Josef Pieper Books & Bio

Josef Pieper’s “Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power” provides powerful insight into the corruptive power of language when manipulated by those in power. Pieper reflects on how language has been abused to control and manipulate people at the cost of truth, wisdom and reality. He shows how tyranny and propaganda distort reality through their use of language, and shows readers a way out of this dangerous situation. With an energy that is both forceful and restrained, Pieper's book is the perfect r...

Josef Pieper's Leisure, the Basis of Culture is a classic twentieth-century philosophy title that has maintained its relevancy and importance even fifty years after its original publishing. This edition also includes his work The Philosophical Act - both offering insightful passages on the topic of leisure as an attitude of the mind and as a condition of the soul. Pieper highlights essential values surrounding leisure, ranging from its indispensable role in fostering our capacity to perceive ...

Josef Pieper's timeless classic on the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love is now available in a single-volume edition. Spanning the intervals between East and West, Reason and Revelation, and despair and ecstasy, these treatises offer profound insights into the nature of the human condition. Delivered with clarity, elegance, and wit, they provide a unique perspective on the perennial questions of human existence.In his famous work on Faith, Josef Pieper discusses the role of f...

"Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart" by Josef Pieper is an essential guide for anyone interested in exploring the power and importance of moral character. Through his philosophical insights, Pieper gives readers a more informed understanding of their moral development and ethical responsibilities. This book will help you to understand yourself better, strengthen your relationships with others, and foster a sense of contentment through living virtuously. It is a thought-provoking r...

"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...

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 symbolsPieper exposes the pseudo-festivals, in their harmless and their sinister forms: traditi...

The Guide to Thomas Aquinas, by Josef Pieper, is an incredibly detailed look into the life and works of one of the most acclaimed philosophers in history – St. Thomas Aquinas. Pieper mixes his genius with faith to comprehensively explore the 13th-century world of Thomas Aquinas and his famous synthesis of Christian spirituality balanced against objective knowledge and Aristotelian theory. Striking a perfect balance between the religious and the secular, this book from one of the great twentie...

In ordinary conversation, including among the "educated", the word "sin" rarely gets mentioned except when one is trying to be coy or facetious. As Thomas Mann once said, "sin" is nowadays "an amusing word used only when one is trying to get a laugh".But this small work will interpret sin in its true -- that is, serious -- meaning. What will emerge from its analysis is the discovery that the concept of sin can still serve to unlock the mystery of existence, at least for a thinking that wants ...

Plato's famous dialogue, the Phaedrus, was variously subtitled in antiquity: "On Beauty", "On Love", "On the Psyche". It is also concerned with the art of rhetoric, of thought and communication.Pieper, noted for the grace and clarity of his style, gives an illuminating and stimulating interpretation of the dialogue. Leaving the more recondite scholarly preoccupations aside, he concentrates on the content, bringing the actual situation in the dialogue -- Athens and its intellectuals engaged in...

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 th...

Pieper collects his contributions to radio programs and to a number of journals and periodicals. The book also includes a selection of notes and comments. The contributions fall into two main groups: the period which encompasses the immediate pre-war period as well as the war period itself, and the post-war period up to 1953.The reader becomes witness, first, to Pieper's problems with the National Socialist regime and, second, to his problems with the ensuing challenges to religious life as i...

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 ...