The Josias Podcast Episode XXXVI: Eduard Habsburg on Bl. Karl of Austria

Archduke Eduard of Austria, of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, Hungarian Ambassador to the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta, joins Urban Hannon for a conversation on Bl. Karl of Austria, his family, and his most recent book: The Habsburg Way.

Eduard Habsburg’s book, The Habsburg Way: 7 Rules for Turbulent Times, is available for purchase here.

Bibliography

Charles A. Coulombe, Blessed Charles of Austria: A Holy Emperor and His Legacy.
Death of an Emperor
Click here to listen to a video interview with Empress Zita.
Talk by Eduard Habsburg, “When Blessed Karl returned to Hungary.“

Header Image: Karl and Zita’s wedding, 21 October 1911.

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June 26, 2023June 28, 2023

Machiavelli’s Secularization of Glory

Ubi est mors victoria tua?
ubi est mors stimulus tuus?
(1 Cor. 15:55)

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori—“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s fatherland,” proclaimed the Roman poet Horace.^[1] Such was the sentiment shared by Niccolò Machiavelli in his exaltation of the fatherland (patria), expounded especially strongly in his critique of Christian religion, culminating in Discourses on Livy II.2. Machiavelli perceived a corrupted attitude among the citizenry toward their patria and laid blame at the foot of the altar: “For, had they borne in mind that religion permits us to exalt and defend the fatherland, they would have seen that it also wishes us to love and honour it, and to train ourselves to be such that we may defend it.”^[2] While castigating the religion of his day as the source of weak and “effeminate”^[3] attitudes toward the patria, he also claimed the mantle of Christian morality to argue that it was permissible and, indeed, laudable to defend and fight for the fatherland.^[4] On this latter point, Machiavelli could have located vigorous support in the writings of many great minds throughout the history of Christendom. Yet, at the same time, he deliberately avoided doing so, and especially avoided the fact that a robust conception of the sacrifice and the virtue of dying for one’s patria had developed and reentered the social imagination over the course of the Middle Ages. This is likely no accident, as this conception was anything but Machiavelli’s own. To suffer death for one’s patria presupposed fighting for and defending it. Death inherently occupies a space between the temporal and the eternal; it is inescapably eschatological, inextricably bound up with questions of salvation, sacrifice, and martyrdom in Christian theology and imagination. For both Machiavelli and the medieval mind, sacrifice for the fatherland was a means of attaining glory—albeit in radically different ways.

June 19, 2023June 25, 2023

The Primacy of the Common Good

For Joel Feil

PDF

1 What is Commonly Thought About the Common Good

1.1 Honor and the Common Good

Honor is a concept that is closely related to the common good, especially the political common good. Honor, Aristotle, notes, seems to be the end, the telos, of the political life. In truth however, he goes on to argue, the end of political life is virtue; we seek honor to convince ourselves that we are good, since honor is the recognition that others give to our virtue.[2] We human beings long to contribute to something greater than ourselves, and to have our contribution confirmed by the recognition of others, by honor. Jan Eyre, in Charlotte Brontë’s novel, after turning up destitute at the doorstep of Moor House, ends up as a schoolteacher in a small village. The usefulness of her work as a schoolteacher to the community, and the recognition, the honor, that she receives from the villagers for that contribution, make her feel that she is “sitting in sunshine, calm and sweet” and that her feelings are budding and blooming under its rays.[3] What is true of honor in a small village is even more true in a greater, properly political society that can achieve a greater common good.

June 12, 2023June 12, 2023

Human Happiness and Virtue

Introduction

The Aristotelian tradition has always maintained that human happiness must consist in a life of virtue. Indeed, Aristotle himself defined happiness as “an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there is more than one virtue, in accordance with the best or most complete.”^[i] This definition may be one which is accepted by many, but it remains nonetheless debated and denied. Consider Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s notorious statement that “at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”^[ii] In the 25 years since this startling declaration was made, society, especially in the West, has continued to wage war on common moral sense, and advocates for a more or less purely autonomous man. Man can now reimagine himself, and as if by fiat, determine what he is, who he is, and what will make him happy. To the contrary, the purpose of this paper is to lay out clearly and succinctly why the happy life for man must consist in a life of virtue. The necessary connection between happiness and virtue, far from being something known only by the wise, can be known by anyone through a careful reflection on their own lives.

June 5, 2023June 5, 2023

The Josias Podcast Episode XXXV: Thomistic Mystagogy

Thomistic theology is rarely associated with liturgical prayer. So, in this episode, Urban Hannon turns the conversation toward St Thomas Aquinas’ mystagogy of the Mass—that is, his theological teaching on the meaning and purpose of its various rites.

The handout mentioned in the episode may be found here.

Bibliography

St Thomas Aquinas, In IV Sent., d. 8, ex.
In IV Sent., d. 12, ex.
ST IIIa, Q. 83, a. 4.
ST IIIa, Q. 83, a. 5.

Header Image: Detail from ‘Mass of the 5 wounds of Our Lord,’ in the Da Costa Hours, Morgan Library MS M.399 (fol. 36v), c. 1515. Image courtesy of Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz/Austria.

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May 29, 2023March 16, 2024

Book Recommendation: William of Tocco’s The Life of St. Thomas Aquinas

As a translator of medieval Latin, I keep a running list of works that I could potentially bring into English in the future. For years now, near the top of that list—but never quite near enough for me to have actually gotten around to doing it—has been the Ystoria of William of Tocco. Mentioned often in Thomistic circles, this is the great hagiography of St. Thomas Aquinas compiled for his cause for canonization by a fellow Dominican friar, perhaps twenty years his junior, with whom Thomas lived at the Dominican priory in Naples toward the end of his life. Alas, I missed my chance to translate it—because a friend has done so instead, and his edition is marvelous.

May 16, 2023May 16, 2023

The Coronation: A Josias Symposium

For the occasion of the coronation of King Charles III in Westminster Abbey, The Josias asked contributors and friends to share their reflections on the event. The contributions to this symposium cover a variety of topics from a variety of perspectives, all of them Catholic.

May 8, 2023April 27, 2023

Prayer as (Still) a Political Problem

Christians throughout the world are facing various levels of persecution and maltreatment from purportedly secular and agnostic regimes. To temper such abuse, there is a tendency to appeal to the regime’s religious indifferentism, to defend Christian practice in the name of neutral “religious liberty.” But might there not be hidden costs to doing so?

May 1, 2023May 1, 2023

The Josias Podcast, Episode XXXIV: De Koninck on Nietzsche

Urban Hannon is joined by Ed and Pat Smith for a conversation about Charles De Koninck’s unpublished course notes on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Bibliography

Charles De Koninck’s Course Notes on Nietzsche, which we have made available here.

Header Image: Frans Francken the Younger, Mankind’s Eternal Dilemma – The Choice Between Virtue and Vice (1633).

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April 24, 2023April 18, 2023

Our Contraceptive Speech

Master Adamo lies a bloated mass of “watery rot.” His amorphous frame bears his diseased paunch and distended limbs, as his lips curl and crack under his parching fever—despite being a waterlogged waste. He lies before Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil and explains how King Minos poured him into the last ditch of the eighth circle of hell. He was a counterfeiter of Florentine florins. He blurred the lines of reality in life and now he lays blurred—a poor counterfeit of his former self.