Peter KreeftBesprekingen

"It's a moral jungle out there," writes Peter Kreeft. In Making Choices he describes why we find decision-making so difficult and living with our choices even harder. With penetrating wisdom, good humor, and common sense, Peter Kreeft draws a map through the everyday jungle of moral choices, one simple enough for the believer and convincing enough for the skeptic. This book clears a straight road through the thorny jungles of skewed modern thinking about the way to live, and does do with the easy brilliance, impish insight, and searching simplicity that have become Peter Kreeft's special trademarks.

Lido

350 Ways to Become a Saint

discourse on method

concise arguments

death as meaningful event

Serious b.s.. The guy didn't want to hear the atheists point of view. He just wanted to convert him. Ridiculous.

Kreeft considers all the fundamental elements of Christianity and Catholicism, explaining, defending and showing their relevance to our life and the world's yearnings. Here is a book to help you understand your faith more fully and to explain it to others more winningly.

The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind The "Lord of the Rings" by Peter J. Kreeft (2005)

Kreeft examines suffering through the lenses of theology, apologetics, philosophy, and personal experience: Why do people suffer and is there any good that can come from suffering. This is a heart and head book, one that will teach you and bathe you in answers.

Right leaning Pilgrims Progress/Regress fan fiction

While Lewis and Tolkien likely discussed the Eucharist during their long friendship, the conversation in this book never took place—but it could have, says Kreeft, who faithfully presents the views of these three impressive men.

Peter Kreeft brings his unique insights to this most important area of our spiritual lives. He claims he himself is still a beginner in prayer, and this book is for all those, like him, who feel that they are not good at praying but desire to become much better at it.

CD Dr. Kreeft shows us that there is only one weapon that will defeat the demons of this age. Saints. Above all, Dr Kreeft assures us that for those who hope in Christ, victory is assured, because good triuphs over evil.

This is from Ignatius Books which is a publisher I like a lot. They started out publishing the work of Swiss theologian Von Balthasar and have produced many other worthwhile titles. This book had two blurber names from the past: Ronda Chervin and Ralph McInerny. Both were philosophy teachers who did much to enhance Catholicism as conversant with modern culture. Kreeft is part of the newer breed of philosophy people urging a focus of attention on Catholicism’s world view.
Here Kreeft tries to develop his own thesis of three Old Testament books linked together to form a loose Divine Comedy in the Dantean sense. This was a novel idea at the time Three Philosophies of Life was written (1989) but is dated now as a title concept. Kreeft says that Ecclesiastes is a version of Dante’s Inferno. The book of Job a version of Dante’s Purgatorio, and The Song of Songs a version of Dante’s Paradiso. Dante wrote a medieval epic poem describing his own journey from being lost at midlife during Good Friday and ends with an Easter Sunday visit to heaven’s upper reaches. Kreeft says the Old Testament books set three different moods which he develops through 140 pages. Kreeft writes a short work doing spiritual exegesis on these three books. Kreeft is at home bringing in Catholic thought and Theology to interpret these scriptures. Because of this, the book is written for Catholics, and mostly for Catholics, to read these three Old Testament works. Or, at least he hopes anyone will read these works as literary masterpieces and see the value in the Catholic interpretation of those works.
The book seems aimed at college students/undergrads who may not be familiar with these books due to their religious associations. Kreeft wants these works to be reevaluated by readers for what they say about current questions about life. The sort of questions which students were supposed to ask during their twenties. Kreeft has an issue when dealing with marriage. His ideas of marriage often come across as dogmatic which is grating to my ears and lacking, not complications, but complexity. Marriage is a sacrament, but he treats like only an ideal and anyone who falls short can never be a true catholic. Sadly, he has one chapter called Love is “sexist”. This is strange to my ears but his views are his own and this is a literary analysis philosophical book. This is minor criticism of mine since the book was otherwise complete in its stated aim. I doubt Dante would endorse his poem’s structure as a way understand these three crucial Old Testament books, but he would appreciate Kreeft’s mission to have people read the Old Testament more seriously and more earnestly as a way to struggle with our individual faith journeys.
A book worth reading. It takes some time to digest his arguments, but it will result in you rereading these great Old Testament literary works which Dante himself knew well.

Kreeft has the ability to take a very big idea (I think it's fair to say among the biggest of ideas) and make it comprehensible, and show how it has echoed through the history of the West. This is not a small accomplishment.

A major book on the subject of heaven, this expanded edition examines the hunger for heaven that is so strong in all of us. Fascinating and upbeat, Heaven, the Heart's Deepest Longing thoroughly explores the psychological and theological dimensions of this search for total joy and for the ultimate reality that grounds it.

Given out by church (St. Lawrence, Chester, NJ). Great little book! Gets better about 1/3 of the way into it. Alot about Eucharist, how Jesus has "shocked" us over the years and still should. Dog eared lots of pages.

Some good thoughts, some I am not sure of, but the big issue was the narrator just did not fit - her accent took away from when Kreeft talked about being American and her voice was very zen, making the whole book sound like a long meditation.

By two stars, it was genuinely okay. And- I'm glad I read it. I both liked and hated it.

Summary:
In The Best Things in Life, Kreeft imagines conversations Socrates might have on a college campus (Desperate State University) today with two students - Peter Pragma and Felicia Flake. Conversation topics bounce around in Peter's chapters on the purpose of education, careers, technology, AI, superstitions, and success/the greatest good. With Felicia, Socrates tackles happiness/pot, music, sex/love, sexism, communism/capitalism, and especially our idea of objective values.

Push-backs:
First, my complaints... it is corny... painfully so. Every chapter starts with some straightforwardly corny statements and jokes. His representations of the college president, another professor, a new age guru, Karl Marx and Adam Smith were all so overly parodied, it was difficult to take them seriously. And his conversation sparring partners (Peter and Felicia) were hardly up to snuff.

Second, Socrates felt pretty Christian. He quotes scripture, along with numerous other contemporary philosophers and writers, which was fine, but to me, Socrates seemed to have more of a Christian agenda than I would've expected.

Third, and this is relatively minor, there are no references or bibliography. Kreeft literally references and quotes dozens of other writers and thinkers, but never tells us who he's referencing. For one wanting to know more, it was frustrating.

Fourth and final, some of the arguments were less than convincing. Some were great, but discussing AI seemed way over simplified and naive (the book was written in the 80s...), and the one on superstitions I don't think would convince anyone. In short he argued against the claim that "Santa Clause doesn't exist," referring also to God, because it's impossible to know the reaches of the universe and a finite mind like ours cannot claim to know whether anything or anyone could exist or not because we cannot know the ends of the universe. I mean, come on. On some level, interesting point, but it's a very modernistic question that I feel fewer and fewer are asking or care to rebut.

Okay - finally final, most people today will be annoyed by the philosophizing I think. We generally don't elevate Reason like Socrates (or Kreeft) does, which means the arguments often don't resonate. I think (and this is mostly ignorance speaking), Kreeft is making modernistic arguments that just don't fly for we postmoderns... which isn't a word.

Conclusion:
All that being said, I (mostly) enjoyed and appreciated the dialogues and seeing the Socratic method in practice. In pursuit of the "best things in life," I think it did well to ask some of the bigger questions and wrestle with them. And - Socrates and basic philosophy is another gap in my education, so that was a plus.

Take-aways
Three quick thoughts that I really appreciated:

In discussing career and a liberal education, Socrates says, "Then we must consider two questions: what ends they serve and how well they serve those ends. If one of them helps you to a better end, or better helps you to the same end, it would be the better thing to choose, wouldn't it?"

... obviously better in context, but that was a helpful idea for me, as I'm looking to make another career change. The discussion of ends and means was delightful.

In discussing technology Socrates says that all the premodern philosophers "agreed that the most important thing in life was somehow to conform the human soul to objective reality..., which was gods, or God, or the will of God, or the laws of God. Even when the philosophers substituted Justice for Zeus and Beauty for Aphrodite and Truth for Apollo, the great task of human life remained essentially the same: to conform the soul to these divine, superhuman realities." (p.41)

For me, that is a profound and moving idea that corresponds to my own journey toward God and wrestling with faith. The Christian, biblical God remains as much (or more) hidden as she is revealed, which confounds and enriches this pursuit of divine mystery.

Lastly was this fun quote, again of Socrates: "The world, it seems to me, is divided into the wise who know they are fools, and the fools, who think they are wise." Hopefully our folly isn't merely false humility. As others have said, "Age makes fools of us all," so we might as well be gracious to others.

If you're curious about Socrates or appreciate the Socratic method, or if you enjoy wrestling with "the best things in life," and you're willing to overlook the corny, terrible parodies and (modernistic) Christian undertones, this might be a good book for you. Mostly I enjoyed it. Kreeft is a thoughtful writer.

I am listening to this on audiobooks and it is very easy to follow. The accompanying PDF is extremely helpful. The way it is read is clear and the content is inspiring. It is a great aid to deeper reflection and prompts a desire to delve deeper into the history and context.

Back when I reviewed Three Philosophies of Life, I said I would have to read more of Peter Kreeft's work. Well, I finally got around to that. (Not my fault that the library doesn't carry much of his stuff.) I had read Plato's account of the trial of Socrates in Philosophy and Contemporary Issues and immediately recalled this title. When I was up at Harvest Logos looking for an Ezekiel bible study, I peeked to see if this was on the shelf and when I found it I succumbed to temptation and impulsively bought it. Anyway, this is written in play format and has Socrates, the father of Western philosophy, appearing at "Have It University" in Boston. He finds himself enrolled in courses in the divinity school there and spends the rest of the book questioning and challenging his fellow students and a couple of his teachers. All in all, it came across as a thinly veiled course in apologetics. A fairly one sided course, at that. Socrates opponents are all caught off guard and in the end, Socrates "meets Jesus" and becomes convinced of Christianity's truthfulness. I would imagine that the real apostate and heterodox Christians would be a bit harder to confound. Be that as it may, I'm keeping the book. The drama may be weak, but Kreeft is a wonderful writer and has this real poetic way of describing God's relationship with his people. I really was moved by Socrates' wonder at the reality of God taking on human form, which in turn colored my own thoughts as I worshiped this Christmas. So why I have to be honest about the book's flaws, I do recommend that you check it out despite them.
--J.½

"I've been a philosopher for all my adult life and the three most profound books of philosophy that I have ever read are Ecclesiastes, Job, and Song of Songs." These are the opening lines of Kreeft's Three Philosophies of Life.

Kreeft has opened up the Bible for many with this amazing, brief summary. It is one of the best ways available to get a quick grasp of each whole book, so that the details will fall into the proper places when the book is read.

For the first time in 400 years the Catholic Church has authorized an official universal catechism which instantly became an international best-seller, the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Using this official Catechism, the highly-regarded author and professor Peter Kreeft presents a complete compendium of all the major beliefs of Catholicism written in his readable and concise style. Since the Catechism of the Catholic Church was written for the express purpose of grounding and fostering catechisms based on it for local needs and ordinary readers, Kreeft does just that, offering a thorough summary of Catholic doctrine, morality, and worship in a popular format with less technical language. He presents a systematic, organic synthesis of the essential and fundamental Catholic teachings in the light of the Second Vatican Council and the whole of the Church's Tradition. This book is the most thorough, complete and popular catechetical summary of Catholic belief in print that is based on the universal Catechism.