Modern Catholic Political Philosophy: A History of Catholic Political Philosophy: Volume II
By (Author) Professor Timothy Sean Quinn
By (author) Professor Michael J. Sweeney
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ABC-CLIO
27th November 2025
United States
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Philosophy of religion
Philosophy and Religion
Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholic Church
Hardback
304
Width 178mm, Height 254mm
Modern Catholic political philosophy begins with a crisis within Christendom. The Wars of Religion ignited by the Protestant Reformation forced upon medieval Christendom a revaluation of the relationship between Church and State, and a reconsideration of the nature of sovereignty and of the relationship between citizens and regimes. Modern Catholic Political Philosophy: A History of Catholic Political Philosophy: Volume II begins with Thomas More and ending with Pope Leo XIII, this volume seeks to show how this sense of crisis shaped Catholic political thought from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Many of the writers treated in this volume have fallen in obscurity. Nonetheless, they are responsible for many of ideas that have become commonplace in modern political thought: division of political alternatives into liberal and conservative; notions of strong executive power; the centrality of social justice on behalf of international organization, all claim antecedent origins in the forgotten Catholic thinkers of this period. Together, they constitute a secret history of political thought that influences the main direction political thought takes in the twentieth century, and without which the political alternatives confronted in that century cannot be adequately understood.
Timothy Sean Quinn holds the rank of Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio. Recent publications include essays, books, and translations of Heidegger, Salomon Maimon, Kant, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Nietzsche and Fides et Ratio.
Michael J. Sweeney is Professor of Philosophy at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. His books, essays, and articles are principally in the areas of medieval Christian and Islamic philosophy and political philosophy.