Sanity
- according to Frank Sheed - is, quite simply, a state in which one's
ideas accord with reality - in which what I believe is true.
In observing the dialogue between Americans and Soviets, Sheed saw what
has since become obvious - that although the Americans could say how a
man ought and ought not to be treated, they could not explain why,
because they could not agree on what a man is. The result is to reduce
the entire set of human rights to irrational preferences, or, viewed
from another perspective, prejudices. A strong defense of human rights,
then, must be based upon a sane account of human nature.
Sheed's thesis is that the Western, which is to say the
Christian, idea of human nature, although predicated upon divine
revelation, is also empirically verifiable in terms of lived human
experience. Included as an extension of human nature are the natures of
the family and of society, without either of which it is impossible to
be fully human. The element which harmonizes all this is reverence - of
children for parents, parents for children, spouses for each other, the
individual for society, and the State for the individual. It is the
concept of man as made in the image and likeness of God which grants the
proper perspective - the proper piety - to allow for the existence of a
healthy society.
Some books are dated a decade after their publication, others are still relevant at sixty years old. This is one of the latter.
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