Person-Centered Politics

Person-centered Politics, in dialogue with some of major contemporary philosophers and thinkers, proposes a renewed vision of politics by presenting a renewal of the real social and transcendent dimensions of personal existence

What accounts for the widespread disillusionment with politics? Person-centered Politics suggests that politics today, through its structures, processes, and institutions tends to presuppose and to impose a certain caricature of the human person that inhibits and frustrates a real sense of personal participation in an authentic common good of politics and society.

In 12 chapters that touch on fundamental themes of political philosophy, Person-centered Politics proposes the social and transcendent dimensions of personal existence and their application to the renewal of politics today. The themes explore the commonly accepted assumptions of politics today and how a renewed understanding of the person can invigorate political discourse and action.

In Person-centered Politics the author is in continuous dialogue with some of the major contemporary philosophers and thinkers, such as Eric Voegelin, David Walsh, Robert Sokolowski, Vaclav Havel, Pierre Manent, Peter Simpson, and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. Detailed footnotes in each chapter provide reference to further sources of enlightenment and research.

Person-centered Politics proposes an outline for a renewed vision of politics that is centered on the truth of human existence, and not a politics that distorts and suffocates the human spirit, because, in the words of E. Voegelin, ‘the right order of the soul through philosophy furnishes the standard for the right order of society’—and not the other way round.

The Rev. Professor Eamonn O Higgins presents us with a book of astonishing erudition and profound philosophical depth…he leads us with competence and passion through several centuries of social and intellectual development of our societies to confront us with the great questions of the meaning and destiny of the human person, the love of man, and the love of God.

Person-centered Politics is ‘a study that I judge to be a masterful account of how the understanding of the person lies at the heart of any serious attempt to understand the political and historical moment that we inhabit today. It draws skillfully on the rich tradition of Catholic theological and philosophical reflection that illuminates what is living and what is dead in modernity. Every chapter is brimming with powerful quotations and selections that the author has mined with great discernment. This is one of those rare texts that not only argues for the centrality of the person but actually demonstrates its significance in shaping the paradigmatic self-understanding of the civilization we all share. It actually points us toward the formation of what St. John Paul II denominated as a “civilization of love.” For all of the fractiousness and contentiousness of the world around us we begin to see that it contains within it the seeds of a profound inner renewal. To suggest all of this is quite an accomplishment for one book.

Fr. Eamonn O’Higgins, L.C., is professor of philosophy at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome.

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