Suggested Further Reading

Works by and about Alasdair MacIntyre

After Virtue was followed by a series of books in which MacIntyre extended and deepened its arguments. These are Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), and Dependent Rational Animals (Open Court Publishing, 1999). The MacIntyre Reader (University of Notre Dame Press, 1998) contains a judicious selection of MacIntyre's work along with a very helpful bibliographical essay.

After MacIntyre, edited by John Horton and Susan Mendus (University of Notre Dame Press, 1994) contains critical responses to MacIntyre's work, including an essay by Charles Taylor, and an essay in which MacIntyre responds to his critics. A more recent collection of critical essays can be found in Alasdair MacIntyre, edited by Mark Murphy (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

MacIntyre's most recent book is God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009).

Works by and about Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor's own account of the origins of modernity can be found in his Sources of the Self (Harvard University Press, 1992). Taylor's The Secular Age (Belknap Press, 2007) is destined to be a central text in future debates about secularism and contemporary ethics.

A collected of critical papers about Taylor's work can be found in Charles Taylor, edited by Ruth Abbey (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Abbey is also the author of Charles Taylor (Princeton University Press, 2001) a systematic study of Taylor's thought. 

Works by and about Immanuel Kant

Kant's philosophical works revolutionized almost every field of philosophy. The Political Writings (Cambridge University Press, 1991) contains a number of important writings relevant to the themes examined in this course, including the essay "What is Enlightenment?" and "The Contest of Faculties." Manfred Kuehn's Kant: A Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2002) is an excellent account of Kant's life.

Works by and about Friedrich Nietzsche

All of Nietzsche's major works are now available in several English translations. A good selection can be found in The Basic Writings of Nietzche, edited by Peter Gay (Modern Library, 2000).

The voluminous secondary literature on Nietzsche is of wildly varying quality. Brian Leiter's Nietzshe on Morality (Routledge, 2002) is an accessible introduction to Nietzsche's views about morality which emphasizes Nietzsche's naturalism and seeks to reclaim Nietzsche from his postmodern admirers. R.J. Hollingdale's Nietzsche: The Man and his Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2d ed., 2008) is a useful work which combines biography with exposition of Nietzsche's views. Another work that combines these two functions is Rüdiger Safranski's Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (W.W. Norton and Co., 2003).

Catholicism and Modernity

Traditionally, in the last Morality and Modernity lecture Professor Solomon recommends 10 books for students who are interested in pursuing themes from the course, highlighting the variety and vitality of the Catholic responses to modernity. This is the most recent version of the list:

1. Lucy Beckett, In the Light of Christ (Ignatius, 2006)
   A reading of some of the greatest works of the Western tradition from Aeschylus and Sophocles to Dostoevsky and D.H. Lawrence. Beckett's writing is both rich and accessible, and her book is the product of a lifetime of reading and reflecting on these great texts.

2. Roman Guardini, The End of the Modern World (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2001)
   Guardini provides an account of the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern period and from the Modern period to a new and as yet ill-defined post-modern culture. The End of the Modern World is an attempt to understand that emerging culture and to articulate a Catholic response to the challenges and opportunities that it contains.

3. Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture (St. Augustine's Press, 1998)
   Written by one of the twentieth century's most original Thomistic philosophers, this short and accessible meditation suggests that modern culture is afflicted not by an over-abundance of leisure but a lack of true leisure. Pieper argues that an Aristotelian perspective can afford us a more adequate understanding of the true nature of leisure and its place in human life.

4. Robert Hugh Benson, Lord of the World
   Published in the first decade of the 20th century, Lord of the World is an early work of apocalyptic science fiction.

5. Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos (Picador, 2000)
   Written as a spoof self-help book, Percy's Lost in the Cosmos is a funny and insightful exploration of our attempts to understand our place in the universe.

6. Henri de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism (Ignatius, 1995)
   Written by one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the last century, The Drama of Atheist Humanism is a brilliant interpretation of the nineteenth century figures who shaped twentieth-century attempts to imagine a world without God.

7. G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
   Less well known than Orthodoxy but regarded by many as his finest apologetic work, The Everlasting Man is Chesterton's telling of the story of human history from a Christian perspective.

8. Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (Ignatius, 2004)
   First published in English in 1969, Introduction to Christianity is a powerful statement of the central claims of Christianity by Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI).

9. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
   Unlike the other authors whose works are included in this list, Dostoevsky was not a Catholic. Nonetheless the Brothers Karamazov has exerted such a profound influence on twentieth-century philosophical and theological thought that it has become a central point of reference for all those attempting to explore the fate of morality in modernity, Catholic and non-Catholic alike.

10. John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, Centesimus Annus, Veritatis Splendor
    During his long papacy and in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, John Paul II shaped the Catholic Church's response to the modern world. These encyclicals will continue to shape Catholic thinking about modernity in the twenty first century.