The Clash of the Orthodoxies by Robert P George

...George claims that for "orthodox secularism" only the "con-scious, desiring, self-aware, and future-directed part of the human being...is truly the 'person.'" For secularists, the body is not part of the "personal reality" of the human being...

...This detachment, according to George, is implicit not only in arguments for abortion and euthanasia (which implicitly treat the body as something that can be discarded freely) but also prevents recog-nition of marriage as a "two-in-one-flesh union" of two persons...

...One may still come to a pro-life conclusion, but to do so simply by asserting that a human life is a human life and therefore deserves the same level of legal protection is too easy...

...Similarly, insistence that an embryo constitutes human life should not preclude recog-nition that the embeddedness of fetal life in another life raises questions about the mother's autonomy that are moral-ly complex...

...Only in hetero-sexual marriage and "reproductive-type" sexual acts, he concludes, can a true "unity of body, sense, emotion, and will" be found...

...George points out that while natural-law theorists be-lieve that there are "uniquely correct an-swers," they reach that conclusion through reason and admit the possibility of error in their reasoning...

...Arguments based on natural-law theory, in this view, cannot constitute "public reasons," and are hence inadmissible in public debate, because they express faith-based truth claims that cannot countenance "the fact of reasonable pluralism...

...I don't know if George selected this image for the cover of his book, but it does carry the substance and tone of his message...

...Taken together, do they really constitute an "orthodoxy...

...what is important is George's apparent belief that his resolution of the mind-body question ends the debate, making it unnec-essary for him to engage directly with moral and legal arguments that raise dif-ferent concerns...

...It is not entirely clear that a state thoroughly imbued with his social conceptions derived from natur-al law and Christian philosophy would be genuinely pluralistic, accommodat-ing of difference, and respectful of the belief that law and morality are not en-tirely coextensive...

...More generally, it is hard to envision the legal and political system that would emerge from a thorough application of George's principles...

...For him, a proper application of natural law and rational Catholic philosophical prin-ciples leads not only to con-demnation of abortion and euthanasia, but also premar-ital sex, contraception, "non-reproductive type" sexual acts within marriage, divorce, same-sex marriage, and pornogra-phy...

...That seems to be the case with Robert P. George's Clash of Orthodoxies, subtitled Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis...

...One suspects that such a state would be quite the oppo-site...

...Similarly, his persuasive argu-ment that an embryo is in fact human life does not, as a matter of pure reason, indisputably end the argument over abortion...

...His goal is to prove that "Judeo-Christian morality is rationally superior to the morality of orthodox secularism...

...His core concept of a "secular or-thodoxy" lumps together "secularists" as disparate as liberals Rawls and Ronald Dworkin, utilitarians Peter Singer and Richard Posner, and such libertarians as Robert Nozick...

...Saint Paul's classical dome, columns, and pediments, all surmounted by a cross, evoke the beauty and resilience of Western civilization as it defies Nazi barbarism...

...The Rawlsian exclu-sion of natural-law-based arguments George finds particularly troubling in the case of abortion...

...Even those who accept the premise that an embryo is human life may reach differing conclusions about the moral status of that life...

...He concedes that there may be "good prudential reasons not to attack them with the full force of the law," but he insists that there is no principled reason why the law should not forbid them...

...Rawls has insisted that "any comprehensive doctrine that leads to a balance of political values ex-cluding that duly qualified right [to an abortion] in the first trimester is to that extent unreasonable...

...This absolutist strain in George's thought generates some important ques-tions...

...His philosophical resolution of the question of same-sex marriage, for ex-ample, does not acknowledge that the specific question is situated in the larg-er question of the dignity of persons who are homosexual, and that there are both theological and social-utility arguments that may justify recognition of same-sex marriage, or at least legal relationships that approximate some aspects of mar-riage...

...George tackles head-on the position as-sociated with liberal political philoso-pher John Rawls that would exclude from political debate appeals to princi-ples drawn from "comprehensive" doc-trines such as natural law...

...It is at this point, however, that many sympathetic read-ers may part company with George...

...He states that he is arguing for an "old-fashioned liberal-ism" or a "conservative liberalism" that would embody a "liberalism of life" ded-icated to "the rule of law, democratic self-government, subsidiarity, social sol-idarity, private property, limited gov-ernment, equal protection, and basic human freedoms...

...The contrasts of light and dark and of the dome's perfect form against the smoke's form-lessness convey simultane-ously the gravity of the assault, the beauty of what is threat-ened, and the possibility of ultimate triumph...

...Much of the first part of the book is a replay of the familiar debate over the le-gitimacy of religious discourse in the formulation of law and public policy...

...This apocalyptic tone is also evident in his critique of judicial recognition of a right to abortion...

...George apparently rejects the notion that a paramount personal interest in privacy would provide a principled rea-son for not criminalizing "private vices...

...For George, the "Judeo-Christian tradition" that has dominated Western culture for most of its history, with its classical and biblical founda-tions and its Christian flowering, is besieged by the new barbarism of "secular orthodoxy...

...To his credit, George demands engagement, and in this book he engages with a vengeance...

...Doing battle with secular or-thodoxy on the ground of reason thus not only allows George to challenge sec-ularism on its own terms, but to prevent dismissal of Christian morality to the private sphere on the premise that it is antirationalist and based on truth claims not shared by all...

...The big problem with this, George emphasizes, is that Rawls's particular "balance of political values" cannot be struck without an "ap-peal to moral or metaphysical views widely in dispute...

...To do this, he insists first upon the Chris-tian philosophical position that faith and reason are not antithetical, but comple-mentary...

...He also believes that no "strict principle of justice" would pre-vent the criminalization of noncom-mercial "private vices" such as fornication, adultery, and sodomy, because there is a public interest in protecting "a com-munity's moral ecology against the cor-rosive effects on marriage and family life of [such] vices...

...Similarly, his swipes at "feminism" do not acknowledge, let alone engage, the variety of feminisms, including a robust Christian feminism...

...Obviously, all this is debatable...

...George, a re-spected constitutional scholar and fre-quent contributor to First Things and Crisis, wants to defend that older tradi-tion...

...Furthermore, the "Judeo-Christian world-view" requires him to stake out a posi-tion radically contrary to the "isms of contemporary American life-feminism, multiculturalism, gay liberationism, lifestyle liberalism"-which together constitute the "culture of death...

...it is "subpersonal...

...In asserting the rational superiority of his arguments about abortion, same-sex marriage, and sexual morality George's trump card seems to be what he regards as the correct understanding of the in-tegration of mind and body...

...He insists that "people of goodwill" (whoever they are) must ask themselves whether "our [American] regime is becoming the democratic 'tyrant state'" about which Pope John Paul II warned in Evangelium vitae...

...The book's dust jack-et reproduces the famous photograph of the dome of Saint Paul's Cathedral in London shining defiantly through the clouds of smoke and dust rising from the destruction created by Nazi bomb-ing...

...Arguments can be constructed from natural law about human equality to support feminist po-sitions inconsistent with George's con-victions about marriage and the family...

...He contends that those who would legalize abortion, recognize same-sex marriages, or coun-tenance contraception and "nonrepro-ductive type" sexual acts are captives of a philosophically indefensible "mind-body dualism...

...Everything else amounts to an immoral "instrumentalization of sex...

...The unacknowl-edged effect is to privilege one set of moral and metaphysical views, name-ly liberalism's, while dismissing anoth-er, namely those of Christian natural law, from the realm of public debate without an attempt to engage its sub-stantive claims...

...He is a thoroughgo-ing social conservative...