One of the most important philosophy titles published in the twentieth century, Josef Pieper's Leisure, the Basis of Culture is more significant, even more crucial, today than it was when it first appeared more than fifty years ago. This edition also includes his work The Philosophical Act. Leisure is an attitude of the mind and a condition of the soul that fosters a capacity to perceive the reality of the world. Pieper shows that the Greeks and medieval Europeans, understood the great value and importance of leisure. He also points out that religion can be born only in leisure -- a leisure that allows time for the contemplation of the nature of God. Leisure has been, and always will be, the first foundation of any culture. Pieper maintains that our bourgeois world of total labor has vanquished leisure, and issues a startling warning: Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for non-activity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture -- and ourselves.

La teoria di Pieper sulla festa è esposta nello stesso titolo del libro, 'Sintonia con il mondo': si può vivere autenticamente la festa solo sulla base del proprio consenso verso il mondo nel suo insieme. 'Consenso' vuol dire riconoscere che il mondo, l'intera realtà ha un senso che noi condividiamo, ha una bontà originaria di cui ci rendiamo conto. Solo se ci mettiamo in sintonia con il significato di fondo di cui il mondo è portatore, è possibile vivere autenticamente la festa.

German philosopher Pieper (1904-97) is considered very accessible, and many of his books have been translated into English. Kopff (U. of Colorado-Boulder) here translates and introduces his treatise on tradition. It delves into such issues as what tradition is and what it is made of, its relation to history and authority, and particularly its sacred dimensions. Überlieferung: Begriff und Anspruch was published in 1970 by Kösel in Munich. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Plato's famous dialogue, the Phaedrus, was variously subtitled in antiquity: 'On Beauty,' 'On Love,' 'On the Psyche.' It is also concerned with the art of rhetoric, of thought and communication.
Pieper gives interpretation of the dialogue. Leaving the more recondite scholarly preoccupations aside, he concentrates on the content, bringing the actual situation in the dialogue - Athens and its intellectuals engaged in spirited debate - alive. Equally alive is the discussion of ideas, which are brought to bear on contemporary experience and made to prove the perennial validity of Socratic wisdom, and its power to excite the mind. The main thesis - that in poetry and in love man is 'beside himself,' that is, divinely inspired - is discussed with reference to modern poets, novelists, and modern psychology.

Il libro, che si inserisce nell'animata discussione giuridica e politica sul significato di giustizia, intende essere una guida a una delle principali virtù cardinali della tradizione cristiana.

In this stimulating and still-timely study, Josef Pieper takes up a theme of paramount importance to his thinking - that festivals belong by rights among the great topics of philosophical discussion.
Pieper exposes the pseudo-festivals, in their harmless and their sinister forms; traditional feasts contaminated by commercialism; artificial holidays created in the interest of merchandisers; holidays by coercion, decreed by dictators the world over; festivals as military demonstrations; holidays empty of significance. And lastly we are given the apocalyptic vision of a nihilistic world which would seek its release not in festivities but in destruction.

A single theme runs through the three essays on St. Thomas gathered in this book. It is the theme of mystery or, more exactly, the response of the searching human intellect to the fact of mystery. Both the fact and the response are suggested in a short biography of Aquinas that forms the first essay and are then sketched out in detail by a presentation of the 'negative element' in his philosophy. The third essays shows that contemporary Existentialism is in basic agreement with the philosophia perennis on this fundamental element of philosophical thinking.

The philosophical classic explores the value and significance of leisure, arguing that it is the foundation of any culture, necessary for the development of religion and the contemplation of the nature of God, and issues a warning about the loss of insight due to our substitution of hectic amusements for nonactivity, silence, and true leisure.