Rauch and the Liberal Seduction of Christianity, Part 4

Moral Agency and Sustainable Liberalism

As I have argued in the first three segments of this essay, a reasonable disposition to necessary compromise in the political realm can easily devolve into the relativistic language of equal “respect” for any and all opinions. Of course, this language is necessarily confused – when it is not simply deceitful – because pure openness in morality and politics is an illusion. Indeed, pure openness or neutrality is an illusion in any domain of human life where judgment, the very capacity to evaluate options and to make decisions, is involved. If human existence-that is, properly human existence, civilized existence–were thinkable as pure openness or moral neutrality, a.k.a. “equal respect” for all viewpoints, then the fundamental problems of morality and politics would not even arise. Civilized human existence is impossible without shared communal authority (always in some way at once moral, religious, and political). This authority can be shaped, articulated, and modified more or less rea…