A review of Pandemic of Lunacy by Richard Kirk in the American Thinker
The chance of finding a philosophy professor like J. Budziszewski is about as rare as finding a teenage student who doesn’t believe that right and wrong, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. In Pandemic of Lunacy. How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy Professor Budziszewski makes a compelling case for the opposite view, one seldom embraced nowadays even by members of his own profession, namely, that right and wrong are objective categories and not, in general, “vague and equivocal.” Nor are they “different for everyone.”
If the reader immediately objects that different cultures have different notions about what is right and wrong, the former nihilist and Nietzsche aficionado who has ruffled many feathers at the University of Texas has a logical answer for you, one that distinguishes what right and wrong actually are from what any person or culture asserts they are. Beyond that currently heretical belief, Budziszewski provides scholarly evidence that the moral elements in the Ten Commandments are, in some form, embedded in all cultures. You’ll have to buy the book to get a reasoned and likely convincing reply to your objections, but be warned that Margaret Mead’s conclusion about South Sea Islander sexual license (precursor to those now extant in America) has been debunked.
Budziszewski’s analysis concerning basic concepts of right and wrong serves as a foundation for the other topics he addresses in this short, six-part tour de force, written for “laymen” and employing a bare minimum of philosophical terminology. Part one, “Delusions about Virtue and Happiness” is followed by topics that concern politics, sexuality, being human, reality, and lastly, God and religion. That final category shouldn’t mislead folks into thinking the book is based on religious dogma. It is not. Aristotle is the philosopher Budziszewski relies on most, even in the final section about God. Accordingly, when speaking about happiness, the professor points readers toward Aristotle’s definition of the term that concerns an activity, living well, not merely a feeling of pleasure.
