On Josef Pieper

Abstract

Josef Pieper (1904-1997) was a German Catholic philosopher. He belongs in the company of those philosophers and theologians who brought Greek philosophy and Thomas Aquinas back to life in the twentieth century, against much of the ideological thinking of that century. His writings are marked by a particularly lucid, eloquent, and compelling style that avoids philosophical jargon. It is probably true that Pieper did not make original contributions to philosophy, but those who have struggled through Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, as well as many other significant philosophers and theologians, and those who are beset by ideological thinking, will find in Pieper a very clear and accessible guide to the very sources of Western culture, a guidance that can only be given by someone who deeply inhabited that culture in his own life. While the Paper considers Pieper's work generally, it includes a separate discussion of his political philosophy, and a separate, much longer discussion of his understanding of philosophy and theology and of the intimate connection between them.