Product Description: William James' celebrated lecture on The Will to Believehas kindled spirited controversy since the day it was delivered. In this lively reappraisal of that controversy, Father O'Connell contributes some fresh contentions: that James' argument should be viewed against his indebtedness to Pascal and Renouvier; that it works primarily to validate our over-beliefs; and most surprising perhaps, that James envisages our passional natureas intervening, not after, but before and throughout, our intellectual weighing of the evidence for belief...read more

A great thinker once said that all philosophy is merely footnotes to Plato.Through Plato, Father O'Connell provides us here with an introduction to all philosophy. Designed for beginning students in philosophy, Plato on the Human Paradox examines and confronts human nature and the eternal questions concerning human nature through the dialogues of Plato, focusing on the Apology, Phaedo, Books III-VI of the Republic, Meno, Symposium, and O'Connell presents us here with an introduction to Plato through the philosopher's quest to define human excellenceor arete in terms of defining what human beingis body and soul, focusing on Plato's preoccupations with the questions of how and what it means to have a good lifein relation to or as opposed to a moral life. (view table of contents)

Product Description: In his preceding work, Soundings in Augustine's Imagination, Father O'Connell outlined the three basic images Augustine employs to frame his view of the human condition. In the present study, he applies the same techniques of image-analysis to the three major conversionsrecounted in the Confessions...read more

Product Description: As a young student in Paris, O'Connell was first enamored of the intriguing artistic imagery of Augustine's works. The imagery continued to impress him as his scholarship continued. Now, after many years of research and regarding study on the topic, a thorough treatment of Augustine's image clustersis revealed in this volume, Soundings in St...read more

Product Description: When this book was originally published in 1969, it added fuel to a controversy (sparked by the author in a previous work) that continues unabated to the present day. Now, available for the first time in a paperback edition, it offers a new generation of readers a detailed exposition of the Confessions, showing how the Plotinian view of man as a fallen soul is present in this work and, furthermore, that it is the key to its interpretation...read more

Product Description: This book rounds off the study of St. Augustine's view of the human condition which Fr. O'Connell began in St. Augustine's Early Theory of Man, A.D. 386-391, and continued in St. Augustine's Confessions: The Odyssey of Soul. The central thesis of that first book, and the guiding hypothesis of the second, proposed that Augustine thought of us in "Plotinian" terms, as "fallen souls," and that he interpreted, in all sincerity, the teachings of Scripture as reflecting that same view...read more

Product Description: The Phenomenon of Man, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, has been characterized as metaphysics, poetry, and mysticism-virtually everything except what its author claimed it was: a purely scientific mmoir.Professor O'Connell here follows up on a nest of clues, uncovered first in an early unpublished essay, then in the series of essays contained principally in The Vision of the Past...read more

Product Description: The Phenomenon of Man, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, has been characterized as metaphysics, poetry, and mysticism-virtually everything except what its author claimed it was: a purely scientific mmoir.Professor O'Connell here follows up on a nest of clues, uncovered first in an early unpublished essay, then in the series of essays contained principally in The Vision of the Past...read more

Product Description: Although it is widely acknowledged that St. Augustine was a consummate artist as well as a great philosopher, and that he was deeply concerned with art, beauty and human values, relatively little attention has been paid to his theory of aesthetics...read more

Product Description: the work in which the disciple is providing an introduction to his master's thought

Product Description: Augustinus (354–430 CE), son of a pagan, Patricius of Tagaste in North Africa, and his Christian wife Monica, while studying in Africa to become a rhetorician, plunged into a turmoil of philosophical and psychological doubts in search of truth, joining for a time the Manichaean society...read more