Books:
Il caso serio della vita
La morale cristiana tra autonomia e libertà del dono
Cantagalli, Siena 2022
Può esistere la libertà del dono, può esistere il dono autentico di se stessi di cui parlava il Concilio Vaticano II, soltanto se “il caso serio” è una prospettiva reale: se nella vita c’è qualcosa per cui valga la pena anche – se necessario – morire. Una tale realtà dovrebbe essere costituita da beni indisponibili, che non devono mai essere deliberatamente lesi o distrutti. Appare dunque evidente che una morale che ci parli del caso serio ci porta a riflettere sulla questione del male intrinseco: esiste qualcosa che non devo mai fare? Solo se la risposta è “sì”, potrà verificarsi il caso serio della vita, cioè il caso di quell’amore più grande che dà la vita per i propri amici (cfr. Gv 15, 13).
Lucerna pedibus meis
Prudenza, amore e virtù
Saggi in onore di Livio Melina
Cantagalli, Siena 2021
Curato insieme a Juan José Pérez-Soba
con la collaborazione di Eleonora Stefanyan
“Lampada per i
miei passi è la tua parola” (Sal 119,105). La parola di Dio che
illumina il nostro cammino è una parola di amore, che ci invita alla comunione
fornendoci così criteri validi per le nostre scelte. La prudenza è la virtù che
discerne in ogni circostanza ciò che l’amore ci chiama a compiere qui ed ora.
Contribuire alla riscoperta del ruolo centrale della prudenza è uno dei tanti
meriti del Professor Livio Melina, che questo volume intende onorare. In queste
pagine viene valorizzato il suo contributo sia al rinnovamento della teologia
morale in generale, sia alla missione e alla promozione del Pontificio Istituto
Giovanni Paolo II per gli Studi su Matrimonio e Famiglia, che egli ha guidato
in qualità di Preside per ben dieci anni dal 2006 al 2016.
Questo libro raccoglie gli
interventi sia di alte personalità di ambito ecclesiastico, che hanno condiviso
un cammino importante con il Professor Melina, sia di alcuni suoi colleghi
accademici dell’Istituto Giovanni Paolo II e di altre università, nonché di
diversi docenti che sono stati i suoi dottorandi. Ognuno di questi contributi
testimonia la fecondità di un insegnamento e di una vita al servizio della
Chiesa.
Embracing Our Finitude
Excercises in Christian Anthropology between Dependence and Gratitude
Cascade, Eugene 2018
Memento mori—remember death—this is how the medieval monks exhort us. Our life, given in birth and taken by death, is radically marked by finitude, which can be a source of great fear and anguish. Our finitude, however, does not in itself need to be something negative. It confronts us with the question of our life’s meaning and spurs us on to treasure our days. Our contingency, as evidenced in our birth and death, reminds us that we have not made ourselves and that there is nothing necessary about the marvelous fact that we exist. Particularly from a Judeo-Christian perspective, embracing our finitude will mean gratefully accepting life as a completely gratuitous gift and living one’s days informed by a sense of this gratitude.
Preview “Kampowski is a
thinker of rare acuity. Indebted to Hannah Arendt, his work consistently
instructs. Here we find wisdom on natality and gratitude, the faith community’s ‘common
sense,’ human action as ordered to interpersonal communion, marriage, and
cultural diversity, the marital bond and human promising, the danger of loving
humanity rather than humans, the nature and claims of the kingdom of God, and
more. Every student of human and Christian flourishing must read this book.”
—MATTHEW LEVERING, Mundelein
Seminary
“Embracing our
Finitude draws together themes in both classical and contemporary philosophy,
including Continental and Anglophone philosophy, to present a positive account
of human finitude. . . . This book should be read by every humaniities student
who is searching for something different from the sterile narcissism of our Western
anti-culture. It is beautifully written, avoids academic jargon, and is
accessible to anyone with an interest in truth, beauty, and goodness.”
—TRACEY ROWLAND,
University of Notre Dame, Australia
“What does it mean to
be born and to have to die? These brilliant essays in Christian anthropology
outline the path of an authentic wisdom wherein the human person, consenting to
his finitude, assumes with gratitude the gifts received and the relations of
dependence which they involve. When the desire of individuals for absolute
independence engenders a mortal loneliness and undoes communities, Kampowski
opens the way for a firm rational and Christian hope.”
—SERGE-THOMAS BONINO,
General Secretary of the International Theological Commission
La fecondità di una vita
Verso un'antropologia del matrimonio e della famiglia
Cantagalli, Siena 2017
Riconoscendo che nelle domande circa il matrimonio e la famiglia è in gioco una visione dell’uomo, il presente volume intende presentare un’antropologia che metta al centro il nostro essere chiamati alla relazione, all’amore, alla fecondità. Sarà articolato in due passi. Nella prima parte l’opera approfondirà alcune questioni antropologiche di fondo. Di quale uomo stiamo parlando? Si tratta di un uomo capace di impegnarsi in una promessa e aperto alla verità, un uomo che realizza la sua natura in modo culturale. La seconda parte e dedicata ad alcune delle attuali sfide rivolte al matrimonio e alla famiglia. È importante fare i conti con la debolezza umana, ma allo stesso tempo occorre far entrare nel calcolo la grazia di Dio, che e fondamento di una speranza originale. Si vedrà come il matrimonio è un’unione basata non solo sull’affetto, ma su una particolare missione, in virtù della quale ancora oggi ha una rilevanza pubblica, essendo un istituto ordinato a rendere feconda la vita.
A Greater Freedom
Biotechnology, Love, and Human Destiny (in Dialogue with Hans Jonas and Jürgen Habermas)
Pickwick, Eugene 2013
How does biotechnology touch on human destiny? What are its promises and challenges? In search for a response, the present volume turns to the thought of Hans Jonas, one of the pioneers and founding fathers of bioethics. The continued relevance of his ideas is exemplified by the way Jürgen Habermas applies them to the current debate. The chief promise of biotechnology is to increase our freedom by overcoming the limits of the human condition. The main risk of biotechnology, as both Jonas and Habermas see it, is to diminish or outright abolish our capacity for responsibility and morality. It is argued that the greater freedom is not simply freedom from constraints but freedom for our destiny: the freedom to be the benevolent, responsible, and spontaneous authors of our lives, capable of communion and love. The touchstone for evaluating any biotechnological procedure has to be this greater freedom.
Preview “It is rare to
encounter a book engaging central moral questions that moves with such facility
between philosophical and linguistic traditions as Kampowski’s. By his
uncommonly deep engagement with contemporary and recent thought, in particular
Habermas and the unappreciated contributions of Hans Jonas, Kampowski has
composed a remarkably vibrant and meaningful account of human nature that
offers our relationality—our familialness—as a corrective to an unmeasured
submission of the human to biotechnological promise.”
—JOSEPH E. CAPIZZI, Catholic University of America
“A Greater Freedom
is an excellent and timely introduction to the thought of two eminent
philosophers and their work on biophilosophy, bioethics, and biotechnology:
Hans Jonas and Jurgen Habermas. Stephan Kampowski enters into an astute
dialogue enriched by other important interlocutors (Spaemann, Arendt, Kass) and
is deeply guided by the theology of love. A most instructive and rewarding
reading for those who want to grasp the boon and bane of biotechnology.”
—REINHARD HÜTTER, Catholic University of America
“A Greater Freedom is essential reading for all those who recognize technology can insidiously shape and form us. This book is particularly important for those who seek a mature environmental ethic. Kampowski’s reading of Jonas teaches us that living organisms are never ‘mere matter,’ and provides a deep philosophical basis for recognizing the self-determining nature of the many sentient (and intelligent) creatures who share the planet with us human beings.” —JOHN BERKMAN, Regis College, Toronto, Ontario
Ricordati della nascita
L'uomo in ricerca di un fondamento
Cantagalli, Siena 2013
Ricordare la nascita vuol dire ricordare il fatto che sin dal principio siamo esseri dipendenti e relazionali e che l’esistenza è un dono che abbiamo ricevuto gratuitamente. L’inizio – per dirla con Aristotele – è già la metà del tutto e contiene in sé una forza che occorre riapprezzare e recuperare in quanto principio di guida e di interpretazione di tutto ciò che segue, nella vita dell’individuo, nella vita sociale e anche nell’attuale dibattito sulla biotechnologia.
Arendt, Augustine, and the New Beginning
The Action Theory and Moral Thought of Hannah Arendt in the Light of Her Dissertation on St. Augustine
Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI 2008
This book presents an original scholarly analysis of the work of political theorist Hannah Arendt, focusing on an area hitherto ignored: the ways in which Augustine s thought forms the foundation of Arendt's work. Stephan Kampowski here offers readers a valuable overview of central aspects of Arendt s thought, addressing perennial existential and philosophical questions at the heart of every human being.
Preview “Saint Augustine’s
significance for Hannah Arendt—a modern, apparently secular Jewish woman who took
as given the irreversibility of «modern deaths»— of God, metaphysics,
philosophy.’ (Life of The Mind, p. 11)—is an obviously tantalizing
question. On the face of it, these two thinkers would seem at best
incompatible. In this superb book, Stephan Kampowski takes up this challenging
inquiry, following a winding trail through Arendt’s life as it is intriguingly
marked, both early and late in her work, by her citations of Augustine.
Kampowski’s quest turns out to illuminate the whole of Hannah Arendt’s, and
strands of Augustine’s, thought afresh.”
—ELIZABETH
MINNICH, Association of American Colleges and Universities, from her review in Notre Dame
Philosophical Reviews, September 3, 2009.
“This book is a
valuable contribution to the assessment of Augustine’s influence on a major
modern thinker. It combines a lucid introduction to Arendt’s
moral thought with a
careful and persuasive analysis of the place of her dissertation in her
development as a moral theorist. For scholars of Augustine, Kampowski has produced
more compelling evidence of the continuing importance of Augustine.”
—ROBERT P. KENNEDY, St.
Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, from his review in Augustinian
Studies 41 (2010), 484-486.
“Kampowski’s study
offers readers and scholars a systematic account of Hannah’s Arendt’s dialogue
with the philosophy of Saint Augustine of Hippo. Since the appearance of Arendt’s
doctoral dissertation, Love and Saint Augustine (1996), the influence of
Augustine’s thought on Arendt’s philosophy has been widely acknowledged, but it
has not been sufficiently mined and explored. Kampowski’s work, to my knowledge,
is the first monograph in English to do so. His work is thorough and
academically rigorous. The aim of this book is to show how Arendt’s early
concepts reappear and are transformed in Arendt’s later writing, especially in
the Human Condition and The Life of the Mind. … Kampowski’s work
is a most welcome contribution to Arendt scholarship. He successfully fills in a
lacuna in Arendt studies and does so with great attention to detail and with
the love of a scholar.”
—ANTONIO CALCAGNO, King’s
University College at the University of Western Ontario, from his review in The
Heythrop Journal 54 (January 2013), 162-163.