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A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart

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Pieper spends much of his effort in defining the true meaning behind words that have been perverted or lost their depth of meaning over time. Words like: faith, prudence, listening, silence, fortitude, patience, sensuality, passion, anger, indolence, magnamity, humility, hope, and acedia. The modern mind, it would appear, has lost the vocabulary keys to salvation and proper moral elocution. Pieper argues, in the simpliest, if not only way, I can define, that too much subjection of one's senses to unfilterd, unanalyzed, unrationalized, unpassioned exposure can lead to a distancing from one's true nature of self, and also a distancing, if not hopeless seperation, from cummunication with the divine. The between-the-lines inference here is too much tv, newspapers, cnn, and anything that is unpassioned and unrationalized to oneself is detrimental to the soul. It is noise, noise, and does not fill the heart, too much of this state and one's heart can get out of tune, possibly irrevocably. Pieper argues that acedia is the state of one not fulfilling the true beauty of one's divine nature and passion. This laziness of endeavor is a sin against nature and God, as well as to oneself. Not a feel good bandaid sort of book of nice little aphorisms. This book is deadly serious and after a serious reading one might be lucky enough to realize the big job involved in being oneself, and how important that is to God. As serious as the air one breaths. Silence and rationalized enrichment, Pieper defines them both. A superficial reading of the book might lead one to think it is just a bunch of unconnected maxims - far from it. A nice little book. Bring a dictionary.

Josef Pieper here synopsizes his thinking on the virtues, providing a digest of brief snippets on the meaning and exercise of each of the virtues (faith, hope, love; prudence, justice, fortitude/courage, temperance/self-control). This is an excellent, readable introduction to the thought of one of the great thoughtful writers of the 20th Century. Highly recommended.