Suchergebnisse

Michael Baxter's long review provides an outline of David Schindler's useful first book; concentrates on its treatment of John Courtney Murray; gives a free pass to its lengthy ontological and theological speculations; and calls attention to its impracticality. Like Baxter, I share de Lubac's view of grace and nature (mediated to me by three Jesuits, Henry Bouillard, Juan Alfaro, and Bernard Lonergan), although I draw from it practical applications quite different from those of Schindler and Baxter. Further, I agree with the main thrust of Baxter's criticism: just where one wants to test Schindler's grand hypotheses about how grace ought to work in a "civilization of love," particularly with regard to politics and economics, Schindler has almost nothing practical to say, and such few gestures as he offers seem lamely indistinguishable from those he criticizes, for example Murray (on the First Amendment) and Richard John Neuhaus (on the public square). His reading of my own work, too, is excessively polemical.

Few centuries have been as sanguinary as the twentieth. Leaving behind as their monuments the ruins of concentration camps and the work camps of the Gulag Archipelago, temporarily discredited, fascism and communism may have slouched into the shadows. Still, the forces of liberty have not succeeded in laying the foundations for a world of free republics. During the twentieth century, both in Europe and in the United States, the moral life of the free societies has been severely weakened. Families are a shadow of what they used to be. Traditional virtues and decencies, a sense of honor, and respect for moral character have given way to vulgar relativism. Thus, the dark underground river of the twentieth century has not been fascism nor communism but their presupposition: nihilism. And nihilism has not yet been abandoned.

When the Whigs define themselves as the Party of Liberty, furthermore, they define liberty in a special way. They do not mean libertinism or any other disordered form of liberty, such as a supposed "liberty to do whatever one feels like doing." For them, a liberty undirected by reflection and choice is slavery. For them, liberty must be achieved through a self-mastery that nourishes reflection and choice. Such self-mastery is won by slowly gaining dominion over appetite, passion, ignorance, and whim. For them, the enabling agent and protector of liberty is virtue—indeed, a full quiver of virtues. (This Hemisphere of Liberty, 1992, pp. 9–10)

Argues that business ethics include such responsibilities as ecology and job creation.

Liberation theologians typically claim that socialism is not only a theory about economic institutions but also a theory about human values. When they list the values inherent in socialism, they mention respect for human dignity, a spirit of sharing, cooperation, and concern for the less fortunate. They can scarcely mean that such values are contrary to the constitutive ideas of democratic capitalist societies. This is a form of abstract idealism, remote from the careful assessment of historical practice

Der Autor legt zunächst dar, daß in den USA die Kultur der Medien weit weltlicher ist als die Kultur des Volkes. Desweiteren ist die Existenz zweier öffentlicher Sprachen festzustellen. Zwischen Volk und Elite ist es zu einer Kluft gekommen. Anhand der Ergebnisse zweier Meinungsumfragen, die ausführlich zitiert werden, wird nachgewiesen, daß die Religion eine bedeutende Kraft bei mehr als zwei Drittel der amerikanischen Öffentlichkeit ist und damit wesentlichen Einfluß auf die Moral- und Wertvorstellungen der Bevölkerung hat. Die nachweisbare neue moralische und religiöse Strömung in den USA stellt deren traditionelle Identität wieder her. Der geistige Wandel, resultierend aus dem Überdenken und Bejahen der moralischen Grundlagen des demokratischen Kapitalismus, hat eine direkte Wirkung auf politische Gegebenheiten im In- und Ausland, politisch und wirtschaftlich. Einige Aspekte hierzu, z.B. die Atlantische Allianz, das Verhältnis zur Dritten Welt und die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Sozialismus betreffend, werden ausführlicher behandelt. (NG)