Despite its widespread popularity in antebellum America, phrenology has rarely been taken seriously as a cultural phenomenon. Charles Colbert seeks to redress this neglect by demonstrating the important contributions the theory made to artistic developmen

In The Problem of the Idea of Culture in John Paul II: Exposing the Disruptive Agency of the Philosophy of Karol Wojtyła, John Corrigan provides a new lens with which to view and understand the philosophy of Karol Wojtyła/John Paul II. He exposes Wojtyła as a major player in contemporary philosophical debates. The work reformulates the “problem of experience” in light of the questions surrounding our idea of culture. Corrigan argues that for Wojtyła the drama of the “problem of experience” manifests in the apparently divergent accounts of the meaning of human experience as presented by the philosophies of being and of consciousness. Solving this conundrum results in an idea of the person capable of explaining human experience in relation to human culture,unfolding the experiences of self-knowledge, conscience, and the ontic-causal relationship of the person to human culture. The first part of the book concerns formal considerations regarding the constitutive aspects of Wojtyła’s approach, while the second part deals with pragmatic considerations drawn from his comments on culture.

Perfectionism is one of the leading moral views of the Western tradition. Defined broadly, it holds that what is right is whatever most promotes certain objective human goods such as knowledge, achievement, and deep personal relations.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1839.