Vlastimil Vohanka

What are values? How do we come to know them? How are values re­lated to morality? How is it possible to act against one´s better knowl­edge? How can one become blind to values? How important is requit­ed love for human happiness? These are just some of the questions to which Dietrich von Hildebrand offers profound and original responses. He arrives at these answers not primarily by a critical discussion of oth­er thinkers (classical or modern) but by turning to the “things them­selves,” that is, to the reality of moral life. Von Hildebrand’s keen sense for categorization, crucial distinctions, and systematic philosophizing does not reduce the rich and complex sphere of moral phenomena to a few abstract principles or rules. On the contrary, it allows the reader of his works to see the moral data with new clarity and explicitness. Although von Hildebrand’s importance as an early phenomenol­ogist and a moral philosopher has been generally recognized for de­cades, The Moral Philosophy of Dietrich von Hildebrand is the first full-fledged monograph on von Hildebrand’s moral philosophy available to date. Despite this pioneering effort, its aim is not to treat all the themes belonging to this area with equal depth and breadth. Rather, it focuses on the themes indicated by the aforementioned questions and relates them according to their inner systematic links rather than according to how and when they appear in von Hildebrand’s works. It also engag­es von Hildebrand in a critical dialogue, particularly with the ethics of Plato and Aristotle. This book will serve as a very good introduction not just to von Hildebrand´s moral philosophy but to his thought in general.

This book in the epistemology of religion discusses a wide spectrum of sources in analytic, scholastic and apologetic philosophy and theology in order to argue non-deductively for the following thesis: Apart from religious experience, it cannot be evident (in a defined sense of psychological impossibility) that the Trinity doctrine is logically possible. Hence, this conclusion is drawn deductively: Apart from religious experience, it cannot be evident that Christianity or the Trinity doctrine have non-minimal logical probability. As the author points out, however, they still may be justified, well-argued, plausibly logically probable, and probable in other than the logical sense. The book will be of interest to philosophers of religion, analytic theologians, and researchers in analytic scholasticism.