In the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Meaney reviews In Praise of Doubt, a new book by sociologist Peter Berger and philosopher Anton Zijderveld:
Peter Berger should know this better than most. In the 1970s, he argued, along with other leading sociologists, that the world was on the fast track to secularization. But in the intervening decades, religious faith—notably fundamentalist Protestantism—enjoyed a resurgence that few expected. At the same time, a species of moral relativism crept into the intellectual culture of the West. For Mr. Berger these trends are two strains of the same disease afflicting modern society. Fundamentalism enforces a consensus about ultimate ends without accounting for difference, while relativism makes sharing common values impossible. In “In Praise of Doubt,” Mr. Berger has teamed up with the Dutch philosopher Anton Zijderveld to argue that it is possible to maintain moral certainty about liberal democratic values without succumbing to either of these extremes.
Continue reading at the Wall Street Journal.