Books published by University of Notre Dame Press

Vittorio Hosle attempts no less than an outline of a political ethics for the twenty-first century. He not only raises the question of the relationship between morals and politics but proposes a relatively complex answer to it.

Development ethics is a growing discipline that deals both academically and practically with the moral assessment of the ends, means, and processes of development. This book contains essays that honor and build on the pioneering work of Denis Goulet (1931-2006), arguably the founding father of development ethics.

Features essays that explores the survival of Catholic culture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England - a time of Protestant domination and sometimes persecution. This work examines not only devotional, political, autobiographical, and other texts, but also material objects such as church vestments, architecture, and symbolic spaces.

Examines a diverse set of poems, plays, and chronicles produced in Cheshire and its vicinity from the 1190s to the 1650s that argue for the localization of British literary history. This title challenges chronologies of literary history that emphasize cultural rupture and view the 'Renaissance' as a sharp break from England's medieval past.

In this extraordinary contribution to Nietzsche studies, Robert Alejandro offers an original interpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy viewed as a complete whole. Alejandro painstakingly traces the different ways in which Nietzsche reconfigured and shifted his analyses of morality and of the human condition, until he was content with the final result: nothing was dispensable; everything was necessary. This is a philosophy of reconciliation-hardly nihilism-and it is a perspective that is not adequately addressed elsewhere in the literature on Nietzsche. Alejandro traces the evolution of Nietzsche's thought by identifying the different layers of his philosophy, expressed in a complex array of stories and historical narratives. Alejandro analyzes the different stories of Nietzsche, places those stories within a tradition of genealogical theorizing, and interprets both the stories and the genealogy in terms of one of Nietzsche's unique features, his use of "e;historiobiography."e; According to Alejandro, historiobiography blends the idea of an attunement with all history and one's awareness of this attunement. As a mode of philosophizing, historiobiography allows Nietzsche to view all human history as if it runs through his own life and thoughts. Alejandro argues that Nietzsche deployed three strategies to find relief from his sense of the meaninglessness of life: his magnified concept of what he himself represented in human history, his doctrine of the eternal recurrence, and his philosophy of reconciliation.

A translation of Osbern Bokenham's ""Legendys of Hooly Wummen"" (1443-1447), the first all-female hagiography. Translated from Latinale Middle English, it contains the Augustinian friar's version of the stories of 13 women saints from gospel, apocrypha, martyrology and high-medieval history.

Leading theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas shows how discussions of Christology and the authority of scripture involve questions about what kind of community the church must be to rightly tell the stories of God. He challenges the dominant assumption of contemporary Christian social ethics that there is a special relation between Christianity and some form of liberal democratic social system.

Analyzes the mobilization of Latino voters at the state and national levels during the 2004 campaign and the efforts of Latino communities to influence electoral outcomes. The volume avoids generalizations about the 'Latino vote' and illustrates its complexity, as well as the opportunities and challenges faced by Latino voters and Latino leaders.

This work considers the complex, far reaching issues surrounding the Human Genome Project - an international scientific enterprise aimed at attaining a complete sequence and locator map of the human genetic structure by the year 2005 - offering the elimination of genetic abnormalities and diseases.

This work offers a synthesis of the meaning of the sacramental rites and feasts. It should be of use to those who are interested in learning, and in instructing others in, the meaning of Christianity.

This is a rich study of O'Connor's second novel by nine scholars in the fields of American literature, theology, and religious studies. Each essay is a penetrating look at the complexity of O'Connor's religious vision, taking seriously the darker turns of faith, the meaning of violence, and the centrality of love in her work.

The title of Charles Taliaferro's book is derived from poems and stories in which a person in peril or on a quest must follow a cord or string in order to find the way to happiness, safety, or home. In one of the most famous of such tales, the ancient Greek hero Theseus follows the string given him by Ariadne to mark his way in and out of the Minotaur's labyrinth. William Blake's poem "e;Jerusalem"e; uses the metaphor of a golden string, which, if followed, will lead one to heaven itself. Taliaferro extends Blake's metaphor to illustrate the ways we can link what we see, feel, and do with deep spiritual realities. Taliaferro offers a foundational case for the recognition of the experience of the eternal God of Christianity, in which God is understood as the fount of all goodness and the subject and object of our best love, revealed through scripture, tradition, philosophical reflection, and encountered in everyday events. He addresses philosophical obstacles to the recognition of such experiences, especially objections from the "e;new atheists,"e; and explores the values involved in thinking and experiencing God as eternal. These include the belief that the eternal goodness of God subordinates temporal goods, such as the pursuit of fame and earthly glory; that God is the essence of life; and that the eternal God hallows domestic goods, blessing the everyday goods of ordinary life. An exploration of the moral and spiritual riches of the Christian tradition as an alternative to materialism and naturalism, The Golden Cord brings an originality and depth to the debate in accessible and engaging prose.

Love beneath the Napalm is James D. Redwood's collection of deeply affecting stories about the enduring effects of colonialism and the Vietnamese War over the course of a century on the Vietnamese and the American and French foreigners who became inextricably connected with their fate. These finely etched, powerful tales span a wide array of settings, from the former imperial capital of Hue at the end of the Nguyen Dynasty, to Hanoi after the American pullout from Vietnam, the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979, contemporary San Francisco, and Schenectady, New York. Redwood reveals the inner lives of the Vietnamese characters and also shows how others appear through their eyes. Some of the images and characters in Love beneath the Napalm-the look that Mr. Tu's burned and scarred face always inflicts on strangers in the title story; attorney and American Vietnam War-veteran Carlton Griswold's complicated relationship with Mary Thuy in "e;The Summer Associate"e;; Phan Van Toan's grief and desire, caught between two worlds in "e;The Stamp Collector"e;-provide a haunting, vivid portrayal of lives uprooted by conflict. Throughout, readers will find moments that cut to the quick, exposing human resilience, sorrow, joy, and the traumatic impact of war on all those who are swept up in it.

Charts the ways in which scholarship on early Christian asceticism has developed.

Plato's dialogues are universally acknowledged as standing among the masterworks of the Western philosophic tradition. What most readers do not know, however, is that Plato also authored a public letter in which he unequivocally denies ever having written a work of philosophy. If Plato did not view his written dialogues as works of philosophy, how did he conceive them, and how should readers view them? In Plato's Literary Garden, Kenneth M. Sayre brings over thirty years of Platonic scholarship to bear on these questions, arguing that Plato did not intend the dialogues to serve as repositories of philosophic doctrine, but instead composed them as teaching instruments. Focusing on the dramatic structure of the dialogues as well as their logical argumentation, Sayre's study is organized according to the progression of a horticultural metaphor adopted from the Phaedrus. Sayre illustrates each of these metaphorical "e;stages"e; with a sustained discussion of relevant dialogues, ranging from the very early Apology to the very late Philebus. In the culminating chapter, he applies the insights gained along the way to a new interpretation of Plato's elusive Form of the Good. In addition to a novel answer to the puzzling question: Why did Plato write the dialogues?, Plato's Literary Garden includes an extended discussion of the considerations that most likely led Plato to write in dialogue form, as well as new analyses of key dialogues such as the Meno, the Symposium</i., and the Theaetetus. Providing readers with practical guidelines for the difficult pursuit of trying to read beneath the surface of a Platonic dialogue, this innovative study is sure to open up new perspectives on the dialogues for both the novice and mature scholar.

All participants in late medieval debates recognized Holy Scripture as the principal authority in matters of Catholic doctrine. Popes, theologians, lawyers-all were bound by the divine truth it conveyed. Yet the church possessed no absolute means of determining the final authoritative meaning of the biblical text-hence the range of appeals to antiquity, to the papacy, and to councils, none of which were ultimately conclusive. Authority in the late medieval church was a vexing issue precisely because it was not resolved. Ian Christopher Levy's book focuses on the quest for such authority between 1370 and 1430, from John Wyclif to Thomas Netter, thereby encompassing the struggle over Holy Scripture waged between Wycliffites and Hussites on the one hand, and their British and Continental opponents on the other. Levy demonstrates that the Wycliffite/Hussite "e;heretics"e; and their opponents-the theologians William Woodford, Thomas Netter, and Jean Gerson-in fact shared a large and undisputed common ground. They held recognized licenses of expertise, venerated tradition, esteemed the church fathers, and embraced Holy Scripture as the ultimate authority in Christendom. What is more, they utilized similar hermeneutical strategies with regard to authorial intention, the literal sense, and the appeal to the fathers and holy doctors in order to open up the text. Yet it is precisely this commonality, according to Levy, that rendered the situation virtually intractable; he argues that the erroneous assumption persists today that Netter and Gerson spoke for "e;the church,"e; whereas Wyclif and Hus sought to destroy it. Levy's sophisticated study in historical theology, which reconsiders the paradigm of heresy and orthodoxy, offers a necessary adjustment in our view of church authority at the turn of the fifteenth century.

A collection of essays which provide insights into such topics as concepts of animal/human relationships; environmental and ecological history; medieval hunting; early modern collections of natural objects; the relationship of religion and nature; and the rise of science.

Focuses on the theological dimension of migration, beginning with the humanity of the immigrant, a child of God and a bearer of his image. This work states that one characteristic of globalization is the movement not only of goods and ideas but also of people. It focuses on the particular problems of immigration across the US-Mexico border.

The death of a friend is a source of pain and grief. For the author, it is also a chance to reflect on the role of friendship in our pursuit of truth. His essays explore friendship as the bond linking Christians, Muslims and Jews alike to the religious traditions embraced in the search for truth.

Contributes to the contemporary discussion of secularity prompted especially by Charles Taylor's book A Secular Age. Unlike Taylor's work, however, this collection concentrates specifically on secular reason and explicitly on its relation to Christianity.

Examining the contributions of truth-telling mechanisms, such as truth commissions, to long-term sustainable peace, this book argues that to ensure a future that does not reiterate the past, the atrocities of war and conflict must be brought to light and addressed. It highlights the intersection of peace building and transitional justice.

In Medieval Autographies, A. C. Spearing develops a new engagement of narrative theory with medieval English first-person writing, focusing on the roles and functions of the "e;I"e; as a shifting textual phenomenon, not to be defined either as autobiographical or as the label of a fictional speaker or narrator. Spearing identifies and explores a previously unrecognized category of medieval English poetry, calling it "e;autography."e; He describes this form as emerging in the mid-fourteenth century and consisting of extended nonlyrical writings in the first person, embracing prologues, authorial interventions in and commentaries on third-person narratives, and descendants of the dit, a genre of French medieval poetry. He argues that autography arose as a means of liberation from the requirement to tell stories with preordained conclusions and as a way of achieving a closer relation to lived experience, with all its unpredictability and inconsistencies. Autographies, he claims, are marked by a cluster of characteristics including a correspondence to the texture of life as it is experienced, a montage-like unpredictability of structure, and a concern with writing and textuality. Beginning with what may be the earliest extended first-person narrative in Middle English, Winner and Waster, the book examines instances of the dit as discussed by French scholars, analyzes Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Prologue as a textual performance, and devotes separate chapters to detailed readings of Hoccleve's Regement of Princes prologue, his Complaint and Dialogue, and the witty first-person elements in Osbern Bokenham's legends of saints. An afterword suggests possible further applications of the concept of autography, including discussion of the intermittent autographic commentaries on the narrative in Troilus and Criseyde and Capgrave's Life of Saint Katherine.

In recent years, Niccolo Machiavelli's works have been viewed primarily with historical interest as analysis of the tactics used by immoral political officials. Roger D. Masters, a leading expert in the relationship between modern natural sciences and politics, argues boldly in this book that Machiavelli should be reconsidered as a major philosopher whose thought makes the wisdom of antiquity accessible to the modern (and post-modern) condition, and whose understanding of human nature is superior to that of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, or Mill. Central to Masters's claim is his discovery, based on previously untranslated documents, that Machiavelli knew and worked with Leonardo da Vinci between 1502-1507. An interdisciplinary tour de force, Machiavelli, Leonardo, and the Science of Power will challenge, perplex, and ultimately delight readers with its evocative story of the relationship between Machiavelli and da Vinci, their crucial roles in the emergence of modernity, and the vast implications this holds for contemporary life and society.

In this volume Russell Hittinger presents a comprehensive and critical treatment of the attempt to restate and defend a theory of natural law, particularly as proposed by Germain Grisez and John Finnis.