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Ethical Personalism proposes to reflect on the person from at least three levels: ontology, epistemology, and ethics. Articulating from various philosophical and religious angles and traditions the ontological and inalienable value of the human person, i.e., her dignity, the contributors to this volume show not just what it means to be a human person, but also what it takes to live accordingly. Hence, beyond the purely theoretical elaboration on ethical personalism that reposes the crucial debates between relativism and realism on the one hand, and consequentialism and deontology on the other hand, this volume offers a range of insights useful for addressing concrete and practical matters that we, as humans, are confronted in our everyday life. With the call "back to the person!" which takes roots from a deep conviction to bring into light the value of the person, Ethical Personalism unequivocally affirms the necessity of (re)placing the person in the centre of our project of society, economic plans, political settings, and environment policies.

The crisis in contemporary civilization, particularly in Europe, can be traced to a lack of balance in the relationship between man & his natural, social, & material environments & between man's existential desires & his tendencies toward doubt & negation. This same imbalance was evident in Europe in the 1930s, & prefigured the absolutism & totalitarianism leading to WWII. It also stimulated a philosophical reaction from such leading figures as Jacques Maritain, Nicholas Berdiaeff, Karl Barth, & Denis De Rougemont. Their "personalism," an attempt to form an ethical system effective for twentieth-century Western nations, stressed personal & social responsibility above irresponsible individualism or pragmatic realism. Present-day Europe requires such an ethic of responsibility in its quest for a unification in which narrow ideologies will be transcended. D. Dunseath.

Jacques maritain is firmly convinced that every philosopher has some primary intuition that permeates his whole doctrine, and that, consequently, his philosophy can be understood only if one is aware of that primary intuition. For Maritain, as for St. Thomas Aquinas, that primary intuition is the intuition of being (ens) in which both recognize the primacy of esse (the act of existing), and therefore its primacy for the philosopher who studies being. Maritain is constantly aware, from the very beginning of his philosophical reflections, that the philosopher who studies being, starts from the being that is given to him through the senses. This being, which is given to him, actually is but need not be. It is, in short, composed of that which is and the act whereby it is, or, if you will, of essence and existence. Existence must be recognized as having primacy over essence; and the philosopher will be true to reality, and therefore will be in a position to solve problems of reality, only if he respects that primacy.

Scholarship on populism has focused on the ways in which charismatic leaders trade economic benefits for political support and their ability to smother political institutions. But the Nicaraguan case suggests that attention should also be given to the other end of the polity—namely, the absence in the general population of a democratic culture that offers needed support for political institutions. In Nicaragua, the scarcity of informed, engaged, and exacting citizens—participants in politics—is an important part of the explanation for the persistence of personalism and populism.