What Do We Really Know About Right and Wrong? | Prof. J. Budzsizewski
The Thomistic Institute
The Thomistic Institute
4.8 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2019
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This talk was offered at Southern Methodist University on April 11th, 2019. For more info about upcoming TI events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1
About the Speaker:
J. Budziszewski (Ph.D. Yale, 1981) is a professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. His main area of research is the natural moral law, and he is most wellknown for his work on moral selfdeception, “the revenge of conscience” what happens when we tell ourselves that we don't know what we really do know. However, has written about all sorts of things such as moral character, family and sexuality, religion and public life, toleration and liberty, and the unraveling of our common culture.
The most recent of his thirteen books are Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law and Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Virtue Ethics, both from Cambridge University Press, as well as On the Meaning of Sex, from Intercollegiate Studies Institute. His book for students, How to Stay Christian in College has sold several hundred thousand copies. He also maintains a personal website and blog, The Underground Thomist.
Married for more than 45 years, Dr. Budziszewski has several children and a clutch of grandchildren. Presently he is completing a book on the meaning of happiness.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You know, in a talk that he gave in the year 2005, the man who was about to become Pope Benedict |
| 0:07.0 | the 16th, although nobody knew that then, and he didn't expect that, |
| 0:11.0 | lamented that I quote, we are building a dictatorship of relativism, a dictatorship of relativism, |
| 0:18.0 | an interesting expression, that does not recognize anything as definitive, |
| 0:21.6 | and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires. |
| 0:27.6 | Now, I think some people must have found this statement confusing. |
| 0:31.6 | He said the dictatorship of relativism does not recognize anything as definitive, right? |
| 0:36.6 | But a dictatorship makes everything definitive, doesn't it? |
| 0:41.3 | It defines what you must do. |
| 0:43.3 | It defines what you must believe. |
| 0:46.3 | It defines what you must not do, and it defines what you must not believe. |
| 0:51.3 | And yet he said that the dictatorship of relativism does not recognize anything as definitive. |
| 0:59.0 | Well, then how can there be a dictatorship of relativism? Wouldn't relativism mean perfect freedom? |
| 1:06.0 | Five years later, by this time he was both, Benedict, in an interview with a German journalist, |
| 1:14.6 | Benedict explained, he said that relativism seems to be freedom, quote, for the sole reason |
| 1:21.6 | that it is liberation from the previous situation. But in reality, he went on, |
| 1:29.3 | this development increasingly leads |
| 1:32.3 | to an intolerant claim of a new religion, |
| 1:37.3 | which pretends to be generally valid |
| 1:42.3 | because it is reasonable, indeed, because it's reason itself, which |
| 1:47.8 | knows all and therefore defines the frame of reference. That is now supposed to apply to everyone. |
| 1:53.6 | In the name of tolerance, he said, tolerance is being abolished. You can see how this works, can't |
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