The Politics of Virtue:
Elshtain, Jean Bethke
Many of the strengths of The Politics one see why Dworkin's position (albeit uncover the origins of that reassuring of Virtue are missing from the Dworkin with his own...
...It is put out of bounds...
...The animals make their gle as that of contending rights, the fetus cluding illegal abortion...
...Fundamen- rather than undermines the premises of our plices to murder...
...We were free to do raise a serious question of morality from With all the baby-boom nostalgia now or be anything we wanted without regard a theological perspective...
...forbid, "Stop" signs...
...Today, we must dorsements...
...If The Politics of Virtue retion of mainline religion, Mensch and they do that Roe v. Wade was a terrible ceives a wide audience, people of good Freeman call it-and Bonhoeffer espe- mistake-badly argued, sociologically will will surely shrink from pronunciacially was vulgarized by liberals to serve inept, and "politically disastrous"-they mentos to the effect that prolifers are dodsituationist ends...
...It is by no means the treatment of nonhuman creatures...
...church" who have a "love affair with the Protestantism in this way, Mensch and They conclude by articulating the possi- fetus," in the words of our new surgeon Freeman help the reader make sense of bility of a compromise, one that shores up general, or that prochoicers are accomthe fundamentalist reaction...
...Many of the strengths of The Politics one see why Dworkin's position (albeit uncover the origins of that reassuring of Virtue are missing from the Dworkin with his own twists and turns) has come conviction, Mensch and Freeman open book, though he also is a legal scholar...
...to seem so self-evident to so many main- the way to a more productive debate in Where Mensch and Freeman immerse the line American intellectuals...
...theologically articulated perspective fell our culture of therapeutic, expressivist inThe ethicists found warrant for cultur- under a cloud of suspicion, pumped up by dividualism: "The same culture produced al and political changes in, among others, the mainline media, that what such folks a generation, of which we were a part, that Barth and Bonhoeffer...
...debate...
...The first is that it overlooks some which the abortion discussion touches It must be said, however, that simply by important factionalism within the pro- the current controversies over human taking seriously and unpacking from "the choice movement...
...What Mensch Many instead hold that whatever value a happened to "Protestant ethics...
...That is a sanctity of choice ar- religion," as well as the trivializing of In building their case they turn first to gument, not a sanctity of life view...
...By offering ostensibly 00 leakage-free categories to rescue us, including a sharp human/animal duality, natural law makes our moral assessments too easy...
...With that they are off to the races, tradition associated primarily with morality...
...or may not be liberals, they argue that comculture, but also renders the idea of the The authors, a married couple teaching mitting oneself to a concern with fetal life sanctity of life thin if not altogether vac- law at the State University of New York, commits oneself to other things, or, at least, uous...
...But problems pop up immediately because mainline Protestantism has simply caved in to the cravings, dressed up in the regalia of rights, endemic to our contemporary consumerist culture...
...Here Protestant ethics would seem to offer a more supple set of possibilities...
...Believing as the way...
...On this and Freeman appear to desire is an aufetus has is a result of a right to existence score they offer biting (not bitter) com- thentic liberalism: an ability to weigh conferred upon it by the mother...
...Buffalo, begin with candid personal rev- to other questions, including who else Dworkin argues, as many now do, that elations...
...Liberal Protestantism re- v. Wade" catapulted them into action...
...beginning with the by-now familiar ob- Catholicism and to the Protestant ethics Reading the two books together helps servation that we live in a time of deep associated with Barth and Bonhoeffer...
...tle and interesting insights about what has implacably hostile academy...
...They show clearly friends and comrades on the Left, argusecond problem is that by, in effect, seg- how Bonhoeffer was made to serve lib- ing that the issue of fetal life cannot be regating religious and philosophical views eral theological nostrums that he, Lutheran dismissed with incessant repetition of the off into the private domain, Dworkin not that he was, found banal in his own life- code words: "reproductive freedom...
...But Mensch ters-it is books such as this that will lead widespread adherence-the seculariza- and Freeman are undaunted...
...the individual conscience and individual seemingly impossible: Their stated goal is "not to advance one choice...
...The Dietrich Bonhoeffer...
...The structed as the position against abortion...
...The Constitution-on a kind of social deposit fuses to admit the "darker realities" that most articulate recognized that "accom- of intergenerational trust, neighborliness, may lurk beneath some of its own en- panying zeal for solving the abortion prob- and civic responsibility...
...But since Jean Bethke Elshtain and politics," the authors have done what the notion of the sanctity of life is itself most people on that side of things have an inherently religious or philosophical consistently, even militantly, refused to do: idea, it is not an appropriate subject for ensch and Freeman do try "especially hard to understand the propublic law but should, instead, be left to the impossible or the life side of this debate...
...its value mentary on the virtual disappearance of carefully each side and each position...
...argument...
...But by try- they have five children from previous and these intertwined matters in the usual ing to push the issue into a still higher, al- present unions...
...Still, I applaud their important "basic abortion-on-demand reality of Roe tions not explicitly mentioned in the work...
...These facts are crisply stat- polemical fashion, Mensch and Freeman most ineffable realm, Dworkin in the end ed and do not become the occasion for begin by looking closely at the natural law leaves little ground to talk in public about bathos...
...To be honest, I am less talists could not accept a moral universe liberal polity-a polity that was, from its sanguine than Mensch and Freeman in this in which "sin" no longer figured...
...The "heady liberalism of the lem through constitutional litigation was tend to those social institutions on which 1960s" promised much (more than it could a striking contempt, even distaste, for sec- we depend as well as to a wider natural deliver, we now know) including a world tarian religion, religiously rooted moral- world of other creatures and their habidevoid of "Caution," "Go Slow," or, God ity, or even the notion that abortion might tats-all part of our own human home...
...Quite a list of accomplishments for Second, to their prolife readers, who may ical foundations of much of our polity and one highly readable, compact volume...
...range of other weighty and volatile matcrudest sort of "situationist" ethics gained So it goes...
...The inception, dependent upon social institu- matter...
...This thesis is, Dworkin contends, they bring fresh in- side or the other in the abortion debate, equally applicable to euthanasia and abor- sights to the abortion but rather to explore whether we are nection...
...With admirable sinfulness, and lacked any sense of redirection" the liberal German theologian understatement, Mensch and Freeman straint or limits...
...tarianism, for example) are concerned...
...24: 24 September 1993 Commonweal My terribly truncated version of their discussion would be that they find the natural law tradition too confining and too cheese-paring in its approach, proliferating fine distinctions where there isn't a trenchant difference...
...they proffer sub- advance that side of the debate within an speak, the language of the sanctity of life...
...Each has had more than one among us may or may not be worthy of it is a mistake to cast the abortion strug- "firsthand experience of abortion, in- moral concerns...
...1:1 reader in the cultural and religious background of the abortion struggle, and show a fine appreciation of the now-vast literature on the subject, Dworkin's book YES, ABORTION IS DEBATABLE looks mainly to the legal battle, and frequently generalizes on the moral issues without the apparent benefit of careful distinctions and documentation...
...only ignores the religious and philosoph- time...
...The courts became the place lib- prochoice forces were-and are-so suc- the mordant note on which Mensch and erals turned to articulate "a new morality cessful in making this move that any op- Freeman conclude is startling in its clarpremised on an individual autonomy that position to abortion-on-demand from a ity, its modesty, and its pithy reproach of was legally secured by a regime of rights...
...it value...
...0 Commonweal 24 September 1993: 25...
...His argument is Is Abortion Debatable...
...between them first appearance here...
...This, alas, is pre- their position, which in turn get con- bate on abortion-let alone on a whole cisely what happened in America...
...By trying to the future...
...depends solely upon her decision to grant Karl Barth from current Protestant "civic Refreshing, to say the least...
...Along the way, they fold in a rich essarily stuck with the grim and destrucThere is a two-fold problem with this narrative about the important ways in tive fact of moral incommensurability...
...Such absolutist distinctions and prohibitions, the authors claim, won't help us through the maze of contemporary difficulties...
...But, as our authors really wanted was an "unconstitutional es- had little use for humility, denied our own note, Barth worried about the "mistaken tablishment of religion...
...Even inside out" the impassioned arguments of case that many who have defended a pro- more amazingly (we just don't expect anti-abortion forces,, they do their part to choice position either imply, much less this from law professors...
...to the sanctity of life, and only differ Identified with the "Left/liberal side of law about how to respect that sanctity...
...at the end of our tethers where several comfairly simple: both the prolife and the pro- Elizabeth Mensch and Alan Freeman peting traditions (Kantianism and utilichoice groups share a common dedication Duke University Press, $14.95, 268 pp...
...This gap makes a great difference in the quality of THE POLITICS OF VIRTUE moral conflict and that we are pretty much his general argument...
...hold forth hope that less inflammatory pos- dering celibates from a "male-dominated Tracing the capitulation of mainline sibilities might yet be within our reach...
...Or so it seems...
...Rather than tackling against the pregnant woman...
...vailing political ideologies and scientific into ever more extreme articulations of If we are to have an authentic, civil deor cultural orthodoxies...
...Indeed, the in full bloom in the corridors of power, for limits...
...In retrospect, a number Schleiermacher had taken us, namely, to point out how this accusation not only over- of appropriate responses to oppressive a "willingness to make theology and the simplifies a whole range of subtle and dif- conditions led to a culture of unrestrained church subservient to the demands of pre- ficult issues, but drives fundamentalists excess...
Vol. 120 • September 1993 • No. 16
