Choosing our king;: Powerful symbols in presidential politics

Novak, Michael

Macmillan

Hardcover book from 1971, 1972 by a professor of philosophy and religious studies at the State University of New York, and staff member of several presidential campaigns of the day. The author argues that rather than a true melting pot, America has distinct ethnic elements that play out in the form of political parties and different ethnic groups. Opposing forces can uphold or alienate individuals depending upon their backgrounds. In particular, the author is critical of the strong WASP conception of America, and believes that individuals do not have to 'melt' into any mold but can assert their own legitimate superculture.

Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics

History

Americas

Macmillan Pub. Co.

Any vision of capitalism's future prospects must take into account the powerful cultural influence Catholicism has exercised throughout the world. The Church had for generations been reluctant to come to terms with capitalism, but, as Michael Novak argues in this important book, a hundred-year-long debate within the Church has yielded a richer and more humane vision of capitalism than that described in Max Weber's classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Novak notes that the influential Catholic intellectuals who, early in this century saw through Weber's eyes an economic system marked by ruthless individualism and cold calculation had misread the reality. For, as history has shown, the lived experience of capitalism has depended to a far greater extent than they had realized on a culture characterized by opportunity, cooperative effort, social initiative, creativity, and invention. Drawing on the major works of modern Papal thought, Novak demonstrates how the Catholic tradition has come to reflect this richer interpretation of capitalist culture. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII condemned socialism as a futile system, but also severely criticized existing market systems. In 1991, John Paul II surprised many by conditionally proposing "a business economy, a market economy, or simply free economy" as a model for Eastern Europe and the Third World. Novak notes that as early as 1963, this future Pope had signaled his commitment to liberty. Later, as Archbishop of Krakow, he stressed the "creative subjectivity" of workers, made by God in His image as co-creators. Now, as Pope, he calls for economic institutions worthy of a creative people, and for political and cultural reforms attuned to a new "human ecology" of family and work. Novak offers an original and penetrating conception of social justice, rescuing it as a personal virtue necessary for social activism. Since Pius XI made this idea canonical in 1931, the term has been rejected by the Right as an oxymoron and misused by the Left as a party platform. Novak applies this newly formulated notion of social justice to the urgent worldwide problems of ethnicity, race, and poverty. His fresh rethinking of the Catholic ethic comes just in time to challenge citizens in those two large and historically Catholic regions, Eastern Europe and Latin America, now taking their first steps as market economies, as well as those of us in the West seeking a realistic moral vision.

Catholic Ethic And The Spirit Of Capitalism

Religion & Spirituality

Religious Studies

Free Press

Freedom with Justice: Catholic Social Thought and Liberal Institutions

Christian Books & Bibles

Harper&Row

Eighteen years after Vatican II, this preeminent Catholic author called to account the values and policy of the Catholic church, reevaluating some of the changes that he helped to effect and the impact of these changes on American Catholic life.  He concluded, 'The world and its church looks far different now in 1983 from its reality in 1965.... All is not well.' Originally published by Harper & Row in 1983.

Confession of a Catholic

The essence of Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove remains intact: its vision of religious studies as sustained refl ection on our lifelong voyage to discover who we are. The story we choose for ourselves, the story we live, can sacralize or secularize our lives and our world by the way in which we choose to relate to it. With this awareness of the story dimension of life, Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove opens us to awe, reverence, and wonder at the risks and possibilities of human freedom.This book is even more important than it was thirty years ago. We need religion to strike deeply into the self, away from public glare. Unless Americans become more sophisticated about the language of the self, inner life will shrivel. In addition, our people will continue to be vulnerable to fundamentalist movements. Such movements take over too many innocents. Th ey promise, and sometimes deliver, a touching happiness. But they do so by closing the spirit in a powerful and dangerous way.Families and schools do not provide a large and critical vocabulary by which to express the inner longings of the spirit. The souls of many are parched and they gladly accept water, any water, from those who off er it. Th e liberation of the religious spirit from trivial, closed, and simplistic systems of thought can only be achieved through the development of a critical language, exercises, and disciplines that open rather than close the mind, that lead to higher viewpoints, breakthroughs, and new syntheses, in a constant enlargement of spirit. Novak's book leads us to that place.

Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove: An Invitation to Religious Studies

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

HarperCollins, Publishers

In The Experience of Nothingness, Michael Novak has two objectives. First, he shows the paths by which the experience of nothingness is becoming common among all those who live in free societies. Second, he details the various experiences that lead to the nothingness point of view. Most discussions of these matters have been so implicated in the European experience that the term "nihilism" has a European ring. Novak, however, articulates this experience of formlessness in an American context.In his new introduction, the author lists four requirements that must be met by an individual in order for the experience of nothingness to emerge: a commitment to honesty, a commitment to courage, recognition of how widespread the experience of nothingness is, and a virtue of will. Novak writes that these principles are what guide self-described philosophical nihilists. But many people simply borrow the nihilistic conclusions without observing the moral commitments to them. For this reason Novak believes that nihilism is fraudulent as a theory intended to explain the experience of nothingness. Nihilism in practice, he maintains, often results in a form of intolerance. The Experience of Nothingness is a work that will cause many scholars to rethink their beliefs. It should be read by philosophers, theologians, sociologists, political theorists, and cultural historians.

Experience of Nothingness (Tb1938)

Harpercollins

God and the Marketplace: Essays on the Morality of Wealth Creation (Choice in Welfare)

Robinson, Simon

et.al.

Roberts, Richard

Jukes, Bishop John

Kennedy, Rev. John

Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA)

Awakening from nihilism: Why truth matters (Religion and liberty)

IEA Health and Welfare Unit

Professor Jonathan Sacks' 1988 IEA Hayek Memorial Lecture on Morals and Markets was generally regarded as one of the most stimulating contributions to this subject in recent years. The institute therefore commissioned three other distinguished authors to write commentaries on Professor Sacks' paper. The four papers are published in this volume, together with an Afterword by Professor Sacks.

Morals and Markets: Seventh Annual Hayek Memorial Lecture (IEA Occasional Paper 108)

Business & Money

SACKS, JONATHAN

Davidson, Robert

Barry, Norman

Business Culture

Inst of Economic Affairs

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