Christopher Dawson

How to write the history of philosophy of history? This article argues that a discursive approach, focused on the use and meaning of such essentially contested concepts like “history” and “objectivity,” is more appropriate for the field at hand than, for example, an institutional approach. By way of example, the article provides a brief history of “metahistory” – the title word of perhaps the most influential study in philosophy of history since R.G. Collingwood’s The Idea of History. It argues that Hayden White’s understanding of the term closely resembles that of Christopher Dawson, a British Roman Catholic author on whom White wrote a lengthy article in the late 1950s. Evidence suggests, moreover, that White actually borrowed the term from Dawson or, more broadly, from a mid-twentieth-century, European, religiously inspired tradition of historical thought. In sum, this article suggests a new genealogy of “metahistory” and, in doing so, advocates a discursively oriented mode of writing the history of twentieth-century philosophy of history.

The roots of gender ideology lie in the broader contraceptive culture that gave birth to it. The consequent abortion of the body, both the bodies of actual persons and the body as a governing concept in law and public policy, is now undermining our collective ability to distinguish between the given and the desired, between the objective and the subjective, between facts and falsehoods. This essay is prefaced by a brief statement of dissent called 'No More Lies'.

This paper considers the future role and fate of religion in liberal modernity through the eyes of two Catholic thinkers, Christopher Dawson and Charles Taylor. It is argued herein that Taylor may be surprised to discover that his analysis of religion and secularism is much more like Dawson's than it is different, despite his criticism of Dawson's backward-looking 'nostalgia' in A Secular Age. Insofar as both figures explain some role that religion ought to play within liberal modernity, they agree that (a) any nostalgic longing for a past religious order is troubling and argue instead for (b) openness to the role of transcendence in the lives of modern persons within liberal modernity. As for the fate of religion in liberal modernity, both figures also (c) deny the idea of progress as it is laid out in what is commonly referred to as the secularization thesis. To the extent that these two figures certainly differ in their views pertaining to the role and fate of religion in liberal modernity, it will also be shown that (d) Dawson makes more explicit theological appeals to the Spirit of God as a vital force that shapes the course of human history.

This paper compares the works of British Catholic thinkers John Henry Newman and Christopher Dawson on the nature of education.  As educators, Newman the theologian and Dawson the world historian were widely influential and widely respected beyond the bounds of their immediate communities during their own lives. Both also left literary legacies that continue to be consulted. Since Newman’s The Idea of a University (1852) is better known, it can serve as a foil for a discussion of Dawson’s The Crisis of Western Education (1961). The rationale for the comparison is provided by Dawson, who professed a strong affinity for Newman’s work. I want to consider here Dawson’s notion of education as enculturation against Newman’s notion of education as the cultivation of the intellect.

At the end of the twentieth century the triumph of capitalism and liberal democracy seemed so complete that Hegel's spectre of the end of history was raised. However, the 2008 financial crisis and, more acutely, the threat of Islamism has shaken such complacency so that John Milbank and Adrian Pabst speak of liberalism in metacrisis. The solution to the problem (which is a composite of left wing social and right wing economic liberalism) is in line with the theological position of Radical Orthodoxy: a post-liberal politics of virtue. Liberalism is rooted in an anthropology that the authors believe is bound to self-destruct, whether this is through the Hobbesian idea that man is in a war of all against all or the Lockean anthropology of man as a self-owning animal. Although these doctrines are false, they are self-fulfilling and tend to bring about the triumph of vice over virtue. We must look, rather, to Aristotle's zoon politikon as expanded by Aquinas for a new " settlement " based on sharing risk, responsibilities, and resources. Noting that this may be deemed unrealistic the authors challenge the very idea of realism (as amoral pragmatism). Although they do not use the term their idea seems to be that the experiment of history vindicates true realism, the rejection of ethics being ultimately unsustainable. The structure of the book is clear enough. In five sections (on politics, economics, polity, culture, and international relations) the metacrisis is first diagnosed and then the post-liberal alternative prescribed. I shall focus on the ninth chapter diagnosing the international crisis. I found the argument difficult to follow at times, possibly because of the paradoxical situation that I take the authors to be addressing, namely, that on the one hand liberalism is a reality, one that is in crisis and that needs replacing, and on the other hand, post-liberalism is already upon us in many ways, often negative. What is clear is the conviction that medieval Christendom in some sense represents a positive and viable model for the way ahead. The chapter on " The Metacrisis of the Nations " opens with a section on the Battle against Barbarism focussing on the rise of ISIS. Whilst it is conceded that the Western carving up of the Ottoman Empire was partly responsible for the rise of Islamism, the authors point to the longevity of Sunni-Shiite hostilities, and obviously think that even if ISIS is defeated in the near future it is quite possible that a successor may arise soon after. The significance is broached in the next section on Liberal Hegemony: it seems to give the lie to democratic peace theory whereby the sovereign state automatically ushers in civilisation. The authors attribute this to a contradiction within liberalism itself: although officially anti-imperial, Woodrow Wilson's project extended what in effect is an American Empire. However, despite the crisis, this world order looks as though it will be around some time and so the authors moot the idea of " international society " formulated by the English school of IR. Still, Western power is on the wane, indeed, the liberal order is in metacrisis. This is attributed to internal contradictions that stem ultimately from atheism. The experiment of history, so to speak, vindicates prophets such as Fyodor Dostoevsky (" Without God, everything is permitted ") insofar as ethics is more and more reduced to power politics. Christopher Dawson, too, is invoked as pinpointing the internal contradictions. On the one hand, modernity inherently globalises and tends to release great energies, but on the other hand it tends to break down the bonds that draw humankind together. Unsurprisingly we see a lack of vision by Western leaders, and a paralysis in their foreign policy.

Martin Wight and Bernard Lonergan both realised the importance of history in their twenties, Wight discovering a universe of meaning in Toynbee’s Study and Lonergan spending “long hours” reading Thucydides. Each writer made significant contributions to their chosen field which included an overlap between epistemology and International Relations though ironically, Wight’s epistemological remarks and Lonergan’s geopolitical remarks both seem to have fallen off the radar screen. I will suggest that this is not too surprising given that both in their own way practiced a very diplomatic theology. In this paper I have tried to bring out some salient features and have tried to relate the two contributions. I argue that it is Lonergan’s unique methodological position that enables him to express a cosmopolitan hope for the future that, perhaps, marks a difference from Wight’s internationalism.

Is culture a temptation for Christianity or is its formation part of the mission of the Church on earth? After exploring several objections, this essay will present an argument that Christianity fundamentally is meant to shape culture within human history. The center of this argument is the entrance of the Son of God into history in the Incarnation, which will be examined in light of Sacred Scripture. They essay will then present Christopher Dawson’s argument on the centrality of the Incarnation to history and also the recent exhortation of the Magisterium’s to transform culture in light of the Gospel.

‘“Post-Christian Era”? Nonsense!’ declared one of Europe’s foremost theologians, Karl Barth, in August 1948 at the first assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam. Barth’s criticism notwithstanding, ‘post-Christian’ was a term that rose to prominence in mid-twentieth-century diagnoses of modernity. From the 1930s onwards, growing numbers of Protestant and Catholic thinkers perceived Europe, or more broadly the Western world, as entering a ‘post-Christian’ phase. The post-prefix was deeply ambiguous, however. For some, it conveyed that Europe had broken with its Christian past – a break that could alternatively be interpreted as liberation or estrangement. Others, by contrast, used the post-prefix to argue that various emerging forms of ‘secularism’ were historically indebted to Europe’s Christian past. Thus, Arnold J. Toynbee told an Oxford audience in 1940 that liberalism, communism and fascism were all leaves ‘taken from the book of Christianity’. Surveying the career of ‘post-Christian’ in mid-twentieth-century Germany, France, England and the Netherlands (with a brief excursion to the United States), this chapter argues that the term was able to achieve prominence because the ‘post’ allowed for different kinds of self-positioning vis-à-vis ‘Christianity’ and ‘modern culture’. Interestingly, however, in almost all cases, these positioning strategies drew on historicist resources in portraying the modern ‘age’ or ‘era’ as a new epoch in the development of Western culture.

A Word in Season I (Fall 2020): 57-64. The rise of Catholic Studies programs at Catholic and non-Catholic universities has provoked admiration and dismay from various viewpoints. Theologian John Cavadini expressed a common criticism when he argued that Catholic Studies inevitably either must be reduced to theology proper or become simply the study of what Catholics do and thus secularize. In this view, a Catholic Studies department is simply an emergency measure acceptable if there is no theology department or if the theology department on campus is too divided to function as a unifying force. In this paper, I will argue that while theology is indeed key to a Catholic education, academic theology is not, never was, and cannot be the unifying subject for undergraduate study because of its "notional" nature. Instead, Catholic Studies departments, because they are not simply theological or even strictly disciplinary, but a new representation of what Newman called the collegiate ideal, become that location by offering courses and an academic experience that focuses on unifying knowledge through an examination of culture and the Catholic intellectual tradition as a whole.

A small number of scholars have noted T. S. Eliot's anticipation of the hermeneutical theory later articulated by the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer. Eliot similarly concerns himself with the epistemological assumptions of positivism in the human sciences and the implications of objectivizing texts and other cultural phenomena by adopting the attitude of the scientific observer. For both thinkers, this represents an approach to social life which either distorts or altogether misses the truth claims of those whose ideas are to be interpreted. Furthermore, Eliot develops a theory of understanding that is similar to the historicizing of interpretation that one finds later in Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. However, among those who have observed these affinities, a key difference has been neglected. In his effort to confront such secularizing forces in the human sciences, Eliot comes to embrace an intellectualist philosophy of history, which relies on a tenuous dualism between the metaphysical and the physical, while Gadamer's philosophy of history collapses the dichotomy between the world of ideas and the existential realm. Thus, Eliot ultimately identifies what transcends history exclusively with the realm of the spirit. This essay argues that as the mature Eliot struggled with the empirically reductive tendencies of the human sciences and aimed to save religious truth from their deterministic assaults, he increasingly retreated to an intellectualism that misconceived the ultimate basis of religious truth. Consequently, the existing literature neglects the intellectualism that defines Eliot's understanding of truth within history and the more concrete understanding of that encounter that one finds in Gadamer's thinking.

This thesis forwards the concept of the ‘Old Western Men’, a phrase borrowed from C. S. Lewis, who used this term to assert the presence of a ‘Great Divide’ in history. Modernity, he believed, was essentially secular, unlike what had preceded it. In this sense, he was in opposition to it as a Christian. This thesis’s unique contribution to the current literature is that it applies Lewis’s identification of the Old Western Men to a broader spectrum of intellectuals and artists, previously referred to, more narrowly, as the ‘Catholic literary revival’. This Ph.D. locates such a revival within a broader ‘religious mode of response’ to modernity, which such men of letters as Lewis believed to be fundamentally materialistic; meaning that modernity denied the existence of an objective spiritual reality. Chapter one describes the general concept of the Old Western Men, including how it confronted secular modernity by attempting to reconcile mind with matter as part of an intellectual via media (middle way); it will also examine the importance that some intellectuals invested in the concept of imaginative understanding. Chapter two focuses on an Old Western emphasis on the ‘More-Than-World’ within the world, one that was essentially sacramental, having come to reconcile reason with the imagination. Chapter three forwards the Old Western notion of thinking ‘christianly’ by cultivating a divine indifference to worldly catastrophe. This also entails examining the concept of self-sanctification, as well as how the Old Western Men responded to the violence of their century by inviting the supernatural into their lives. Chapter four concludes the thesis by examining the spiritual/cultural device of Christendom as a redemptive discourse combatting European nationalism and racialism.

Sažetak Tema kršćanskih korijena Europe i njezinog jedinstva bila je vrlo aktualna u vrijeme donošenja Europskog ustava (2004.). Međutim osim iznošenja političkih stavova gotovo da i nije bilo povjesničara u rangu engleskog apologeta Christophera Dawsona (1889.-1970.) koji bi stali u obranu kršćanske kulture kao integrativne snage u Europi. Zato je nužno vratiti se Dawsonovim tekstovima u kojima on promiče danas rijetko viđeno i proklamirano katoličko viđenje povijesti jedinstva Europe, što će se prikazati u ovome radu. Tezu o integrativnoj snazi kršćanske kulture Dawson najjasnije zagovara u knji-zi The Making of Europe: An Introduction to the History of European Unity (1932.) u kojoj je u predvečerje Drugoga svjetskog rata prikazao kako je tek srednjovjekovno kršćanstvo pod Karlom Velikim oblikova-lo Europu i omogućilo joj da postane svjesna same sebe. Za Dawsona religija je nužna sastavnica kulture i bez nje nije moguće razumjeti početke europskog jedinstva, nije moguće razumjeti Europu. Na tu činjenicu valja neprestano podsjećati jer preambula Europskog ustava dokazuje koliko je ona pala u zaborav. Zato Dawson predlaže temeljit studij kršćanske kulture kao put k oživljavanju pamćenja na kršćanske korijene Europe.

The Christian roots of Europe and its unity were a topical issue at the time of the European Constitution adoption (2004). But apart from presenting political views there were almost no historians in rank of English apologist Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) who would spring to defence of Christian culture as an integrative force in Europe. Therefore, it is necessary to return to Dawson’s texts in which he promotes today rarely seen and proclaimed Catholic visi- on of the history of European unity, which will be presented in this paper. Dawson promotes the thesis about the integrative power of Christian culture most clearly in his book The Making of Europe: An Introduction to History of European Unity (1932). In it, in the eve of the Second World War, he shows that it was just the medieval Christianity under Charlemagne that shaped Europe and enabled it to become self-aware. For Dawson religion is an essential compo- nent of culture and without it, it is not possible to understand the beginnings of European unity, it is not possible to understand Euro- pe. This fact should be constantly pointed out, since the preamble of the European Constitution demonstrates just how much this fact has fallen into oblivion. Therefore Dawson proposes a thorough study of Christian culture as a way to revive the memory of Christian roots of Europe.

This essay discusses an almost forgotten text by Hayden White: a 1959 book review published in the journal Speculum. The brief text offers an interesting glimpse on the medieval historian that was White in 1959 – though one who clearly was on his way of becoming a historical theorist. At the same time, the review raises a number of questions with which historians still find themselves struggling. What are the moral interventions that historians make through their books and articles? And is it true, as White memorably put it, that “no historian worthy of the name is only an historian”?

A short (1400-word) reflection on the essential value of a spiritually-attuned humanistic liberal education in American education. Our common culture serves the common good, and the educational sector is obligated to engage in a large enterprise that enables that service.

Originally titled "Transforming Culture through Family Catechesis," the essays covers the role of family life in forming culture and education. It offers four proposals for building culture in the family: 1) family prayer 2) forming the imagination 3) family work and 4) forming intentional community with families.

Bellarmine Forum 5:3 (Winter 2015): 14-17. In this article I attempt to diagnose the position of the Catholic Church in this time period, locating us at the end of Christopher Dawson's "sixth age" of the Church, in which internal and external pressures are causing what looks like collapse. I then examine five ways necessary for Catholics to survive, including 1) an emphasis on seeing the present, 2) a renewal of prayer and liturgy, 3) a renewed preaching to those inside and outside the Church, 4) a positive ecumenical alliance with serious Protestants and Orthodox Christians, 5) a strategy of political prudence that builds bridges on a number of different topics, and 6) a rethinking of Catholic education that focuses on a dedication to hiring people in Catholic institutions who manifest real belief in the Church's teaching and mission.

Max Weber, from whom we derive the term “Protestant work ethic,” saw work (and buying, selling, or accumulating and investing capital) as deeply entwined with a religious framework. Weber’s view is amenable to the perspective of generative anthropology (GA), of the human scene with center and periphery. With increasing automation, the growing ubiquity of artificial intelligence, and now the proposal for a “Universal Basic Income” (UBI), Weber's thesis seems particularly pertinent; such developments are consistent with Weber’s thesis on the “capitalist spirit.” On the other hand, they obviously undermine the famous “work ethic”—the civic virtue derived from Weber, though never articulated as such in his thesis.

In this paper I overview Weber’s thesis as well as its popularization in the “work ethic” meme. I then review a string of thinkers who came to different conclusions than Weber but all of whom, in one way or another, looked at religion and the market through a “Weberian” framework: R. H. Tawney, Amintore Fanfani, Christopher Dawson, Michael Novak, Francis Fukuyama (his book Trust), Jean-Pierre Dupuy, and Venkatesh Rao (his tragi-comic reflections in "The Gervais Principle"). Each of these thinkers have complementary insights that deepen the overall effect of Weber’s approach, and all of them are worth considering from a GA perspective. In the concluding section, I consider the “work ethic” in light of automation, AI, and UBI. I reflect on the possibility of an "anthropology of work," in light of GA and Catholic social teaching.



,  has focused on the paradoxical structure of Weber’s thesis to anatomize the paradoxes of capitalism itself.

As the “work ethic” itself now crawls into its terminal stages (AI, mechanization, Universal Basic Income), the prophet of doom is Venkatesh Rao, in his excruciatingly cynical but brilliant anatomy of company hierarchies. A “loser” laity at the bottom knows the score but goes through the motions; “clueless” middle management, true believers, serve as a priestly class overseeing empty rituals; “sociopath” gods at the top orchestrate the masquerades below, as they sink into nihilistic existential dilemmas. The work ethic may have sprung from religion, but now generates its own religious ecology, in the service of its gods.

Books & Culture (September-October 2009): 35-37.  In this essay I discuss the decline of Chesterton's reputation in the post-sixties era and his return to prominence in both academic and popular attention. In the course of this I discuss three recently (at the time) published books: Adam Schwartz's The Third Spring; Mark Knight's Chesterton and Evil; and volume VII of the Collected Works of Chesterton, edited and introduced by Iain Benson and including The Ball and the Cross, Manalive, and the Flying Inn.

On October 19th, 1954, the Archbishop of Boston, Richard Cush- ing, appointed Guillermo Porras the first Opus Dei priest to settle in Boston, as chaplain of the Harvard Catholic Club. This article investigates the reasons that led the Archbishop to make that decision. The article also looks at Fr. Porras’ role in various events, such as the beginning of the regular celebration of Mass at Harvard, the first personal meeting of the Boston Archbishop and the Presi- dent of Harvard, and the establishment of the Charles Chauncey Stillman Chair of Catholic Studies. Finally, the author addresses the chaplain’s vision of how Catholics should live and make their Catholicism present in an institution such as Harvard in the lead up to the Second Vatican Council.

Apresentação à edição brasileira da obra de Christopher Dawson "A Formação da Cristandade - Das origens na tradição Judaico-cristã à ascensão e queda da unidade medieval" (São Paulo: É Realizações, 2014, pp 7-30). No link abaixo em trecho da obra, na página da editora, se acessa a íntegra desta apresentação.

L'article parcourt un éventail d’interprétations macro-historiques expliquant l’apport du monde musulman à la formation et au développement de l’Europe. Dans ces interprétations , le monde musulman est présenté (1) en tant qu’expérience traumatique, (2) en tant que stimulant considérable et (3) en tant que clé pour comprendre une histoire complexe, partagée, enchevêtrée qui est, si l’on veut, l’histoire de l’Europe. Finalement, (4) le monde musulman est présenté comme faisant partie intégrante d’un espace transculturel qu’on pourrait appeler euro-méditerranéen ou même eurasiatique. Une histoire transculturelle mettant en relief l’enchevêtrement culturel de l’espace euro-méditerranéen est désirable et reste encore à écrire. Les chercheurs qui s'appliqueront à cette tache, seront confronté avec le défi de ne pas pouvoir ignorer la partie de cette histoire enchevêtrée qui est caractérisée par l’opposition et la bipolarité culturelle et qui se manifeste avant tout dans l'interprétation de l'histoire des relations entre l'Europe et le monde musulman.
[publié dans: Catherine Richarté et al. (eds), Héritages arabo-islamiques dans l'Europe méditerranéenne, Paris 2015, p. 471-84.]