The Law of Love: From Autonomy to Communion by Stephen F. Brett (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 494 conversation, and I would recommend reading those two articles out of order. It is also unclear why the editors did not insist on a standard referent for some of the figures discussed; one finds, for example, both “Ibn Sina” and “Avicenna,” which can be confusing for the uninitiated. My greatest complaint is the lack of a bibliography. Even a limited bibliography of major works would have increased the book’s value as a general source on the topic. Although, the price of the hardcover is prohibitive, it can be read on-line by subscribers to Cambridge University Press and is available as an ebook. Creation and the God of Abraham is to be highly recommended and I hope it will be widely read by scientists, philosophers, and theologians engaged in questions of the origins of the universe, and become a standard for students and scholars alike. SANDRA TOENIES KEATING Providence College Providence, Rhode Island The Law of Love: From Autonomy to Communion. By STEPHEN F. BRETT. Scranton, Pa.: University of Scranton Press, 2010. Pp. 204. $18.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-1-58966-207-0. This interdisciplinary essay takes up the more important challenges surrounding the meaning and importance of autonomy as it has been developed in theological, philosophical, and legal traditions. A work of broad and foundational exploration, the essay focuses its particular energies on the issue of human sexuality. Brett’s fundamental thesis is that an inadequate notion of autonomy has co-opted much of our legal and ethical conversations surrounding marriage and sexuality. He appeals, in the end, to the recovery of the virtue tradition and to the work of Servais Pinckaers, O.P., in seeking to retrieve a notion of human flourishing that is better situated within the drama of the Christian theology of creation, grace, and redemption. With this objective in mind, Brett moves the reader through a series of reflections designed to illustrate how the Enlightenment (read Kantian) notion of autonomy has (de)formed the moral, cultural, and legal landscape. Epitomized in the now famous “mystery passage” of Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), Brett’s autonomous figure stands in defiance of any objective moral order, at liberty “to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Brett’s interpretive narrative in this regard is consistent with a chorus of others who have written on this now famous episode BOOK REVIEWS 495 of American jurisprudence. His originality lies in his effort to weave together a variety of implications and connections concerning this thesis. At times, the trail of his argument gets a bit lost in a thicket of allusions, and sometimes Brett moves too quickly for this reader from philosophy to law, to theology, to culture, and back. Overall, however, the thrust of his essay illuminates well the context and challenges that face contemporary Catholics, especially in the arena of sexual morality. In the first chapters, Brett reflects on Enlightenment philosophical tradition, giving special attention to Kantian ethics. He asserts that “the brilliance of Kant and the fiery force of Enlightenment have essentially led to the cul-de-sac of relativism,” and that the overall turn to the subject, coupled with a mechanistic view of the natural order, has lead to the deracination of the human person as a citizen of an ordered cosmos. The argument proceeds in broad strokes and lacks on occasion some of the nuances that could have furthered its aims. Surprisingly, there is no mention of Descartes as the predecessor of Enlightenment epistemology, for instance, and Kantian ethicists would bristle at the suggestion that Kant is a relativist. That Kantian morality set in motion a vision of the moral life utterly alien to Thomistic thought is a thesis not a few in Brett’s circles would be comfortable with, but more attention to some of the very real challenges facing the philosopher of Königsburg would have been helpful. Brett is eager to demonstrate how the notion of an unmoored autonomy is devastating to Catholic sexual morality, a thesis I share, but he is at times too eager to make causal connections in an effort to secure his...