Review 5
Bud Preface
I. Reasons for author’s nihilism
a. As he got caught up in radical politics he had his own ideas about redeeming the world that moved him farther from God, his childhood faith, moral law, and personal responsibility
b. By then, he had committed certain sins he didn’t want to repent (“Most of us sin and then start doubting his existence”
c. He was taught a false anthropology in school that ideas about good and evil are different in every society
d. He was taught that facts and opinions were different, and that moral propositions were always included among the opinions
e. Disbelieving in God was a good way to get back at Him for things that went wrong in his life after he had lost hold of God
f. He confused the materialist worldview with science
g. He fell under the spell of Nietzsche on the meaningless of all things; and, finally
i. I was, if anything more Nietzschean than he was. Whereas he thought that given the meaninglessness of things, nothing was left but to laugh or to be silent, I recognized that not even laughter or silence was left.
h. His sheer, mulish prides – J. Budziszewski wanted to be God
II. Author’s approach to natural theory
a. My own contribution to the theory of natural law is different from others. I specialize in understanding the ways we pretend to not know what we really do suppressing or holding our knowledge down; self deception. I don’t try to prove it, I try to show that the philosophies of denial must at some point assume the 1st principles they deny.
Bud 1
I. Differences in the classical vs pluralist approaches to ethics
a. All those who practice the classical way of affirming absolute values have two things in common. If you will pardon the coinages, they are all apologetical, and they are all noetic. By calling them apologetical, after the Greek word for “a speech in defense,” I mean that each stakes a claim and defends it. Each makes some one voice in the Babel his own, then takes on...