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Title: Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion
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Manufacturer: Ignatius Press
List Price: $14.95
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| Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion by Ignatius Press An Answer For A World Morally Confused | Do you believe that life today is so confusing? And do you believe that the modern world is morally confused? If you do, you will find Peter Kreeft's "Back to Virtue" stimulating and enlightening. Kreeft examines modern civilization and why it is at risk. He poses the question, "What ever became of virtue?" and proceeds to examine the absence of virtue in today's world and why it's absence has led to moral confusion.
"Back to Virtue" begins with review of spiritual history and how we got to this state of confusion. In modern life, life flows from the modern world view that there is no God; therefore we play God to the world. As a result, we do not have any shared principles (virtues) as each person can decide what is virtuous and what is not. There is no notion of any universal and objective morality, no meeting place.
The rest of Kreeft's work (most of the book) examines the key to eliminating confusion, personal virtue. He goes into great detail examining each - the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues - and the role each plays in an ordered world. He ends with a beautiful discussion of the Beatitudes and their role in confronting the seven deadly sins. You will be stimulated, enlightened, and motivated by each of these discussions.
"The patient, Western civilization, may indeed die soon and will certainly die some day, for everything human is mortal. But it need not die now. Though we are sliding towards the abyss...we can (still) turn back the clock which keeps false time." All we need to do is grab onto the footholds presented in this book - the cardinal virtues, the theological virutes, and the Beatitudes. "We are the slaves of time and the masters of morality rather than vice versa. We can return."
| | Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion by Ignatius Press Virtue light with revolting analogies | While Peter Kreeft does provide a very accessible introduction to the traditional virtues and their corollaries, he certainly does not probe their actual depths. Josef Pieper's THE CARDINAL VIRTUES, though a bit more difficult, is by far worth the extra time for anyone seriously interested.
My chief complaint is Kreeft's writing style, "pop-style". In addition to incorrect punctuation (the semi-colon, in particular), his analogies are terribly revolting. Here's one example:
"Why is it that nothing can make us as sorrowful as love? It is the same reason that nothing can make us as joyful as love. I love we become the other, we slough off our skin like a snake. Underneath that hard, protective coat of otherness and ego, thre is new flesh, incomparably more sensitive than the outer skin. The heart is like a newborn bay. It is our spiritual erogenous zone, capable of exquisite joy and and exquisite sufferings by its extreme sensitivity. We appropriately cover and protect these privy parts of the soul, just as we do to the corresponding parts of the body. But when we love, we expose them, to pleasures or pains beyond imaginings."
If that doesn't irk you, the book will be fine for you. | | Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion by Ignatius Press Good but not the logical analysis I expected | | Peter Kreeft does show that the reformist where misguided in rejecting the cardinal virtues of Plato and Aristotle, just as we would be misguided by rejecting Newtonian Physics after learning Einstein's theories of relativity. You need to understand Newton in order to understand Einstein and you need to have a basic knowledge of logic and virtues in order to understand the Bible. However, he does not show exactly how the Cardinal virtues are derived from logic alone. Why only 4? Why isn't love a more important virtue than wisdom, fortitude, justice or temperance? | | Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion by Ignatius Press SOOO good | This book sat on our bookshelf for several years before I picked it up one day out of boredom. What a wonderful suprise to discover Peter Kreeft. This book gave me pause to step back from our modern world in which anything goes to see that we do live in a world of good and evil--sin and virtue. These distinctions are not to be ignored, because, as he writes, they are of "life and death" proportions.
Peter Kreeft is the modern day G.K. Chesterton. Don't miss him. | | Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion by Ignatius Press Virtue-Can We recover It? | | Philosopher and Cultural Critic Peter Kreeft has written an outstanding book discussing virture in Western Culture. He opens the book by asking "Is Virtue Out of Date?". This sets the tone as he spends the next couple of chapters on how Western Culture got to the point in the lack of virtue we now see before us. The middle of his book discusses the "Cardinal Virtues" and "Theological Virtues" and their importance. He then does a comparison and contrast between the "Beatitudes" and the "Seven Deadley Sins." His conculsion is a little too short for such a profound work, yet rating this important book four stars would not do it justice. Four and a half would be more appropiate, so I'm rounding it off at five stars. A Must read for all Christians in Western Culture, and others who are concern about the decline of virtue in our culture. |
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