Abstract

The four essays in this little volume are the essence of a lifetime of thought, lecturing and writing by a leading twentieth century philosopher. Josef Pieper's theory of festivity was forged in dismal wartime Germany. Agreeing with Nietzsche that "the trick is not to arrange a festival but to find people who can enjoy it," he discovers a rage for anti-festival sweeping the earth: "C'est la guerre qui correspond a la fete!" Yet Pieper conveys 'certain tidings' of the divine guarantee of the world and of human salvation. In each of these essays Dr. Pieper surveys twentieth century world views. In "Hope and History" he contrasts Baudelaire's and Dostoevsky's dire warnings of an extreme concentration of evil with the promise of the Apocalypse: victory over death; resurrection; a new heaven and a new earth. "The Unavoidable Dilemma of a Non-Christian Philosophy", he says, "is that while Plato, Pythagoras and Aristotle, the founders of Occidental philosophy, require an unprejudiced openness to theology, the secularized modern European or North American does not even know what 'wisdom in divine affairs' means." Finally, in "Leisure" he points out that in contemporary life utility demands to be the measure of all things, including 'spare time' and even the intellectual life of the university. However, Plato, like the Christians, says that only in celebrating divine worship does man lose the shape of a slave.