CATHREIN, VIKTOR. — Moral philosopher, born at Brig (Switzerland) on 8 May 1845, died at The Hague on 10 September 1931. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1863 and was a professor at the seminaries of the German province of the Order (at Blijenbeck, Exaten, and finally Valkenburg).
His principal works are: Moralphilosophie (2 vols., Freiburg im Breisgau 1890–91; 2nd ed. 1924; Italian translation by E. Tommasi, Florence 1913–20); Der Sozialismus, eine Untersuchung seiner Grundlagen und Durchführbarkeit (Freiburg im Breisgau 1890, 14th–16th eds. 1923; translated into 11 languages, including 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 contributor to the journal Stimmen der Zeit (formerly Stimmen aus Maria-Laach), to the Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Görresgellschaft, and to the journal Scholastik.
C.’s significance lies in his systematic overcoming of positivism in the field of ethical and juridical concepts 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 intrinsic and necessary transcendence of ethical obligation in the will of God the Creator. In this way he safeguards the fundamentally intellectual character of ethical life against every one-sided emotional, existentialist, or purely philosophical tendency. The systematic force of his work on socialism remains unsurpassed even today.