CATHREIN, VIKTOR. - Moral philosopher, b. at Brig (Switzerland) 8 May 1845, d. at The Hague 10 Sept. 1931. Jesuit from 1863, he taught the students of the German province of the Order (at Blijenbeck, Exaten and finally at Valkenburg).
His principal works are: Moralphilosophie (2 vols., Freiburg in Br. 1890-91; 2nd ed. 1924; Italian trans. by E. Tommasi, Florence 1913-20); Der Sozialismus, eine Untersuchung seiner Grundlagen und Durchführbarkeit (Freiburg in Br. 1890, 14th-16th ed. 1923; work translated into 11 languages including, in Italian, by G. Cecconi, Turin 1906); Recht, Naturrecht und positives Recht (Freiburg 1901); Grundbegriffe des Strafrechts (ibid. 1905, 2nd ed. 1909); Die Grundlage des Völkerrechts (ibid. 1918); Die Einheit des sittlichen Bewusstseins der Menschheit, eine ethnographische Untersuchung (3 vols., ibid. 1914). He was also an active collaborator of the review Stimmen der Zeit (formerly Stimmen aus Maria-Laach) and of the Philosophisches Jahrbuch of the Görres-Gesellschaft, and of the review Scholastik.
CATHREIN’s significance lies in his systematic overcoming of positivism in the field of ethical and juridical notions and in the struggle he waged against every form of morality divorced from religion. On the basis of Aristotelian-Scholastic metaphysics he regards the real order of every being as the natural principle of action, grounding the internally necessary transcendence of ethical obligation on the will of the Creator God. Thereby he secures the fundamentally intellectual character of ethical life against every one-sided emotional, existentialist or purely philosophical trend. The systematic force of his work on socialism remains unsurpassed even today.