Dr. Peter Paul Seaton, Jr.

Dr. Paul Seaton has been at St. Mary’s Seminary & University since 2005. He teaches philosophy full-time and serves on the formation faculty. He is the Richard and Barbara Fisher Professor of Philosophy Dr. Seaton earned his Ph. D. from Fordham University. His professional interests lie in the areas of political philosophy and French thought. He has written extensively in both areas and has translated a number of books from French into English, among them works by Rémi Brague, Chantal Delsol, and Pierre Manent. He is also the book review editor of the journal Perspectives on Political Science.

For health and recreation, Dr. Seaton swims regularly.

Selected Courses Taught

• Introduction to Philosophical Argumentation
• Ancient & Medieval Philosophy
• Modern Philosophy
• Philosophical Anthropology
• Augustine’s Confessions
• Epistemology
• Metaphysics
• Contemporary Issues

Service to the Church

• Lector

Selected Publications

Translations

• Rémi Brague
  • Moderately Modern (St. Augustine Press, 2019)
  • The Kingdom of Man: On the Genesis and Failure of the Modern Project (University of Notre Dame Press, 2018)
  • The Legitimacy of the Human (St. Augustine Press, 2017)
  • On the God of the Christians (and one or two others) (St. Augustine Press, 2013)
• Benjamin Constant, On Religion (Liberty Fund Press, 2018)
• Chantal Delsol, Unjust Justice (ISI Books, 2008)
• Pierre Manent
  • Pascal and the Christian Proposition (University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming)
  • The Religion of Humanity: The Idol of our Time (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 2022), writings by Pierre Manent on the religion of Humanity, translated with a Translator’s Introduction by Paul Seaton.
  • Democracy without Nations? (ISI Books, 2007)
  • Modern Liberty and Its Discontents (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998) (co-translated with Daniel J. Mahoney)
  •  
• Montaigne: Life without Law (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020), by Pierre Manent, translated with a Translator’s Introduction by Paul Seaton.

Selected Articles

• “Teaching Philosophy in Today’s Seminary Context,” Seminary Journal, Summer 2023
• “‘A Personal Point of View’: The Dissidents, Peter Augustine Lawler, and Us,” Perspectives on Political Science, July 2022, vol. 51, no 3, pp. 141-148.
• Pierre Manent, Natural Law and Human Rights (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020), book review in Review of Metaphysics, Vol 74, No. 2, December 2020, pp. 395-397.
• “A Socratic in the Late Modern Democratic City,” Perspectives on Political Science (August 2020)
• “Sentire cum Brownsone,” Perspectives on Political Science (December 2019)
• “Humanitarian Illusions,” Modern Age (Spring 2019)
• “Charlemagne’s European Project—and Rémi Brague’s,” Modern Age (Winter 2018)
• “Papal Globalization,” Perspectives on Political Science (April 2015)
• “Benedict XVI on Secular Culture, Technological Rationality, and Contemporary Liberty,” in Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome: Essays in Honor of James V. Schall, S. J. (St. Augustine Press, 2013)
• “Between the Human Condition and Contemporary Societies: The Exemplary Mode of Being-in-the-World of Chantal Delsol,” in Lucid Mind, Intrepid Spirit: Essays on the Thought of Chantal Delsol (Lexington Books, 2012)
• “European Dreamin’: Democratic Astigmatism and Its Sources,” in Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Globalization (The University Press of Kentucky, 2011)
• “A Socratic on the Elysée: Chantal Delsol on ‘The Clandestine Ideology of Our Time,’” Perspectives on Political Science (Summer, 2009)
• “Progress or Tyranny? The Goodridge Dissents,” in Democracy Reconsidered (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009)
• “Political Philosophy in the Strict Sense”: Thomas L. Pangle on One of the Roots of Western Civilization,” The Political Science Reviewer (Vol. XXXVI, 2007)

Online Resources (Blog Reviews and Essays at libertylawsite.org and elsewhere)

• “The Declaration’s Civic Anthropology,” July 4, 2023
• “Pope Benedict and the Drama of European Culture,” January 5, 2023.
• “Government under Judgment,” July 4, 2022
• “Classical Historicism?” (contribution to a symposium on Adrian Vermeule, Common Good Constitutionalism), April 28, 2022.
• “Medieval Remedies for Modern Maladies” (review of Rémi Brague, Curing Mad Truths:  Medieval Wisdom for Modern Man), March 24, 2022.
• “America’s Secular Church (review of Leigh Eric Schmidt, The Church of St. Thomas Paine), March 2, 2022.
• “Intellectual Sins” (review of Gregory Mellema, Sin), Oct. 24, 2021.
• “Yves Simon:  Thomist for the Modern World” (review of An Yves Simon Reader), September 24, 2021.
• “The Declaration’s Principled “We”,” July 4, 2021
• “Between Philosophy and Prophecy” (review of Heinrich Meier, What is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?  A Philosophical Confrontation), June 24, 2021
• “Tantae Molis Erat:  Machiavelli on “the Greatest Examples,” www.pomocon@substack.com/July92021.
• “Machiavelli’s Scholastic Parody,” www.pomocon@substack.com/June232021.
• “Who is The Prince?,” www.pomocon@substack.com/June172021. 
• “Augustine’s Spirited Defense of the City of God” (review of Veronica Roberts Ogle, Politics and the Earthy City in Augustine’s City of God), June 15, 2021.
• “Étienne Gilson’s City of God” (review of Étienne Gilson, The Metamorphoses of the City of God), April 14, 2021.
• “The Prophetic and the Logos” (review of Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought),  July 3, 2020.
• “America, Young and Beautiful” (review of Robert Reilly, America on Trial), Catholic World Report, June 3, 2020.
• “Martha Nussbaum’s Flawed Humanism” (review of The Cosmopolitan Tradition:  A Noble but Flawed Ideal), June 12, 2020.

Recommended Reading

• Augustine, Confessions
• Leon Kass, anything (but start with The Hungry Soul, then go to The Beginning of Wisdom)
• Isaac Kikawada and Arthur Quinn, Before Abraham Was: The Unity of Genesis 1-11
• Pierre Manent, A World beyond Politics? and Metamorphoses of the City
• Daniel J. Mahoney, The Idol of the Age