, in the style of Thomism, but applies these truths to the individual, and strives to show how they amplify the dignity of the person. His Theology of the Body is the best example of his mixture of the eternal truth with the individual human.

John Paul II & St. Thomas Aquinas reaquaints us with John Paul's major books and encyclicals by taking this philosophical reading of them. The book reviews and deepens our knowledge of writings that we think we've already digested.

Dulles writes of Veritatis splendor that it “invokes the authority of St. Thomas in maintaining that natural law is a participation in the eternal law of God...Although he speaks of natural law and divine law, he avoids all legalism. He accepts from St. Thomas the idea of natural law as the light of natural reason imprinted upon our minds by God.”

This book does more than unearth John Paul's links with Aquinas. It also places the late pope within the history of modern philosophy by discussing phenomenology, personalism, utilitarianism, Plato, and medieval scholasticism.

Michael Sherwin in his essay sums things up best: “John Paul did not speak of truth and freedom in only one way, but followed the Gospel of John in applying the terms analogically.”

The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul

By Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary, $32.95, 368 pages hardcover.

Mario Beauregard, neuroscientist at the University of Montreal, and Denyse O'Leary, religious-issues writer, reject any inherent opposition between science and spirituality. Instead, they identify the main contest as between materialism and spirituality. Materialism has spread into every corner of science to the point that scientists have been spending a lot of their time trying to prove a materialist ideology rather than pursuing research.

In contrast, Beauregard and O'Leary offer a simple reason for believing in the natural connection between science and spirituality: “We might expect living beings to evolve toward consciousness if consciousness underlies the universe.”

The well-supported thesis of The Spiritual Brain culminates in Beauregard's neuroscientific analysis of Carmelite religious. The researchers admit to being a bit naïve in asking the nuns to turn on a mystic experience in the lab. To the surprise of even the nuns, though, many did undergo such a happening when the researchers asked them to relive the most mystical or unitive moments of their Carmelite lives. The scientists rightly theorized that the neuronal pathways would remember these experiences and become activated.

The lab results showed two interesting things: First: subjects produced a huge amount of brainwaves from a wide variety of areas rather than from the isolated “God module” hypothesized by materialist scientists looking to explain God away; second: the nuns' brains made theta waves, which scientists have associated with meditative states, rather than beta waves, the latter of which reflect “strenuous conscious activity,” including lying.

The Spiritual Brain uses scientific data to counter common scientific claims for the irrationality or meaninglessness of religion and spirituality. Beauregard and O'Leary assert, among other things, the rational and mentally healthy nature of mystics. The mystic's search for a higher, unifying truth differs greatly from epilepsy or hallucinations. In contrast to mystical experiences, which bring clarity and understanding, these episodes confuse people.

The Spiritual Brain discusses how scientists in their atheistic materialism have themselves adopted an extreme faith position by rejecting or misusing research data. The authors criticize “promissory materialism”: Unable to explain consciousness, spiritual experiences such as Near Death Experiences, or parapsychology through their materialism, and unwilling to entertain spiritual explanations, scientists simply throw up their hands and say “Further Research Required.” After decades of this game, Beauregard and O'Leary call for another attitude. Perhaps science will never understand these things.

The authors also challenge the many scientists who sound positively scary in objectifying humans as “very complicated machines” and our brains as blobs of neurons.

Most interesting of all, Beauregard and O'Leary turn the tables on science itself, accusing materialism of countering modern physics: “The reason that consciousness is a problem for materialist neuroscience is that it does not appear to have a mechanism. Modern quantum physics conceives of the universe as superposed states. These states do not exist apart from each other, so their interaction is not governed by a mechanism.”


The Spiritual Brain's optimistic freedom beats materialist science's reductio ad absurdum, where rather than enjoying choice, our actions simply reflect billions of neurons firing off. Nonmaterialist neuroscientists such as Beauregard can use the mind to change the brain. This demonstrates that the spiritual – in this case the mind – precedes and uses the material – the brain.

One researcher used people's minds to change their compulsive-obsessive brains. Jeffrey M. Schwartz “was not simply getting patients to change their opinions, but rather to actually change their brains. He wanted them to substitute a useful neural circuit for a useless one, for example, to substitute 'go work in the garden' for 'wash hands seven more times,' until the neuronal traffic from the many different activities associated with gardening began to exceed the traffic from washing the hands.” Schwartz succeeded in getting patients to physically change the neuronal networks in their brains by first getting them to change their minds.

This leads Beauregard and O'Leary to the encouraging and anti-secularist belief that “normal humans are not feeling robots, but are quite capable of adjusting their emotional reactions. This is true even of children,” as studies they mention demonstrate.

The authors explain theological terms well, with the chapter on mysticism containing particularly effective definitions of mystical experience, such as the following: “Some mystics have attempted to describe their experiences by negation. This apophatic tradition – explanation through denial – can be rhetorically effective, as in 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.'”

The Spiritual Brain also wades into philosophy since it challenges the materialist legs on which contemporary science stands. The authors demonstrate that science has become guilty of its own blind faith. Scientists have been trying to explain religious and spiritual matters “in relation to human evolution. Unfortunately, under materialist influence, the project became not so much exploring a way, but explaining away.” In other words, scientists have acted unscientifically.

Researchers must approach spiritual and religious issues without the materialist ideological baggage, and with more empty, truly inquisitive minds. Beauregard and O'Leary show that scientists need humility to go with their natural wonder.

Tradition: Concept and Claim

By Josef Pieper, translated by E. Christian Kopff, ISI Books, hardcover 97 pages, ISBN: 1-933859-54-7, $ 25.

Pieper (1904-97), a German philosopher famous for his simple writing style, succeeds in the important task of defining tradition for our busy, post-modern society, emphasizing tradition's living vitality and accessibility.

Yet the philosopher doesn't want a frozen tradition. Pieper welcomes the harsh questioning and criticizing that adolescents and young adults do towards their cultural and religious inheritance. These repeated challenges can only help sharpen tradition, and encourage the guardians to retain only the central parts.

Pieper notes the connection between reason and tradition. Reason, and philosophy as a whole, cannot indefinitely do without theology, because philosophy needs a compass to set itself towards.

Pieper shows how Western civilization is even now Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman, as he refers to Socrates and Plato again and again. Pieper recounts the Socratic teaching that the gods gave something to humans from heaven that the ancestors handed on, and that we have handed on ever since. The dignity of the ancients was found in this divine source, and not in some special holiness that they had personally attained.

Tradition, for the Greeks as well as for Judeo-Christian thought, finds its source in this original divine revelation. Modern philosophy, though distinct from theology, should also find its impetus from this original divine source, Jesus Christ and the Hebrew writings that He fulfilled. Christ is the ultimate origin of tradition.

Tradition can only succeed and survive as long as people base it on divine revelation. Perhaps with a slightly condemning eye to our modern times, soon after these words, Pieper notes that “If sons really did stop celebrating the religious holidays celebrated by their fathers, or if the tradita of the sacred tradition were no longer handed down, here alone we must talk about a 'loss of tradition,' of 'a complete lack of tradition' and a 'break with tradition.'”

As a philosopher Pieper was all-too-aware of the so-called deconstructionists and post-modernists, who assert that there is no truth, but only truths relative to individuals or, at best, to isolated cultures. Their truth is that there is no truth.

Pieper refutes this with a few choice words: “Tradition is by no means a confused mass of historically transmitted accidents, wherein everything that has been created and preserved, as long as it possesses a certain antiquity, is equally valid.”

Contemporary thought fails on two grounds. First, no individual has direct access to revelation, which must instead be handed down through the proper authorities. Tradition, in fact, is all about the handing down of an original revelation. If people did have direct revelations, tradition would not exist.

Second, the modern notion of progress fails, even when it occasionally tries to wed itself to tradition. The accumulation of more facts, Pieper notes, does not mean that we are more advanced than the church fathers or medieval saints, because progress is really a spiritual good. This is so because of the spiritual nature of tradition, where “the goal is always to represent identically what was originally shared with mankind from a divine source.... I am only interested in using the interpretation that represents the tradition as a means to help me gain access to exactly the same thing that the first recipient of the message had access to: salvation, knowledge, wisdom.”

The unique gift of Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman civilization is freedom. True freedom, as opposed to the self-oriented license of modern freedom lovers, comes from the tradition because of its core truth, which is Christ. Otherwise, Pieper warns, people become enslaved, and “worry obsessively about the cultivation of the 'traditions.'” This was the case with the ancient Romans fighting the Christians, and again seems to be the case today when secular people fight for their pseudo-freedom against the Catholic Church, which forever calls people to a higher freedom.

In Defense of Lost Causes

By Slavoj Zizek, 504 pages, Verso Books, $38.50.

Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian philosopher and Paris-trained psychoanalyst, spends a lot of time thinking about capitalism and its spiritual, psychological, and metaphysical fallout. He examines this fallout both in the hearts and minds of individuals and in historical and recent political experiences. Zizek is a big thinker who talks about mental health, cultural studies, politics, and sexuality all at once.

In Defense of Lost Causes' steady focus on humans and how they are affected by aggressive, revolutionary capitalism is reminiscent of Carl Jung's Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Aggressive capitalism has destroyed age-old human and physical ecology. Countless cultures across the world, one by one, have fallen to America's opening up markets imperialism.

Zizek makes the point over and over that capitalism leaves no one untouched, and that the normal state of the individual nowadays is to feel overwhelmed and unhinged.

Zizek's pessimism comes from his belief that capitalism for the time being has indeed won and has become the backdrop to everything else. It is, he writes, the Big Other. Just as the West was once a Christian civilization, with religion producing all the givens, now capitalism offers all the assumptions. Money, not eternal religious truth, is the measure of all things.

Yet Zizek is not a true pessimist. He adopts Thomas Beckett's dictum, Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Opponents of capitalism must not give up. Alternatives are available. Often limp-noodle socialists and anti-capitalists in general just don't realize that they have to create the alternatives themselves. They have been uninspired, lazy, and stubborn.

Liberal bourgeois democracy, the force behind rabid capitalism, is not as all-knowing and powerful as people suppose. Zizek's psychoanalytical skills help us see the short-sighted, foolishly arrogant nature of this political way:

“[I]s bringing Western liberal democracy the real solution for getting rid of the religious-fundamentalist regimes, or are these regimes rather a symptom of liberal democracy itself? What to do in cases like those of Algeria or the Palestinian territories, where a 'free' democratic election brings 'fundamentalists' to power?”

Zizek repeatedly circles vulture-like around the same problems: The pro-Nazi philosopher Heidegger; Stalin's purges; French deconstructionists and philosophers; Mao and the Cultural Revolution; Freud; and countless other topics wound together in an analysis of utilitarianism, materialism, and scientism. Zizek philosophizes from pop culture.

Zizek's philosophy, as pessimism with a possibly rosy ending, is really Christianity-without-Christ thinking. The new original sin is capitalism and the money-mind. The new grace, as mysterious as Christian grace, comes out of the depths of suffering – from our dark side or from our ecological fate. We can build a refreshed, post-capitalist civilization if we cooperate with this post-Christian grace.

Capitalism, like anything else, can never be totally free and easy because things just don't work like that. Zizek identifies “fundamentalist populism” as socialism's replacement. Populism in its extreme simplicity finds ready scapegoats such as immigrants or, in Europe, Brussels.

Zizek sees through Islamic terrorism, humanizing the terrorists in a unique way, showing that their anti-Western bloodlust is the core of their own weakness:

“Are, however, the terrorist fundamentalists, be they Christian or Muslim, really fundamentalists in the authentic sense of the term? Do they really believe? What they lack is a feature that is easy to discern in all authentic fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish in the US: the absence of resentment and envy, deep indifference towards the non-believer's way of life.”

Zizek emasculates what our culture sees as imposing, and empowers various lost causes. He shows how our attempts at fighting capitalism or fundamentalism already point to our defeat. In Defense of Lost Causes invites us to create a new reality rather than contest these things head on. Zizek opens up new possibilities in our suffocating, money-mad world.

The Priority of Christ: Toward a Postliberal Catholicism, by Robert Barron

352 pages, Brazos Press.

The Priority of Christ discusses a whole swath of issues unearthed by post-Enlightenment philosophy's rejection of God, which culminated in Friedrich Nietzsche's Death of God and Jean Paul Sartre's Hell is Other People. It would be an understatement, then, to suggest that Robert Barron is ambitious.

He begins at the beginning - the source of the modern mentality. As with so much else in contemporary society, we find these roots in the High Middle Ages, between 1100-1450. The discussion is necessarily academic and presupposes a high degree of knowledge about the relevant movers and shakers, but readers who know these players are in for a treat.

His Thomistic-inspired discussion parallels Pope John Paul II's concept of freedom. This is important, because leading secularists in France and America, who always seem so influential in universities and therefore among society's leaders, assert that freedom, their most cherished value, is threatened by God or by any belief in God. They have concluded, and have caused countless millions to conclude, that freedom can only exist in a theological vacuum. Freedom and God cannot co-exist.

For Robert Barron, Thomas Aquinas' idea of freedom, based on his famous analogical theology, allows Catholic theologians great grounds for rejecting secularist philosophers. Aquinas said that God's being is primary and our being secondary. We can therefore understand God's being by analogy (An analogy is a kind of comparison: Although I cannot know something directly, in this case God, I can know something indirectly by comparing it to things that I do know and that share some qualities with this unknowable entity. From my mother's love, I can get a good sense of God's love, even though divine love is of course of an entirely different level than that of any human's):

“Aquinas maintained consistently throughout his career that God is inescapably mysterious to the human intellect, since our frame of reference remains the creaturely mode of existence, which bears only an analogical resemblance to the divine mode of being. We may say that God exists, but we're not quite sure what we mean when we say it; the 'cash-value' of the claim that God exists is that there is a finally mysterious source of the to-be of finite things.”

Briefly put, thinking about God in this analogical way means that God is of a different being than we are and that we do not have to fear God encroaching on our freedom. Since God's being is primary, his being sustains us and therefore gives us greater and greater life.

Barron locates the modern, zero-sum way of thinking in Duns Scotus: “In an effort to make the to-be of God more immediately intelligible, Duns Scotus proposed a univocal conception of existence, according to which God and creatures belong to the same basic metaphysical category, the genus of being. Though God is infinite and therefore quantitatively superior to any creature or collectivity of creatures, there is nevertheless no qualitative difference, in the metaphysical sense, between the supreme being, God, and finite beings.”

Barron makes the point that Scotus's model unhinges humans from our metaphysical anchor to God: “[N]o longer grounded in a common source, creatures lose their essential connectedness to one another. Isolated and self-contained individuals (God the supreme being and the many creatures) are now what is most basically real.”

Barron is faithful to the Catholic tradition, and so The Priority of Christ represents an important step forward in the new-evangelization.