The Josias

May 18, 2018May 19, 2018

The Josias Podcast, Episode VIII: Basic Concepts – Virtue

A freewheeling discussion in which our editors have a very TAC moment discussing the connection of the music of the spheres and the virtues, and then set out to discuss Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics, but somehow talk more about Plato. Important topics are covered such as, how much virtue does it take to refrain from throwing a baby from an upper-story window? Is there any sense in which Bertrand Russell has virtue? All this, and so much more!

The editors had so much fun that the time slipped by without even getting to the supernatural virtues or the post-enlightenment revolt against virtue.

Bibliography

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics.
Plato,
- Phaedrus.
- The Republic.
- Meno.
St. Thomas Aquinas,
- Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIæ, Q 49-89 (“Treatise on Habits”).
- Summa Theologiae, IIa-IIæ, Q 47-122 (“Treatise on Prudence and Justice”).
- Summa Theologiae, IIa-IIæ, Q 123-170 (“Treatise on Fortitude and Temperance”).
Duane Berquist, Lectures on Ethics.
Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., The Good, The Highest Good, and the Common Good, The Josias (2015).

If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. We’d love the feedback.

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May 9, 2018February 28, 2020

Liberalism’s Fear

By Adrian Vermeule

In honor of Prof. Ryszard Legutko and his book, The Demon in Democracy, the Consul-General of Poland, Maciej Golubiewski, convened an event on May 9, 2018, to address the following topic: “Democratic Reformers or Illiberal Backsliders? Poland and the challenges of sovereign politics in the West.” Professor Vermeule has kindly agreed to allow us to publish the illuminating remarks that he delivered at this event. One need not think democracy is the best form of government to realize that it is not, in and of itself, liberal. Liberalism, however, needs democracy, or more precisely it needs the “periodic ceremony” of democracy.
–The Editors

I want to thank the Consul-General for arranging this event. It’s always a pleasure to have a chance to honor Prof. Legutko, whose book helped to awaken so many of us from our modernist slumbers, into the light of a new dogmatism.

The title of the panel is “Democratic Reformers or Illiberal Backsliders?” And my answer is “Both.” Let me start with a puzzle. I know, or know of, a number of U.S. and U.K. academics, journalists, and other intelligentsia who spend their careers in a state that can only be described as professional hysteria, particularly directed at Poland, Hungary, and Brexit. In this state of hysteria, the meanings of words are redefined. The Polish election, although free and fair, represents a threat to “democracy”; the passage of legislation according to constitutional procedures, such as the Polish parliamentary law on the judiciary, becomes a threat to the “rule of law”; and so forth. What is the root cause of this extraordinary reaction?

Continue reading “Liberalism’s Fear”

April 17, 2018April 18, 2018

Politics and the Church

by Scott Hahn

The following is an excerpt from Scott Hahn’s new book The First Society. Posted here with the kind permission of the author.

The Western world has spent much of the last few centuries trying to find or form a replacement for the unifying catholicity of the Catholic Church. But the project has always been doomed to failure. No purely human idea or institution can replace the sacramental solidarity of the Church. Continue reading “Politics and the Church”

April 11, 2018March 2, 2020

Hard Liberalism, Soft Liberalism, and the American Founding

by Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist

1. Hard Liberalism: Patrick Deneen on Thomas Hobbes

In Why Liberalism Failed, Patrick Deneen identifies a double principle underlying the liberal conception of liberty: 1) an anthropological individualism and a voluntarist understanding of choice, and 2) a view of human beings as separate from and opposed to nature.^[1] The two principles are intimately connected. Both are bound up with the Enlightenment’s rejection of the objectivity of the good, expressed with unrivalled clarity by the protoliberal Hobbes: “Good, and Evill, are names that signifie our Appetites, and Aversions.”^[2] Choice is therefore “voluntarist” in the sense that it is not elicited by the objective goodness of things, but is rather the arbitrary fixing of the will on some object. Such an anthropology is individualistic, since there is no common end uniting different human beings. Human life, under this conception, is indeed radically irrational: there is no final goal, and therefore no reason to do one thing rather than another: Continue reading “Hard Liberalism, Soft Liberalism, and the American Founding”

March 28, 2018March 31, 2018

The Josias Podcast, Episode VII: Atonement and Salvation

That Christ died for our sins is at the heart of of the Christian faith: “For I delivered unto you first of all, which I also received: how that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3). But what does it mean that He died for our sins? How did Christ’s death save and redeem us? Prof. Michael Waldstein and Professor Timothy Kelly join the editors to contemplate the mysteries of salvation.

The theme of today’s episode is closely linked to our project at The Josias, as we write in our About page, “A truly Catholic account of politics cannot be understood except with reference to the whole perennial wisdom of practical and speculative philosophy, and to the integral tradition of Sacred Theology.” Today we contemplate the “vertiginous heights” of Sacred Theology.

Bibliography

St. Anselm of Cantebury, Cur Deus Homo.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IIIa Q 48.
Norbert Hoffmann, “Atonement and the Ontological Coherence Between the Cross and the Trinity,” in: Toward a Civilization of Love, trans. Erasmo Leivo (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985) 213-66.
Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., Desire, Deicide, and Atonement: René Girard and St. Thomas Aquinas, Sancrucensis (2016).
Michael Maria Waldstein, Harmony and the Scriptures: Lenten Reflections on Harnoncourt and Bach, First Things (Web Exclusive, 2017).

If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. We’d love the feedback.

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March 26, 2018March 26, 2018

Christianity, Just War, and Just Punishment

by Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.

Can Christians take part in war? The Christian life is participation in the life of Christ. Christ gives us this participation through the free gift of grace. He is both the sanctifier, the divine workman, who works grace within us, and the plan, the exemplar cause and model, according to which He conforms us in His work of sanctification. He conforms us to His Eternal Sonship, by giving us the beginning, the inchoatio, of eternal life through the infused virtues. And He also conforms us to the works and virtues of His earthly life. He conforms us especially to His patience and mildness under suffering. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and opened not His mouth. He Himself lived the precepts that He gives in the Sermon on the Mount; He turned the other cheek and suffered injustice without defending Himself. And we are called to do the same: Continue reading “Christianity, Just War, and Just Punishment”

March 23, 2018March 24, 2018

The Josias Podcast, Episode VI: Ralliement

Historian and theologian Alan Fimister joins the editors to discuss whether Pope Leo XIII was right to ask French Catholics to recognize the Third Republic. And more generally: does political engagement in modern parliamentary politics engender liberalism in Catholics? What form of government is best anyway? Alan defends the Lancastrian theory of the English Constitution as a mixed-form republic as the best.

Bibliography

Alan Fimister, Robert Schuman: Neo-Scholastic Humanism and the Reunification of Europe (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2008).
Alan Fimister, Interview: Catholic Origins of the European Union Zenit (2008).
Petrus Hispanus, The Primary Political Question: A Response to Milco on Liberalism, The Josias (2016).
Pope Leo XIII, Au milieu des sollicitudes (1892).
Roberto de Mattei, The Ralliement of Leo XIII: A Pastoral Experience That Moved Away from Doctrine, Rorate Cæli (2015).
Pius VI, Quare lacrymae (1793).
Adrian Vermeule, Ralliement: Two Distinctions, The Josias (2018).
Felix de St. Vincent, Four Catholic Political Postures: Lessons from Leo XIII and Ralliement, The Josias (2017).
Edmund Waldstein, Ralliement! Ralliement! Ralliement!, Sancrucensis (2017)
Edmund Waldstein, Catholic Action and Ralliement, The Josias (2016).
Edmund Waldstein, The Politics of Nostalgia, Sancrucensis (2014).

If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors@thejosias.com. We’d love the feedback.

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March 16, 2018March 21, 2018

Ralliement: Two Distinctions

by Adrian Vermeule

A few analytic notes on ralliement — a notion stemming originally from Leo XIII’s 1892 encyclical Au Milieu des Sollicitudes, which urged French Catholics to rally to the Third French Republic in order to transform it from within. The idea has become more general, suggesting that Catholics would do well to rally to and work within a liberal-democratic political order. I have two conceptual distinctions to sketch, merely in the hope of clarifying the terms of the conversation. Continue reading “Ralliement: Two Distinctions”

February 27, 2018June 7, 2022

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Critique of Integralism

by Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.

On recent uses of the term “integralism”

In July of last year, Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa published an essay in La Civiltà Cattolica criticizing the cooperation of conservative Evangelicals and Catholics in American politics. Among conservative American Christians, Spadaro and Figueroa argue, religion ceases to be the force for reconciliation and peace that it ought to be, and becomes an instrument of division, forcing a sectarian agenda on society by main force. One of the many things that puzzled readers in the essay was the use of the term “integralism” as a Catholic analogue to Evangelical “fundamentalism.” Integralism is not a term that is used much in an American context. Integralism in the strict sense in which we use it at The Josias, has never played much of a role in American political life, which has always been committed to the Enlightenment ideal of religious liberty. Spadaro and Figueroa never explain very clearly what they mean by “integralism.” A blog-post from September by Keith Michael Estrada, however, points us to an author who does give a very detailed account of integralism that in some ways fits the usage of Spadaro and Figueroa: Hans Urs von Balthasar. Continue reading “Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Critique of Integralism”

February 13, 2018February 13, 2018

The Josias Podcast, Episode V: Liberalism (Part 2)

Restlessly seek power after power ceasing only in death, or just try to be a little crueler every day? Wherein the gang flows along the surface of life’s path as they please; unleash Newman’s critique of political liberalism; ponder what it means for liberal education that Basil and Julian were fellow-students at the schools of Athens; decry the shortcomings and superficialities of great books educations; and ask whether Christians can be gentlemen in the end.

All this and much more!

Bibliography for pts 1 & 2:

Susannah Black, “On Presley Progressivism“
Patrick Deneen, “A Catholic Showdown Worth Watching,” The American Conservative (2014)
Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (Yale, 2016)
Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy (Encounter, 2016)
Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan [1651], (Hackett, 1994)
The Complete Essays of Montaigne, ed. Donald Frame (Stanford, 1958)
John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University [1852], ed. Martin Svaglic (Notre Dame, 1984)
John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua [1864], ed. Ian Ker (Penguin, 1994)
John Henry Newman, “Biglietto Speech” (1879)
John Rawls, Political Liberalism [1993], (Columbia, 2005)
Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge, 1989)
Gabriel Sanchez, “Illiberal Catholicism One Year On,” Front Porch Republic (2015)
Judith Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Harvard, 1984)
Felix de St. Vincent, “Four Catholic Political Postures,” The Josias (2017)
Edmund Waldstein, “Contrasting Concepts of Freedom,” The Josias (2016)

If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors@thejosias.com. We’d love the feedback.

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