Spontaneous Order Versus Organized Order (original) (raw)

Catholic Reflections on the Basis of the Pluralist Structure of Society

Journal of Markets Morality, 2012

In his paper, "Human Dignity, Personal Liberty," Michael Novak has clearly pointed out the contribution of a rejuvenated economic science (in the properly understood sense of the term), founded on the person and placed in the historical context of old-world statism, burgeoning socialism, and a relatively sterile economic science modeled on mathematics. While it is true that Leo XIII did point out the major flaws of both socialism and the older authoritarian system, as Schumpeter discussed, there really is no thorough defense of capitalism as a moral economic system. 1 The result has been that discussion of the free market, even by Christians, has been mostly ideological. 2 Novak's works are a major contribution to the clarification of the truth of the market economy and its compatibility to man's God-given nature and to Catholic teaching. The purpose of this paper is to examine a major stumbling block in the acceptance of the freedom required of man, and due to man, in the economic and political spheres. That stumbling block is the inability of many wellmeaning Christians, academics included, to deal with the existence of evil in society.

"Religious Life as a State of Perfection," Nova et Vetera 19 (2021): 1181-1214.

Nova et Vetera (English Edition), 2021

Arguing from within a Thomistic framework, this paper is a defense of the language and concept of state of perfection as an apt way by which to understand religious. The exposition focuses on the interaction between the virtue of religion (and its acts) and the virtue of charity in the context of this ecclesial state.

The Church as the Realization of the Nature of Man in »Deus Semper Maior« by Erich Przywara

Bogoslovni Vestnik, 2019

Today's culture of Western Europe has commonly rejected God and Chri-stianity and considers this state of affairs to be the best state conducive to the development of individuals and societies. Among those who have kept faith in the transcendent God, many present the attitude of »God-yes, the Church-no«, considering individuality in faith as the best way to happiness. The answer to these extremely common attitudes today is the concept of Analogia Entis by Erich Przywara and its application in reflection on man and the Church. The article considers the vision described in the three-volume interpretation of Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola published by Przywara and titled Deus semper maior. This work can be called the synthesis of his theology which the author himself describes as the practical application of his analogous method.

In Pursuance of God: Spiritual Anarchy as a Way of Life Volume 5

Anarchism as a Way of LIfe (28/03/22), 2022

In this version there is an additional Endnote describing something of the recent situation of my mother's death, but within the context of the material herein. The nature of this material dissects further Emma Jung´s analysis of gender roles in the context of both conscious and unconscious spheres. My aim is to also express much deeper her out-dated theories by using other classical texts to bolster my personal and religious experience. Obviously I delve deeper into psychoanalysis but rather than use real-life case scenarios as I did in ´My Confessions', in this essay I develop more expressly my own subjective and mystical viewpoints. Hence, I begin to explore Kabbalism through the eyes of Carl Jung and thoroughly use Paul Johnson´s exegesis on the development of Christianity through the ages that gave rise to millenarianism and other cultic orders. I do not quibble on my theories, metaphysical and historical, and advance what I believe to be a practical mind-map for the nurturing of heightened awareness hitherto referred to as transcendence. I juggle the concepts of socialism and individualism whilst trying to engage the reader in the meaning behind Creation, propheticism and messianism. Effectively, I am trying to encourage the consciousness of individuals to understand the influence they could have in society when transcending cultural norms. The material gets very profound and conceptually broaches difficult new horizons, especially libertarianism, anarchism and existentialism for the role they play in new movements. I end by historically examining the 20th century and the role Hitler played by continuing to explore literature and myth, interweaving different genres into, what I believe, is an ancient method of approaching the nature of truth. It will help the reader to have a background in philosophy or metaphysics.

4-The-Alleged-Inseparability-of-Morality-and-Religion.pdf

The relation of religion to morality is a theme well known to every student of Ethics or history of religion. Not only has it been the subject of much discussion within the various religious traditions themselves, it has been at the center of the Philosophical discussions of Ethics in Western culture since the period of enlightenment. Those that argued from religious perspective insist that religion provides adequate basis for morality while others insist that morality will always be a part of the human culture. It is one of the major factors that separate humans from other earthly creations. Hence, the interdependency of religion and morality has been the subject of more general philosophical analysis, as distinct from its treatment at the hands of theologians working within the Christian framework. This paper attempts to bring to the fore the conflicting and evolving considerations and arguments for or against by making apparent the dialectic of the problem. This paper argues that we do not need religious conception to support our moral convictions; hence, there can be a morality without religion.

Spiritual communism. The career of a theory from Saint Augustine to MacIntyre

Past and Present Political Theology. Expanding the Canon. Ed. by D. V. Auweele and M. Vassányi. London and New York, Routledge, ISBN: 978-0-367-40755, 2020

Saint Augustine’s theory on private and common things is at the core of the teaching of the Church Father. In a theoretical sense, on the one hand, he considers all corporeal things, which are only suited to be acquired and possessed in a win-lose game, as private (privatum, proprium). On the other hand, he regards the objects of pure intellection as common, in the sense of being acquired and possessed in a win-win game. In normative terms, this doctrine, labeled as spiritual communism by the outstanding French Augustinian scholar Goulven Madec (1987), exhorts us to turn from the private things to the common ones, eminently to God. This paper aims to point out that Augustine’s moral doctrine concerning private and common things had a certain career in the history of Western thought and that MacIntyre’s famous concept of practice contains fundamental elements of it in a secularized form. By detecting this Augustinian element in this concept of the Scottish-American philosopher, I also intend to give a partial comparison between two concepts of community. To realize this plan, in the first part of my paper I will present Augustine’s doctrine on common and private things, and also examine what it means in terms of political theology. The second part points to the occurrence of some elements of this doctrine in certain medieval and modern philosophers. In the third part, I will investigate what role the concepts of the common and the private play in MacIntyre’s doctrine of practice as expounded both in his After Virtue and his writings subsequent to it.