Recent Catholic Philosophy

Catholic thinkers contributed extensively to philosophy during the Nineteenth Century. Besides pioneering the revivals of Augustinianism and Thomism, they also helped to initiate such philosophical movements as Romanticism, Traditionalism, Semi-Rationalism, Spiritualism, Ontologism, and Integralism. Unfortunately the exceptional diversity and profoundness of this epoch in Catholic thought has all too often been underappreciated. This book consequently traces the work of sixteen leading Catholic philosophers of the Nineteenth-Century so as to make evident their seminal offerings to philosophy, namely: Bautain, Blondel, Bonald, Brownson, Chateaubriand, Gratry, Gunther, Hermes, Kleutgen, Lequier, Mercier, Newman, Olle-Laprune, Schlegel, Ravaisson-Mollien, and Rosmini-Serbati.

This presentation of Catholic philosophy in the twentieth-century reveals a remarkable diversity of views. Dr. Vincelette presents this diversity in an expository manner without applying the kind of interpretive framework that is often used in critical commentaries to shape the reader's judgment inside of a particular paradigm. This is Catholic thought expressed in its finest way, raw and unsaturated, across the intellectual fabric of forty-two important philosophers whose thought has shaped our current century.

Exploring a Catholic philosophy of education in the modern world.

In the most wide-ranging history of phenomenology since Herbert Spiegelberg’s The Phenomenological Movement over fifty years ago, Baring uncovers a new and unexpected force—Catholic intellectuals—behind the growth of phenomenology in the early twentieth century, and makes the case for the movement’s catalytic intellectual and social impact. Of all modern schools of thought, phenomenology has the strongest claim to the mantle of “continental” philosophy. In the first half of the twentieth century, phenomenology expanded from a few German towns into a movement spanning Europe. Edward Baring shows that credit for this prodigious growth goes to a surprising group of early enthusiasts: Catholic intellectuals. Placing phenomenology in historical context, Baring reveals the enduring influence of Catholicism in twentieth-century intellectual thought. Converts to the Real argues that Catholic scholars allied with phenomenology because they thought it mapped a path out of modern idealism—which they associated with Protestantism and secularization—and back to Catholic metaphysics. Seeing in this unfulfilled promise a bridge to Europe’s secular academy, Catholics set to work extending phenomenology’s reach, writing many of the first phenomenological publications in languages other than German and organizing the first international conferences on phenomenology. The Church even helped rescue Edmund Husserl’s papers from Nazi Germany in 1938. But phenomenology proved to be an unreliable ally, and in debates over its meaning and development, Catholic intellectuals contemplated the ways it might threaten the faith. As a result, Catholics showed that phenomenology could be useful for secular projects, and encouraged its adoption by the philosophical establishment in countries across Europe and beyond. Baring traces the resonances of these Catholic debates in postwar Europe. From existentialism, through the phenomenology of Paul Ricoeur and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, to the speculative realism of the present, European thought bears the mark of Catholicism, the original continental philosophy.

This presentation of readings in Catholic philosophy in the twentieth-century reveals a remarkable diversity of views. Dr. Vincelette presents this diversity in the selection of resources that serve as a companion to his Recent Catholic Philosophy: The Twentieth Century. This is Catholic thought expressed in its finest way, raw and unsaturated, across the intellectual fabric of forty-two important philosophers whose thought has shaped our current century.

These movements include Phenomenology, Neo-Thomism, Transcendental Thomism, Personalism, Existentialism, Analytical Philosophy, and Postmodernism; these figures include Stein, Von Hildebrand, Dussel, Gilson, Maritain, Wojtyla [Pope John Paul II], Rousselot, Rahner, Lonergan, Ebner, Mounier, Nedoncelle, Lavelle, Marcel, Zuburi, Anscombe, Taylor, Jacques, Marion, Lacoste, and Desmond.

'What does it mean to be a human being?' Given this perennial question, Alasdair MacIntyre, one of America's preeminent philosophers, presents a compelling argument on the necessity and importance of philosophy. Because of a need to better understand Catholic philosophical thought, especially in the context of its historical development and realizing that philosophers interact within particular social and cultural situations, MacIntyre offers this brief history of Catholic philosophy. Tracing the idea of God through different philosophers' engagement of God and how this engagement has played out in universities, MacIntyre provides a valuable, lively, and insightful study of the disintegration of academic disciplines with knowledge. MacIntyre then demonstrates the dangerous implications of this happening and how universities can and ought to renew a shared understanding of knowledge in their mission. This engaging work will be a benefit and a delight to all readers.