A probing meditation on the nature, value, and beauty of purity, In Defense of Purity is not a book of sexual ethics, nor a “how-to” guide to purity—but for readers with open minds and hearts, the book promises to be transformative.
When Dietrich von Hildebrand converted to Catholicism in 1914, he was surprised to find that, despite an abundance of books on the dangers of impurity, there were practically none on the positive values of purity. “So,” writes Alice von Hildebrand, widow of Dietrich, in a new foreword to the book, “this is what he set out to do in In Defense of Purity: to explore purity as a positive reality and only in light of its beauty to describe its contrary.”
First published in 1927, In Defense of Purity anticipates many of the most pressing social issues of our day. Hildebrand’s vision of the human person offers an antidote to a contemporary attitude that treats the body as a mere object and fails to appreciate its integral unity with the person.
In Defense of Purity has influenced thinkers like Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II, whose own Love and Responsibility and Theology of the Body share and build upon many of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s insights. This new edition stands to influence a new generation of readers, looking for enduring answers to the perennial questions about human life and love.
In Defense of Purity cuts through the current debates to offer a fundamental view of the very essence and meaning of purity. Hildebrand’s insights on love, marriage, virginity, and sexuality offer fresh wisdom to people in any stage of life, from first dates, to religious vows, to golden anniversaries.

In Defense of Purity: An Analysis of the Catholic Ideals of Purity and Virginity

Politics & Social Sciences

VON HILDEBRAND, DIETRICH

Philosophy

Hildebrand Project

Dietrich von Hildebrand understood the centrality of beauty not merely to art but to philosophy, theology, and ethics. In his ambitious and comprehensive Aesthetics, now translated into English for the first time, Hildebrand rehabilitates the concept of beauty as an objective rather and purely subjective phenomenon. His systematic account renews the Classical and Christian vision of beauty as a reliable mode of perception that leads humanity toward the true, the good, and ultimately the divine. There is no more important issue in our culture—sacred or secular—than the restoration of beauty. And there is no better place to start this urgent enterprise than Dietrich von Hildebrand's Aesthetics. - Dana Gioia | From the Foreword

Aesthetics: Volume I

Arts & Photography

"What importance is to be attributed to beauty in the life of a Christian? What role should it play in the life of those who have been redeemed? What is the relationship between redemption and beauty? Did beauty lose its significance after the redemption?” These are some of the questions Dietrich von Hildebrand answers in this collection of essays, which introduces his philosophy of art, truth, and beauty.

Beauty in the Light of the Redemption

Religion & Spirituality

A book of everyday ethics by a man whom Pope St. John Paul II called “one of the great ethicists of the twentieth century,” The Art of Living is Dietrich von Hildebrand’s essential guide to the moral life. In just over one hundred pages, Dietrich von Hildebrand, with his wife Alice, presents a distinctive view of the virtuous life that begins with reverence, “the mother of all virtues,” and includes chapters on “Faithfulness,” “Goodness,” “Hope,” “The Human Heart,” and many others. The essays that make up this book began as a popular series of radio lectures in 1930s Germany, and their conversational tone comes through in this new edition, which maintains Alice von Hildebrand’s original translation, and updates this beloved work for a new generation of readers. The Art of Living promises to provide clarity, hope, and fresh insights for those seeking to live life more fully, faithfully, and beautifully.

The Art of Living

Von Hildebrand, Alice

Is morality relative? Does it depend on one’s perspective or on external circumstances? It has become popular, even commonplace, to assert that what is moral is dependent on one’s situation. Dietrich von Hildebrand saw this trend coming, and at the earliest outset he authored this book as a refutation of “situation ethics” and an affirmation of the unchanging and universal call of true morality. The book takes up the central challenge of situation ethics to argue, definitively, that some actions are always and in every situation wrong. But Hildebrand is sensitive to the special circumstances of individual people’s lives, and he does far more than simply offer judgment. He leads us first to understand the allure of “self-righteousness,” of “the tragic sinner,” and of “sin mysticism,” and how these can obscure true morality.

Morality and Situation Ethics

Dietrich von Hildebrand provides a uniquely in-depth and astute analysis of the many ways we substitute false idols (the “graven images”) for true Christian morality. This is not a simple book on the differences between good and evil; most people do not replace true morality with pure evil, but with some other “extramoral” good, like “respectability” or “honor.” Hildebrand guides us through these false alternatives, helping to show both what is good in them, but also where they fall short of the uniqueness of true Christian morality.

Graven Images: Substitutes for True Morality

Ethics

Dietrich von Hildebrand offers here the most nuanced version we have of a value-based ethics, building on the ethics of Max Scheler, but going far beyond it. The Prolegomena of the work gives an account of Hildebrand’s understanding of phenomenology. In the first fourteen chapters Hildebrand lays out a general theory of value, in which he distinguishes himself from his predecessors by not limiting value to the sense of what is good for the human person, but instead placing at the center of his reflections what is good and worthy in itself, prior to its beneficent impact on human persons. On this basis he develops his signature concept of value-response, wherein a person gives value its due, along with his signature concept of the transcendence of the person in value-response. He re-thinks virtue theory on the basis of his value philosophy, and in doing so he places virtue at the center of his ethics long before the revival of virtue theory in Anglo-American thought. Of particular importance is his re-thinking of moral evil in its different forms, and he throws new light on the question how it is possible knowingly to do wrong. The book concludes with a probing account of the religious dimension of the moral life and the place of God in morality.

Unlike most recent books about death, Jaws of Death: Gate of Heaven faithfully presents both faces of death—its grim horror and its potential for infinite light and joy. Dietrich von Hildebrand shows that although death never loses its character as a punishment for sin, its fearful darkness can be pierced by the radiant light of faith—faith in God, in eternal life, in the resurrection of the body, and in the certainty of reunion with our beloved dead—a reunion that will know no sunset.Because the jaws of death can be our gate to Heaven, the radiant aspect of death finally triumphs as the light of Christ dissipates the fearful dark clouds spread by death.Alice von Hildebrand | From the Foreword

Jaws of Death: Gate of Heaven

Christian Books & Bibles

What Is Philosophy? is a foundational study in epistemology by the eminent phenomenologist Dietrich von Hildebrand. Hildebrand begins by analyzing closely the receptivity that is proper to all kinds of knowledge. As a result, Hildebrand holds a robust philosophical realism according to which the mind does not impose its terms on the object known, but receives the object on the object’s own terms. He does acknowledge that certain aspects of the physical world do indeed depend on the human mind, such as color qualities, but he avoids idealism by the way he embeds these qualities within things that are known in their own proper being. Perhaps the major contribution of this work lies in the account that Hildebrand gives of our knowledge of the essential structures and laws of being (what the phenomenologists called eidetic intuition). Such knowledge is inconceivable to those empiricists who think that we connect with the world only by way of empirical observation. Hildebrand shows that in addition to such observation we also possess rational insight into what things essentially are and are not. With great originality, Hildebrand examines just what kind of essential structure it is that makes possible rational insight into necessary laws of being. He also engages in debate with those empiricists who think that these necessary laws of being are reducible to tautologies. He argues that these laws are not just grounded in our word-meanings, but in the very being of things. He thus agrees with Kant that we possess necessary truths that we express in synthetic propositions; but he disagrees strenuously with Kant’s idealist account of how such propositions are possible. Hildebrand’s What Is Philosophy? is perhaps the most significant and nuanced work we have that defends the position of realist phenomenology.

What Is Philosophy?

This slim volume can be read as a handbook for the restoration of truth to its rightful place at the throne of human reason. In the essays presented here, Dietrich von Hildebrand dismantles the various intellectual and political movements that have worked to undermine truth over the last century: relativism, skepticism, materialism, historicism, psychologism, Communism, and Nazism. He shows the utter insufficiency of such arguments and reveals their common root in the denial of God and people’s attempts to be like gods themselves. To anyone who has looked at the modern world and wondered how did we get here? and how do we get out?this book shows the way.

The Dethronement of Truth

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