Who is Dietrich von Hildebrand?

Born October 12, 1889 in Florence of German parents, Dietrich von Hildebrand was an original philosopher and religious writer, a brave anti-Nazi activist, an outspoken Christian witness, and a unique representative of Western culture - truly a great figure in twentieth century religious, political, intellectual, and cultural history. As the son of a famous sculptor, von Hildebrand grew up in an unusually rich aesthetic milieu, receiving a formation that allowed him to become an eminently cultured man. He was, quite literally, a Renaissance man.

Von Hildebrand studied philosophy under Edmund Husserl, who declared his dissertation to be a work of genius. He was profoundly influenced by his close friend, the brilliant German philosopher Max Scheler, who helped to pave the way for von Hildebrand's conversion to Catholicism in 1914.
 
When Hitler rose to power in 1933, von Hildebrand was among the first to recognize and denounce the evil of Hitler and Nazism. A persona non grata in Germany, he left everything and went penniless to Vienna where he founded an anti-Nazi newspaper. With the German occupation of Austria in 1938, von Hildebrand became a political fugitive. Fleeing through Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, France, Portugal, and Brazil, he eventually arrived in the United States in 1940 where he taught for many years at Fordham University in New York City.

Read the entire story at the HildebrandLegacy.org.

I have been so touched by his story, and the story of his wife, Alice.  I have been blessed during the many hours which I have spent watching and listening to interviews with Alice on the EWTN series,  A Knight for Truth:  Transformation in Christ.  I have become a student of Phenomenology and von Hildebrand's philosophy of Personalism,  joining St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)  and Blessed Pope John Paul II as students of this philosophy.  I am equally blessed to be studying his books, especially his book of the same name,  Transformation in Christ.  Both Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have commented on the greatness of this twentieth century philosopher and religious writer: 

Pope John Paul II called Dietrich von Hildebrand "one of the great ethicists of the twentieth century." Pope Benedict XVI said this about von Hildebrand, "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." 

von Hildebrand begins Transformation with man's need and desire to change.   He contrasts the idealist's natural optimism and readiness to develop and perfect himself by his own power with the Christian who knows the "essential inadequacy of all natural morality, as well as the incomparable superiority of virtue supernaturally founded,"  which is the virtue of holiness.

von Hildebrand says:  "His readiness to change will differ, therefore, from that of the Christian, above all in the following respects.  First, he has in mind a relative change only:  an evolution immanent to nature.  His endeavor is not, as is the Christian's, to let his nature as a whole be transformed from above, nor to let his character be stamped with a new coinage, a new face, as it were, whose features far transcend human nature and all its possibilities.  His object is not to be reborn:  to become radically - from the root, that is - another man; he merely wants to perfect himself within the framework of his natural dispositions . . . whereas, with the Christian, it refers to a basic transformation and redemption of things human by things divine:  to a supernatural goal."

von Hildebrand continues:  "The idealist's readiness to change is aimed at certain details or aspects only, never at his character as a whole.  The aspiring man of natural morality is intent on eradicating this defect, on acquiring that virtue; the Christian, however, is intent on becoming another man in all things, in regard to both what is bad and what is naturally good in him.  He knows that what is naturally good, too, is insufficient before God:  that it, too must submit to supernatural transformation — to a re-creation, we might say, by the new principle of supernatural life conveyed to him by Baptism."

I hope you join me on this journey of discovery - discovery of the von Hildebrands, of St. Edith Stein, of Blessed John Paul the Great.  May you be as blessed as I have been.