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 enthusiasms that have appeared in religious circles. In addition, Fortin's essays are a direct challenge to, and redirection of, the major trends in political philosophy in the modern era. Few writing in intellectual circles today have Fortin's breadth of interest and profundity of analysis; his grasp of the classics and of modern theory is incomparable. Fortin is one of the few thinkers who take everything into consideration-experience, history, philosophy, revelation, the tradition of reason.

James V. Schall S.J., Georgetown University

If this enlightening Catholic scholar has not yet garnered the credit that is his own due, this collection provides a remedy.

Homiletic & Pastoral Review

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