Bishop Barron on George Will's “The Conservative Sensibility”

[Music] I've long been an admirer of George Will I'm old enough to remember when his column appeared every other week as the back last page of Newsweek magazine I also remember when he was sort of in the chair of conservative thought on David Brinkley Sunday morning talk show will as a very elegant literary style and I loved his sort of clip smart manner of speaking especially when he was in a kind of loyally way dissecting the thought of of his intellectual and political opponents in fact when I was a professor at Mundelein seminary years ago I taught a course in political philosophy and to get across the idea that was common in the ancients that the purpose of government was to shape us morally I had the students read wills little book called statecraft as Soulcraft so I've been using his work and studying him and reading him for a long time and so with great interest I turned to his latest book which by any measure is his magnum opus it's a big thick book and in in size and scope it's a it's a major work called the conservative Sensibility and I read it again with great interest and it has all of wills typical you know virtues and in terms of style and and literary impressiveness and all that the the central argument of the book is one that I think is very important and one that I find myself in strong agreement with namely this that the American experiment in democracy is grounded in this epistemological conviction that political rights are not the gift of government but political rights are grounded in at least relatively stable human nature which is a given prior to government government exists and here we go back to Jefferson's Declaration of Independence government exists to guarantee and to use the word now that we'll thinks is the most important word in the prologue to secure these rights in other words government is the servant of these rights not the creator of them has that move is extremely important and is ratified certainly by Catholic social teaching that government is not the grandeur of rights but the protector of rice this is the source of a healthy sense of limited government this goes a long way to keeping tyranny at bay in a way see will is following John Locke as Jefferson followed Locke that the purpose of government is to guarantee an arena in which the freedom of individuals can express itself they can pursue happiness as they see fit now a lot of the first half of the book in light of this principle is a critique of progressivism and will traces this back to the philosophical thought of Hegel because of course Hegel had called into question the permanence of human nature nature is a much more historically conditioned malleable reality and therefore this opened the door will thanks to government playing the role of shaping human nature according to its purposes so he sees Hegel's philosophy as incarnated itself in the practical politics of Theodore Roosevelt whom he calls beautifully Hegel on horseback and then especially in Roosevelt's second successor Woodrow Wilson he sees these two players as the fathers of modern political progressivism and coming up through franklin roosevelt into lyndon johnson and he thinks really all of our political sensibility today the problem is all this is conduced toward what many complain about today which is the hyper intrusive sort of nanny state that presides over all aspects of life and tries to shape us according to its sense of the good that sense of the good by the way always evolving this is what will is opposed to what he names as progressivism and he sees it as undermining the purposes of the founders okay you know so far in the book I found myself often applauding and in agreement as I say Catholic social teaching is a fan of limited government likes the that a stable human nature and political rights precede the moves and policies of government it's also suspicious seems to me of a progressivism grounded in a sort of hegelian or neo Gnostic sense of the malleability of nature with all that I find myself in profound agreement I must say though as the book unfolded I became less and less enthusiastic about it now here's why having said all that so having affirmed all that's really valuable in that kind of locky and Jeffersonian tradition Catholic social teaching is at the same time wary of a public space that is basically morally thin now think of this for a second Hobbes and Locke the two great figures behind the founders and then Jefferson himself all clearly thought that no clear objective sense of the morally good can be discerned no common sense of the of the shared good can be agreed upon therefore what's best is to allow for this arena of freedom in which all the individuals seek what they perceive to be their own good the government's role is to guarantee that space and to police that space so that as we seek our own private goods we don't bump too much into each other right so to protect and to secure the rights of life liberty and mind you the pursuit of happiness says Jefferson because we don't really know what happiness is so let each individual pursue it according to his or her own lights government's job is to keep that space open and to keep it relatively safe now Catholic social teaching it seems to me is uneasy with how thinly described this space becomes if that's the whole purpose just to maintain basic life freedom so that we can pursue our ends as we see fit what's falling apart what's falling apart is a common moral purpose to the society a real sense of the common good or the commonweal they used to say the Commonwealth what's what's the the shared moral purpose of a society catholic social teaching says this and i think we'll would be uneasy with it to some degree government does help to determine this know-how through legislation it protects indeed so part of laws purpose is to protect i would say for example the fact that laws prohibiting abortion have fallen apart that's a huge moral problem because now we don't have a protection or that law is protecting against euthanasia are being more and more compromised that's a real problem because laws meant to protect certain basic moral goods but more to it colonel george has always insisted upon those law also teaches us what to desire and what not to desire because what's legal and what's illegal inform us to a degree about what we ought to be seeking and ought to be avoiding so partially government's role through legislation is to help determine the moral purpose of a society now more to it and more importantly all those mediating institutions that stand between government and the individual i'm talking about social organizations and clubs and societies and and Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and Rotary Clubs and above all religion all these mediating institutions make the public space morally thick if I can put it that way so it's not the nanny state we're talking about but it's a morally coherent public space Catholic social teaching likes limited government but it also likes a public space that is not denuded of spiritual and moral purpose now take one more step and this is where again I was uneasy with wills argument he makes it explicitly clear at the end of the book that he's operating out of an atheist perspective he himself is an atheist he says not an aggressive one he's not he's not on a campaign religion but he doesn't think we need God to ground this political project seeing there I would strongly disagree as does Catholic social teaching when you take God out of the equation what happens first of all inevitably you move into a Hobbesian metaphysic okay what I mean here thomas hobbes is view that the world is just made up of matter in motion of atoms moving about and colliding into each other he read that metaphysically and he read it politically the political science is the result of looking at the world as this a space where individuals are seeking their own private ends see when when the unifying element which is the creator god that through whom all things are united to each other when that's taken away the Hobbesian metaphysic takes over it seems to me and you have the public space described by george will of and by thomas jefferson to be fair of individuals seeking their private ends more importantly you take God out of the equation you finally take away the ground for objective morality I know this is a big argument and this this could be a whole semester course but the conviction of Catholic social teaching is that finally without God any objective claimed immortal moral value even s's and you do indeed find this constantly changeable moral space what was morally right yesterday is no longer morally right it depends on the individual it's all relative to your social status etc etc and when that happens the morally thick public space is compromised so what would I say conclusion you know there's a central argument of the book with which I strongly agree that first argument he makes I think it's a very important one and and Catholic social teaching affirms it but as the argument unfolds much less enthusiastic because we can't just have this thin locky and Jeffersonian public space there's more to it than that so I guess I'd say in the end maybe you know one cheer for the conservative Sensibility [Music]

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

Views: 56,874

Rating: 4.8949442 out of 5

Keywords: Bishop Barron, George Will, The Conservative Sensibility, Politics, Atheism, Moraltiy

Id: 1CdwtgJcruI

Length: 11min 25sec (685 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 22 2019