What We Can't Not Know
A Guide
by J. Budziszewski
Spence, 288 pp., $27.95 "ONCE UPON A TIME," J. Budziszewski begins "What We Can't Not Know: A Guide," "it was possible for a philosopher to write that the foundational moral principles are 'the same for all, both as to rectitude and as to knowledge'--and expect everyone to agree." What the Chinese call the Tao, what has been described in Plato and Jesus as the Golden Rule, what moral and political philosophers call natural law, what is embodied in the Ten Commandments, and what the Apostle Paul referred to as the "law written on the heart"--one could look to a consensus in the human race (our evasions, excuses, and subterfuges notwithstanding) as to fundamentals of right and wrong.
Today all that has changed, laments Budziszewski. Rather, we must be prepared to hear that foundational moral principles are not the same for all people. Indeed, professional philosophers are resolutely leading the charge rather than sounding the alarm. Personhood is a matter of utility, function, and degree, we are assured, while human beings may not after all possess an inherent dignity, sanctity, and worth. Neither abortion nor infanticide, nor suicide, for that matter, is intrinsically wrong.
"What We Can't Not Know" follows on the heels of Budziszewski's "The Revenge of Conscience," a thoughtfully written semi-autobiography of Budziszewski's journey to and away from nihilism, and "Written on the Heart," in which Budziszewski considers the history of natural law. Perhaps the author realized that natural-law thinking can no longer be presumed in Western culture. In any event, "What We Can't Not Know" is written in a tone suggesting that moral skepticism is more deeply ingrained in American culture than Budziszewski seemed once to acknowledge.
HIS ARGUMENT IS THIS: However off-putting, rude, or inconvenient it may be to our enlightened sensibilities, there are moral realities that we all intuit--realities that are impossible not to know. This is not to say that we know them with unfailing clarity or that we fully realize their implications or that we never pretend we don't know them. Nevertheless, our awareness of a basic right and wrong, that two plus two equals four, is as real as arithmetic and not lacking rather substantial evidence. Budziszewski describes with refreshing honesty our evasive tendency as we attempt to "connect the dots" of moral evidence in the cosmos. The more sophisticated among us prefer to "cook the moral data" as it were, so that, for example, "we don't want dinner but the pleasure of feeling full; nor knowledge, but the pleasure of feeling knowledgeable, nor love, but the pleasure of feeling loved." And so on.
Aside from the sheer force of Budziszewski's argument, there are two features that make "What We Can't Not Know" engaging. One is the considerable portion of the book that is devoted to treating objections. A related feature is his description, in language that is nonreligious and avoids condescension, of humanity's brilliant attempts at rationalizing moral dullness, our unwillingness to name evil, and our repeated attempts to suppress the natural moral law.
Reading "What We Can't Not Know," one is immediately reminded of C.S. Lewis's "The Abolition of Man," a short but extremely dense treatise on natural law written half a century ago. Lewis's argument was basically that in neglecting the law of nature, the "law of oughtness" (the moral impulse that holds sway over all societies irrespective of time and place) will also decay--with the result that human beings inexorably descend into inhumanity and annihilate one another. The thought of Peter Singer--Princeton University's utilitarian philosopher, turned open advocate of infanticide and euthanasia--is a good example of the process Lewis sketched, and Budziszewski fills out the progression from the denial of natural law to the abolition of man in clear and easy-to-follow steps.
Following his work as chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, South African justice Richard Goldstone reflected in his address delivered at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum not long ago on why notions of justice and moral law must not be fluid, despite differing cultural and social values:
The one thing that I have learned in my travels to the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda and in my own country is that where there have been egregious human rights violations that have been unaccounted for, where there has been no justice, where the victims have not received any acknowledgment, where they have been forgotten, where there has been a national amnesia, the effect is a cancer in the society. It is the reason that explains, in my respectful opinion, spirals of violence that the world has seen in the former Yugoslavia for centuries and in Rwanda for decades.
The things for which Judge Goldstone calls all require nonfluid notions of justice, a justice which inheres in natural law: the exposure of the truth of individual moral self-responsibility (as distinct from general collective guilt), the necessity of moral atrocity being recorded for history's sake (so as to underscore the enduring nature of good and evil), the acknowledgment of true victims (who as broken, terrified people stand in need of authentic justice), and the future deterrence of criminal acts (since what deters humans from doing evil is a fear of getting caught and being punished).
When J. Budziszewski calls his book "What We Can't Not Know," he restates the obvious that must be restated in each generation: All people possess basic moral knowledge, all must be reminded of this basic knowledge, and in the end all must be held accountable for this basic knowledge. Once upon a time you could expect nearly everyone to agree.
J. Daryl Charles is a visiting fellow at the Baylor University Institute for Faith and Learning and author of "Virtue Amidst Vice" and "The Unformed Conscience of Evangelicalism."