Book Description
No conservative library is complete without the thought of Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservatism.
Customer Reviews:
The Best of Burke is the best Burke I've read.......2001-07-24
For the student of politics and politcal philosophy this compilation is a wonderful 'must-read'. I was captured at times by the power of Burke's writing. Occasionally I was so taken with the majesty of his language and the power of his logic that I found myself reading aloud, savoring each word. For example, try rolling these phrases off your tongue: "Liberty...is a general principle, and the clear right of all subjects within the realm, or of none. Partial freedom seems to me a most invidious mode of slavery. But unfortunately, it is the kind of slavery most easily admitted....The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts." Burke's erudition and style are refreshing in a modern political landscape of mediocrity and mindless soundbites. Editor Peter Stanlis divides the book into eight roughly chronological sections from Burke's seminal writings in the mid-1700's through his celebrated expressions as a member of Parliament debating the American Revolution, Ireland and Catholic Emancipation, Economic Reforms, British misrule in India and the subsequent impeachment of Governor-General Hastings. The Book concludes with selections from Burke's exceptional observations on the French Revolution, thoughts which galvanized British opposition to the revolutionary regimes and gave the intellectual undergirding of the Napoleonic Wars. Stanlis also provides the reader with helpful prequels setting the stage for each of the selected writings or speeches, a chronological table of Burke's life, a handy selected bibliography and a concise indroduction to the whole work which is an excellent summary of what follows. This hardback edition is well bound on quality paper. It will survive the many re-readings and quick searches it deserves. The one flaw in this edition is the lack of a helpful appendix or index. Even though my copy is well underscored and highlighted with marginal notes to flag key thoughts or expressions, appendices would save time thumbing through nearly 700 pages to find a particular quote. The book is not a quick read, yet it is surprisingly relevant to today's headlines. Burke's brilliant insights into human nature and the practical workings of governments far outshine most modern pundits. This book is now a standard reference work in my personal library, sitting on a close-at-hand shelf for ready access.
Book Description
He seemed to be everywhere
It amazed Lucy how regularly Mr. der Linssen, the handsome Dutch doctor who taught one of her nursing classes, kept turning up in her life. She would bump into him at the hospital, at her home and even in Holland when she went on vacation. If only he knew she existed! But that wasn't likely, Lucy thought, since far prettier girls were obviously his for the asking. . .
Amazon.com
A collection of largely unpublished or out-of-print essays, journals, speeches, and interviews on issues from the merging of physics and metaphysics to the potential influences and consequences of virtual reality by the Hugo Award-winning author of The Man in the High Castle.
Non-fiction.
Customer Reviews:
Not just for PK Dick fans.......2007-01-16
This book is a gathering of eclectic, mostly non-fictional, writings by one of my favourite authors -Philip K. Dick. I have given it a five star rating in spite of the fact that the material is of uneven quality. Dick can't talk to us anymore since he died in 1982, and so it is wonderful and special to come across these writings. From a literary point of view they are invaluable as spotlights on the mind of the author of such brilliant, disturbing and important works such as The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Ubik, The Man In the High Castle, Faith of Our Fathers, etc. But these works also stand on their own for their intelligent, creative and transcendent analysis of what it is to be human. If you have any interest in Gnosticism, you are in for a treat, since Dick is a kind of Gnostic warrior, and offers up many fascinating, and at times, profoundly uplifting Gnostic thoughts and speculations. There is much more -biographical material, thoughts on SF as a genre, comments on other SF works and writers, political commentary, musical musings, two excellent completed chapters from an abandoned sequel to The Man In the High Castle, and even a brilliant pitch for a never-made television sit-com about angels visiting earth on commission to help clients out of tight jams. Some of this material is frightening, since Dick is constantly challenging the very concept of reality. As with all of Dick's writing -fiction and non-fiction -there is a mind expanding effect. Your universe is never the same after reading him -it will be enlarged or even multiplied, as well as being rendered a lot stranger. All P.K. Dick fans should have this book, but anyone wanting to learn more about the views of one of the brightest, most intriguing minds of the past century will find it an invaluable and entertaining book to read. Lawrence Sutin has done us all a wonderful service by making these pieces available, some of them for the first time. These are peculiar and magical writings from a 20th Century savant. Read it. It could change your life.
(Not So)Altered States.......2005-06-23
Being interested in speculative reality and philosophy, this was a must read. I was not disappointed.
Philip K Dick writes, "All responsible writers, to some degree, have become involuntary criers of doom, because doom is in the wind...and the doom stories are intended to call attention to reality."
This is made all the more relevant by the fact that the human folly that gave way to encroaching doom(war) ~ as the interviews and essays complied for this book run anywhere from twenty five to fifty five years ago ~ is far more manifest and pervasive in our own perceived time. That much closer.
Part five: Essays and Speeches, deals with schizophrenia, LSD and Gnosticism. He delves into the Jungian concept of synchronicity regarding his own life, and the inexplicable coincidences in his novel, "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said"...(also see the movie, "Waking Life")..of "fiction mimicking truth, and truth mimicking fiction."
What he refers to as "a dangerous overlap, a dangerous blur." Take a look with *open* eyes at the society we've created and you realize that the "dangerous blur" is scarcely acknowledged it is so routine, so deeply solidified. 'Entertainment'(of the mindless sort) has proven to be the ultimate vehicle for Big Brother totalitarianism, so to speak.
The final section, Exegesis, at times feels like listening in on a discussion, a contemplation, within his own conscience, on the matter of God/Cosmos: "Creator: time past. Holy Spirit: time is. Christ: time completed."
Overall, a fascinating and unique read.
A modern Gnostic master........2002-07-14
While I've read this entire book cover-to-cover, I have probably read the last half (Part Five: Essays and Speeches, and Part Six: Selections from the Exegesis) at least four times. That's where the real philosophy is. Or perhaps I should say the real mysticism. Actually, P.D.K.'s thought was a combination of philosophy and mysticism, not unlike the works of Pythagoras or Plato. Indeed, I would not hesitate to place him in such exalted company.
Dick's Gnosticism is the Gnostisism of true revelation, of epiphany and theogony (of union with the divine.) Yes, some people arrogantly write this off as the rantings of a "schizophenic", but then they would no doubt apply that same meaningless, garbage diagnosis to every great mystic teacher or shaman.
Here you get the revelations of his novel ,_Valis_, developed and fleshed out in a much more satisfying manner. Indeed, unless you are fortunate enough to track down a copy of his mythical _Exegesis_ this is the best expression of his thought that you will find.
One last note, as much as I agree with the gnostic idea of a transcedent God (or Logos, or Tao) breaking through into our material "Black Iron Prison", I do have a problem with his concept of a Yaldaboath (i.e. deranged, lesser, creator god.) You see, human materialistic, hyper-rational, civilization functions as such a lesser "god." Have we not made money, science, and ego into idols that are worshipped in their own right to the exclusion of the the true transcendant God? You simply do not need to posit the existance of such a supernatural demiurge, devil, or "Moloch" (as Ginsberg called it.) Human ignorance and evil are quite up to the role.
(...)
More of the extraordinary - but then I am a fan.......2002-01-17
PKD is my number-one writer, both for style, but more particularly for ideas. There is so much in this book that shows the man was a thinker, an explorer of ideas not just for the novels and short stories he could generate from them. With PKD, ideas developed a unique philosophy which is why his fiction is founded on such a firm basis. Even when his ideas change and we can see the change (for example 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch' and 'A Scanner Darkly') there is no contradiction involved, just a clear evolution. For PKD fans who haven't yet read his non-SF novels I encourage you to do so - I would be surprised if you were disappointed.
PKD has also left a great legacy of pithy quotes - such as 'reality is what is left behind when you stop believing in something'. My favourite, however, he wrote in a forward to one of the anthologies of short stories. He said that science fiction is not about 'what if ......' it's about 'My God! what if .....'.
There is a lot of this in his philosophy too.
The Universe Was His Sandbox.......2001-08-05
THE SHIFTING REALITIES OF PKD is a perfect title for this material. It was in his speeches to college students that PKD exposed his mental terrain--holding little back. Here he discussed his two obsessions: What is reality? & What constitutes an authentic human? This material shows how Dick used his sci-fi novels to poke holes in simpler cosmologies. Dick made the universe his own sandbox.
In THE ANDROID & THE HUMAN he says that free will may be an illusion. Were humans also controlled by tropisms that are so evident in the growth of plants? He sounded out his greatest fear as ýThe reduction of humans to mere use--men made into machines, ... what I regard as the greatest evil imaginable.ý Dick saw the time to come when a writer would be stopped not by unplugging his electric keyboard but by someone unplugging the man himself.
In MAN, ANDROID & MACHINE Dick found a hopeful theory at the end of his dark tunnel. In this essay he discussed Teilhard De Chardinýs Noosphere, ýcomposed of holographic & informational projections in a unified and continually processed Gestalt,ý--a summation of the globeýs intelligence. Dick never worried about the label ýmade in a laboratory.... the entire universe is one vast laboratory,ý he writes. Here he also lays bare his own reality--one composed of a series of crystallized dreams. He cites Ursula Le Guinýs THE LATHE OF HEAVEN as his model for ýunderstanding the nature of our worldý. He adds: ýI myself have derived much of the material for my writing from dreams.ý PKD challenged the reader to pry beneath the facade of daily existence and knead the silly putty of the dream world into some recognized shape.
Book Description
Filling a lapse in the debate on the role of religious thought in economic theory, The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy, informed by the history of Catholic economic thought, shows that the long-seen contradiction between Catholic faith and support for the market economy does not exist.
Customer Reviews:
The Unhistorical Historian.......2006-03-26
Woods accepts uncritically the rather paradoxical view that there is an arena of human action (economics)exmempt from the moral order. This implies that it is also exempt from Church teachings. Thus, for Woods, it is the Church and not the market that is problematic. The market, for Woods, moves according to its own logic, just as the stars do; it is a pure science on the order of physcis or astronomy. However, the view that men are moved in the same way as are the stars is more akin to astrology than astronomy.
The traditional view that prevailed from Aristotle to Smith was that all human relationships, including economic ones, were regulated by justice. Justice, for Aristotle and St. Thomas, was not merely a "Part of virtue, but virtue entire." Hence there can be no human relationships outside its realm. To posit an order of relationships beyond justice is to subscribe, consciously or not, to the doctrine of the double truth. Just as in the 13th century, those who subscribe to this doctrine reject the authority of the Church, or indeed any authority at all.
Woods is truly unprepared for his task, with only a rudimentary knowledge of economics, mainly gleaned from the pretensions of "praxeology," a philosophy so flawed that only an economist could take it seriously. (Economists are generally the most poorly trained and least well-read of all the academics.) But Woods is an historian, and should have used his training in this area to examine the question. Had he done so, he would have discovered that the system he longs for existed in the 19th and early 20th century. The economy was, during that period, very nearly laissez-faire, with the government not even 1/10th as involved as it is today. The system was also highly unstable and inequitable, subject to ever increasing cycles of economic euphoria and depression, culminating in the Great Depression that very nearly brought the system down. Only massive government redistribution, starting after World War II, could given the system any stability. Now this intervention itself has become problematic, resulting in debts that cannot be sustained.
We have been where Woods would have us go; we did not like it. The truth of the matter is that economic Austria and social chaos share a border, and you cannot draw near to the one without coming close to the other. If justice is one thing and economics another, then there can be no just systems, and society is condemened to being a war of all against all. A little history would have saved the historian from great errors. And a little humility would not have hurt, either; if one is going to be a dissenter, it would be a good idea to have a better idea of the teaching one is dissenting from. Woods has neither history, nor humility, nor economics, nor justice. Without justice, there can be no stable social order.
Very effective.......2006-01-29
Let me note from the outset that I've gotten to know Professor Woods by means of emails we've exchanged after I've read some of his articles; I have reviewed a couple of his other books for Amazon as well.
I read The Church and the Market late last year and loved it. Woods has a gift for explaining complicated things in ways that can easily be understood. Woods anticipates more arguments against the free market than I could have come up with in 20 years and demolishes them all, without invective or a sneer.
This is an extremely learned book, and written in clear and engaging prose. Woods takes a consistently pro-freedom position in his discussion of wages, antitrust, the welfare state, banking, foreign aid, etc.
At the same time, he addresses some of the Catholic hostility to the market, and poses some interesting questions. His argument goes something like this: certain papal statements call for a "living wage" (for example) because they believe such recommendations will make workers better off. But what if such a policy (whether enforced by law or by ecclesiastical urging is irrelevant) will make workers worse off? (Woods gives many reasons that this would be the case, including the fact that fewer workers would be employed.)
Leave aside your objection that Woods' economic analysis is wrong, and that, say, a $50 minimum wage would actually be a great thing. The question is this. Let's say Woods is right, which is certainly possible. Let's say this approach would indeed make workers worse off. Is a Catholic free to say so? If not, why not?
Note that Woods isn't saying the Church is not allowed to speak on economic matters. He is saying that some of the economic assumptions behind the bishops' statements on the economy are faulty, and that the resulting moral analysis is necessarily faulty as well.
It would be something else if Church leaders were to admit that the policies they recommend would surely make people worse off, but that justice requires that they be instituted anyway. That would be one thing. But these policies are being recommended on the express assumption that they will help people. But what if they won't? What then?
That is an interesting and good question, though many Catholics are embarrassing themselves by claiming Woods has no right to ask it. Playing right into the Protestant caricature of Catholicism, they insist that free discussion on such matters is not allowed (a fact that would have been very interesting to medieval scholars, who wrote about and debated just about every philosophical and theological issue you can name). They acknowledge none of the careful distinctions Woods makes, and some of the dafter ones go so far as to say he's dissenting from official teaching simply in pointing out reality. What a nightmare.
As for N. Ravitch, below, he's Professor Norman Ravitch, who 1) hates the Catholic Church (do a Google search on him) and 2) makes a habit of reviewing books he hasn't read. (Check out his review of George Weigel's book God's Choice, for example.) The point of Woods's book is to ADDRESS anti-market statements by Church figures; Ravitch, apparently going only on the brief description above, assumes Woods' book just ignores them. No one who even owned a copy, much less actually read it, could have mischaracterized it so completely.
Catholics for Freedom.......2005-03-12
Professor Thomas Woods is an interesting author: a traditionalist Catholic who is also a supporter of the free market economy. In this book, he presents a Catholic case for the free enterprise system, employing the economics of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard (neither of whom was religious, much less Catholic.)
It's well known that the Roman Catholic Church has never been a particularly strong supporter of capitalism. Many popes have stressed the benefits of private property and opposed extreme versions of socialism, but have not realized the positive benefits of Capitalism. In the past, teachers in the Catholic Church haven't understood the functioning of economic laws. The always-paradoxical John Paul II, while having a better understanding of the markets processes, supports large-scale government intervention in the economy. In addition, many Catholics believe that the church's advocacy of the mixed economy is dogma, thus putting Catholic supporters of free enterprise on the same level as those who advocate women priests and the like.
Prof. Woods thus has a lot of work to do. He first shows the autonomous nature of economic reasoning. Churchmen are entitled to instruct the faithful on their duties to their fellow man, but lay Catholics are free to make an independent appraisal of the effectiveness of any given plan. For example, if a churchman tells his flock to help the needy, that's all well and good; if he tells them that the only way to improve the lot of the poor is through minimum wage laws, labor unions, foreign aid and the like, he is making a judgment about how economic laws work. Woods argues that, from the Catholic perspective, there is no reason to believe that the pope is infallible in his economic prescriptions. Prof. Woods discusses a large number of subjects, including usury, wages, prices, banking and foreign aid.
My one concern is whether all of Catholic economic teaching fits neatly into Prof. Woods' approach. Many popes taught in a rather dogmatic way about the need for various interventions in the economy. One example is the support for laws mandating the closing of stores on Sunday (as well as giving workers the day off). If popes who advocated these things had been Misesian praxeologists, I doubt they would have come to different conclusions.
The book ends with a strong critique of distributism, which seeks a larger distribution of private property in the hands of workers. Chesteron and Belloc, among others, advocated distributism. Many traditionally minded Catholics see distributism as a "third way" between capitalism and socialism. But as Prof. Woods points out, the only institution which has the power to redistribute property on a massive scale is the state.
an austrian primer.......2005-03-05
This book's title is deceptive in that it suggests the author is going to examine the place of capitalism within formal Catholic social thought. Sadly, Dr. Woods foregos the opportunity to examine the teachings of the social magisterium in favor of the standard bromides of the Austrian school. Admitting at the outset that he's no intention of bringing up the pronouncements of the popes throughout the ages, he instead nitpicks about the sorts of things which have traditionally annoyed Austrians. In most things, Woods follows the lead of others, contributing nothing himself in the way of original analysis. He acknowledges his intellectual debt to Murray Rothbard in the introduction and, later on, draws on Rothbard's arguments concerning the 16th century scholastics, some of whom wrote opinions in accord with Austrianism. Unfortunately, a few 16th century theologians does not the Church make and it's of course silly to even think that these men, grounded as they were in the thought of the Angelic Doctor, would in any way endorse the bastard children of the Enlightenment. It would be the equivalent of saying that the popes are Austrian because they view private property as a pillar of society.
According to Rothbard, the error of Thomists and all classical natural-law theorists is that they viewed the state as a "major locus of virtuous action". Elsewhere, Rothbard defines the state as a monopolistic criminal enterprise. Each of these views is well outside of the social magisterium; no where will you find a pope who rejects the validity of the state since it holds authority by the will of God. St. Paul addresses the state in Romans 13, not the all-powerful market, and he does not fall on the side of Murray Rothbard. The errors of the non-Catholic Rothbard on political issues are not enough to persuade Woods that he's suspect as an authority in economics. He clings instead all the more tightly to the luminaries of Austrianism in a book ostensibly dedicated to Catholic social teaching on economic concerns. Modern Catholic intellectuals and popes have always recognized the interdependence between the economic and political frameworks. What one holds regarding the proper constitution of a society has ramifications in the economic sphere. Rothbard's political views are inseparable from his economic theory since the state exists solely to destroy the fruits of the market (cf. Man, Economy & State).
The irony is that Dr. Woods continues to defend the compatibility of Austrianism and Catholicism, despite the repeated condemnations of economic liberalism by popes like Pius XI, to whom Woods appeals against the errors and confusion which have plagued the post-conciliar Church (cf. The Great Façade; the phrase "cafeteria Catholic" comes to mind). Here, Pius XI addresses Woods and his ilk in his encyclical letter Ubi Arcano Dei:
"Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV. There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism."
Liberalism takes many forms. In our own day, most faithful Catholics assume it is primarily concerned with corruptions of human sexuality. In fact, the popes remind the faithful that liberalism appears under varied guises.
Dr. Woods evinces a poor philosophical foundation and he is easily taken in by all sorts of Austrian assumptions. For example, Ludwig von Mises, critical inspiration to Rothbard and other Austrians, claims in his work Human Action that praxeology "is the science of every kind of human action," rejecting any claim that his new science, heretofore unknown to the doctors of the Church, is not limited to those actions which lead to an improvement in man's material well-being. This claim of course is fundamentally at odds with St. Thomas and Catholicism at both a natural and theological level. From a Thomistic perspective, one wonders how anyone can have a perfect science of all human action that does not weigh good or bad actions. This is true whether it's philosophical ethics or evangelical precepts. The error of the past, says Mises, is that philosophers like Aristotle sought to explain human action by notions of good or bad, just or unjust, or even worse, the miraculous "interference" of a Deity. Instead, human actions are not ordered by objective valuations, but rather by the dictates of the market. Virtue and vice are subjective notions which have no place in economics. If a man is to "succeed" says Mises, he must adjust his actions to economic law. In his intro to Human Action, he uses the example of a man who wants frequent sexual intercourse: if he's going to get it, he's going to have to know economics. Austrian economics, not Chicago-style. Elsewhere, he quips that "simple faith and economic rationalism cannot dwell together. It is unthinkable that priests should govern entrepreneurs." Meaning, the Church has no business at all talking about the market. The social magisterium is just so many opinions which may or may not be the correct way to establish a just and felicitous social order. Rothbardians would go further and say that the Church can be ignored without moral peril whenever She posits the notion of a common good that the state is obligated to safeguard.
Woods argues that economics is not a species of ethics but is instead a pure science studied in the same way that physics is by physicists. As St. Thomas says in his commentary on Aristotle's Ethics, "external goods that are used purposively by men have a moral consideration." It's precisely this ethical cast that Mises and other Austrians have sought to remove from the discipline of economics. The Church has claimed the right to decide the moral lights which should guide Christians in formulating a just economic order. The author does not meditate upon the question of whether there is a moral calculus in the laws which the state passes to regulate the exchange of goods or in relations between labor and capital. How can he? His mentor Rothbard had already taught that the state was criminal by nature, so it follows that its decrees are only the threats of violence made by a monopolistic crime syndicate. Rothbard took Mises to his logical conclusion, deciding that the market would necessarily find the most humane and efficient way to secure corporate goods with the state tagging along as an unwanted parasite. The author uses the same line of thought in his discussion on safety regulations. The market will always do a better job of implementing safety in the workplace than any public regulation because it is rational. If an objective moral evil exists in the social order, it cannot be addressed by the state. The market is infallible and will eventually solve any problem, whether it takes days or decades. Positive laws to remedy or palliate a condition are by definition always worse than doing nothing. It's kind of like a doctor telling his patient to fore go any treatment since death will eventually cure his illness.
Woods wants us to accept that economics is a value-free science, a set of observations about the way things work in a world marred by scarcity. At the same time, he can't help dipping into moral considerations (e.g, p. 47), predicating moral or immoral of certain economic choices. In addition, he favorably quotes the Jesuit Mariana, who calls any ruler "wicked" who sets a price by edict. Mises and Rothbard of course also resorted to various moral arguments when discoursing on economics; their gift for moralistic psychologizing has been picked up by anarchists like Hans Hoppe at UNLV. The question is then: whose morals guide the discussion? Are they Catholic? Do they reflect the mind of the Church in her magisterium and liturgy (cf. The Feast of Christ the King)? The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, used by Byzantine Catholics, is very un-Rothbardian: the priest prays for the good of the civil authorities and the armed forces. It's hard to be a Greek Catholic and a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist. Biblical passages like 1 Peter 2:13 become problematic at best, candidates for expunging at worst. To be deep in Austrianism is to cease to be Catholic.
At the very least, we can dispense with the pretension that economics is just a pure science about the way things are. This claim can also be found in fields like sociology and psychology. It's foolish to predicate pure value-neutrality of the political science, but the Economic Man is a powerful myth, so it happens that the whole science of economics gets a pass when it does this very thing. The Austrian School is a marginal school at best (no pun intended), with Noble Laureates and scholars coming from other schools like Chicago. The variety of theories would suggest that economics is a science in an equivocal sense only.
Woods has repeatedly shown that he's out of his depth in tackling the question of the Church and the market. For those who accept his thesis, think more carefully about it after reading Rothbard and Mises. Both authors have good insights and much of what they write is reasonable when they discuss the minutiae, but this book is nothing more than an Austrian primer. Woods limits much of his effort to sniping at individuals like Belloc. Heinrich Pesch gets two whole pages even though he's hugely influential in 20th century Catholic social thought. One senses that Woods is really only interested in regurgitating standard Austrian fare. We don't need this book for that purpose since many others have already been written.
A concise but potent antidote to Austrian ideology is the recently released Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Unlike this book, it actually delves into the heart of the Church's teaching on economic, political and cultural issues. Citations are copious and far ranging and, alas, authoritative.
Long overdue.......2005-02-27
I have been waiting for this book for many years. As an economist and an orthodox Catholic, I have been concerned at how many of my fellow Catholics, with little if any background in economics, have dismissed the free-market while advancing policies that can only lead to economic ruin. This is a travesty, I've always thought. In philosophy, in medical ethics, and in many other disciplines Catholics have been some of the best thinkers; in economics, on the other hand, the situation is too embarrassing to behold.
What Dr. Woods has done here is to show that so many of the Catholic arguments against the free market are rather like many of the Protestant arguments against Catholicism: they're often based on ignorance and misunderstandings. He then proceeds to lay out one of the strongest and most overwhelming cases for the free market I have ever read - and I have read a lot of them.
I just finished Woods's book an hour ago and signed on to write my review. I was sorry to see the review below (which has since been placed above this one, apparently). At no time does Woods's book contend that economic efficiency is the supreme value; in (as I recall) chapter one Woods expressly dismisses that idea, and in fact criticizes the Chicago School of economics for at times holding that very position.
The Church and the Market often deals with issues that by and large have not been taken up by the popes at all. Thus the chapter on money and banking discusses the gold standard, the moral dimension of fiat currency, the moral implications of fractional-reserve banking, the moral aspects of inflation, etc. Here Woods shows Catholics that a good grasp of economics can help them render better moral judgments. He also corrects the errors of Fr. Coughlin, who is still admired by some people but whose grasp of monetary economics was disastrously poor.
I wonder if the critic above read the whole book, since it explicitly answers the very clichés that are sprinkled throughout that review. This is disappointing; I hoped Woods's book, so carefully and persuasively argued, would force opponents of Austrian economics to stop and think. Instead, at least in this one case, it has succeeded only in making them repeat the same ill-informed charges they did before he wrote his book. That is the kind of ignorance against which this important -- and beautifully written -- book is directed.
Your work is not wasted, Dr. Woods, believe me. Many of us have been waiting for this book for a long time. Pay no attention to those who call you disobedient (or whatever it is they'll call you). You have done the Church an important service, as did the scholastics who showed that the best of secular thought could be reconciled with the teaching of the Church.
Books:
- The Bronze Horseman: A Novel
- The Circus in Winter
- The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand, and The Stories
- The Distinguished Guest
- The File On H.: A Novel
- The Final Confession of Mabel Stark
- The Ghost Stories of Muriel Spark
- The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines
- The Laws of Evening: Stories
- The Lion and the Throne: Stories from the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, Vol. 1
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography
- Rao's Recipes from the Neighborhood: Frank Pelligrino Cooks Italian with Family and Friends
- Eve Green: A Novel
- HELL'S HIGHWAY: Chronicle of the 101st Airborne Division in the Holland Campaign, September - Novemb
- History: Fiction or Science
- Musical Instrument Design: Practical Information for Instrument Making
- Introduction to Environmental Engineering and Science
- J. R. Simplot: A billion the hard way
- Financial Crises in "Successful" Emerging Economies
- The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law: 3 volume set
General
| World
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered
The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot
Reflections on the Revolution in France (Oxford World's Classics)
The Portable Edmund Burke (The Viking Portable Library)
John C. Calhoun: Selected Writings and Speeches (Conservative Leadership Series)
