released 4/26/2012

Long before Alasdair MacIntyre or Stanley Hauerwas were reminding us of the significance of historic teaching about virtue, Josef Pieper (1904-1997) was writing confidently about virtue and the virtues. Pieper is best known today for his 1952 book, Leisure, the Basis of Culture. When the book was published, The New York Times enthused “Pieper’s message for us is plain. . . . The idolatry of the machine, the worship of mindless know-how, the infantile cult of youth and the common mind — all this points to our peculiar leadership in the drift toward the slave society. . . . Pieper’s profound insights are impressive and even formidable.” While the Times may not be quite as excited about Pieper today, we’re pleased to present a primer on Pieper’s ideas in this Audio Reprint. This 1999 essay by Roger Kimball introduces listeners to Pieper’s arguments about the nature of leisure, which are claims about the nature of philosophy and of human well-being.

The article was originally published in The New Criterion, January 1999, where Roger Kimball is editor and publisher. It is read by Ken Myers.

34 minutes

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Jessica Hooten Wilson’s latest book is called The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints. In the  book’s Introduction, she writes: “We cannot concoct holiness on our own, decide what it looks like without examples, or try to become holy without other people. The goal is to be remade into God’s likeness, and we do so by imitating models of holiness. When we read stories of holiness, we live vicariously through those stories, then we body them forth in our reality. The models become part of our imagination, our way of seeing how to live a holy life.” Ken Myers introduces a conversation with her with some reflections about the ethical role of narrative from Stanley Hauerwas and others.

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