What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

J. Budziszewski’s newest book is about the lost world of common truths—about what we all really know about right and wrong.

We are passing through an eerie phase of history. The things that everyone really knows are treated as unheard of, and the principles of decency are attacked as indecent. Exposing the emptiness of contemporary moral fashions, Budziszewski explores the rules of human conduct that we can’t not know.

Budziszewski’s purpose is to "bolster the confidence of plain people in the rational foundations of their common moral sense." There are certain moral truths—"as real as arithmetic"—that are part of the equipment of a rational mind. He describes the basic principles of morality known to all men, explains why those principles are under attack, and demonstrates that we do in fact know what we think we know.

Addressing "the persuaded, the half-persuaded, and the wish-I-were-persuaded," Budziszewski shows Protestants, Catholics, and Jews the unanimity of their traditions on the common truths. And what about the unpersuaded, those who deny the reality of a moral law? They are on the other side of a dispute over the basic norms for human life. Civility, Budziszewski insists, does not require denying the unprecedented gulf between the two sides. What’s needed are both charity and clarity, which Budziszewski provides in abundance.

"A few times in a generation, if we are fortunate, moral intelligence finds a voice as lucid, engaging, and relentless as that of J. Budziszewski," says Richard John Neuhaus, publisher of First Things.

J. Budziszewski is professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas.