The Human Person and a Culture of Freedom

Edited by Peter A. Pagan Aguiar and Terese Auer

Foreword by Alice Ramos

Introduction by Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I

Book Overview

Twenty-first-century society faces profound challenges, and the future seems anything but secure. The rapid advance of technology has far outpaced mankind's moral and religious development. There is greater material wealth now than in past centuries, yet poverty remains an international problem. Wars persist and global peace seems increasingly unattainable as terrorism and civil strife become more prevalent. Numerous forms of entertainment made possible by modern industrialization and technology divert attention away from the things that really matter and invert the objective hierarchy of values. Underlying all these threats to the foundations of civilization one can find one or another theoretical conception of man and human freedom.


This volume presents a rich and diverse collection of essays on the theoretical foundations of human freedom. From several distinct perspectives, the authors examine various aspects of the deeper anthropological questions at the root of a number of critical social challenges confronting modernity. Readers interested in educational theory, church and state, the nature of love and friendship, questions of authority and the common good, law and human rights, and virtue theory and the various types of freedom will find this collection of special interest.

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Contents

  • Alice Ramos, “Foreword”

  • Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., “Introduction”

  1. Brian Hughes, “Maritain and Newman: Theology, Intellectual Freedom and Human Transcendence in University Education”

  2. Steven Long, “Causal Entailment, Sufficient Reason, and Freedom”

  3. John Cuddeback, “A Free Culture: Living the Primacy of the For-Itself”

  4. Heather Erb, “From Rivulets to the Fountain's Source: Image and Love in Aquinas' Christian Anthropology”

  5. Desmond FitzGerald, “Anton Pegis’s Thomistic Theory of Man as an Incarnate Spirit”

  6. Carson Holloway, “Strauss, Darwinism, and Natural Right”

  7. Gavin Colvert, “Aquinas and the Limits of Political Authority: Natural Lawyer or Virtue Politician?”

  8. David Klassen, “Jacques Maritain and Natural Rights: The Priority of Metaphysics over Politics”

  9. Ralph Nelson, “The Ambiguity of Autonomy”

  10. James Schall, S.J., “The Common Good: Why Is It Good? Why Is It Common?”

  11. Romanus Cessario, O.P., “Freedom and Satisfaction”

  12. John Conley, S.J., Religious Freedom as Catholic Crisis”

  13. Christopher Cullen, S.J., Dignitatis Humanae and a Catholic Society: The Confessional State as a Perennial Possibility”

  14. Piotr Jaroszynski (trans. Hugh McDonald), “Freedom and Tolerance”

  15. Raymond Dennehy, “Abortion and Ideology”

  16. Montague Brown, “Fairness, Freedom, and Responsibility”

  • List of Contributors

  • Index