Catholic Church 

Pope John Paul II perceives the dignity of the human person as threatened on every side. It is caught between two dehumanizing materialist forces: the narcissistic individualism of the West and the institutionalized conformism of the East. His philosophical writing has been a persistent, carefully argued attempt to find an alternative understanding of human nature that envisions the individual as dynamic and free yet whose fulfillment is possible only when he or she participates in a commonly experienced good.

Toward a Philosophy of Praxis is a compilation of the central passages and core arguments from the Pope's four major works and selected pontifical homilies and addresses. Its focus is on the humanistic and ethical themes to which the Pope consistently returns in all of his writings. These works include The Self and the Act, The Controversy About Man, Sign of Contradiction, "The Theology of the Body," and the Pope's first encyclical, The Redeemer of Man. The major selections are provided with commentaries which offer a compact and thoroughgoing introduction to the humanistic vision of the new Pope.

Alfred Bloch, whose articles on Pope John Paul II have appeared in the National Catholic Reporter, is associate professor of political science at the State University of New York, College at New Paltz.

George T Czuczka is a retired foreign service officer who served in central Europe and India.

Taken from the inside flaps.