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  • Redeeming the Enlightenment: Christianity and the Liberal Virtues
  • Daniel Mullins
Bruce K. Ward . Redeeming the Enlightenment: Christianity and the Liberal Virtues. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2010. Pp. xiii + 230. Paper, US$26.00. ISBN 978-0-8028-0761-8.

In this ambitious volume, Ward explores the complicated relationship between Christianity and liberalism that is often over-simplified. In his effort to take the moral insights of both the Enlightenment and Christianity seriously, he aims “neither to reject nor reclaim the Enlightenment project, but to see how it might be redeemed” (2).

Ward’s thesis is that liberalism depends on the cultivation of virtues, but that these virtues have come under attack in a post-Christian era and now lack the philosophical resources to sustain themselves. Ward’s book is thus designed as a three-way conversation among liberalism (Rousseau), nihilism (Nietzsche), and Christian humanism (Dostoevsky). Rousseau is chosen as the spokesman for Enlightenment virtues because he stands as a counterpoint to rationalistic ethics. Thus, Alasdair MacIntyre’s distinction between virtue ethics (Aristotle) and modern ethics (Kant) can be misleading, because it underestimates “the crucial role that qualities of character do play in the liberal moral imperatives” (11). Nietzsche is perhaps an obvious choice as the proponent of nihilism. He identifies the same liberal virtues as Rousseau but repudiates them as disguised Christian virtues, which the Enlightenment has inadvertently given a longer lease on life. Dostoevsky is chosen as the voice of Christian humanism because he takes account of Nietzsche’s critique and gives us a humanism that is free from Rousseau’s naïveté.

The Enlightenment virtues that Ward takes up are equality, authenticity, tolerance, and compassion, and the first chapter deals with the first of these four, highlighting Rousseau’s role in bringing this virtue to the forefront in liberal thought. Unlike other Enlightenment thinkers, Rousseau sees conscience, rather than reason, as the basis for treating all people with dignity and respect. Predictably, Nietzsche repudiates conscience and equality as remnants of a superseded Christian past. Ward quotes Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: “The masses blink and say: ‘We are all equal—Man is but man, before God—we are all equal.’ Before God! But now this God has died” (51). Ward also invokes Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov: “If there is no God, everything is permitted.” However, Ward argues that taking this phrase at face value, as an endorsement of divine commands as the basis for morality, is to miss what Dostoevsky is doing: “Simple reaffirmation of the religious tradition in the space opened up by Nietzsche’s exposure of the shaky foundations of secular liberalism is not enough; what is needed is a critical retrieval of the more profound strata of the tradition’s teachings about God, and about human worth” (53). In Ward’s estimation, Dostoevsky doesn’t pretend that the Enlightenment didn’t happen; rather, he sees it as having a validity that his Christian humanism must take into account. Through his fiction, he presents a more subtle basis for equality that avoids the sentimentality of Rousseau and grapples with the psychological realism of Nietzsche. I am certainly no expert on Russian literature, so I cannot comment in detail on Ward’s interpretation of the many works of Dostoevsky that he cites. Nevertheless, I found Ward’s use of Dostoevsky effective in this chapter. Philosophers sometimes underestimate the subtleties in the human condition that literature can elucidate and the motivation to build solidarity that it can elicit.

The second chapter contends with authenticity—a particularly modern virtue that finds its origin as in Rousseau. For him, society destroys the authenticity of the individual, breeding dependence and conformity. Authenticity as a moral virtue is further developed in the literature of Tolstoy and the philosophy of Heidegger and has implications for religion. For example, the authenticity with which we must face death—nobody can die in our place—has implications for some theologies of the atonement. In addition, the kenotic self-emptying of Christ and his followers runs afoul of modern authenticity. Indeed the very notion of Imitatio Christi is problematic. According to Rousseau, the [End Page 143] only religion suitable for an authentic self is solitary...

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