In ordinary conversation including among the educated the word sin rarelygets mentioned except when one is trying to be coy or facetious. As Thomas Mannonce sai... » 

In ordinary conversation including among the educated the word sin rarelygets mentioned except when one is trying to be coy or facetious. As Thomas Mannonce said sin is nowadays an amusing word used only when one is trying toget a laugh.But this small work will interpret sin in its true that is serious meaning. What will emerge from its analysis is the discovery that the conceptof sin can still serve to unlock the mystery of existence at least for athinking that wants to press down to the very foundations.Needless to say such an effort will require a kind of mining energy of anarcheologist of ideas who knows how to recover what was once known or at leastsuspected from time immemorial but has now been forgotten. But Josef Pieperdoes more than bring to bear on this issue his famous powers of excavation healso makes meaningful the concept of sin to the ways of thinking and speakingof our time.Readers of his work already know Pieper as an extraordinarily fitting master inthis art of making the wisdom of the ages a living reality today. And in thiswork he brings Plato Augustine and Thomas Aquinas into a living dialogue withT. S. Eliot Andre Gide even with JeanPaul Sartre. As he shows in thispowerful work none of these writers leaves any doubt that the fact of sin iscentral It is the willful denial of ones own lifeground a denial that alonerightly bears the name of sin. Paradoxically this reality is both willed andyet also pregiven that is both adventitious and yet somehow innate to ourexistence a paradox which next to the mystery of existence itself is themost impenetrable mystery of all. «