Moral Matters

Moral Matters: A Philosophy of Homecoming by Mark Dooley, 198 pages

"Man is born free but is everywhere in chains."  So Rousseau famously wrote.  But Mark Dooley has his own emendation for the modern world: Man is free to go anywhere but is nowhere at home.  The latter is the result of the former - a destructive philosophy which sees home, family, nation, and the whole of past history as instruments for the enslavement of the autonomous individual.  This vision of freedom inevitably leaves its pursuers alienated instead of liberated.  The reason is that the illusion of mastery and self-sufficiency conceals the reality that no one is entirely independent.  Only with a philosophy of interdependence, a philosophy of love and sacrifice, a philosophy grounded in respect and reverence, can human beings find their place in this world, he argues. 

Moral Matters is more of a manifesto than the careful philosophical reflection its subtitle might suggest.  As a result of this emphasis on rhetoric, it is somewhat muddled, with the distinction between the alienation of modernity (and post-modernity) and the alienation of techno-consumerism effectively blurred.  Similarly, the author never seems to be able to clearly define the tradition he is fighting for in concrete terms, instead resorting to vague slogans.  Yet Dooley remains convincing in his passion to save future generations from the narrow minds of innovators and iconoclasts.