What does it mean to love someone? What does the concept of human dignity mean, and what are its consequences? What marks the end of a person's life? Is personhood more than consciousness? These perplexing questions lurk beneath the surface of everyday life, surfacing only to demand urgent attention in crises.
Renowned German philosopher Robert Spaemann addresses these and other foundational enigmas in three eloquent short essays. Speaking wisdom to controversy, he offers carefully considered, novel approaches to key philosophical and theological questions about the nature of human love ("The Paradoxes of Love"), dignity ("Human Dignity and Human Nature"), and death ("Is Brain Death the Death of a Human Person?").

Metaphysical study of God, love, technology, and culture in modern society Reality most basically and properly considered, says David L. Schindler, is an order of love -- a gift that finds its objective only in an entire way of life. Love is what first brings things into existence, and everything exists in, through, and for love. With this understanding of reality, Schindler explores how modern culture marginalizes love, regarding it at best as a matter of piety or goodwill rather than as the very stuff that makes our lives and the things of the world real. Schindler examines how Western civilization's fixation with technology -- especially its displacement of experience with experiment and its privileging of knowing and making -- has undermined its capacity to build an authentic human culture. Schindler sees this as a technological age not simply because of technological advancements but because of the way we think as the result of our technological orientation. He shows, within the context of politics, economics, science, and cultural and professional life generally, that God-centered love is what gives things their deepest and most proper order and meaning.

Pope Paul VI characterised the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom - Dignitatis Humanae - as one of the greatest documents of Vatican II. It is also perhaps the most intensely debated document of the Council; both the drafting of the Declaration of Religious Freedom and its reception within the Church have been marked by deep disagreements about what this teaching means for the Church. In this book David Schindler and Nicholas Healy promote a deeper understanding of this important document. In addition to presenting a new translation of the approved text of the Declaration, Freedom Truth and Human Dignity makes available for the first time in English the five drafts of the document that were presented to the Council bishops leading up to the final version. The book also includes an original interpretative essay on Dignitatis Humanae by Schindler and an essay on the genesis and redaction history of the text by Healy.

Examines the meaning of nature, or physics, in light of some of the central concerns of Catholic theology and philosophy. The papers presented here result from a conference which examined developments in twentieth-century physics, particularly as interpreted in the work of theoretical physicist David Bohm. Co-published with COMMUNIO International Catholic Review.