Michael Novak

The Tiber Was Silver

In this work, the author 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. This author, however, articulates this experience of formlessness in an American context.

The experience of nothingness

Bridges the gap between the Catholic idea of commonwealth and Protestant liberal tradition.

Free Persons and the Common Good

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.

The Experience of Nothingness

Michael Novak's eyewitness report on the second and pivotal session of Vatican II in 1964 vividly inter weaves pageantry, politics, and theology. An unusually well-informed lay intellectual, who had earned a theological degree just before the Council, Novak applauded the purposes of Pope John XXIII and his successor Paul VI-"to throw open the windows of the church." In this report, he coined the classic description of the foes of the reforms at Vatican II as the party of "nonhistorical orthodoxy," emphasizing the eternal and unchanging, neglecting history and contingency. The author recounts many moments of high drama-Pope Paul VI's opening speech, the vote on the collegiality of bishops, the plea of Cardinal Bea on behalf of the chapter on Jews, and Bishop De Smedt's defense of religious freedom. His colorful chapter on the American bishops in 1964 serves as a fascinating benchmark, as do his many insights into the new role of the laity. His final chapter is a moving tribute to the Open Church engaging the contemporary world, and his new introduction brings this report up to date. This work will be of compelling interest to those interested in the post-conciliar fall of Communism, under the great John Paul II-who took his name from his two predecessors at Vatican II. The winner of the million-dollar Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion (1994), Michael Novak is a theologian, author, and former U.S. ambassador. He currently holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. where he is director of social and political studies. His writings have appeared in every major Western language, and in Chinese, Bengali, Korean, and Japanese. Also available from Transaction are his Catholic Social Thought and Liberal Institutions, The Experience of Nothingness, The Guns of Lattimer, Unmeltable Ethnics, Belief and Unbelief, and Choosing Presidents.

The Open Church

On September 10, 1897, in the hamlet of Lattimer Mines, Pennsylvania, an armed posse took aim and fired into a crowd of oncoming mine workers, who were marching in their corner of the coal-mining region to call their fellow miners out on strike. The marchers - Poles, Slovaks, Hungarians, most of whom could not yet speak English - were themselves armed only with an American flag and a timid, budding confidence in their new found rights as free men in their newly adopted country. The mine operators took another view of these rights and of the strange, alien men who claimed them. When the posse was done firing, nineteen of the demonstrators were dead and thirty-nine were seriously wounded. Some six months later a jury of their peers was to exonerate the deputies of any wrong-doing. This long-forgotten incident is here movingly retold by Michael Novak, himself the son of Slovak immigrants and one of our most gifted writers and social observers. In his hands, the so-called "Lattimer Massacre" becomes not only a powerful story in its own right (and an invaluable key to the history of the growth of the United Mine Workers), but an allegory of that peculiarly American experience undergone over and over again throughout the land, and down to this very day; the experience of new immigrants, still miserable with poverty and bewilderment and suffering the trauma of culture shock, being confronted by the hostility and blind contempt of the "real" Americans. In Michael Novak's uniquely vivid account, the incident at Lattimer is seen as a tragedy brought on not so much by inhumanity as by the profound failure of majority WASP society to understand the needs and responses of "foreigners." The Guns of Lattimer is a gripping book that tells Americans, old and new, a great deal about themselves and the society they live in.

Guns Of Lattimer

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.

An Invitation to Religious Studies (Third Revised Edition)

Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove

As one of the foremost contemporary public intellectuals and scholars of our time, Hamid Dabashi's interests and writings span subjects ranging from Islamic philosophy and political ideology to Iranian art and Persian literature; from Sufism and Orientalism to Iranian and world cinema and contemporary Arab and Muslim visual arts; and from postcolonial theory and globalization to imperialism and public affairs. There is a direct connection between his theoretical innovations and the angle of his public interventions on the urgent global issues of the day. This book brings together some of his most important writings, especially those that offer new ways of understanding Islam, Iran, Islamist ideology, global art, and the condition of global modernity. The book shows the underlying conceptual themes that unify Dabashi's wide-ranging and brilliantly insightful corpus. Book jacket.

The Myth of Romantic Love and Other Essays

«A ideia nova mais importante que este livro contém é que há muito mais coisas por detrás do progresso político e económico das sociedades avançadas do que aquilo que os nossos economistas, quer de direita, quer de esquerda, já salientaram.» Partindo desta constatação fundamental e da sua discordância pessoal da ideia de que a ética protestante seja um dos pilares edificadores do capitalismo (como defendeu Max Weber), Michael Novak pretende neste livro «dar uma ideia de como a ética católica pode circunscrever, corrigir e alargar o espírito do capitalismo». O seu discurso bem argumentado e frontal fazse acompanhar de perto pelo pensamento social da Igreja de Leão XIII a João Paulo II, numa análise contundente e perspicaz da realidade económica e social do nosso tempo que interessa a todos quantos, católicos ou não, se interessam pelas bases morais das sociedades modernas Pretendese essencialmente semear vontades, relativizar sentimentos, perspetivar pedagogias do quotidiano, conduzir à reflexão acerca de temas que nos aprecem banais só porque julgamos que respeitam apenas aos outros, o que não é de todo verdade.

A Ética Católica e o Espirito do Capitalismo

Politics and Culture in the Seventies

The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics

Examines the family, welfore reform, free markets, self-government, and the founding of America in a defense of a free and virtuous society

Reflections on Moral Ecology

On Cultivating Liberty

...a major work for our times. —Irving Kristol, The Public Interest

The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Michael Novak's work is challenging. We often disagree sharply in out interpretations and assessments of liberation theology, but he raises important issues which call for clarification and response. Arthur F.McGovern

Questions about Liberation Theology

Will it Liberate?

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 Squishy Prince

William Brailsford

Cornelis Heesters

A Free Society Reader rises to the challenge of freedom in the twenty-first century, offering thoughts and insights with significant implications for citizens of today's brand new world. Our era's most prominent figures in the fields of Christianity and liberty speak about Pope John Paul II's vision of a free society, conceptualize Christianity and political economy, debate issues of democracy and the free society, and question the role of culture. Together for the first time in one volume, these preeminent thinkers provide inspiration and insight to scholars, students, and general readers charting the enormous changes the new millennium has seen.

Principles for the New Millennium

A Free Society Reader

In arguing that, although maligned by most as soulless, business actually creates social connections and can be morally uplifting, an award-winning author presents a defense of the moral value of materialism and its counterpart, natural virtue. 30,000 first printing. Tour.

Business as a Calling

"Novak is to be commended for raising the question of liberty in connection with economic justiceThis volume makes a significant contribution to the discussion of Catholic social thought and contemporary economic policies." --John T. Pawlikowski, O.S.M, Theology Today

Freedom With Justice

Catholic Social Thought and Liberal Institutions

30 years after the release of his ground-breaking work, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, Michael Novak returns to answer the question of what gives rise to democratic capitalism - that intricate blend of commerce and rule of law that encourages peace and global trade. This essay is vital to understanding the intangible environment that best inspires human flourishing, as it discovers capitalism's essence, and uncovers what truly fosters creativity.Novak articulates how democratic capitalism works toward creating, not just consuming, wealth, along with encouraging ambition, discipline, and mutual benefit. He explains how critics fail to consider the interaction between the system and the role that economic, political, and moral liberties play in comprehensive human flourishing.This new and exciting work enlivens the connection between the Bible and democratic capitalism by showcasing how seamlessly the dynamic polity fits with the imperatives of human capacity and drive.

Thirty Years Later

...a major work for our times. --Irving Kristol, The Public Interest

Michael Novak

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