A year ago, Donald Devine offered readers of Law and Liberty an expert summary and a warm endorsement of the political philosopher Larry Siedentop’s latest book Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism. Siedentop traces the modern, “secular,” and liberal ideas of moral equality and equal liberty to the Christian overturning of “the aristocratic assumption upon which all ancient thinking was based, that of natural inequality,” and he finds in this intellectual genealogy an argument for a contemporary alliance of secular liberals and Christians in affirmation of individual rights.
Friday Roundup, October 18th
Our feature review this week is by Nathaniel Peters on Robert George's Conscience and Its Enemies: George next offers an account of human morality based on practical reason’s discernment of the data of our experience. To put it more simply, he examines what people choose and why they choose it, those motives for which we act in pursuing the good as human beings. Those things that we choose in our pursuit of the good for their own sake he calls intrinsic or basic goods. These include knowledge, friendship, marriage, religion, aesthetic expression, and play. Embracing these goods—pursuing knowledge, being a friend,…
