The Josias Podcast

Urban Hannon’s “The Politics of Hell,” narrated by James T. Majewski of Catholic Culture Audiobooks. Header Image: Neil Packer. If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Many thanks to our generous supporters on Patreon, who enable us to pay for podcast hosting. If you have not yet joined them, please do so. You can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be splendid.

Pater Edmund speaks with Pater Ælred Maria Anthony John Howard Davies, Subprior of Stift Heiligenkreuz, about the late Queen Elizabeth II. Music: Henry Purcell, Thou Knowest, Lord  If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Many thanks to our generous supporters on Patreon, who enable us to pay for podcast hosting. If you have not yet joined them, please do so. You can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be splendid.

Contributors to The Josias and Ius & Iusitium pick their favorite movies and discuss them.  The result of the draft: To vote for a winner click here. Bibliography Tertullian, De Spectaculis (On the Shows) John Francis Nieto, A Study of Film. Music: Max Steiner, “Tara Theme” from Gone with the Wind.  If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Many thanks to our generous supporters on Patreon, who enable us to pay for podcast hosting. If you have not yet joined them, please do so. You can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be splendid.

Do rights exist, or are they moral fictions? What is the significance of the distinction between objective and subjective rights? In this lecture, Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist. Gives an account of rights and their relation to the common good. Bibliography and Links Hispanus, Petrus. “Notes on Right and Law.” The Josias (2017). Legge, Dominic O.P. “Do Thomists Have Rights?” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, 17.1 (2019): pp. 127–147. MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3rd ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Pappin, Gladden J. “Rights, Moral Theology and Politics in Jean Gerson.” History of Political Thought 36.2 (2015), pp. 234-261. Pinkoski, Nathan J. “Alasdair MacIntyre and Leo Strauss on the Activity of Philosophy.” The Review of Politics 82 (2020), pp. 97-122. Rosenblatt, Helena. The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. Strauss, Leo. Natural Right and History. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1953. Tierney, Brian. The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law 1150-1625. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. Header Image: Giovanni di Paolo, The Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise (1445). If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Many thanks to our generous supporters on Patreon, who enable us to pay for podcast hosting. If you have not yet joined them, please do so. You can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be splendid.

The debate on socialism continues, with Pater Edmund playing the socialist and Alan Fimister taking the anti-socialist side. Joel is joined by Chris to moderate the discussion. Bibliography and Links Leo XIII, Rerum novarum (1891) Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno (1931) Ernest Fortin, “Sacred and Inviolable: Rerum Novarum and Natural Rights“ Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, ch. 9 Beatrice Freccia, “Aristotle’s Account of the Relationship of the Household to the State” Charles De Koninck, “The End of the Family and the End of Civil Society” Jacques de Monléon, “Short Notes on the Family and the City” Scott Meikle, “Aristotle and Exchange Value” Tři oříšky pro Popelku Music: Prokofiev – Cinderella Suite – Cinderella’s Waltz Header Image: “Das ist eine wunderschöne Wiese“ If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Many thanks to our generous supporters on Patreon, who enable us to pay for podcast hosting. If you have not yet joined them, please do so. You can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be splendid.

Alan Fimister comes on the podcast to debate socialism with Pater Edmund. For the purposes of the debate, Pater Edmund takes the socialist side, arguing that the injustices of modern capitalism, which orders all things to the private interests of capitalists, requires the adoption of socialism to subordinate economic matters to the common good of the political community. Alan Fimister takes the anti-socialist side, arguing that the individual and the family are prior to the state, and have the antecedent duty and right to provide for their subsistence, which requires private property. The debate is moderated (not entirely impartially) by Joel: There are no rules. Bibliography and Links Leo XIII, Rerum novarum (1891). Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno (1931). W. Borman, “Thomism and Private Property,” The Josias (2017). Thomas Crean and Alan Fimister, Integralism: A manual of political philosophy (2020). David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011). Henri Grenier, “The Lawfulness and Social Character of Private Ownership,” The Josias (2015). C.W. Strand, “A Catholic Socialism,” Tradinista! (2016). Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., “Use Values and Corn Laws, Aristotelian Marxists and High Tories,” Sancrucensis, 2015. Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., “Dialogue with a Catholic Leftist,” Sancrucensis (2016). Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., “Robin Hood Economics: How should the wealth of the world be distributed?” Plough, 2019. Music: Дми́трий Шостако́вич, Jazz Suite No.2 – 6. Waltz II. Header Image: New Harmony, Indiana, as proposed by Robert Owen. Engraving by F. Bate, 1838. If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Many thanks to our generous supporters on Patreon, who enable us to pay for podcast hosting. If you have not yet joined them, please do so. You can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be splendid.

Historicism seems to be a challenge to an integralist account of politics, because it denies that there is an unchanging truth about the human good accessible to our minds. In this episode the editors talk to Felix de St. Vincent and Brett Favras about Collingwood’s historicism, Leo Strauss’s critique of Collingwood, and Alasdair MacIntyre’s much more positive response to Collingwood and historicism. Bibliography and Links R.G. Collingwood, An Autobiography, 1939. Felix de St. Vincent and Brett Favras, “Integralism, MacIntyre, and Final Ends: Towards a Secular Account of Christian Politics,” The Josias, 2018. Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics, 1966; After Virtue, 1981. Nathan Pinkoski, “Alasdair MacIntyre and Leo Strauss on the Activity of Philosophy,” Review of Politics, 2020. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, 1953; On Political Philosophy: Responding to the Challenge of Positivism and Historicism, 2018; “Lectures on Plato’s Meno,” 1966. Music: W.A. Mozart, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Act 3 “Nie werd’ ich deine Huld verkennen,” Les Arts Florissants under the direction of William Christie. Header Image: William Hogarth, “The Seraglio.” If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Many thanks to our generous supporters on Patreon, who enable us to pay for podcast hosting. If you have not yet joined them, please do so. You can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be splendid.

Our new technical editor, Chris, moderates a discussion with the editors of questions raised by our listeners. Nota bene: In the discussion of distributism at the 1:10 mark when Pater Edmund said “that’s what integralism is all about” he meant to say “thats what distributism is all about.” A slip of the tongue. Bibliography and Links Joel Augustine, “Dyarchy is Dyarchical: A Reply to Meador“Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Emma; Mansfield Park; Persuasion; Sense and Sensibility.Maurice Baring, The Puppet Show of Memory.Duane Berquist, Lectures on Ethics.John Brungardt, “Shorting the Market on the Common Good;” “The Question of Catholic Integralism: An Internet Genealogy.”Thomas Crean and Alan Fimister, Integralism.Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe.Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop; Barnaby Rudge; Martin Chuzzlewit; David Copperfield; Bleak House; Little Dorrit; Hard Times.Andrew Willard Jones, Before Church and State.Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels.J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.Anthony Trollope, The Barsetshire Novels; The Palliser Novels.Walter Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Power in the Middle Ages.Edmund Waldstein, “An Education in Desire;” “The Soul in the Novel: From Daniel Defoe to David Foster Wallace;” “Reasoning is worse than scolding;” “On Weddings in Novels;” “Prayer Begins in Pointlessness and Stupidity;” “Don’t Even Try;” “You Will Be Honored in the Presence of All;” “The Way of the Cross and Real Apprehension of Sin;” “What it is Like to Celebrate Mass.”Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited; The Sword of Honour Trilogy; A Handful of Dust. Music: W.A. Mozart, Serenade 13 in G Major, KV 525, “Eine kleine Nachtmusik,” II. Romanze. Performed by the Camerata Salzburg under the direction of Sándor Végh. Header Image: “Hans Christian Andersen,” by Kirill Chelushkin. If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Many thanks to our generous supporters on Patreon, who enable us to pay for podcast hosting. If you have not yet joined them, please do so. You can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be splendid.

Prof. Thomas Pink joins the editors to discuss Thomas Hobbes’s radical rejection of the scholastic understanding of law as a coercive teacher, and the anti-integralist motives behind that rejection. Bibliography Thomas Pink, “Suarez on Authority as Coercive Teacher,” Quaestio (2019).Petrus Hispanus, “Notes on Right and Law,” The Josias (2017). Music: J.S. Bach, Schafe Können sicher weiden wo ein guter Hirte wacht, from Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd, BWV 208. Performed by Elisabeth von Magnus and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Ton Koopman. Header Image: Charles-Émile Jacque, Landscape with a Herd (1872). If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Many thanks to our generous supporters on Patreon, who enable us to pay for podcast hosting. If you have not yet joined them, please do so. You can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be splendid.

The editors discuss Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Libertas praestantissimum, on the true nature of liberty—both natural and moral—and on the errors of the liberals. Bibliography Pope Leo XIII, Libertas praestantissimum (1888).Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., “Contrasting Concepts of Freedom,” The Josias (2016). Music: Gustav Mahler, Lied Des Verfolgten Im Turm, from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Performed by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of George Szell. Header Image: Raphael Statt, O.Cist. Beflügelter Schritt. If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Many thanks to our generous supporters on Patreon, who enable us to pay for podcast hosting. If you have not yet joined them, please do so. You can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be splendid.