This article by Johannes B. Lotz, S.J., never before translated into English, describes his contacts with Martin Heidegger. First it describes his arrival, along with Karl Rahner, S.J., to pursue doctoral studies in Freiburg im Breisgau and their first experiences with the famous professor. Lotz continues his narrative by mentioning times he met with Heidegger over the subsequent forty years up to the philosopher’s death. With Gustav Siewerth, Max Müller, Bernhard Welte, and Karl Rahner, Lotz belonged to a group of (...) Catholic thinkers influenced—some more, some less—by Martin Heidegger. In Lotz’s view some of Heidegger’s ideas were already found in Aquinas, and a philosophy of Being needed to go beyond existential analysis into religion, revelation, and cultural criticism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE DOMINICAN SCHOOL OF SALAMANCA AND THE SPANISH CONQUEST OF AMERICA: SOME BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES THOMAS F. O'MEARA. O.P. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana SALAMANCA, northwest of Madrid and Avila and not far from Spain's border with Portugal, preserves the atmosphere of a medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque university even as it develops the schools and clinics of a contemporary center of studies. There are associations with Teresa (...) of Avila, who spent the night there just after her reform was approved by Rome, with the young Cervantes, with Luis de Leon and Ignatius Loyola, and with John of the Cross, who was a student there. A bridge from the time of Trajan spans the river Tormes, and the Romanesque cathedral still reserves a chapel for the Mozarabic rite. The University of Salamanca The city brings to mind sixteenth century Dominicans like Francisco de Vitoria, often called the founder of international law, and Domingo Bafiez, confessor to Teresa of Avila. The Order of Friars Preachers, however, came to Salamanca in 1222 at the same time that Dominic's missions were taking root in·Paris and Bologna; the friars founded a priory and soon a school under the patronage of St. Stephen (San Esteban). The " Dominican School of Salamanca " means formally the line of great theologians reaching from Diego de Deza at the end of the fifteenth century to Tomas de Lemos, a main protagonist in Rome in 1607 in the controversy over grace entitled De Auxiliis. Today, after seven and a half centuries of existence, the Salamancan SSS 556 THOMAS F. o'MEARA, O.P. Dominicans remain a vital community, active m teaching, research and publishing. My attention was directed to the Dominicans at Salamanca by two volumes of essays reporting on congresses concerning the "Dominicans and the Discovery of the New World." My interest was not church history but the history of theologies of how grace might exist outside of explicit faith and sacramental baptism. The following report is a bibliographical survey of recent research on a theological era and school. Focusing on the thought of the theologians stimulated by the experiences of the missionaries in the Indies, it treats the Dominicans during the first decades after the voyages of Columbus. In the 1480s, as it entered its golden age, the University of Salamanca had a hundred professors and almost 7000 students. University records begin late, but they show that in 1546/47, one hundred thirty-four Dominicans were studying at the university, and in 1598/99, eighty. J. L. Espinel has written. a historical guide to the Dominican buildings and institutions.1 The great period of the Dominican school at the University began with Diego de Deza ( 1480-1486), professor and archbishop of Seville, and Matias de Paz (1518-1519), a professor of Scripture. Francisco de Vitoria (1526-1546) and Domingo de Soto (15321549 ) were its most gifted thinkers, but the school's achievements continued with Melchior Cano (1546-1552), Juan de la Pefia (1561-1565) and Domingo Banez (1581-1604). These t San Esteban de Salamanca, Historia y Gufa, Siglos, XIII-XX (Salamanca: Editorial San Esteban, 1978); see also R. Hernandez, "Convento y estudio de San Esteban," La Universidad de Salamanca (Salamanca: Universidad, 1989), pp. 369ff.; A. Martin Melquiades, "La Escuela de teologia de Salamanca," Atti del Congresso internazionale, Tommaso d'Aquino nel suo settimo centenario, Tommaso d'Aquino nella storia del pensiero, 1 :2 (Naples: Edizione Domenicane Italiane, 1975), pp. 242ff. A Salamancan Dominican of the 1930s, Vicente Beltran de Heredia, pioneered research in the history of the university and in the writings of the Dominican speculative masters. His writings can be found in past issues of Ciencia Tomista (CT), and some of his books and several recent collections of his most important essays are available from Editorial San Esteban. Similarly initial research in the United States can be found in the writings of Lewis Hanke. SALAMANCA AND THE SPANISH CONQUEST 557 are joined by lesser figures like Pedro de Sotomayor (15601564 ), Mancia de Corpus Christi (1564-1576), and Bartolome de Medina (1576-1581). The occupants of the chair in theology of the liturgical hour of prime from Vitoria in 1526 to Bafiez's... (shrink)

This text considers Aquinas the theologian, his profession as a teacher and preacher, his influence past and present, and theology as the subject of his thought and most of his writings. It examines the Summa theologiae in terms of its purpose and multiple structures. The centre piece of this volume is a tour through the themes of Christianity, as presented in the Summa, themes which range from Triune divine being, to the graced person as the image of God, and a (...) member of the body of Christ, to the life beyond death. (shrink)

"O'Meara masterfully situates Pryzwara in relation to the traditional and contemporary theological, philosophical, ecclesial, cultural, and social contexts within which he wrote." --_William P. Loewe, professor of religious studies, Catholic University of America_ Erich Przywara, S.J. is one of the important Catholic intellectuals of the twentieth century. Yet, in the English-speaking world Przywara remains largely unknown. Few of his sixty books or six hundred articles have been translated. In this engaging new book, Thomas O'Meara offers a comprehensive study of (...) the German Jesuit Erich Przywara and his philosophical theology. Przywara's scholarly contributions were remarkable. He was one of three theologians who introduced the writings of John Henry Cardinal Newman into Germany. From his position at the Jesuit journal in Munich, _Stimmen der Zeit_, he offered an open and broad Catholic perspective on the cultural, philosophical, and theological currents of his time. As one of the first Catholic intellectuals to employ the phenomenologies of Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, he was also responsible for giving an influential, more theological interpretation of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola. Przywara was also deeply engaged in the ideas and authors of his times. He was the first Catholic dialogue partner of Karl Barth and Paul Tillich. Edmund Husserl was counted among Przywara's friends, and Edith Stein was a close personal and intellectual companion. Through his interactions with important figures of his age and his writings, ranging from speculative systems to liturgical hymns, Przywara was of marked importance in furthering a varied dialogue between German Catholicism and modern culture. Following a foreword by Michael Fahey, S.J., O'Meara presents a chapter on Pryzwara's life and a chronology of his writings. O'Meara then discusses Pryzwara's philosophical theology, his lecture-courses at German universities on Augustine and Aquinas, his philosophy of religion, and his influence on important intellectual contemporaries. O'Meara concludes with an in-depth analysis of Pryzwara's theology, focusing particularly on his Catholic views of person, liturgy, and church. (shrink)

Catholic theology today is not so much a new idea about God or Christian data but word, message, and medium interpreting and communicating the kerygma.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:706 BOOK REVIEWS struments of redemption for others. Mary is the primary exemplar of receiving her Son's redeeming love in freedom and of wholeheartedly mediating his graces to all he has redeemed. The final essay, "Mary and Modernity," is most timely for American Christians and ecumenists. It is a very worthwhile attempt to compare and contrast the secular triad of virtues, liberty, equality, and fraternity with the Christian triad (...) of theological virtues, faith, hope, and love, especially as they are exemplified in Mary. Although this approach perceives Mary more as a " sign of contradiction " to our secularistic culture, she will help us to avoid the extremes of confusing true freedom with licence, genuine equality with egalitarianism, and authentic fraternity with collectivism by helping inspire in us the really liberating values of her Son's Gospel. Everyone can benefit immensely from the intelligent reading of this book. Mt. St. Mary's Seminary Emmitsburg, Maryland FREDERICK M. JELLY, O.P. Dieu et l'etre d'apres Thomas d'Aquin et Hegel. By EMILIO BRITO. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991. Pp. 422. 245 francs. Sprung from premature fears of post-modernity or from an ignorant nostalgia for a monoform Catholicism which never existed, universal dismissals of " modernity " still appear occasionally in Catholic j ournals. They recall,the neo-scholastic te:xitbooks prior to Vatican II in whose pages the " moderni " (among whom were numbered not only "Kantiani" but "Hegeliani ") were dismissed by authors who, having read a few pages, were incapable of grasping the basic directions of philosophy from Herder to Heidegger. Emilio Brito, S.J., however, follows in the line of the French and German Jesuits: through this century they have sustained a varied dialogue, in philosophy and theology, between Thomas Aquinas and the important figures of modern philosophy. His two works on Hegel's Christology, and a third large study of God and creation in Schelling are now followed by this comparative work. The theology of Aquinas and the philosophy of Hegel are like two galaxies. Do they move past each other at a distance, or do they move through each other guarding a proper identity with similar forces and shared motifs? Brito has chosen one theme within these two vast realms of thought: his topic (and the book's title can mislead) is God; 'being' BOOK REVIEWS 707 is present as a stimulus to our reflection about God. After an introduction on recent interpretations of Hegel, particularly by Catholics, pages which should be read by all interested in contemporary theology, there are three sections: " the knowledge and naming of God," " the divine substance and the cycle of its attributes," and " the operations of absolute spirit." The chapters in each of the three areas present Aquinas's and then Hegel's thought, and sometimes a section of further comparison. At the end of the work Brito offers a conclusion ("God's Goodness") and a postlude ("God's Beauty"). Finally there is a "Resume." According to Brito, Aquinas's thought is clear (his Aristotelian logic is readily understandable), and his emphasis lies with the divine transcendence. Despite the process-format of the Summa theologiae and the traces of history in the headship of Christ, the diversity of sacraments, and the theologies of faith and natural law, his modest description of movement in God and in God's world of beings stands in contrast to the unleashed and unresolved development penetrating Hegel's Geist. The concluding " Resume " of nine pages is particularly valuable as it brings together the author's synthetic insights into Aquinas and Hegel (one might hope that at least it would appear in translation). The following excerpt displays its balance and clarity. The God of the Summa tends to stay back from mediation, letting itself exist in a certain exteriority, while the Hegelian absolute " raises out" the determinations it posits only by also absorbing them negatively. In the same vein, the Hegelian parousia of the negative abolishes absolutely the distance maintained by the inexpressible in language. In an opposite direction, the originating positivity of the God of Thomas grounds the irreducible presence of a reality represented in discourse. If he is a stranger to this approach and more... (shrink)

Bernhard Deister’s book Anthropologie im Dialog is a comparison of aspects of Karl Rahner’s theology with the psychology of Carl Rogers. Here the dialogue partner of the German philosophical theologian is an American psychologist of influence. The author begins: “These pages present two exemplary pictures of the human person, from theology and psychology. They unfold their approaches in an interdisciplinary dialogue.” The following pages summarize this comparison. Both thinkers see the human being as an active subject living in the tensions (...) between individuality and relation­ship, and then between immanence and transcendence. Building on this, Rogers’ psychology centers on the dynamics and emotions accompanying life with social groups, while Rahner is frequently involved in drawing particular theological disciplines like moral theology or ecclesiology forward into creative reflections on tradi­tion, spirituality, and praxis amid church and society. (shrink)

This essay, beginning with pastoral and theological reasons why Karl Rahner is still important fifteen years after his death, discusses how his theology figures explicitly in a graduate course, and implicitly in an undergraduate course. Special attention is paid to the transcendental, categorical and historical modalities of grace and revelation.

Among the almost fifty speakers at the Davos Seminars from 1928 to 1931 were Paul Tillich and Erich Przywara, S.J. Tillich discussed contemporary philosophies of religion with the Catholic Przywara. While the basic question of these lectures at Davos was the suitable form of religion for the modern person, the speakers often were presenting theologies, Lutheran and Catholic, on grace and nature. Tillich went beyond both the liberal Protestantism of the late nineteenth century and the new dialectical theology of Karl (...) Barth, while Przywara sought to leave behind a sterile neo-medievalism for a new philosophy of revelation drawing on Thomas Aquinas, John Henry Newman, and Max Scheler. Przywara reviewed many of Tillich's writings, and in the 1950s he was invited to contribute an essay to a volume honoring the Protestant theologian who had been forced to immigrate to the United States in 1934. Tillich and Przywara were an early ecumenical encounter. (shrink)

Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner were Christian theologians who thought out of a modern perspective: transcendental, existential, and historical. One was from a Protestant church joining Calvinist and Lutheran traditions, and the other belonged to the Roman Catholic Society of Jesus; both studied Immanuel Kant and learned from Martin Heidegger. Tillich's theology unfolded amid and after the two World Wars with marked cultural changes, while Rahner's years were particularly marked by the changes of Vatican II and cultural shifts after 1960. (...) Both are known for fashioning a theology of the Kingdom of God wider than church membership. This comparison looks at their audiences, the structure of the major systematic work of each, similarities illustrated in a few themes, and contrasting orientations. (shrink)

The nephew of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger was ordained a priest in the Roman Catholic Church for the Archdiocese of Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. Heinrich Heidegger, born in 1928, was the son of Fritz Heidegger , the younger brother of the philosopher. Soon after the ordination of a Roman Catholic to the priesthood he celebrates his First Mass, and after that special Eucharist there follows a dinner and reception enhancing the day. The following pages give a translation of the (...) remarks made in 1954 by Martin Heidegger at the dinner after the First Mass of his nephew Heinrich. There are then some reflections on themes from this brief discourse relating to Heidegger’s thinking, motifs like the disclosure of Being, the centrality of individual existence, and the pervasiveness of history. In 2002, Fr. Heinrich Heidegger responded to an inquiry about the priest’s close relationship to his uncle, and that essay gives a further context for information on Heidegger and faith and church. (shrink)

Theology and literature, as the twentieth century progressed, increasingly treated religion not in terms of the objectifications of dogmas and devotions but as the unseen presence of the divine in an individual life. Readers and critics saw degrees of belief and modalities of sin in the novels of Graham Greene. The writer acknowledged the influence of European novelists and theologians on his narratives. Karl Rahner’s theology of human existence within an atmosphere of grace along with a presentation of the transcendental (...) and the categorical in expressions of faith and grace recall some modern novels like Greene’s A Burnt-Out Case. Both theologian and novelist point to God’s presence as silent, varied, mysterious, and real. (shrink)

The author acquired in May of 1965 a copy of Karl Rahner’s observations on the latest draft of “Schema XIII” which would becomeGaudium et Spes. The title was “Anmerkungen zum Schema DE ECCLESIA IN MUNDO HUIUS TEMPORIS (in der Fassungvom 28.5.65).” After the third session of Vatican II serious work remained to be done on that text. Among several meetings was onelong and important occurred at Ariccia in the Alban hills outside Rome. Rahner could not attend because he could not (...) miss so manylectures at the University of Munich. He sent written comments. That document is a valuable source for the research of the theologicalbackground of Gaudium et Spes. Rahner’s observations fall into three subheadings: remarks on the Latin syntax and style; generalobservations on the underlying theological principles; detailed observations on particular points. (shrink)

This article describes the presence of Karl Rahner in philosophical, theological, and propagandistic works published in the Soviet Union or published outside the USSR and distributed within it. Some references to Rahner appeared in self-published works without the approval of Soviet censors. These included the works of Orthodox theologians such as Sergej Želudkov and Alexander Men’. Other references to Rahner appeared in anti-religious propaganda and in works by Marxist-Leninist philosophers such as Bronislavas Juozas Kuzmickas. By 1992, the year following the (...) collapse of the USSR, Rahner began to receive a more favorable reception in the writing of philosophers such as Elena B. Timerman. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:332 BOOK REVIEWS toral inventions (such as basic Christian communities), and the religious backgrounds of millions who help to make up the churches, Catholic and Protestant, of the United States. Providence College Providence, RI EDWARD L. CLEARY, O.P. Springs of Action: Understanding Intentional Behavior. By ALFRED R. MELE. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. 272 + ix. $39.95 (cloth). Alfred Mele's overarching aim in this book (...) is to offer an account of the role of intentions in the explanation of intentional action. He works within the familiar terms of causal theories of action, and is particularly indebted to Donald Davidson. In Part I, Mele borrows a set of theses from Davidson's desire/belief model of intentional action, and in the process of addressing problems associated with these theses, he progressively refines an account of action that understands an agent's reasons to have explanatory force by virtue of being among the causes of action. In Part II, Mele argues that desire/belief models are insufficient as they stand and need to be filled out by recognizing that intentions provide a crucial link between reasons and actions. The discussion begins with the vexed question of how the content of mental states can be relevant to the causal explanation of action. We constantly appeal to our desires, beliefs, plans, and so on (i.e., to various propositional, or intentional, attitudes) in explaining our behavior. But how does, say, my appetite for good wine and my belief that the house chardonnay is such a wine figure in the causal order that brings about my act of ordering a glass of it? Presumably, these intentional states supervene upon certain physical states of my body, and the latter do the causal work of producing wine-ordering behavior. However, there are good reasons to think that, with certain sorts of changes in my history and environment (viz., of the sort described in twin earth thought experiments), these physical states could be the realization of different intentional states. So can a causal theory of action actually accord my desires and beliefs any role in explaining my action? Mele argues that even if we hold (with externalists) that the agent's history and environment help to fix the content of her intentional states, we can nonetheless say that unless the agent had intended what she did, she would not have acted as she did. The behavior is intentional action by virtue of issuing (in the right way) from physical processes BOOK REVIEWS 333 that realize the agent's reasons for acting, and these processes realize these reasons only if the processes have an appropriate causal history. The result is that what we desire, believe, and intend does after all make a systematic difference in what we do. Mele makes some helpful refinements in the standard account of the causal role of desire in intentional action. It has typically been claimed that when an agent's wants compete, the "strongest" of them deter· mines the action; if an agent wants to do A more than anything else that she takes herself to be able to do, then if she acts intentionally she will do A. Mele points out that this general claim must be qualified so as to index desires to times, to accommodate both unsuccessful at· tempts and the agent's estimates of the likelihood of success, and to deal with the complex relations between desires. He explores the way in which agents are able to control the motivational strength of their desires, and he works out a definition of irresistible desire. One of the deepest challenges to the claim that action is caused by what we most desire arises in considering "motivational ties." How, on this account, is intentional action possible when we equally desire each of two incompatible alternatives? An arbitrary decision procedure can be adopted (e.g., a coin toss), but this alone does not en· hance the attractiveness of the randomly selected alternative. Here Mele introduces his thesis about intentions: viz., that intentions have an "executive quality that is not reducible to desire-strength" (p. 72), so that even when there is no preponderant motivation to do A... (shrink)

Dr. White teaches philosophy at the New School for Social Research ; his doctorate was done in 1980 at Pennsylvania State University on the end of philosophy in Schelling and Hegel. A reader who has some acquaintance with Schelling may be misled by the title into thinking that the book is about Schelling’s essay on freedom. White’s book is about Schelling’s entire philosophy which he views as a quest towards a system of freedom. The book is succinct, clearly written, and, (...) in the English-speaking world, where teachers and students can find almost nothing on Schelling, such an introduction is welcome. There is intentionally no discussion of secondary literature, but the bibliography is too brief and random to serve as a bibliographical introduction, something this introduction should have offered. (shrink)

Without exaggeration one can trace the beginnings of the Schelling renaissance taking place now in the last decades of this century to the symposium held at Bad Ragaz in 1954. That meeting, whose proceedings were published in a limited edition, was held to honor the one hundredth anniversary of Friedrich Schelling's death. The event and the volume did not receive great attention. An anniversary symposium, twenty-five years later, and this collection of the symposium's addresses indicate how far Schelling studies have (...) progressed in recent decades. (shrink)

Andreas Battlogg, S.J., one of the supervising editors, discusses the conclusion of the publication of Karl Rahner's Sämtliche Werke in over thirty volumes along with its impact on the study of theology now and in the future.

Andreas Battlogg, S.J., one of the supervising editors, discusses the conclusion of the publication of Karl Rahner's Sämtliche Werke in over thirty volumes along with its impact on the study of theology now and in the future.

Hegel introduced the Phenomenology of Mind as a work on the problem of knowledge. In the first chapter, entitled “Sense Certainty, or the This and Meaning,” he concluded that knowledge cannot consist of an immediate awareness of particulars ). The tradition discusses sense certainty in terms of this failure of immediate knowledge without, however, specifically addressing the problem of reference. Yet reference is distinct from knowledge in the sense that while there can be no knowledge of objects without reference, there (...) may be reference without knowledge. If that is the case, then the failure of immediate knowledge does not entitle us to conclude anything about the success or failure of reference. It is not surprising, then, that a few scholars have begun to examine sense certainty primarily as a thesis about reference. (shrink)