What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

About this book

J. Budziszewskis newest book is about the lost world of common truthsabout what we all really know about right and wrong. We are passing through an eerie phase of history. The things that everyone really knows are treated as unheard of and the principles of decency are attacked as indecent. Exposing the emptiness of contemporary moral fashions Budziszewski explores the rules of human conduct that we cant not know. Budziszewskis purpose is to "bolster the confidence of plain people in the rational foundations of their common moral sense." There are certain moral truths"as real as arithmetic"that are part of the equipment of a rational mind. He describes the basic principles of morality known to all men explains why those principles are under attack and demonstrates that we do in fact know what we think we know. Addressing "the persuaded the half-persuaded and the wish-I-were-persuaded " Budziszewski shows Protestants Catholics and Jews the unanimity of their traditions on the common truths. And what about the unpersuaded those who deny the reality of a moral law? They are on the other side of a dispute over the basic norms for human life. Civility Budziszewski insists does not require denying the unprecedented gulf between the two sides. Whats needed are both charity and clarity which Budziszewski provides in abundance. "A few times in a generation if we are fortunate moral intelligence finds a voice as lucid engaging and relentless as that of J. Budziszewski " says Richard John Neuhaus publisher of First Things.