The Religious Sense, the fruit of many years of dialogue with students, is an exploration of the search for meaning in life. Luigi Giussani shows that the nature of reason expresses itself in the ultimate need for truth, goodness, and beauty. These needs constitute the fabric of the religious sense, which is evident in every human being everywhere and in all times. So strong is this sense that it leads one to desire that the answer to life’s mystery might reveal itself in some way. Giussani challenges us to penetrate the deepest levels of experience to discover our essential selves, breaking through the layers of opinions and judgments that have obscured our true needs. Asserting that all the tools necessary for self-discovery are inherent within us, he focuses primarily on reason, not as narrowly defined by modern philosophers, but as an openness to existence, a capacity to comprehend and affirm reality in all of its dimensions. Part of the so-called new religious revival, The Religious Sense avoids any sentimental or irrational reduction of the religious experience. It is a forthright and refreshing call to reassess our lives. In this revised edition, John Zucchi offers a new translation of this seminal and best-selling work.

The Impact of 9-11 on Religion and Philosophy is the sixth volume of the six-volume series The Day that Changed Everything? edited by Matthew J. Morgan. This volume features a foreword by John Esposito and contributors include Jean Bethke Elshtain, Philip Yancey, John Milbank, Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, John Cobb and Martin Cook.

"The Impact of 9-11 on Religion and Philosophy "is the sixth volume of the six-volume series" The Day that Changed Everything?" edited by Matthew J. Morgan. The series brings together from a broad spectrum of disciplines the leading thinkers of our time to reflect on one of the most significant events of our time. With forewords by John Esposito and Jean Bethke Elshtain, the volume's contributors include Philip Yancey, John Milbank, Arvind Sharma, Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, John Cobb, Martin Cook, and other leading authors.

Who or what determines the right to die? Do advancing reproductive technologies change reproductive rights? What forces influence cultural standards of beauty? How do discipline, punishment, and torture reflect our attitudes about the human body?
In this challenging new book, Jean Bethke Elshtain, a nationally recognized scholar in political science and philosophy, and J. Timothy Cloyd, a strong new voice in social and political science, have assembled a collection of thought-provoking essays on these issues written by some of the finest minds of our day.

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Long before the "shock and awe" campaign against Iraq in March 2003, debates swarmed around the justifications of the U.S.-led war to depose Saddam Hussein. While George W. Bush's administration declared a just war of necessity, opponents charged that it was a war of choice, and even opportunism. Behind the rhetoric lie vital questions: when is war just, and what means are acceptable even in the course of a just war?

Originally published in 1991, in the wake of the first war against Iraq, "Just War Theory" explores this essential dilemma. With a new preface by the editor, the essays in this indispensable collection move beyond the theoretical origins of just war theory to examine issues faced by military strategists, politicians, social theorists, and anyone concerned with the provocations and costs of military action.

Popular wisdom once claimed that notions of just war would become obsolete with the onset of "total warfare," characterized by attacks on civilians and undiscriminating weapons of mass destruction. While the last decade has been ripe with brutality, just war theory is more critical than ever to the future of international relations and public discourse. This readable collection is an invaluable introduction to the debate.

The Religious Sense, the fruit of many years of dialogue with students, is an exploration of the search for meaning in life. Luigi Giussani shows that the nature of reason expresses itself in the ultimate need for truth, goodness, and beauty. These needs constitute the fabric of the religious sense, which is evident in every human being everywhere and in all times. So strong is this sense that it leads one to desire that the answer to life’s mystery might reveal itself in some way. Giussani challenges us to penetrate the deepest levels of experience to discover our essential selves, breaking through the layers of opinions and judgments that have obscured our true needs. Asserting that all the tools necessary for self-discovery are inherent within us, he focuses primarily on reason, not as narrowly defined by modern philosophers, but as an openness to existence, a capacity to comprehend and affirm reality in all of its dimensions. Part of the so-called new religious revival, The Religious Sense avoids any sentimental or irrational reduction of the religious experience. It is a forthright and refreshing call to reassess our lives. In this revised edition, John Zucchi offers a new translation of this seminal and best-selling work.

Until September 11th, 2001, few in the West fully appreciated the significance of religion in international politics. The terrible events of that day refocused our attention on how thoroughly religion and politics intermingle, sometimes with horrific results. But must this intermingling always be so deadly? The Sacred and the Sovereign brings together leading voices to consider the roles that religion should -- and should not -- play in a post-Cold War age distinguished by humanitarian intervention, terrorism, globalization, and challenges to state sovereignty. But these challenges to state sovereignty have deep and abiding roots in religion that invite us to revisit just what values we hold sacred.

Offsetting the commonly shared idea that religion is politics' perennial nemesis, this volume demonstrates that religious traditions, institutions, and ideas are essential elements of the political quest for human rights, peace, order, legitimacy, and justice. The Sacred and the Sovereign brings distinguished scholars of religious studies, theology, and politics together with ranking members of the military and government to reflect seriously about where -- and if -- safe boundaries can be drawn between religion and politics in the international arena.

<div>Jean Elshtain examines how the myths of Man as "Just Warrior" and Woman as "Beautiful Soul" serve to recreate and secure women's social position as noncombatants and men's identity as warriors. Elshtain demonstrates how these myths are undermined by the reality of female bellicosity and sacrificial male love, as well as the moral imperatives of just wars.</div>

As religiously grounded moral arguments have become ever more influential factors in the national debate-particularly reinforced by recent presidential elections and the creation of the faith-based initiative office in the White House-journalists' ignorance about theological convictions has often worked to distort the public discourse on important policy issues. Pope John Paul II's pronouncements on stem-cell research, the constitutional controversies regarding faith-based initiatives, the emerging participation of Muslims in American life-issues like these require political journalists in print and broadcast media to cover religious contexts that many admit they are ill-equipped to understand. Put differently, these news events reflect subtle theological nuances and deep faith commitments that shape the activities of religious believers in the public square. Inasmuch as a faith tradition is an active or significant participant in the public arena, journalists will need to better understand the theological sources and religious convictions that motivate this political activity. The current national discourse has brought faith and its relationship to public policy to the forefront of our daily news. Since 1999, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, through the generosity of the Pew Charitable Trusts, has hosted six conferences for national journalists to help raise the level of their reporting by increasing their understanding of religion, religious communities, and the religious convictions that inform the political activity of devout believers. This book contains the presentations and conversations that grew out of those conferences.

While other academic disciplines claim a focus around specific subject matter, sociologists think of their field as an approach to understanding the often invisible forces and social contexts that shape the way people conduct their lives. How these forces and contexts are structured is central to sociology. But how do sociologists analyze these invisible structures? This book contributes to our understanding by bringing together a remarkable set of master essays about modern sociology written by some of the leading figures of the field. Each author describes a vision of sociological inquiry or offers an example of research that illustrates approaches and problems encountered in doing sociological work. The collection is rounded out with a prologue by Kai Erikson, an epilogue by Paul DiMaggio, and an extraordinary autobiographical essay by Robert K. Merton. The book is introduced by its editor as a set of reflections, a gathering of visions. But the range of topics and the variety of authors represented make it a valuable introduction to sociology as a discipline and as a way of thinking.

Each chapter of this book treats a particular historical or contemporary topic of civic concern. Some are centered on current family crises and issues (the "family wage," child abuse, the "new eugenics") while others look to the wider national and international polity. Yet each, insistently, returns to common themes: the many faces and forms of power; struggles for autonomy; the need for human sociality and community. Elshtain's essays on controversial domestic subjects demonstrate her independence of mind, her understanding of politics as the art of the possible, and her openness to debate. In the last section, related essays on women's power and powerlessness, on patriotism, and on just war track a movement from domestic politics to foreign affairs. They are cautionary tales which simultaneously express realizable hopes and honor those, like the Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina, who have taught us, through their desperation and triumph, what it means to fashion a politics of hope and justice against a politics of vengeance and despair.

Who or what determines the right to die? Do advancing reproductive technologies change reproductive rights? What forces influence cultural standards of beauty? How do discipline, punishment, and torture reflect our attitudes about the human body?
In this challenging new book, Jean Bethke Elshtain, a nationally recognized scholar in political science and philosophy, and J. Timothy Cloyd, a strong new voice in social and political science, have assembled a collection of thought-provoking essays on these issues written by some of the finest minds of our day.

The "City of God" or the "City of Man"? This is the choice St. Augustine offered 1500 years ago--and according to Pierre Manent the modern West has decisively and irreversibly chosen the latter. In this subtle and wide-ranging book on the Western intellectual and political condition, Manent argues that the West has rejected the laws of God and of nature in a quest for human autonomy. But in declaring ourselves free and autonomous, he contends, we have, paradoxically, lost a sense of what it means to be human.

In the first part of the book, Manent explores the development of the social sciences since the seventeenth century, portraying their growth as a sign of increasing human "self-consciousness." But as social scientists have sought to free us from the intellectual confines of the ancient world, he writes, they have embraced modes of analysis--economic, sociological, and historical--that treat only narrow aspects of the human condition and portray individuals as helpless victims of impersonal forces. As a result, we have lost all sense of human agency and of the unified human subject at the center of intellectual study. Politics and culture have come to be seen as mere foam on the tides of historical and social necessity.

In the second half of the book, titled "Self-Affirmation," Manent examines how the West, having discovered freedom, then discovered arbitrary will and its dangers. With no shared touchstones or conceptions of virtue, for example, we have found it increasingly hard to communicate with each other. This is a striking contrast to the past, he writes, when even traditions as different as the Classical and the Christian held many of these conceptions in common.

The result of these discoveries, according to Manent, is the disturbing rootlessness that characterizes our time. By gaining autonomy from external authority, we have lost a sense of what we are. In "giving birth" to ourselves, we have abandoned that which alone can nurture and sustain us. With penetrating insight and remarkable erudition, Manent offers a profound analysis of the confusions and contradictions at the heart of the modern condition.

Focusing on the Western philosophical tradition and the work of contemporary feminists, Jean Elshtain explores the general tendency to assert the primacy of the public world--the political sphere dominated by men--and to denigrate the private world--the familial sphere dominated by women. She offers her own positive reconstruction of the public and the private in a feminist theory that reaffirms the importance of the family and envisions an "ethical polity."

At a time when many despair of culture, Elshtain recovers the life-affirming essence of what it means to be human.

Respected Christian ethicist Jean Bethke Elshtain finds in the tensions and tragedies of our turn-of-the-century society hope in the recovery of personhood. She explores the internal and external trappings that so easily lead us to forget how to be faithful to something other than ourselves.

This is a work of political analysis, cultural criticism, and theological engagement. Elshtain suggests that much of what we rightly interpret as troubling presents fascinating interpretive occasions for Christians, who, of all people, are called to live in hope. She highlights in particular certain aspects of youth culture, taking up popular films like "Seven and "Titanic and tragedies like the shootings at Columbine High School. What she finds running through all of these are examples of courage and a search for a source of truth and meaning that seems to elude so many.

Now with a new foreword by Patrick J. Deneen. Jean Bethke Elshtain brings Augustine's thought into the contemporary political arena and presents an Augustine who created a complex moral map that offers space for loyalty, love, and care, as well as a chastened form of civic virtue. The result is a controversial book about one of the world's greatest and most complex thinkers whose thought continues to haunt all of Western political philosophy. What is our business "within this common mortal life?" Augustine asks and bids us to ask ourselves. What can Augustine possibly have to say about the conditions that characterize our contemporary society and appear to put democracy in crisis? Who is Augustine for us now and what do his words have to do with political theory? These are the underlying questions that animate Jean Bethke Elshtain's fascinating engagement with the thought and work of Augustine, the ancient thinker who gave no political theory per se and refused to offer up a positive utopia. In exploring the questions, Why Augustine, why now? Elshtain argues that Augustine's great works display a canny and scrupulous attunement to the here and now and the very real limits therein. She discusses other aspects of Augustine's thought as well, including his insistence that no human city can be modeled on the heavenly city, and further elaborates on Hannah Arendt's deep indebtedness to Augustine's understanding of evil. Elshtain also presents Augustine's arguments against the pridefulness of philosophy, thereby linking him to later currents in modern thought, including Wittgenstein and Freud.

Revised and updated, this long-awaited second edition provides a comprehensive introduction to what the most thoughtful Americans have said about the American experience from the colonial period to the present. The book examines the political thought of the most important American statesmen, activists, and writers across era and ideologies, helping another generation of students, scholars, and citizens to understand more fully the meaning of America. This new second edition of the book includes chapters on several additional historical figures, including Walt Whitman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Ronald Reagan, as well as a new chapter on Barack Obama, who was not prominent in public life when the first edition was published. Significant revisions and additions have also been made to many of the original chapters, most notably on Antonin Scalia, which now updates his full legacy, increasing the breadth and depth of the collection.

What is the proper relationship of religion to power? In this collection of essays, a group of interdisciplinary scholars address that question, building on the scholarship of the late Dr. Jean Bethke Elshtain. The first section of this book provides the reader with three previously unpublished essays by Elshtain on the subject of political sovereignty, followed by an interview with the noted ethicist and political theorist. Dr. Elshtain questions the nature of sovereignty in a world where some have elevated the state and the self above the authority of God himself. In the second section of the book, "Sovereignty through the Ages", four scholars explore some of the key questions raised by Dr. Elshtain's work on Just War, resistance to tyranny, political liberalism, and modernity, questioning the ways in which sovereignty may be conceived to reinforce the limitations of human societies and yet seek the greater good. In the third section of the book, entitled "Sovereignty in Context", three essays extend her analysis of sovereignty to different contexts - Latin America, the Islamic world, and the international system as a whole, all the while demonstrating the importance of how religious interpretation contributes to our understanding of political power.

In Christianity and Human Rights: Christians and the Struggle for Global Justice, Frederick M. Shepherd has collected essays by scholars and activists who, in a wide variety of ways, confront the issue of Christianity's role in the burgeoning movement for human rights. The volume's contributors provide diverse perspectives on the theology behind the idea of human rights, the debate over the its meaning, and the evolution of the struggle for human rights. A wide variety of disciplinary perspectives are represented, from economics, political science and law to history, philosophy and theology. The essays also represent a broad political spectrum, including specific accounts from activists participating in the struggle for human rights. Separate chapters focus on cases from Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia. Christianity and Human Rights begins and ends with attempts to synthesize current theory and practice, acknowledging both Christianity's great success and its failures in defending basic human rights around the globe.

Christianity and Civil Society responds to the crisis of American democracy as perceived by such diverse thinkers as Christopher Lasch, Michael Sandel, Mary Ann Glendon, and Robert Putnam. Despite their philosophical differences, these thinkers highlight a common theme: a decline in the institutions of civil society once held to be the vital center of the American polity. In place of these institutions-such as the family, neighborhood, church, and civic associations-one finds a disturbingly reduced socio-political stage, dominated by an abstract triumvirate of the individual, state, and market as prime actors. Whether taking their inspiration from the political theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and papal encyclicals or from John Calvin and his heirs in the Reformed traditions, the authors assembled here find the doctrinal resources of Christianity indispensable to defending the irreducible identity and value of the social institutions that serve as the connective tissue of a political community. By drawing upon a treasury of social thought little known to most Americans, Christianity and Civil Society offers a fresh vantage point from which to assess the crisis of our polity as well as the best prospects for its renewal.

In formulating this collection, Don Browning asked his contributors to respond to a simple question: Has moral relativism run its course? The threats of terrorism, reproductive technology, and globalization have forced us to ask anew whether there are universal moral truths upon which to base political and ethical judgments. In this timely edited collection, distinguished scholars present and test the best answers to this question. This dialogue includes contributions from widely-recognized scholars Richard Bernstein, Amitai Etzioni, Jean Bethke Elshtain, William Galston, Franklin Gamwell, Timothy Jackson, James Turner Johnson, John Kelsay, and Jean Porter. Although the conflict between universalism and relativism is a complex issue with many parts, the contributors to this volume tackle the question at hand in an engaging, thought-provoking manner. These insightful responses temper the strong antithesis between universalism and relativism and retain sensitivity to how language and history shape the context of our moral decisions. This important and relevant work of contemporary political and social thought is ideal for use in the classroom across many disciplines including political science, philosophy, ethics, theology, and law.

Public Intellectuals: An Endangered Species? investigates the definition, role, and decline of public intellectuals in American society. Drawing from a wide range of commentaries and studies, this edited volume demonstrates the unique importance of public intellectuals and probes the timely question of how their voices can continue to be effective in our ever-changing social, academic and political climates. At a time when many argue that public intellectuals are dying out, the book addresses questions such as who qualifies as a public intellectual? Have their ranks thinned out and their qualities diminished? What is that special service that public intellectuals are supposed to render for the body politic? And, above all, is society being shortchanged?

Public Intellectuals: An Endangered Species? investigates the definition, role, and decline of public intellectuals in American society. Drawing from a wide range of commentaries and studies, this edited volume demonstrates the unique importance of public intellectuals and probes the timely question of how their voices can continue to be effective in our ever-changing social, academic and political climates. At a time when many argue that public intellectuals are dying out, the book addresses questions such as who qualifies as a public intellectual? Have their ranks thinned out and their qualities diminished? What is that special service that public intellectuals are supposed to render for the body politic? And, above all, is society being shortchanged?

At a time when democracy in America suffers from a profound sense of cynicism, lack of trust, and disengagement, especially among young adults, this book is a much needed antidote. Here are original essays by some of the most distinguished and insightful political thinkers of our time. No armchair observers, they have advised presidents, been public servants, testified before Congress, helped other countries draft constitutions, worked as journalists, and won teaching awards. They participate ardently in the polity and civil society they write about here. The main focus of the essays is what role universities might be able to play in reviving a sense of citizenship and civic responsibility in our society. They represent different perspectives and differing opinions, making this a rich stimulus for discussion and action. At stake is nothing less than the future strength of democracy in the United States.

The purpose of this valuable book is to consider recent cultural trends in bioethics from a Catholic perspective. The first section describes modern cultural notions of health and human suffering. It examines the meaning of suffering in the contemporary world and relates this discussion to the ethical issues surrounding abortion, euthanasia, and the competing conceptions of health. The second section discusses the philosophical origins of the culture war through an examination of the problematic bases of various forms of moral relativism and its inability to guide moral action. The third section contextualizes this abstract discussion in the current political and legal debate on biotechnology, marriage, and the family. Bioethics is intended for a lay audience interested in understanding bioethical issues from a Catholic perspective.