Restoring Our Moral Sense in Troubled Times

Taking the former’s recent book Morality in the Twentieth Century as a point of departure, Jonathan Sacks and Robert P. George argue that the current epidemic of loneliness, cancel culture, political disfunction, and other modern ills have their roots in a spiritual malaise attributable to the decline of traditional religiosity and the radical social changes that have taken place since the 1960s—made much worse by social media. These are problems that can only be counteracted by the cultivation of virtue and character, and the renewal of a common moral language. Rabbi Sacks concludes the discussion with a brief meditation on the distinction between hope and optimism, averring, “No Jew—knowing what we do of our history—can be an optimist, but no Jew worthy of the name ever lost hope.” (Video, 65 minutes. Moderated by Yuval Levin.)