Thomas Langan

A concise and readable overview of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, from Being and Time to the postwar period. Langan argues that Heidegger's work forms a comprehensive whole, which never abandoned his initial project. Langan's work should be of particular interest to students of Traditionalism who wish to understand Heidegger's view of the history of Western thought and metaphysics.

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Per tienne Gilson, "philosophy is a collective enterprise in which no one can pretend to take part unless he is first properly introduced." To provide that proper introduction vis- -vis the modern period, Gilson and Langan move systematically through the landmark figures and ideas of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Beginning with the vestiges of medievalism in Montaigne and Bacon, they then cover the interplay of science and philosophy (Descartes, Newton, and Vico); the emergence of a new political ethos (Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau); the installation of the golden age of modern metaphysics (Spinoza, Leibniz, and Wolff); the juxtaposition of materialism with idealism (Newton, Berkeley, and Hume); the Christian reaction (Pascal and Gerdil); and the rise of Romanticism (Lessing, Herder and Kant). With its emphasis on the doctrinal content of each philosopher, braced by healthy portions of biographical detail, Modern Philosophy is a comprehensive treatment of what it has meant and what it means to philosophize, the ambitious breadth of which is matched only by its absorbing depth.

What is 'human being'? In this book, Thomas Langan draws on a lifetime of study to offer a new understanding of this central question of our existence, turning to phenomenology and philosophical anthropology to help us better understand who we are as individuals and communities and what makes us act they way we do. While recognizing the human being as an individual with a particular genetic makeup and history, Langan also probes the real essence of Human Being that philosophers have tended to ignore. He argues that Human Being is the result of the experiences of humans throughout time - an ontological reality that not only incorporates our collective memories, institutions, habits, ethical practices, and religious faiths but also unfolds in time with its own history to inform individuals in the present. He provides tools and descriptions for accessing this broader historical and present-day reality, investigating deeper structures of human being to show how those historical roots can be appropriated and made meaningful. Building on his earlier works, ""Human Being"" is also readily accessible on its own. Langan shows how the larger issues discussed in those books, ranging from the Catholic tradition to high technology, relate to being human while he brings to light new philosophical insight and ideas. Because human beings continue to evolve, informing our everyday understanding of the world, Langan shows how vital it is for us to think through the sense of human being and how great a challenge that is in today's society. His work offers insight into Human Being that invites readers to think and live more deeply in their humanity - and to face the challenges of a rapidly changing world by reawakening perennial quests for love and the divine, and the very search for meaning itself.

Exploring virtual reality and technology's effect of our very being, this book interweaves the worlds of technology and philosophy. It considers such questions as: what is being within the context of virtual reality?; and if virtual reality is, in fact, real, what is this life we are caught up in?

In his Tradition and Authenticity in the Search for Ecumenic Widsom, Thomas Langan argued that the close interaction of traditions in today's society calls for methodical critical appropriation of the beliefs fostered by the principal traditions. He also promised to demonstrate by example how such appropriation could be accomplished. In The Catholic Tradition, Langan successfully fulfills that vow by showing how a tradition-the Catholic-has shaped his own outlook. In this comprehensive study, Langan examines the history of the Catholic Chruch and the origins of its teachings since the Church's conception. Although committed to the Catholic religion, Langan does not obscure the Church's failings as he lays out the fundamentals of the Catholic faith. With meticulous detail, he treats the great Christological councils, discusses the differences in the spiritualities of East and West, and portrays the crucial roles that the pope and bishops played during the Dark Ages. He examines the role of the pope's authority in the defintion of doctrine and the importance of symbols within the Church. He incorporates the thought of Augustine Aquinas, and medieval Catholicism as he traces the rise and decline of Christian Europe, the priesthood, the Eucharist, and spirituality. Satan has no greater triumph, Langan asserts, than when Catholics, wo are supposedly recipients of the Good News of God's universal love, allow selections from their tradition to be turned into sectarianism and ideology. This balanced history of the Church as human reality deals with just such perversions. But despite betrayals byits own across the centuries, the Catholic tradition, with its origin at Sinai, remaisn the oldest and largest extant religious institution. Students of theology, as well as anyone interested in Catholicism, or in man's struggle for any higher tradition, will welcome his addition to the literature.

Our emerging world system is bringing the great traditions and cultures it has spawned into ever more intimate and dangerous contact. Although many of the same processes of change and development are unfolding in different parts of the world, distinctive traditions seem to make conflicting, perhaps irreconcilable, truth claims. The material conquest of the world, through its planetary-scale institutions and through its planetary-scale institutions and through a scientific-universalistic concept of truth, trends to relativize the claims of all cultures. In ""Tradition and Authenticity in the Search for Ecumenic Wisdom"", Thomas Langan argues that we must struggle toward a unity of discourse respectful of genuine experiences of varying civilizations if we are to live peacefully on one planet. Drawing upon the thought of Heidegger and Hegel, among others, he studies the role of explicit traditions in transmitting truths and distinguishes four genera of tradition - artistic, revelational, associational, and scientific-philosophical. Langan lays down the challenge of the ""truth question"" and shows how understanding the developmental nature of history helps realize such a project without ""imperialistically"" imposing one tradition's truth and rationality upon another's. Langan's exploration of the interaction of different traditions and his ultimate search for an ecumenic wisdom should be of interest to students and scholars of political philosophy, intellectual history, and theology.

An exegesis of Heidegger's existentialist philosophy.