An Ignatius Press Reprint

Ignatius Press Reprints are identical in content with the most recent print edition of the original title. In order to keep important titles available at reasonable prices, we reprint them digitally in small quantities. We use high quality, acid-free paper, but the books are not smyth-sewn as is customary with our offset press print editions.

This volume presents illuminating treatises of Josef Pieper on Thomistic anthropology and on the principles of right human behavior based on anthropology.

With his customary lucidity, Pieper shows how all reality is positioned between the mind of God and the mind of man and is the basis for both man's unquenchable yearning and the measure of all man's knowledge. He then develops the Thomistic position that reality is also the basis for the good and therefore the norm of conscience and ethical action. As Pieper himself expresses in part of the thesis of the second treatise, "An insight into the nature of the good as rooted in objective being, of itself compels us to carry it out in a definite human attitude, and it makes certain attitudes impossible."

Josef Pieper was schooled in the Greek classics and the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. He also studied philosophy, law and sociology, and has been a professor at the University of Munster, Germany. His books have been widely praised by both the secular and religious press.