Curing Mad Truths

In his first book composed in English, Rémi Brague maintains that there is a fundamental problem with modernity: we no longer consider the created world and humanity as intrinsically valuable. Curing Mad Truths, based on a number of Brague's lectures to English-speaking audiences, explores the idea that humanity must return to the Middle Ages. Not the Middle Ages of purported backwardness and barbarism, but rather a Middle Ages that understood creation—including human beings—as the product of an intelligent and benevolent God. The positive developments that have come about due to the modern project, be they health, knowledge, freedom, or peace, are not grounded in a rational project because human existence itself is no longer the good that it once was. Brague turns to our intellectual forebears of the medieval world to present a reasoned argument as to why humanity and civilizations are goods worth promoting and preserving. Curing Mad Truths will be of interest to a learned audience of philosophers, historians, and medievalists.

Before Theological Study will orient students to the aptitudes, knowledge, spirituality, imagination, and dispositions that are appropriate to thoughtful, engaged, and generous theological study. The book has the character of a modern theological enchiridion (handbook) for engagement with the disciplines that are a part of preparation for ministry. It is characterized by the vision of the Vancouver School of Theology to prepare students for thoughtful, engaged, and generous Christian ministry practiced in a way that is alert to the multi-religious contexts and the colonial legacy of mainline Christianity. The essays in this handbook are written in a variety of registers, yet each remains accessible to the newcomer or potential newcomer to theological education. The book is not rooted in a unified orthodoxy but expresses the bandwidth of contemporary theological viewpoints.

Human Flourishing in a Technological World addresses the question of human identity and flourishing in the light of recent technological advances. The chapters in Part I provide a philosophical-theological evaluation of changing major anthropological assumptions that have guided human self-understanding from antiquity to modernity: How did we move from a religious and mostly embodied anthropology of the person to the idea that we can upload human consciousness to computing platforms? How did we come to imagine that machines can actually be intelligent, or even learn in human fashion? Moreover, what metaphysical changes explain our mostly uncritical embrace of a technological determination of being and thus of how reality "works"? In Part II, the focus turns to the practical implications of our changing understanding of what it means to be human. Covering some of the most pressing current concerns about human flourishing, these chapters deal with the impact of technology on education, healthcare, disability, leisure and the nature of work, communication, aging, death, and the nature of wisdom for human flourishing in light of evolutionary biology. The volume includes the text of a lecutre by virtual reality engineer and computer scientist Jaron Lanier, and a discussion between Lanier and other contributors.

In this book Paul Contino offers a theological study of Dostoevsky's final novel, The Brothers Karamazov. He argues that incarnational realism animates the vision of the novel, and the decisions and actions of its hero, Alyosha Fyodorovich Karamazov. The book takes a close look at Alyosha's mentor, the Elder Zosima, and the way his role as a confessor and his vision of responsibility "to all, for all" develops and influences Alyosha. The remainder of the study, which serves as a kind of reader's guide to the novel, follows Alyosha as he takes up the mantle of his elder, develops as a "monk in the world," and, at the end of three days, ascends in his vision of Cana. The study attends also to Alyosha's brothers and his ministry to them: Mitya's struggle to become a "new man" and Ivan's anguished groping toward responsibility. Finally, Contino traces Alyosha's generative role with the young people he encounters, and his final message of hope.

"Read this book, strengthen your resolve, and help us all return to reason." —JORDAN PETERSON The West’s commitment to freedom, reason, and true liberalism have become endangered by a series of viral forces in our society today. Renowned host of the popular YouTube show “The SAAD Truth”, Dr. Gad Saad exposes how an epidemic of idea pathogens are spreading like a virus and killing common sense in the West. Serving as a powerful follow-up to Jordan Peterson’s book 12 Rules for Life Dr. Saad unpacks what is really happening in progressive safe zones, why we need to be paying more attention to these trends, and what we must do to stop the spread of dangerous thinking. A professor at Concordia University who has witnessed this troubling epidemic first-hand, Dr. Saad dissects a multitude of these concerning forces (corrupt thought patterns, belief systems, attitudes, etc.) that have given rise to a stifling political correctness in our society and how these have created serious consequences that must be remedied–before it’s too late.

Western culture, which influenced the whole world, came from Europe. But its roots are not there. They are in Athens and Jerusalem. European culture takes its bearing from references that are not in Europe: Europe is eccentric. What makes the West unique? What is the driving force behind its culture? Remi Brague takes up these questions in Eccentric Culture. This is not another dictionary of European culture, nor a measure of the contributions of a particular individual, religion, or national tradition. The author's interest is especially, with regard to the transmission of that culture, to articulate the dynamic tension that has propelled Europe and more generally the West toward civilization. It is this mainspring of European culture, this founding principle, that Brague calls "Roman". Yet the author's intent is not to write a history of Europe, and less yet to defend the historical reality of the Roman Empire. Brague rather isolates and generalizes one aspect of that history or, one might say, cultural myth, of ancient Rome. The Roman attitude senses its own incompleteness and recognizes the call to borrow from what went before it. Historically, it has led the West to borrow from the great traditions of Jerusalem and Athens: primarily the Jewish and Christian tradition, on the one hand, and the classical Greek tradition on the other. Nowhere does the author find this Roman character so strongly present as in the Christian and particularly Catholic attitude toward the incarnation. At once an appreciation of the richness and diversity of the sources and their fruit, Eccentric Culture points as well to the fragility of their nourishing principle. As such, Brague finds in it notonly a means of understanding the past, but of projecting a future in (re)proposing to the West, and to Europe in particular, a model relationship of what is proper to it. An international bestseller (translated from the original French edition of Europe, La Voie Romaine), this work has been or is presently being translated into thirteen languages.

Beginning with a personal recollection of the achievements of Joseph Fessio, S.J., this work includes twelve essays by theologians who acknowledge a debt to Father Fessio and Ignatius Press. The writers treat a variety of topics including the Church, the liturgy, the interpretation of Scripture, and the development of doctrine, representing the interests of Father Fessio and the books he has published. The essays touch upon the major twentieth-century figures who influenced Father Fessio, such as Hans Urs von Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, Henri de Lubac, Joseph Ratzinger, and Josef Pieper. From its founding by Father Fessio in 1978, Ignatius Press has translated and printed works by these great thinkers and writers in order to make their contributions to the Church available to English-speaking Catholics.