By Jonathan Sacks
Jonathan Cape. 269 pages. £15.99
ISBN 0 224 04329 3
A newspaper on the day Jonathan Sacks began this book apparently stated: 'There is little doubt that most people believe that Britain is in severe moral decline.' In The Politics of Hope the Chief Rabbi gives a coherent analysis of how British - and to a certain extent Western - society has come to its present position.
His understanding and philosophical thought and contemporary reaction to it takes us from the Enlightenment through the growth of liberalism to what he calls the present day 'libertarianism' (to be distinguished from liberalism by its bent towards permissiveness). His Jewish scholarship also throws interesting light on aspects of the Old Testament along the way. The author explicitly states that this is a 'non-theological work' and his argument therefore eschews any reference to the 'Divine Promise'. He highlights very clearly, however, the poverty of moral relativism and does so in a way which compels attention from a world that does not acknowledge God.
