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CV NEWS FEED // A new work of the famed moral philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand is now being published for the first time.
The Hildebrand Project, whose mission is to promote the religious, political, and philosophical writings of the famed German moral philosopher, has announced that after the discovery of a new manuscript in the Hildebrand collection at the State Library in Munich by Professor Martin Cajthaml, the leading Czech scholar of Dietrich von Hildebrand, the text has now been published for the first time under the title, The Roots of Moral Evil.
According to the Hildebrand Project’s press release, the newly published work “invites readers into a deeper engagement with one of the twentieth century’s most significant moral philosophers, offering new perspectives that will resonate with scholars, students, and anyone grappling with fundamental ethical questions.”
The book “delves into Hildebrand’s analysis of pride and concupiscence, extending material in the Ethics, with all new material on hatred, revenge, and laziness,” according to the Hildebrand Project. In the new work, Hildebrand offers a “careful analysis of important moral phenomena” that will appeal “to anyone interested in moral philosophy, especially those within Catholic and Christian philosophical traditions.”
In a foreword to the book, Professor John F. Crosby describes The Roots of Moral Evil as “akin to discovering a lost dialogue of Plato.”
In comments made to CatholicVote by email, Christopher Haley, Hildebrand Project’s vice president, praised the philosopher’s voluminous output, stressing the centrality of his ethical works.
“Hildebrand’s life and works contain so many apparent twists and turns that it almost borders on credulity to think that all this was the output of one man,” Haley said. “Seminal works on liturgy, love, beauty, and affectivity, heroic opposition to both Nazism and Communism, as well (at the time quite an unpopular) defense of Humanae Vitae and of the Church’s practice during the liturgical heyday of the 1960s and 70s.”
But what unites all these areas into a whole is Hildebrand’s fundamental and faithful response to the value of truth, which is perhaps most vividly developed in his ethical works. Indeed, Pope St. Paul II spoke of Hildebrand as “one of the great ethicists of the twentieth century.”
Hildebrand’s ethical philosophy helps you not only to understand, but to live and to see. He pays such close attention to human moral phenomena that readers frequently “find themselves” in his pages. He writes with great sympathy and understanding–not the kind that muddles the truth, but the kind that presents raw reality in a refined clarity. His detailed analyses of ethical phenomena are like the cuts a jeweler makes to a rough stone, letting the light of truth shine through.
“That is why a book such as The Roots of Moral Evil (I admit it doesn’t sound like a beach-reading bestseller!) actually makes for a gripping read,” Haley added, remarking that Hildebrand “probes the fundamental and universal roots of moral evil–pride and concupiscence–in their myriad manifestations in our daily lives.”
Excited that a work of the Catholic philosopher, unknown until just a few years ago, was now seeing its debut, Haley recounted, “This work was a new discovery, found in the Hildebrand Archives in the Bavarian State Library in Munich by the book’s editor Martin Cajthaml. We were completely unaware of its existence just a few years ago.”
According to Haley, the Hildebrand Project has now produced new English editions of most of Hildebrand’s works, with many more already underway.
“Imagine our excitement to find a completely new work that elaborates on some of Hildebrand’s signature insights,” he wrote to CatholicVote, lauding the hard work that went into the new publication.
“Martin Cajthaml has done a masterful job in working the manuscripts and typescripts into a cohesive work–there are not many people in the world with the knowledge of Hildebrand’s ethical philosophy to do this–and many hands and minds spent over three years in preparing the book for its final form, which is both philosophically rich but also eminently readable by anyone seriously concerned with moral topics,” he said.
According to the Hildebrand Project, Hildebrand lived from 1889 to 1977. Born in Florence, he was the son of renowned German sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand. “A leading student of the philosophers Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, he took up the ‘great questions’ – about truth, freedom, conscience, community, love, beauty – with a freshness that allowed him to break new ground, especially in ethics, but also in epistemology, social philosophy, and aesthetics.”
Hildebrand converted to Catholicism in 1914 in what has been called “the decisive turning point of his life and the impetus for important religious works.” The Hildbrand Project chronicles that due to his outspoken opposition to Hitler and Nazism, the Catholic philosopher was forced to flee Germany in 1933. He finally settled in New York City in 1940 and taught at Fordham University until 1960. His numerous works on marriage, Christian philosophy, and ethics can be found here.
In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI wrote a letter to the Founder and President of the Hildebrand Project, John Crosby, praising Hildebrand’s contributions to Catholic philosophy and the efforts of the Hildebrand Project to promote his thought and works. The letter from the Pontiff can be viewed below.
