Call to Happiness

Nathaniel A. Warne (PhD, Durham University, UK) is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Notre Dame in the Center for Social Concerns and also ministers in the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana.

• Chapter 1: Puritanism and the ‘Haunting Fear’Chapter 2: Nature, Ends, and HappinessChapter 3: Reason, Theoria, and PraxisChapter 4: A ‘Kind of Life’: Rationality, Virtue, and Moral DevelopmentChapter 5: ‘Imposed on Man:’ Personhood, Command and CallingChapter 6: ‘Common Good:’ Community and the PoliticalChapter 7: Community, Friendship, and LawChapter 8: Puritan Ethics and a Tradition of Happiness

Nathaniel A. Warne is that rare thing: a rigorous philosophical theologian who is also deeply humane. This book is about how some of the most impressive people in the Christian tradition have wrestled with what it truly means to be happy — not just in theory, but also in practice. He not only understands the Puritans sympathetically in their own context, but also draws out their lessons for our own age, when the idea of 'happiness' has become so impoverished. Anyone who wants to enrich it again will benefit from reading this book.