Philosopher · Contemporary
Josef Pieper
1904–1997 · Thomist philosophy of culture
A German lay philosopher of Münster who wrote short, lucid books restating St. Thomas for modern readers: on the four cardinal virtues and the three theological, on leisure as the basis of culture, on hope, festivity, and the divine madness of Plato's Phaedrus. He held that philosophy is contemplative wonder and that the modern world of “total work” has forgotten both leisure and worship.
Why he matters: The most readable Thomist of the century; his virtue books and “Leisure: The Basis of Culture” have introduced countless readers to the Catholic philosophical tradition.
School of Thomism · Sapiential and spiritual Thomism
Pieper, Chenu, Pinckaers and Bouyer: Thomas as a spiritual master and a theologian of the Gospel, whose Summa is built on the beatitudes and the gifts of the Spirit, whose ethics is a morality of happiness and virtue, and who ended by calling all he had written straw. The recovery of Thomas's own spirituality against the manuals.
Others in this strand: Marie-Dominique Chenu, OP, Servais Pinckaers, OP, Louis Bouyer, Dante Alighieri, St. Catherine of Siena
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each question the test asks.