Morals and Man

By Gerald Vann, O.P.

“Man is born free,” Rousseau famously observed, “and everywhere he is in chains.” For modern man, these chains are often forged not by ignorance, but by information. As Gerald Vann, O.P., describes: “With so much to occupy the surface of the mind and imagination, so much work and so much play, it is possible to pass one’s whole life without really thinking at all…” For those who shirk this possibility and seek to know the meaning of life, two instruments are essential: philosophy and theology, directed toward producing a system which can comprise “the whole of life, the directing of all one’s life to God.” In guiding this endeavor, Vann addresses the theoretical, surveying the wisdom of Thomistic moral thought regarding freedom, happiness, and law, and then addresses the practical, applying the insights of Thomistic “theory” to politics, economics, “modern” Christianity, liturgy, marriage, and more.

First published in 1937 as Morals Makyth Man, with a second edition in 1960, Morals and Man is a perceptive, at times provocative, evaluation of the humanist project and its principles. Like Maritain’s Integral Humanism, it takes seriously the search of man’s reasons for and methods of living, and strikingly concludes that life without religion, as without morality, is a life bereft of meaning—a contradiction in terms.

St. Thomas’s moral theology expresses a truth which we Christians of today have almost entirely forgotten: the truth that morals deals first and foremost with man, that its task is to explain what man should be like—the ideal of man—and that consequently Christian morals should portray the Christian ideal of man. (Josef Pieper)

Gerald Vann, O.P. (1906–1963) was an English Dominican priest and author of numerous bestselling works of philosophy, spirituality, and theology. A gifted preacher and scholar, he was in great demand as a lecturer and retreat-master, and appeared frequently in the United States on the National Council of Catholic Men’s weekly radio program, “The Catholic Hour.”

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Paperback: 238pp.

ISBN: 978-1685954116