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Why Bother?

Here is a sort of a reply to Prof. Ryn’s recent answer to the Claremont brigades. To sum up, Mr. Voegeli seems to hold that for someone to believe that transcendent goods can only be experienced and known in particular, historically contingent forms he must also be agnostic or uncertain about the morality of slavery. […]

Here is a sort of a reply to Prof. Ryn’s recent answer to the Claremont brigades. To sum up, Mr. Voegeli seems to hold that for someone to believe that transcendent goods can only be experienced and known in particular, historically contingent forms he must also be agnostic or uncertain about the morality of slavery. As if to confirm everything Prof. Ryn has said so far, Mr. Voegeli seems to offer the alternatives of Promethean certainty and shrugging one’s shoulders in confusion. Anything less than an embrace of the modern idolatry of reason must perforce be irrational.

After all, unless you embrace those “self-evident truths,” you apparently can’t really believe in abiding truths about human dignity. You would apparently also have no recourse to any of the moral teachings of your religious tradition or any other part of the “heritage” that Mr. Voegeli finds so lacking, nor would you be able to use discernment between good and evil without scrapping your entire tradition (there can be no combination of traditional authorities and reason for those at Claremont–you must choose the latter). No relying on the human heritage, because slavery is part of the human heritage!

This, I submit, is just about the laziest answer there is. Prof. Ryn may attempt a more thorough response, but given how his attempts to reason with the Straussians have gone so far this month why would he (or anyone else) bother?

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