There is also a discussion on what is understood by respect. There is a well-meaning, though misleading, way of engendering respect through racial categorisations. However, the author points out that this is not behaviour borne out of a shared living experience but, rather, construed in “peer-reviewed journals and Powerpoint slides.” This and other factors reduce culture to a “dangerous place steeped only in prejudice and hatred… fear and suffering” rather than the “source of unity” that it can—and should—be. Phillips calls on an eclectic range of philosophers, poets, and novelists as tutelary spirits; and he extracts unexpected lessons from disparate, real-world events."

Jacob Phillips - Battle of Ideas Jacob Phillips - Battle of Ideas

Sensual liberty is as unsatisfying as political liberty. Pornography is existentially emptying, leaving everyone with a “permanently scorched vision” and a deeply dispiriting notion of the universe as a mechanistic eternity of grinding lumps of flesh, short-lasting sensations, and cold-eyed transactions. The sexual deviants from what norms still remain are partly the products of mainstream sexualization. Conspiracy theories, from 5G wireless mind control to the QAnon cult, may be fueled by “an intuitive sense that our cultural atmosphere is increasingly permeated with things that are unsanitary and deleterious.” By giving into our whims, by indulging our weaknesses, we risk becoming like the mutineers of the HMS Bounty, who drank saltwater and went insane, drifting in a vast and meaningless expanse. This book is not a thunderous polemic, still less a dry work of abstract argumentation. Phillips, writing in effective and elegant prose, draws on literature, modern history and personal experience to craft richly human insights into thinking and living well […] stimulating and insightful.’ Jacob Phillips has written a book which needed to be written and which needs to be read […] this work cements his reputation as a fine essayist in the best of English traditions.” Allegiance, loyalty, deference, honor, respect, responsibility, discipline, and duty have all been ironized and outmoded in our civilization, which is simultaneously paedomorphic and senile. These virtues are nonetheless indispensable threads in a web of reciprocity uniting individuals who would otherwise sheer off randomly into social outer space, occasionally as brilliantly as comets, but just as aimless and lonely. For all our choice, comfort, opportunity, and stimuli, today’s West is neither dynamic nor happy; perhaps, like Prometheus, we are being tortured for knowing too much. We all know there is no such thing as a free lunch; we now need to learn there is no free freedom. For every freedom we are afforded, there are often important restrictions, paradoxical corollaries of a need to balance often competing desires—most obviously our ability to think or say what we want on an ever-expanding range of subjects. Not all colors can be found in the rainbow.Freedom is obedience, if obedience to the correct thing. That thing is God and His bible. Obedience to Him aligns the human being towards his designed purpose. You could also say that freedom is obedience to natural law which is the theological idea that God created us with a sense of what is objectively right and wrong. The problem is that there is another factor at play in our souls, sin. Having discipline, constraining impulse is the act of ignoring sinful desire. Sin destroys. It leads away from our human purpose. It seeks to destroy the notion of natural law and the intention to live it out. Yet Goodhart, who is commendably sympathetic to the often-disregarded Somewheres, is still a little patronizing about the importance of loyalty. Phillips, unlike Goodhart, sees loyalty as an elemental rather than a merely primitive emotion, and an uplifting one, encouraging self-sublimation in the service of others who may have few or no other defenders. The cultural context remains vital. Perhaps, this is a culture at war with the different subtleties within it. Culture wars are broadly defined as battles “against a foe with whom there is no common ground.” There is no acceptance of a shared history or a shared endeavour; the common good is sacrificed on the altar of identity politics. Phillips points out that such wars enslave all dimensions of life. We are all conscripted into battle, and “there is no place to which one can retreat, nowhere to return and be recuperated.” Thus, we must question those words that we think we know the meaning of but have somehow been re-defined by changing attitudes, including allegiance, loyalty, deference, honour, obligation, respect, responsibility, discipline, duty, and authority. Phillips does so by turning each word on its head and exploring how these values relate to contemporary society. Phillips’ attempt to defend the value of ordinary, everyday duties – to one’s family, friends and loved ones – is important. He is right to show that fulfilling the duties imposed on you by a wider community creates a special kind of freedom. This is a vital corrective to the narcissistic idea that freedom is simply the absence of limits.

The Case for the Geezer ━ The European Conservative

It is surely unnecessary to say that Phillips is not against freedom per se, but rather against the particular kinds of freedoms fetishized today. Here in the West we are largely free to buy what we want, wear what we want, sleep with whomever we want, live and travel where we want, engage in demonstrations, vote in elections, and increasingly even change our “gender”—subject only, of course, to our personal and economic resources. But there is a great deal of empirical and everyday evidence to suggest that all these liberties (which often amount to mere libertinism) are insufficient in themselves, and not obviously conducive to social stability. But to keep spiked free we ask regular readers like you, if you can afford it, to chip in – to make sure that those who can’t afford it can continue reading, sharing and arguing. He uses this example to contrast this with the culture “in which child-bearing is conditional on self-fulfilment.” This attitude restrains the development of “basic impulses of responsibility and care.” He makes a caveat: “This is not to say that only those who have children exercise such responsibilities. It is to say that the degree to which natality is celebrated in a culture is a vital barometer of how responsible that culture is.”It should be clear from this example that while Phillips defends some forms of deference, duty, obligation et cetera, he does not defend them in their maximally authoritarian and reactionary sense. When he writes about “obedience”, for example, he is not reducing it to the servility that exists between peasants and a king. He is thinking of obedience to custom, and tradition, and mutual agreements as much as official authority. The virtue of obedience is seen as outdated today, if not downright toxic - and yet, are we any freer than our forebears?

Obedience is Freedom by Jacob Phillips | WHSmith Obedience is Freedom by Jacob Phillips | WHSmith

The skill of the author lies in how he crafts his argument. This is neither a polemical text nor a heavy read. Instead, the author avoids a preachy or condescending tone and guides the reader gently through various themes. It is almost as though the author enters into a conversation with literary figures, philosophers, and theologians and offers their views to the reader. He weaves into these conversations his own experiences and observations, thus presenting a book that is engaging, personal, and even moving at times.A sceptical reader might dispute Phillips’s positive conception of liberty. I think it is inarguable that in a civilised society, freedom depends to some extent on obedience. Take driving. How “free” would you feel if you drove on roads, or walked across them, on which motorists could drive at 100 miles per hour after downing a bottle of vodka? There is a good chance that your freedom would end on a broken windscreen. Still, it is true that departing from a negative conception of freedom exposes us to endless conceptual elasticity. Jacob Phillips is an associate professor in systematic theology, and writes on culture, society, philosophy, and religion. His book, Obedience is Freedom, was published by Polity Press in May 2022. Argues” is an imperfect word. This book is not a thunderous polemic, still less a dry work of abstract argumentation. Phillips, writing in effective and elegant prose, draws on literature, modern history and personal experience to craft richly human insights into thinking and living well.