THE DETHRONEMENT OF TRUTH

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 role of truth in human life is so predominant and decisive, the interest in the question of whether a thing is true or not is so indispensable in all the domains of human life, ranging from the most humble everyday affairs to the highest spiritual spheres, that the dethronement of truth entails the decomposition of man’s very life. Disrespect for truth, when not merely a theoretical thesis, but a lived attitude, patently destroys all morality, even all reasonability and all community life.” 

Dietrich von Hildebrand

Dietrich Richard Alfred von Hildebrand was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and religious writer.  Pope Pius XII called Hildebrand "the twentieth-century Doctor of the Church".  He was a leading philosopher in the realist phenomenological and personalist movements, producing works in every major field of philosophy, including ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical anthropology, social philosophy, and aesthetics.

Benedict XVI also had a particular admiration and regard for Hildebrand, who knew Ratzinger as a young priest in Munich: "When the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time."

Hildebrand is known for his consistent public opposition to Nazism before and during World War II.