The Personalist Challenge

Pittsburgh Theological Monograph Series General Editor - Dikran Y. Hadidian

New technologies, developing at an unbelievable pace, have profoundly changed many areas of reproductive medicine including fertility control, infertility treatment, embryology, prenatal diagnosis and fetal surgery. These fields of modern reproductive medicine are all flourishing at Catholic universities in the Low Countries, Belgium and Holland. However, contraceptive techniques, assisted reproductive technologies, preimplantation genetic diagnosis and embryonic stem cell research are deeply dividing Catholic universities around the world. Are Catholic universities in the Low Countries heading silently towards a schism with Rome? Or is modern reproductive medicine based on personalist ethics and practiced at progressive Catholic universities compatible with the Catholic doctrine?

A comprehensive and detailed account of the history of personalism - the system of thought that maintains the primacy and uniqueness of the human or divine person, on the basis that reality only has meaning through the conscious mind.

A study of what motivates humans and the activity that gives rise to human social life and social structures. In his 2010 book What Is a Person?, Christian Smith argued that sociology had for too long neglected this fundamental question. Prevailing social theories, he wrote, do not adequately “capture our deep subjective experience as persons, crucial dimensions of the richness of our own lived lives, what thinkers in previous ages might have called our ‘souls’ or ‘hearts.’” Building on Smith’s previous work, To Flourish or Destruct examines the motivations intrinsic to this subjective experience: Why do people do what they do? How can we explain the activity that gives rise to all human social life and social structures? Smith argues that our actions stem from a motivation to realize what he calls natural human goods: ends that are, by nature, constitutionally good for all human beings. He goes on to explore the ways we can and do fail to realize these ends—a failure that can result in varying gradations of evil. Rooted in critical realism and informed by work in philosophy, psychology, and other fields, Smith’s ambitious book situates the idea of personhood at the center of our attempts to understand how we might shape good human lives and societies. Praise for To Flourish or Destruct “This major work in sociology theory should be read by social scientists in all disciplines. Highly recommended.” —Choice “To Flourish or Destruct poses a powerful and important challenge to the entire discipline of sociology. Smith is becoming the anchor of a humanist renewal in sociology and although he is not alone in this movement, what makes To Flourish or Destruct different is a coherent, new, oppositional perspective that draws on critical realism to affirm both human personhood and the ever-present moral element in human affairs. Smith’s Personalism could become the banner around which a very different kind of sociology develops, one that respects the centered consciousness that is human personhood.” —Douglas Porpora, Drexel University “This book represents a major advance in sociology and more specifically within critical realism, which is gradually emerging as a full-fledged alternative in the social sciences. I am fundamentally convinced by this book.” —George Steinmetz, University of Michigan

This collection presents views on key aspects of Russian/Soviet history such as the non-Slavic sources of Russian statehood; tsarist penal systems; the pre-evolutionary technological level; the famine of 1931-3; patronage practices in Stalin's Russia; and the fall of the Soviet Union.

Foundations of Economic Personalism is a series of three book-length monographs, each closely examining a significant dimension of the Center for Economic Personalism's unique synthesis of Christian personalism and free-economic market theory. In the aftermath of the momentous geo-political and economic changes of the late 1980s, a small group of Christian social ethicists began to converse with free-market economists over the morality of market activity. This interdisciplinary exchange eventually led to the founding of a new academic subdiscipline under the rubric of economic personalism. These scholars attempt to integrate economic theory, history, and methodology with Christian personalism's stress upon human dignity, humane social structures, and social justice. This second volume in the series surveys the anthropological foundations to the disciplines of economics and moral theology. The first part of the book presents an overview of the German, French, and Polish branches of personalist thought. Particular attention is given to theological anthropology, especially as it is developed by such thinkers as Emmanuel Mounier, Max Scheler, Gabriel Marcel, Karol Wojtyla, and Emil Brunner. Part two surveys models of human nature that have been espoused by various schools of free-market thought-including mainstream neoclassical economics. In conclusion, the authors demonstrate how an expanded understanding of human nature can augment the ability of economic science to model and predict human behavior.