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One of the most important philosophy titles published in the
twentieth century, Josef Pieper's Leisure, the Basis of Culture is
more significant, even more crucial, today than it was when it
first appeared more than fifty years ago. This edition also
includes his work The Philosophical Act. Leisure is an attitude of
the mind and a condition of the soul that fosters a capacity to
perceive the reality of the world. Pieper shows that the Greeks and
medieval Europeans, understood the great value and importance of
leisure. He also points out that religion can be born only in
leisure -- a leisure that allows time for the contemplation of the
nature of God. Leisure has been, and always will be, the first
foundation of any culture. Pieper maintains that our bourgeois
world of total labor has vanquished leisure, and issues a startling
warning: Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the
ability for non-activity, unless we substitute true leisure for our
hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture -- and ourselves.
In The Four Cardinal Virtues, Joseph Pieper delivers a stimulating
quartet of essays on the four cardinal virtues. He demonstrates the
unsound overvaluation of moderation that has made contemporary
morality a hollow convention and points out the true significance
of the Christian virtues.
This title, which at first sight seems curious, shows Pieper's
philosophical work as rooted in the basics. He takes his
inspiration from Plato - and his Socrates - and Thomas Aquinas.
With them, he is interested in philosophy as pure theory, the
theoretical being precisely the non-practical. The philosophizer
wants to know what all existence is fundamentally about, what
"reality" "really" means. With Plato, Pieper eschews the use of
language to convince an audience of anything which is not the
truth. If Plato was opposed to the sophists - amongst them the
politicians -, Pieper is likewise opposed to discourse that leads
to the "use" of philosophy to bolster a totalitarian regime or any
political or economic system. A fundamental issue for Pieper is
"createdness." He sees this as the fundamental truth of our being -
all being - and the fundamental virtue we can practise is the
striving to live according to our perception of real truth in any
given situation. The strength and attraction of Pieper's writing is
its direct and intuitive character which is independent of abstract
systematization. He advocates staying in touch with the "real" as
we experience it deep within ourselves. Openness to the totality of
being - in no matter what context being reveals itself - and the
affirmation of all that is founded in this totality are central
pillars of all his thinking. Given the "simplicity" of this stance,
it is no surprise that much of it is communicated - and
successfully - through his gift for illustration by anecdote. Like
Plato, this philosopher is a story-teller and, like him, very
readable.
This title, which at first sight seems curious, shows Pieper's
philosophical work as rooted in the basics. He takes his
inspiration from Plato - and his Socrates - and Thomas Aquinas.
With them, he is interested in philosophy as pure theory, the
theoretical being precisely the non-practical. The philosophizer
wants to know what all existence is fundamentally about, what
"reality" "really" means. With Plato, Pieper eschews the use of
language to convince an audience of anything which is not the
truth. If Plato was opposed to the sophists - amongst them the
politicians -, Pieper is likewise opposed to discourse that leads
to the "use" of philosophy to bolster a totalitarian regime or any
political or economic system. A fundamental issue for Pieper is
"createdness." He sees this as the fundamental truth of our being -
all being - and the fundamental virtue we can practise is the
striving to live according to our perception of real truth in any
given situation. The strength and attraction of Pieper's writing is
its direct and intuitive character which is independent of abstract
systematization. He advocates staying in touch with the "real" as
we experience it deep within ourselves. Openness to the totality of
being - in no matter what context being reveals itself - and the
affirmation of all that is founded in this totality are central
pillars of all his thinking. Given the "simplicity" of this stance,
it is no surprise that much of it is communicated - and
successfully - through his gift for illustration by anecdote. Like
Plato, this philosopher is a story-teller and, like him, very
readable.
This volume, the original version of which was published in 1988,
brings to a close the autobiographical writings of a modern
Christian philosopher who lived through the two World Wars and the
ecclesiastical upheaval in the Catholic Church in the context of
the Second Vatican Council. What stamps this philosopher throughout
the course of his life - with all its social and political
uncertainties - is his constant dedication to truth and his
manifest unswerving integrity. Themes with which the reader of his
previous works would be well acquainted recur in this volume. The
dedicated Catholic philosopher, who preferred his independence as a
trainer of teachers to the less independent role of a professor in
a Catholic university, was quite prepared to criticize developments
in the Church which resulted from Vatican II. In his defense of the
sacred, which he deemed threatened by popularizing trends in the
Church, he criticized what he saw as the watered down language in
modern German translations of Church liturgical texts; the growing
preference for secular garb; and the compromising developments
which saw the sacramental signs - surrounding baptism, for instance
- being reduced to such an extent that they no longer had the power
to signify their sacred meaning even to a well-intentioned
congregation. A great lover of the philosophy of Plato, Augustine,
and Aquinas - among many others -, Pieper highlighted the need for
living a life of truth. He did not consider truth to be merely
something abstract but as something to be lived existentially.
While he could explain his philosophy in clear rational terms,
something which especially stood to him in his post-war lectures to
eager students who were hungry for intellectual guidance and
leadership, the great interest of his philosophy was, possibly, his
preoccupation with mystery - that which impinges on our inner lives
but frustrates all our attempts to account for it in purely
rational terms. As a philosopher - one might say a Christian
philosopher - Pieper seems to have observed the traditional
boundaries drawn between philosophy and theology. His generation
was exposed to the modernist debates in the Church. It would have
been deemed heretical to say that the Divine could be grasped by
our purely human thought processes - access to the Divine being
only possible through faith and grace. Pieper was no heretic. But
he was also not altogether conservative. In fact, his philosophy,
closely allied to existentialism - despite his care, for instance,
to distance himself from the negative existentialism of Sartre -
focused on the individual's inner existential grasp of the most
profound reality. Truth is to be found within us, even if it
remains a mystery. What lies beyond death is, for the individual,
the ultimate mystery.
In this stimulating and still-timely study, Josef Pieper takes up a
theme of paramount importance to his thinking -- that festivals
belong by rights among the great topics of philosophical
discussion.
As he develops his theory of festivity, the modern age comes
under close and painful scrutiny. It is obvious that we no longer
know what festivity is, namely, the celebration of existence under
various symbols.
Pieper exposes the pseudo-festivals, in their harmless and their
sinister forms: traditional feasts contaminated by commercialism;
artificial holidays created in the interest of merchandisers;
holidays by coercion, decreed by dictators the world over;
festivals as military demonstrations; holidays empty of
significance. And lastly we are given the apocalyptic vision of a
nihilistic world which would seek its release not in festivities
but in destruction.
Formulated with Pieper's customary clarity and elegance,
enhanced by brilliantly chosen quotations, this is an illuminating
contribution to the understanding of traditional and contemporary
experience.
1 Vorlesungen iiber die Geschichte der Phi osophie. Erster Band.
Hrsg. Joh. Hoffmeister. Leipzig 1940. S.101. Confessiones 11, 14. 3
Aufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1875/79. Gesammelte Werke.
Musarion-Ausgabe (Miin chen 1922 ff.), Bd. 9, S. 480. 4 Kurt
Eisner, Feste der Festlosen. Dresden 1906. S. 10. S Gerhard Nebel,
Die Kultischen Olympien. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung vom 20.8.
1960. 8 Martin P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste von religioser
Bedeutung, mit AusschluB der atti schen. Leipzig 1906. S. III und
S. 160. 7 Richard Alewyn, Karl Salzle, Das groBe Welttheater. Die
Epoche der hofischen Feste in Dokument und Deutung. Rowohlts
Deutsche Enzyklopadie. Hamburg 1959. S. 16. 8 J. Pinsk, Die
sakramentale Welt. 2. Auf ., Freiburg i. Br. 1941. S. 163. 9
Alewyn-Salzle, Welttheater S. 13. 10 Karl Kerenyi, Yom Wesen des
Festes. Paideuma, Bd. I. Leipzig 1938-40. S. 73. - ders., Die
antike Religion. Amsterdam 1940. S. 67. 11 Dictionnaire des
Antiquites Grecques et Romaines. Ed. Ch. Daremberg und E. Saglio.
Paris 1896. Artikel "Feriae." Bd.lI, S. 1044. 12 Georg Wissowa,
Religion und Kultus der Romer. 2. Aufl., Miinchen 1912. S.432. 13
Theorie de la Fete. Nouvelle Revue Fran aise, Bd. 53 (1939). -
Spater aufgenommen in L'homme et Ie sacre. 3. Auf ., Paris 1950. S.
128; 165 f. 14 Phaidros 276 b 5. 16 Phi osophie der Weltgeschichte.
Samtliche Werke. Jubilaumsausgabe. Hrsg. H. Glo- ner. Stuttgart
1927-1940. Bd. 11, S. 318. 18 Adolf Ellegard Jensen, Mythos und
Kult bei Naturvolkern. Wiesbaden 1951. S.77."
"The ultimate of human happiness is to be found in contemplation".
In offering this proposition of Thomas Aquinas to our thought,
Josef Pieper uses traditional wisdom in order to throw light on
present-day reality and present-day psychological problems. What,
in fact, does one pursue in pursuing happiness? What, in the
consensus of the wisdom of the early Greeks, of Plato and
Aristotle, of the New Testament, of Augustine and Aquinas, is that
condition of perfect bliss toward which all life and effort tend by
nature?
In this profound and illuminating inquiry, Pieper considers the
nature of contemplation, and the meaning and goal of life.
This is a new release of the original 1948 edition.
This is a new release of the original 1948 edition.
Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of
rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for
everyone!
Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of
rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for
everyone!
Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of
rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for
everyone!
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