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151 of 157 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Handbook of American Social Conservatism, January 22, 2002
Here in Princeton, New Jersey there are a lot of highly educated people, including especially university professors and graduate students. Sometimes they share their viewpoints with the rest of us by pasting bumper stickers to their cars, usually older model Saabs or Volvos. I saw one the other day: "I do my part to keep the religious right angry." It conveys a widespread understanding among liberal elites that religious conservatives are not motivated by reason, at least not in their opinions about social issues, like abortion, euthanasia, and gay rights, which, from time to time, are the subject of public debate. Rather, they work from "prejudices" unthinkingly imported from their traditional religious beliefs into the political arena. Liberals believe that these conservatives would impose--not persuade or convince because their positions are not based in reason--their religious belief on the reasonable majority. A new book by Princeton professor Robert P. George, The Clash of Orthodoxies (ISI Books, 2001) challenges this understanding of religious conservatism. George, a Harvard and Oxford educated philosopher who holds the McCormick Chair of Jurisprudence once occupied by Princeton demigod Woodrow Wilson, sets out to make the case that the moral views of conservative Christians (often shared by observant Jews and other believers) are rationally defensible. Actually, he even goes farther, arguing throughout this 300-page work that "Judaeo-Christian moral teaching can be shown to be rationally superior to orthodox secular moral beliefs." A remarkable thing about The Clash of Orthodoxies is its accessibility. George attained his high standing in the academy by writing books and articles addressed to scholars in highly specialized areas of law and philosophy. In this latest work, however, he addresses the wider public. The Clash of Orthodoxies is a pleasure to read. It is lively and engaging, and avoids academic jargon and unnecessary technical analysis. (When one senses that the details of an argument have been sacrificed for readability, one can go to his own and others' scholarly works which are cited in the numerous endnotes and which discuss a point in far greater depth.) On the other hand, John Grisham has nothing to fear. This is not a beach reading. This is an analytical work; it takes up the thorny perennial questions of how we organize our lives together--issues of life and death, rights and freedoms. And the author does not take the easy way out by recourse to rhetoric or facile reasoning. Counterarguments to traditional morality's answers are consistently engaged. Professor George's brand of conservatism owes little to the pundits, politicians and journalists on the right. The author is genuinely interested in a debate on the merits; he eschews partisanship and always argues in a spirit of goodwill. The Clash of Orthodoxies will do much then to enhance the quality of public debate on controversial issues such as abortion, euthanasia, pornography, embryonic stem cell research, marriage and sexual morality, and the role the of the courts in resolving such issues. It is greatly needed. The orthodoxy of secular liberalism is dominant in the elite sector of our culture. The writings of political theorists and judges, such as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin and Justice William Brennan, have made the case for the "liberal secularism," as Professor George calls it, and its understanding of man and government. So now many of us are at least a little wary of religious-minded conservatives. Even if not bomb-throwers, do they not constitute a standing threat to freedom? Are they not modern day puritans who, according to one definition, are people who live in the fear that some one, somewhere is having a good time? In my view, the hegemony of liberal secularism in the academy and elsewhere is not just because license, especially sexual license, is an easy sell. It is also explained by the absence of an opposing intellectual force. And this is why The Clash of Orthodoxies may be destined to play a critical part in making our democracy more deliberative--which, everyone should agree, would be a good thing. Professor George cannot be dismissed as unintelligent or uninformed. He is intellectually brilliant, highly credentialed, and understands academic liberalism as only someone who makes his living in the academy itself can understand it. And he advances impressive arguments that shake up, and could even topple, its prevailing assumptions. His philosophical natural law theory sets forth a reason-based understanding of the inviolability of human life (from conception), for example, and an understanding of sex and marriage, which will flummox efforts to wave away conservative views as mere "religious intolerance." In The Clash of Orthodoxies, American social conservatives have a powerful
voice; and liberals have an intellectual opponent with whom they will have to reckon.
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Rational Defense of (Catholic) Natural Law, January 14, 2005
I'll keep my review short. Simply put, Professor George, a former student of John Finnis at Oxford, has created one of the best defenses of the Catholic Natural Law tradition, with no appeal to Divine Revelation -- which is an important point to make since your average skeptic considers Christian ethics as relying primarily, if not solely, on "irrational" faith. The book is primarily concerned with the effects of ethical subjectivism on legal/social matters; however, George nearly covers the whole gamut of ethical issues, including abortion, homosexuality, and contraception -- all in a clear, succinct manner. The first chapter alone is worth the purchase of the book; it is certainly one of the best essays I have read on the truth of Natual Law orthodoxy and Theistic Moral Realism, including a refutation of Atheistic Moral Realism (a la Iris Murdoch) via a debate with Josh Dever, who represents what George calls "liberal orthodoxy."
In order to get the most out of this book, one should also read George's 'Making Men Moral,' a defense of the social conservative position (e.g., communities banning pornography). If one enjoys George's work, he should also check out other books published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). ISI is one of the leading organizations promoting conservative thought in academia. Their list of books is quite impressive.
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39 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Political philosphy of the highest order, November 24, 2002
In The Clash of Orthodoxies, a limpidly written and deftly argued collections of essays, Robert George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and one of the most important natural-law philosophers of our time, wants "to show that Christians and other believers are right to defend their positions on key moral issues as rationally superior to the alternatives proposed by secular liberals and those within the religious denominations who have abandoned traditional moral principles in favor of secularist morality." He triumphantly succeeds in this ambitious endeavor, and as a result our understanding of the cultural and moral struggle that convulses our country is vastly enriched. To select one example from the numerous ones available in the book, Professor George's essay "The Concept of Public Morality" is a masterly clarification of an area that has become a terrible intellectual mess, a situation engendered by the reckless libertarianism of both the left and right. For instance, pornography is now an unavaidable part of our daily lives, and Professor George rightly contends that "where pornography flourishes, as it does in our own culture, it erodes important shared public understandings of sexuality and sexual morality on which the health of the institutions of marriage and family life in any culture vitally depend. This is a classic case in which the accumulation of apparently private choices of private parties has big public consequences." The stability (or what little stability is left) of what Professor George calls our "moral ecology" depends on the restoration of this kind of understanding in the place of the prevailing relativism that thwarts any serious reflection on the notion of public morality. Professor George brings to all the complicated questions he explores a fairmindedness coupled with a moral position utterly devoted to the cause of life and the vindication of human dignity. This view is in emphatic opposition to the culture of death that is at the center of secular orthodoxy. He summarizes his view with characteristic precision and elegance: "It is the liberalism . . . of the rule of law, democratic self-government, subsidiarity, social solidarity, private property, limited government, equal protection, and basic human freedoms, such as those of speech, press, assembly, and above all, religion. This . . . is a decidedly old-fashioned liberalism -- if you will, a 'conservative liberalism.' It is the liberalism of Lincoln and the American founders, of Newman and Chesterton, of the Second Vatican Council and Pope John Paul II: A liberalism of life." Professor George makes his case for this "liberalism of life" with uncommon rigor and clarity. As America inevitably confronts complex moral and political issues that seriously threaten to undermine our humanity, the thinking found in The Clash of Orthodoxies is precisely the orthodoxy needed to advance a rational culture of life.
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