But answers came there none
Bruce Anderson
THE POLITICS OF HOPE by Jonathan Sacks Cape, £15.99, pp. 288
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The Chief Rabbi has written an almost great book. He gives us a lucid, provocative and convincing account of moral and politi- cal philosophy from Hobbes and Mill onwards. He diagnoses a basic weakness, both in the philosophers who try to find a secular basis for morality — Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Mill — and those who would explicitly repudiate God: Marx and Nietzsche. Neither group can explain who man is or how he should live. But Dr Sacks lacks the courage of his conclusions, which is why The Politics of Hope falls ultimately and absolutely short of great- ness. He asks the questions in a way which demands only one answer, yet he refuses to give it.
He regularly returns to the paradox of the Enlightenment. All the thinkers of the Enlightenment were moralists; all their political prescriptions had moral premises. Yet none of them could rest their morals on a sure foundation. As Dr Sacks writes, a propos of Hume, there remains 'a fateful gap between "facts" and "values" . . . [and] the hairline fracture which Hume had noticed would eventually grow into an abyss'.
The Chief Rabbi comes from a tradition and a faith which believe themselves able to close that abyss. But he lacks the intel- lectual self-confidence which his faith ought to give him. Prime Minister Salisbury often insisted that anyone who believed that the Christian ethic could survive Chris- tian theology for more than a couple of generations was deluded, and subsequent events have not refuted him. Dr Sacks would evidently agree, though he would doubtless prefer to broaden Salisbury's point to the Judaeo-Christian tradition to which he often refers.
In these pages last week, Matthew Parris had some fun at the expense of that tradi- tion, without rebutting the fundamental argument that Judaeo-Christianity is the only viable extra-secular basis for morality which we have. Dr Sacks should have pre- empted Mr Parris's argument by finding a Hebrew translation for the twin petrine constants: semper eadem and nulla mitts extra ecclesiam (`always the same' and 'no salvation outside the church'). He should have insisted with Chesterton that a man who does not believe in God will believe in something worse. He should have exposed modern man's illusions about himself. Be he never so prosperous, let him think him- self never so free — without God, his pros- perity is the prosperity of Job: his freedom, the freedom of Jonah.
Above all, the Chief Rabbi should have argued, against the entire thrust of modern Western history, that morals depend on two foundations: God and scarcity. Modern man may believe that hiving transcended scarcity, he can also dispense with God. On the contrary, Dr Sacks should have insist- ed: in the absence of scarcity, God is more important than ever. But Dr Sacks is, apparently, as lacking in theological self- confidence as the average Church of Eng- land bishop. So he moves on from a scholarly history of modern moral philoso- phy to a mere political mish-mash, as unscholarly as it is banal.
He tries to draw a distinction between liberalism — post-religious morality — and libertarianism, which he defines as the belief that morality can be privatised. But his account of so-called libertarianism is as philosophically flawed as it is historically unsound.
Morality is by definition a social con- struct; 'one man, one morality' would mean the death of moral discourse. But it is `What kind of a club is this? I've been sitting here for two hours and nobody has offered me any Ecstasy.' equally impossible to argue against the notion that morality must have a private dimension. Dr Sacks approvingly quotes the Rabbi Israel Santer who wrote that he had started by trying to change the world; it did not change. Then he tried to change his town; it did not change. Finally he tried to change his family; it did not change either. So at last 'I realised: first I must change myself.' A coerced individual may obey a moral code, but no one can claim to be a moral individual unless he gives his free and private consent to that which he is obeying. In pursuit of his caricature of libertarian- ism, Dr Sacks cites Margaret Thatcher's notorious comment that 'there is no such thing as society'. But that is a cheap debat- ing point, not an argument. Mrs Thatcher was no libertarian; she believed that people ought to be free, but only to do what they ought to do. Nor was she denying that morality had a 'social dimension'; she was merely insisting that no one was entitled to use society as an alibi for their Os' demeanours — as the Chief Rabbi wens to agree. In a phrase which Mrs Thatcher could have echoed, he states that: 'The transfer of responsibility from the individu- al to the state is not just ugly in its conse- quences. It impoverishes our lives'. After apparently repudiating society, Mrs Thatcher went on to say: 'There are hid!" vidual men and women and there are fault' lies.' She would agree with Dr Sacks that unless those men, women and families Internalise a moral code, it will neither be moral nor codified.
Dr Sacks rightly attributes most of the current moral breakdown, which is visible both in the crime statistics and in the widespread anxiety prevalent in the advanced West, to the breakdown of mar; riage. But what is to be done? He himself insists that 'We cannot re-legislate morali- ty.' But he also claims to have written a book about political solutions; this suggests that he does not understand the nature or the limitations of politics. A problem which cannot be addressed by legislation is a more than political problem. Politics is only one aspect of the common life of an advanced society. There are bound to be troublesome questions, many of them rooted in human nature, which require a much longer and more rigorous scrutiny than could be accomplished iiiat1Y legislature. That is why we have universities and churches. The difficulties arise when the dons and clerics lose confidence in their own vocations and descend — in all senses into the political arena — in which they may assume that lower intellectual standards will prevail. For half of this boo.it, the Chief Rabbi vindicates Judaism's claim be the only part of the Judaeo-Christian tradition in which the intellect is still tall seriously. But in the other, lesser, polit!ca, half, he is no more than an ethical Oat° diniser.
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