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Philosophy

What Every Catholic Should Know

$24.95

Hardback

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Product Details

Product Code:
PWCKH
Format:
Hardback
ISBN/UPC:
9781955305303
Length:
0.94 (in)
Size (HxW):
8.31 x 5.63 (in)
Pages:
270
Publication date:
February 01, 2023
Weight:
15.68 oz
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Product Overview

Series Summary

The What Every Catholic Should Know series is intended for the average faithful Catholic who wants to know more about Catholic faith and culture. The authors in this series take a panoramic approach to the topic of each book aimed at a non-specialist but enthusiastic readership. Already published titles in this series include: literature, salvation, mercy, being Catholic, God, and philosophy.

Book Summary

“The need for this book is perennial, but it is especially acute today, when both faith and reason are on life support in our culture, which is increasingly hostile to both, or at least to the classical or traditional forms of both….In this culture it is essential that Catholics and other Christians know the intellectual weapons and strategies of the enemies of religious faith and the defensive and offensive intellectual weapons that defeat them. Philosophical arguments are needed. They are weapons in the intellectual dimension of spiritual warfare, a warfare which is just as real and just as much a matter of life or death as physical warfare.”

Just what is philosophy? Is there objective truth? Is self-knowledge possible? What is being? What is man’s relation to nature? Is it possible for human reason to know God? If there is a God, why is there evil? What is happiness and how can we achieve it? If you’ve ever wondered about the answers to any of these questions, this is the book for you! These and dozens of other crucial questions are asked and answered in this easy-to-read book by one of the best-known philosophers alive today. Every Catholic should own one book on philosophy. This is it.

Editorial Reviews

"Peter Kreeft, our very own C. S. Lewis, is a keen diagnostician of our moral and spiritual disorders."
Robert Reilly, Author, America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding

"Many writers have the gift of irony, or humor, or logic, or common sense. Very few combine all these gifts in one talent and put it at the service of truth. Peter Kreeft is simply the best, the most engaging, Christian apologist at work today."
—Francis X. Maier, Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center

Reviews

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  • 5
    A philosophy book that everyone should read

    Posted by Charles Schmidt on Apr 14th 2023

    Peter Kreeft has taught philosophy at Boston College for 58 years and he has written more than 100 books, many of them dealing with philosophy. He’s a Catholic philosophy professor who has been compared favorably with C. S. Lewis due to his clear, concise and lively writing style. Kreeft’s 101st book, Philosophy – What Every Catholic Should Know delivers on what its title promises, and it is a truly excellent book that is destined to become a Catholic classic. Let’s quickly look at highlights from some of the key chapters: Chapter 2 deals with the question of why we should study philosophy. Kreeft’s answer is that philosophy is a love of wisdom, and wisdom is supremely worth loving. So philosophy is very much worth studying. Happiness comes from perfecting yourself, and philosophy helps to perfect your behavior and your mind, leading to ultimate happiness. Chapter 21 deals with epistemology: We must accept that as the foundation of our knowledge, both faith and reason are uncertain. Common sense, common experience and the foundational principles of thought are the strongest start points in reasoning. Most of our mistakes in judgment are based on mistakes in understanding, many of which are due to poorly defined terms. Chapter 22 talks about how your ethics depends on your metaphysics. Catholic metaphysics affirms life, orders life, and sets up a hierarchy of all the goods in human life. Chapter 51 is titled “Is the Soul Immortal” and it lists 10 good arguments for the immortality of the soul, so the case for an immortal soul is strong. Among those 10 is Aquinas’ argument that the human mind and the human will both seek spiritual, immaterial and universal goods, which shows that men have spiritual souls. Saint Augustine argued that an eternal truth is that an eternal good is better than a temporal good. This means that we should value spiritual goods like goodness, beauty and truth as more important than material goods like wealth or power. Chapter 52 is titled “What Happens at Death?” and it gives an excellent summary on what different philosophies and different religions think happens at death. The key point is that we only live once, so live it with gusto and passion. Chapter 54 is about the moral virtues: A virtue that is presupposed by all other virtues is honesty, or the will to truth. It is directed not only toward others (telling the truth) but also toward oneself (both telling oneself the truth and listening to it) and toward God (both telling the truth to God and listening to God’s truth). The virtue of honesty both seeks and tells and values truth everywhere. Other important moral virtues, recognized by nearly all cultures, are gratitude, forgiveness, humility, empathy, fidelity, kindness, respect (or reverence), and mercy. Chapter 60 is titled “Does Virtue Make You Happy?”: Does virtue make you happy? Yes, virtue is what perfects man, and the perfection of man brings happiness. In fact and in long-range experience, both in individual lives and in the life of the human race, moral character and behavior in fact makes us happier, and immorality always makes us unhappy deep down and in the long run, even though on the surface and immediately it strongly appeals to our desire for happiness and can give us a short-lived satisfaction or thrill. The close causal relationship between moral virtue and personal happiness is the reason why (1) ethical philosophies that focus only on personal happiness, like hedonism and utilitarianism, and (2) ethical philosophies that focus only on duty and obedience (ignoring virtuous character acting out of love for God and neighbor), are incomplete and ineffective. We often reduce happiness to a feeling, but happiness is a state of human perfection, or human virtue, which results a feeling of contentment. Chapter 70 deals with the political problem of balance the common good with the individual good: The mutual reinforcement of solidarity and subsidiarity is also the political reflection of the well-known paradox that obsession with your own happiness makes you unhappy, while self-forgetfully working for others’ happiness makes you happy. Every religion in the world teaches some version of this paradox. Philosophy – What Every Catholic Should Know should be required reading at every Catholic high school and college. Philosophy is about the good, the beautiful and the true, and this philosophy book is very good, very true and very beautifully written.

  • 5
    A philosophy book that everyone should read

    Posted by Charles Schmidt on Apr 8th 2023

    Peter Kreeft has taught philosophy at Boston College for 58 years and he has written more than 100 books, many of them dealing with philosophy. He’s a Catholic philosophy professor who has been compared favorably with C. S. Lewis due to his clear, concise and lively writing style. Kreeft’s 101st book, Philosophy – What Every Catholic Should Know delivers on what its title promises, and it is a truly excellent book that is destined to become a Catholic classic. Let’s quickly look at highlights from some of the key chapters: Chapter 2 deals with the question of why we should study philosophy. Kreeft’s answer is that philosophy is a love of wisdom, and wisdom is supremely worth loving. So philosophy is very much worth studying. Happiness comes from perfecting yourself, and philosophy helps to perfect your behavior and your mind, leading to ultimate happiness. Chapter 21 deals with epistemology: We must accept that as the foundation of our knowledge, both faith and reason are uncertain. Common sense, common experience and the foundational principles of thought are the strongest start points in reasoning. Most of our mistakes in judgment are based on mistakes in understanding, many of which are due to poorly defined terms. Chapter 22 talks about how your ethics depends on your metaphysics. Catholic metaphysics affirms life, orders life, and sets up a hierarchy of all the goods in human life. Chapter 51 is titled “Is the Soul Immortal” and it lists 10 good arguments for the immortality of the soul, so the case for an immortal soul is strong. Among those 10 is Aquinas’ argument that the human mind and the human will both seek spiritual, immaterial and universal goods, which shows that men have spiritual souls. Saint Augustine argued that an eternal truth is that an eternal good is better than a temporal good. This means that we should value spiritual goods like goodness, beauty and truth as more important than material goods like wealth or power. Chapter 52 is titled “What Happens at Death?” and it gives an excellent summary on what different philosophies and different religions think happens at death. The key point is that we only live once, so live it with gusto and passion. Chapter 54 is about the moral virtues: A virtue that is presupposed by all other virtues is honesty, or the will to truth. It is directed not only toward others (telling the truth) but also toward oneself (both telling oneself the truth and listening to it) and toward God (both telling the truth to God and listening to God’s truth). The virtue of honesty both seeks and tells and values truth everywhere. Other important moral virtues, recognized by nearly all cultures, are gratitude, forgiveness, humility, empathy, fidelity, kindness, respect (or reverence), and mercy. Chapter 60 is titled “Does Virtue Make You Happy?”: Does virtue make you happy? Yes, virtue is what perfects man, and the perfection of man brings happiness. In fact and in long-range experience, both in individual lives and in the life of the human race, moral character and behavior in fact makes us happier, and immorality always makes us unhappy deep down and in the long run, even though on the surface and immediately it strongly appeals to our desire for happiness and can give us a short-lived satisfaction or thrill. The close causal relationship between moral virtue and personal happiness is the reason why (1) ethical philosophies that focus only on personal happiness, like hedonism and utilitarianism, and (2) ethical philosophies that focus only on duty and obedience (ignoring virtuous character acting out of love for God and neighbor), are incomplete and ineffective. We often reduce happiness to a feeling, but happiness is a state of human perfection, or human virtue, which results a feeling of contentment. Chapter 70 deals with the political problem of balance the common good with the individual good: The mutual reinforcement of solidarity and subsidiarity is also the political reflection of the well-known paradox that obsession with your own happiness makes you unhappy, while self-forgetfully working for others’ happiness makes you happy. Every religion in the world teaches some version of this paradox. Philosophy – What Every Catholic Should Know should be required reading at every Catholic high school and college. Philosophy is about the good, the beautiful and the true, and this philosophy book is very good, very true and very beautifully written.