Reason’s Culture, Life’s Defense
The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis
by Robert P. George
Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2001
(387 pages; $24.95, cloth)
reviewed by Jack Wade Nowlin
The striking image on the cover of Robert P. George’s The Clash of Orthodoxies shows the stately dome of a cathedral standing above a harrowing scene of billowing black smoke, fire, and ruins. It is a photograph of St. Paul’s Cathedral taken during a Nazi bombing of London, a representative scene from one of the last century’s great clashes of orthodoxies: Man made in the image of God, possessing intrinsic dignity and worth, versus the Übermensch, “blood and soil,” and the Nietzschean will to power.
As readers of this journal well know, the Kulturkampf continues—first, within the Western democracies in the form of a disturbingly progressive erosion of traditional values by various anti-life ideologies, and second, from without in the form of newly active enemies such as the Islamo-fascist terrorist movement of Osama bin Laden. Ultimately, the stakes on both these fronts remain high: the protection of human life, human freedom, and human flourishing. And, ultimately, the foundation of victory will also be the same as in the last century: human reason in the service of moral truth and human courage in the defense of the common good. The Clash of Orthodoxies is a profound and far-reaching contribution to that ultimate victory.
Robert P. George—who has contributed several articles to Touchstone as an associate editor and who has been described without hyperbole as a “national treasure”—is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, one of the most prestigious political science chairs in the country. He also serves as director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, centered at Princeton University and dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in constitutional studies and political thought, and he holds advanced degrees in law and legal theory from Harvard and Oxford.
Philosophical Battleground
As one might expect, George’s defense of traditional moral values evinces a high degree of philosophic sophistication, rivaling that of any moral theorist writing across the political spectrum today, and he is more than a match for liberal and leftist moral theorists such as John Rawls and Peter Singer. In particular, George’s own approach to moral questions is that of the central tradition of Catholic natural law philosophy as reconceptualized in recent decades by Germaine Grisez and John Finnis. This “new” natural law approach has proved to be a powerful tool for exposing moral errors in liberal individualism and providing a sophisticated moral defense of traditional Judeo-Christian values.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should note here that George supervised the writing of my dissertation at Princeton University in the 1990s, and I remain indebted to him for his guidance and support throughout those years. That said, I can say without qualification that The Clash of Orthodoxies is one of the most important books of the last decade in the area of moral theory. There is simply no better-reasoned case for life and no better examination of the philosophic heart of the debate between the “culture of life” and the many anti-life commitments in contemporary America. In short, The Clash of Orthodoxies is an indispensable book by an indispensable man, and it should be read by every moral traditionalist who has an interest in engaging the moral arguments of anti-life theorists or participating in public discourse on the momentous topics of the culture of life.
The scope of George’s book is quite broad, and it is well organized into three sections, discussing the clash of orthodoxies in the public square, in the courts, and in the Catholic Church. Each of the three sections is further subdivided into discrete but related and complementary essays, which are ideal for dipping into and which also make the book a useful reference tool. The section on the public square examines issues surrounding the culture of life, such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and the concept of public morality. The section on the courts examines a number of “life” issues related to the Constitution, the scope of judicial review, the legitimacy of the Supreme Court’s abortion decisions, and the relationship of positive law to natural law. The section on the Catholic Church involves a discussion of issues such as liberalism and Catholicism, abortion and Catholic political leaders, Catholic participation in debates over bioethics and public policy, and the relationship of faith and reason.
The last of these is directly related to George’s main thesis in The Clash of Orthodoxies: the superiority as a matter of reason or rationality of traditional Judeo-Christian morality to its anti-life rival(s). As George, writes: “My criticism of secular liberal views is not that they are contrary to [religious] faith; it is that they fail the test of reason.” Indeed, George demonstrates through a series of complex and sophisticated moral inquiries into areas such as abortion, homosexual conduct, euthanasia, and the nature of marriage that the values of moral traditionalism can vanquish secular liberalism on secular liberalism’s own epistemic terms: the appeal to reasoned argument rather than to religious authority. In short, human reason confirms the moral soundness of the culture of life, reveals the moral errors at the heart of anti-life belief systems, and is thus life’s first and best defense against the recent inroads of anti-life movements in the cultural, political, and judicial arenas.
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