University of Notre Dame Press

Challenging the prevailing understanding of the authority of law, Daniel Mark offers a theory of moral obligation that is rooted both in command and in the law's orientation to the common good. When and why do we have an obligation to obey the law? Prevailing theories in the philosophy of law, starting with the work of H. L. A. Hart and Joseph Raz, fail to provide definitive answers regarding the nature of legal obligation. In this highly original and effective new work, Daniel Mark argues that there is a prima facie moral obligation to obey the law simply because it is the law. In Mark's view, the best concept of law—one that allows for the possibility of justified authority and obligation—defines law as a set of commands oriented to the common good. Legal obligation, he proposes, shares defining features with moral obligation and with religious obligation while aligning wholly with neither. This philosophically coherent view of legal obligation offers a viable framework for analyzing important and seemingly paradoxical puzzles about the law, such as why civil disobedience is punished as lawbreaking or why war-crimes trials for legal but immoral acts present a moral quandary. By reconciling the concept of law as command with the role of law in promoting the common good, The Nature of Law provides an original and important scholarly contribution to the fields of legal philosophy and political thought.

This book considers how the modern concept of "conscience" turns the historic commitment on its head, in a way that underlies the decadence of modern society. Steven D. Smith's books are always anticipated with great interest by scholars, jurists, and citizens who see his work on foundational questions surrounding law and religion as shaping the debate in profound ways. Now, in The Disintegrating Conscience and the Decline of Modernity, Smith takes as his starting point Jacques Barzun's provocative assertion that "the modern era" is coming to an end. Smith considers the question of decline by focusing on a single theme—conscience—that has been central to much of what has happened in Western politics, law, and religion over the past half-millennium. Rather than attempting to follow that theme step-by-step through five hundred years, the book adopts an episodic and dramatic approach by focusing on three main figures and particularly portentous episodes: first, Thomas More's execution for his conscientious refusal to take an oath mandated by Henry VIII; second, James Madison's contribution to Virginia law in removing the proposed requirement of religious toleration in favor of freedom of conscience; and, third, William Brennan's pledge to separate his religious faith from his performance as a Supreme Court justice. These three episodes, Smith suggests, reflect in microcosm decisive turning points at which Western civilization changed from what it had been in premodern times to what it is today. A commitment to conscience, Smith argues, has been a central and in some ways defining feature of modern Western civilization, and yet in a crucial sense conscience in the time of Brennan and today has come to mean almost the opposite of what it meant to Thomas More. By scrutinizing these men and episodes, the book seeks to illuminate subtle but transformative changes in the commitment to conscience—changes that helped to bring Thomas More's world to an end and that may also be contributing to the disintegration of (per Barzun) "the modern era."

Aristotle's Political Philosophy offers a concise and accessible overview of Aristotle's political thought in his Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and Rhetoric. Aristotle's writings on politics are known for their legendary complexity and contradictions. In Aristotle's Political Philosophy, renowned scholar Mark Blitz draws connections between the Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and Rhetoric to explain how these texts relate and interact with each other. Throughout the book, Blitz examines the foundations of political action, devoting special attention to Aristotle's understanding of virtue, justice, slavery, education, friendship, statesmanship, and speech. In doing so, Blitz clarifies the central ethical and political concepts presented throughout these works to articulate how these texts, together, advance a coherent political philosophy. After offering a comprehensive analysis of Aristotle's political thought, Blitz ultimately argues that Aristotelian philosophy remains fundamental for understanding modern political opinions, practices, and institutions.

Marshalling unprecedented global scholarship, Allen Hertzke demonstrates how religious freedom is pivotal to democratic, peaceful, and flourishing societies. The twenty-first century has witnessed a rising crisis of religious repression and persecution. In Why Religious Freedom Matters, Allen Hertzke synthesizes vast evidence from history, ethnography, and worldwide statistical analyses to make the compelling empirical case for the role of religious liberty in shaping a better global future. In rich detail, Hertzke demonstrates how religious freedom nurtures democracy, fosters prosperity, and cultivates international peace. The book also reveals the surprising ways that religious liberty and equality unleash personal agency that empowers women and uplifts the poor. Religious freedom uniquely matters, Hertzke argues, because it goes to the heart of human personhood and aspiration—the right "to be who we are," to act on ultimate commitments, and to be treated with equal worth and dignity. Based on a quarter century of immersion in global networks of scholarship and activism on religious freedom, Hertzke has produced a landmark volume showing how we can navigate the challenge of living with our differences in a shrinking world.

Homoerotic Poets of the Italian Trecento explores same-sex desire in the work of three skilled medieval Italian poets, bringing their verse and expression to English readers. Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy produced a wide range of literature, from the courtly love of the Sicilian School, to the spiritualized love of the dolce stil nuovo and Dante, to the comic poetry that flourished with authors such as Cecco Angiolieri and Folgore da San Gimignano. Author Fabian Alfie, through his translations of these poets, shows how this cultural context allowed three medieval Italian poets—Meo dei Tolomei, Cecco Nuccoli, and Marino Ceccoli—to openly discuss their sexual relationships with other men in their own poetic verse. These three poets adapted the languages of comic literature and courtly love to the new topic of homoeroticism. The result is a unique form of poetics that blended traditional expressions with innovative material. While homoerotic subtexts in the canonical works are often highlighted in the scholarship, the expression of same-sex desire ran deeper and was more prominent than in those works alone. For these poets, same-sex desire is not the subtext to their verse—it is the text itself. Through their poems, presented in facing Italian/English format, we are given a glimpse into the range of sexual attraction available to men in medieval Italy.

In a comprehensive meditation on freedom and reason, Ralph Hancock reveals the pressing need for renewed confidence in virtue and agency. With an emphasis on reclaiming the moral preconditions of Christian love, Love and Virtue in a Secular Age offers a thought-provoking study on the effects of secularism on Christian morality. Ralph C. Hancock brings eminent scholars of the Christian Aristotelian tradition, such as Thomas Aquinas and Pierre Manent, into conversation with insights from Leo Strauss's critique of Christianity. Love and Virtue in a Secular Age sheds light on the various ways in which the increasing prevalence of secular humanitarian sensibility has voided the idea of humanity of its natural substance. In a probing reflection poised at the intersection of the theological and the political, Hancock outlines a new theological ethic according to which faith must redeem a certain pride and particularism on behalf of real Christian communities and the virtues they enact.

Athenian Democracy provides innovative readings of ancient theorists to reveal both the complexity of democracy's achievements and its limits. In this classic work, noted political scientist Arlene W. Saxonhouse offers fresh and provocative explorations of ancient political theorists, lending new insights about democracy's foundations and principles. These insights are more relevant than ever in a moment when the viability of democratic regimes is under scrutiny. Saxonhouse provides an in-depth discussion of the modern mythmakers (Hobbes, Paine, Hamilton, Mill, and Arendt, among others) who, in praising or excoriating Athenian democracy, have in fact distorted it to support their own assessments of democracy. She then offers detailed reinterpretations of the writings on democracy of four ancient theorists who had directly experienced life in the first democratic regime: Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle. Saxonhouse argues that the mythmaking that often attends our views of Athenian democracy—whether as a flawed, slaveholding regime that fostered factions and oppressed women or as an ideal regime of egalitarian and participatory democracy—blinds us to the deeper understanding of democracies that these ancient theorists can offer.

This study provides a compelling account of the major works of Henri de Lubac, one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century, and argues that soteriology provides a lens through which their inner unity can be discerned. The writings of Henri de Lubac have left an indelible mark on Catholic theology, preparing the ground for, giving shape to, and explaining the seminal event of twentieth-century Catholicism: the Second Vatican Council. Like the Council itself, though, de Lubac remains a contested figure, difficult to classify. Salvation in Henri de Lubac presents an overview of de Lubac's major works in light of his own statements that a mystical vision animated them all. De Lubac's mystical theology hinges upon a vision of salvation, understood as humanity's incorporation into the triune God through the cross and resurrection of the incarnate Christ. From his writings on the supernatural and theological epistemology, to his treatments of the spiritual interpretation of Scripture, ecclesiology, sacramental theology, and the theology of history, the mystery of the cross looms large, gathering these disparate topics into one focal center while also allowing their distinct contours to remain. By attending to de Lubac's work in this light, Eugene R. Schlesinger brings important themes from French-language scholarship into the English-speaking conversation and clarifies the nature of de Lubac's ressourcement. Schlesinger claims that unless we understand de Lubac and his work in light of his own motivations and emphases, we risk distorting his contribution, reducing him to a proxy in the struggle for post-conciliar Catholic self-definition.

Building on the insights of the ressourcement theology of grace, this sophisticated theological aesthetics offers a fresh vision of the doctrine of creation through a consideration of the beauty of time. Conventional eschatological accounts of life after death tend to emphasize the discontinuity between earthly life and the hereafter: whereas this life is subject to the contingencies of time, life after death is characterized by a stolid eternity. In contrast to this standard view, John E. Thiel's Now and Forever articulates a Catholic eschatology in which earthly life and heavenly life are seen as gracefully continuous. This account offers a reconceptualization of time, which, Thiel argues, is best understood as the sacramental medium of God's grace to creation. Thiel's project thus attempts to rescue time from its Platonically negative resonance in the doctrine of creation. Rather than viewing time as the ambiance of sinful dissolution, Thiel argues for a Christian vision of time's beauty, and so explicitly develops an aesthetics that views time as a creaturely reflection of God's own Trinitarian life. This thesis proceeds from the assumption that all time is eschatological time and is thus guided by attention to the temporality implicit in the virtue of hope, with its orientation toward a fulfilled future that culminates in resurrected life. This interpretation of the beauty of eschatological time in its widest expanse presses further the insight of ressourcement theology that grace is everywhere, while appreciating how time's graceful beauty manifests itself in the diversity of temporal moments, human communities, and most fully in the heavenly communion of the saints.

This book provides the first sustained philosophical treatment of Pope Francis's Laudato Si' and articulates a theology of creation to recover our place within the cosmos. In the encyclical Laudato Si', Pope Francis discerns beneath the imminent threat of ecological catastrophe an existential affliction of the human person, who is lost in the cosmos, increasingly alienated from self, others, nature, and God. Pope Francis suggests that one must reimagine humanity's place in the created cosmos. In this ambitious and distinctive contribution to theological aesthetics, Thomas S. Hibbs provides the basis for just such a recovery, working from Laudato Si' to develop a philosophical and theological diagnosis of our ecological dislocation, a narrative account of the sources of the crisis, and a vision of the way forward. Through a critical engagement with the artistic theory of Jacques Maritain, Hibbs shows how certain strains of modern art both capture our alienation and anticipate visions of recovered harmony among persons, nature, and God. In the second half of the book, in an attempt to fulfill Pope Francis's plea for an "aesthetic education" and to apply and test Maritain's theory, Hibbs examines the work of poets and painters. He analyzes the work of poets Robinson Jeffers and William Everson, and considers painters Georges Roualt, a friend to Maritain, and Makoto Fujimura, whose notion of "culture care" overlaps in suggestive ways with Francis's notion of integral ecology. Throughout this tour de force, Hibbs calls for a commitment to an "ecological poetics," a project that responds to the crisis of our times by taking poets and painters as seriously as philosophers and theologians.

This volume provides a thorough introduction to three of the twentieth century's most influential proponents of Aristotle's moral philosophy. Arthur Madigan's Contemporary Aristotelian Ethics examines the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, and Robert Spaemann in the context of twentieth-century Anglo-American moral philosophy. By surveying the ways in which these three philosophers appropriate Aristotle, Madigan illustrates two important points: first, that the most pressing problems in contemporary moral philosophy can be addressed using the Aristotelian tradition and, second, that the Aristotelian tradition does not speak with one voice. Madigan demonstrates that Aristotelian moral philosophy is divided on important issues, such as the value of liberal modernity, the character and provenance of our current moral landscape, and the role of nature in Aristotle's ethics. Through his examination of MacIntyre, Nussbaum, and Spaemann, Madigan offers a vision for the future of Aristotelian moral philosophy, urging today's philosophers to set a clear educational agenda, to continue refining their concepts and intuitions, and to engage with new conversation partners from other philosophical traditions.

Paul L. Heck's Political Theology and Islam offers a sophisticated and comprehensive analysis of sovereignty in Islamic society, beginning with the origins of Islam and extending to the present. This wide-ranging study sets out to answer an unassumingly tricky question: What is politics in Islam? Paul L. Heck's answer takes the form of a close analysis of sovereignty across Islamic history, approaching this concept from the perspective of political theology. As he illustrates, the history of politics in Islam is best understood as an ongoing struggle for a moral order between those who occupy positions of rulership and religious voices that communicate the ethics of Islam and educate the public in their religious and moral devotions. In this sense, sovereignty in Islam is split between ruling powers and pious communities, whose interactions range from close cooperation to outright competition. Heck shows that it is precisely through these interactions that Islamic conceptions of sovereignty are constructed and negotiated. Political Theology and Islam's first section spells out the concepts and methods for the study of politics in Islam as a struggle for a moral order, one not only involving varied claims to sovereignty but also a general determination to realize the righteousness of Islam that stands at the heart of the message that the Prophet Muhammad conveyed to his society in seventh-century Arabia. The following sections demonstrate, through examples from both the past and today's worldwide Muslim community, the diverse ways in which the umma, the community of Muslims, has struggled for a moral order that recalls its prophetic message. Deftly moving in various political theaters and through a wide range of intellectual traditions, Heck's book will emerge as a touchstone of scholarship in the field of Muslim politics and intellectual thought.

By analyzing how America's greatest presidents displayed their mastery of statecraft, American Presidents in Diplomacy and War offers important lessons about the most effective uses of national power abroad. American Presidents in Diplomacy and War chronicles the major foreign policy crises faced by twelve American presidents in order to uncover the reoccurring patterns of successful and less successful uses of diplomatic, economic, and military power. In this succinct and highly readable book, Thomas R. Parker reveals how America's most successful leaders manage events instead of allowing events to control them. Parker explores how the U.S. presidency, from the days of the early Republic to the present, shaped the world. Ranging from George Washington to George H. W. Bush, Parker shows how successful statecraft requires the understanding of complex situations, the prudent evaluation of various courses of action, the ability to adapt and to anticipate, and personal determination. Parker compares each of these leaders to their contemporaries—reasonable political leaders who nonetheless made serious mistakes, such as Thomas Jefferson and Barack Obama—to examine the dangers of being unable to strike the right balance of aggressiveness and caution and to examine the costs of inexperience and ambivalence toward military power. The book concludes by discussing the increasingly complex international situation of today, particularly the manifold challenges posed by China and Russia to U.S. foreign policy, and the continued necessity of effective statecraft.

Being before God offers a thorough account of Cornelio Fabro's Thomistic reading of Soren Kierkegaard's theology, speaking both to systematic theology and Kierkegaard studies. Italian Stigmatine priest and Thomist philosopher Cornelio Fabro is well known for his work on the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas. Yet despite also authoring many studies on Soren Kierkegaard, Fabro remains virtually unknown among Kierkegaard scholars outside of Italy. Being before God sheds light on the influence of Kierkegaard's writings on Fabro's Thomism and provides a detailed historical account of Fabro's contributions to Kierkegaard studies and systematic theology. Drawing upon rare archival material, including materials that have never been translated into English, Joshua Furnal speaks to Kierkegaard's relationship to Catholic theology, the Kierkegaardian aspects of Fabro's Thomism, and Fabro's Thomistic approach to Kierkegaard in turn. Being before God also highlights how Fabro's work brings together ideas from both Aquinas and Kierkegaard to broaden the horizon of contemporary theology. Through his meticulous research, Furnal contends that, despite his lack of modern recognition, Fabro remains one of the most important European interpreters of Kierkegaard in the twentieth century.

April 1917, Book 1, captures the division and helplessness of Russia's first Revolutionary rulers, paving the way for the victory of the ruthless Bolsheviks later that year. One of the masterpieces of world literature, The Red Wheel is Nobel prize–winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's multivolume epic work about the Russian Revolution told in the form of a historical novel. April 1917—the fourth node—shows the intractable divisions that would lead Russia to catastrophic Communist dictatorship and civil war. Whereas the first three nodes of The Red Wheel form its first act, "The Revolution," April 1917 opens its second act, "The Rule of the People."The action of Book 1 (of two) is set during April 11–May 5, 1917. Book 1 presents an early showdown, just seven weeks into the revolution, between its various wings. The Provisional Government comes under fire for its "bourgeois" capitalism and continuing commitment to World War I. Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin returns from exile and delivers his April Theses in Petrograd, actively sowing seeds of division. He declares that the revolution is not complete and openly calls for civil war, outlining a radical plan to overthrow the Provisional Government and seize power for the Soviets. Amid the chaos and rising tide of Bolshevism, the elements of resistance, and decency, slowly begin to awaken.

This thrilling memoir documents the early life of Russian journalist and human rights activist Alexander Podrabinek as he and other dissidents fearlessly fought against the Soviet Union. Between Prison and Freedom chronicles Alexander Podrabinek''s deeply personal recollections of his early life fearlessly opposing the injustices of the Soviet Union. He vividly describes his turbulent journey from silently protesting at Pushkin Square as a teenager to his exile in a brutal prison camp for publishing Punitive Medicine. Between Prison and Freedom is a powerful tribute to the Russian dissidents, desperately loyal to their country and to each other, as they fought for freedom and justice, all while cunningly evading the KGB''s nearly successful efforts to break—or kill—them. Through his personal experiences, the dissident reality unfolds as an onslaught of surveillance and false accusations, corrective labor camps and exile, and a consistent disregard for basic human freedoms. In this captivating story about standing against tyranny, Podrabinek captures the spirit of the dissident movement, the painful intersections between personal and political in a dissident''s life, and the solidarity that kept the resistance moving forward.