What We Can't Not Know: A Guide
by J. Budziszewski
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Book Summary Information
Author: J. BudziszewskiEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-05
ISBN: 1890626546
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Spence Publishing Company
Book Reviews of What We Can't Not Know: A Guide
Book Review: A Truly Golden Compass
Summary: 5 Stars
In an engaging style, Professor J. Budziszewski argues powerfully and convincingly for the existence of a natural moral law, which is accessible to everyday people through right reasoning. Though we tell ourselves otherwise, most moral choices just ain't that hard! Our claim to difficulty in making a moral choice often just veils our difficulty in following through with the right choice: "When, despite considerable intelligence, a thinker cannot think straight, it becomes very likely that he cannot face his thoughts....Don't we lie to ourselves about ordinary right and wrong? The desire to know truth is ardent, but it is not the only desire at work in us. The desire not to know competes with it desperately, for knowledge is a fearsome thing. So it is that oftentimes we groan about how difficult it is to know what is right even though we know the right perfectly well" (pp. 11, 62)
"Certain moral principles are not only right for all, but at some level know to all....our common moral knowledge is as real as arithmetic, and probably just as plain....The classical natural law thinkers held that although there are broad moral truths which cannot be blotted out of the heart of man, there are others, more remote from first principles, which can all too easily be blotted out - and the usual way to blot them out is bad living....two universals are in conflict: universal moral knowledge and universal desire to evade it" (pp. 15, 19, 25, 28).
What is this natural moral law or "natural law" all about? Budziszewski tells us that "a great many more or less satisfactory summaries have been proposed. Perhaps the simplest formula was suggested by Thomas Aquinas: `Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided'....Good in his view is richly differentiated" (p. 47).
Budziszewski argues that, "Everyone knows inviolable goods like friendship, formal norms like fairness, and everyday moral rules like `Do not kill' - though we can pretend not to know them, and we sometimes err in what we derive from them. Everyone recognizes that the universe is designed and that we are designed - though we can refuse to pay attention, or pretend we haven't noticed. Everyone recognizes the most obvious features of our design, for example the complementarity of the sexes and the spontaneous order of the family....everyone recognizes the most obvious inbuilt penalties of wrongdoing, for example that those who betray are not trusted....Not everyone feels guilty for murder, but everyone knows murder is wrong. Precisely because they have guilty knowledge, wrongdoers who lack guilty feelings show other telltales, such as depression, a sense of defect, a compulsion to rationalize, or a puzzling desire to be caught" (pp. 102, 118).
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