Human Rights, Virtue and the Common Good

Father Ernest L. Fortin, one of the nation's foremost thinkers in the fields of philosophy and theology, is Professor of Theology at Boston College, and the author and editor of numerous books on ancient and medieval philosophy and religion.

Ernest Fortin possesses that rare combination, found only in the greatest thinkers, of both immense learning and a playful intellect. His essays are grounded, but not confined, in tradition; they are scholarly, but not pedantic. They are eloquent testimony to the eros of the mind. -- Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University, former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Such deep and wide learning is rare enough. But the cumulative effect of bringing together all these valuable contributions is to let us see something rarer still: the life of a mind that is humane, lucid, and wise. -- Ralph Lerner, University of Chicago Ernest Fortin has a place of honor at the table of quiet erudition and uncompromising curiosity where adults try to understand how the world went crazy, and what might be done about it. If we are ever so much more fortunate than we deserve, younger scholars will follow Fortin in what is best described as the path of wisdom. -- Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, First Things These three volumes are fundamental contributions to the problem of modernity. In his analysis of rights, Catholic social thought, the state, and general questions of justice, Ernest Fortin has penetrated to the core of the misplaced ideologies and enthusiams that have appeared in religious circles...Fortin is one of the few thinkers who take everything into consideration-experience, history, philosophy, revelation, the tradition of reason. -- James V. Schall, Professor of Government, Georgetown University A grand champion of reasoned faith and faithful reason, Ernest Fortin lets us hear the Christian voice in political philosophy with all its eloquence and subtlety. Fortin has erudition and wit and generosity of spirit, and he is also that rarity, an observer of the political scene who does justice to both the here and now and the everywhere and always. -- Wilson Carey McWilliams, Rutgers University