Back in print, by Dietrich von Hildebrand

This new edition of The Heart: An Analysis of Human and Divine Affectivity (St. Augustine's Press, December, 2006) -- out of print for nearly 30 years -- is the flagship volume in a series of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s works to be published by St. Augustine’s Press in collaboration with the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project. Founded in 2004, the Legacy Project exists in the first place to translate the many German writings of von Hildebrand into English.

Here are some remarkable quotations about Von Hildebrand from the Legacy Project page: Louis Bouyer once said that “von Hildebrand was the most important Catholic philosopher in Europe between the two world wars.” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger expressed even greater esteem when he said: “I am personally convinced that, when, at some time in the future, the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time.”

This new edition of The Heart describe it as an accessible yet important philosophical contribution to the understanding of the human person. In it, the author aims to rehabilitate the affective life of the human person. He thinks that for too long philosophers have held it in suspicion and thought of it as embedded in the body and, hence, as inferior to intellect and will. By contrast, he argues, the heart, the center of affectivity, has multiple levels, including an eminently personal level, which is just as important a form of personal life as intellect and will. Von Hildebrand argues that properly personal affectivity, far from tending to withdraw us from an objective relation to being, in fact is the major avenue of transcendence by which we give being its due. Von Hildebrand also develops here the significant notion that the heart “in many respects is more the real self of the person than his intellect or will.” At the same time, he is fully aware of the possible deformities of affective life, offering rich analyses of what he calls affective atrophy and affective hypertrophy. The second half of The Heart offers a remarkable analysis of the affectivity of the God-Man, Jesus Christ.

Highly recommended.