By Jonathan Sacks
Rebuilding shared moral foundations for society
Subject
Themes
Western liberal democracies face a crisis that is not primarily political or economic but moral. Over the past half-century, a profound shift has occurred from "We" to "I," from shared responsibility to radical individualism. This cultural climate change began in the 1960s, when morality was effectively outsourced first to markets through economic liberalism and then to the state through welfare expansion. The consequences now manifest in four interconnected crises: divisive populist politics, declining personal happiness despite material abundance, widening economic inequality, and the assault on free speech across university campuses.
Western liberal democracies face a crisis that is not primarily political or economic but moral. Over the past half-century, a profound shift has occurred from "We" to "I," from shared responsibility to radical individualism. This cultural climate change began in the 1960s, when morality was…
Jonathan Sacks published "Morality" in 2020, just months before his death from cancer in November of that year, making it effectively his final major intellectual statement. As the former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, holding the position from 1991 to 2013,…
One of the most striking arguments presented is that modern Western societies have gradually outsourced moral responsibility to two powerful but ultimately insufficient institutions: the state and the market. This process, described as a fundamental shift in how communities organise themselves, has…
Between the state and the market lies a vast, often overlooked domain where the real work of social cohesion takes place. Civil society, the network of families, communities, voluntary associations, religious congregations, and charitable organisations, is presented as the indispensable third pillar…
Secularisation is frequently presented as an unqualified march of progress, a liberation of human reason from the shackles of superstition. Yet the rapid decline of religious observance across the Western world has coincided with a crisis of social trust, civic engagement, and collective meaning…
Liberal democracy, long considered the settled political destination of the Western world, faces a crisis of legitimacy that threatens its very survival. Trust in government has collapsed dramatically: in the United States, it fell from 75 percent in 1958 to just 18 percent in 2017. A quarter of…
The intellectual trajectory of Western individualism traces a path from the Reformation to the present day, gathering force with each century until it has become the dominant cultural orientation of the modern world. What began as a principled assertion of individual conscience against institutional…
Single-person households in the United States have more than doubled in fifty years. Nine million people in Britain report feeling lonely, and 200,000 older Britons had not spoken to a friend or relative in over a month. A 2018 Cigna survey found 46 percent of Americans always or sometimes feel…
The intellectual roots of Western individualism stretch from Luther's assertion of individual conscience through Descartes's "I think, therefore I am" to Hobbes's social contract built on self-interest. Kant translated Lutheranism into secular moral philosophy, insisting that true morality requires…
Humans are social animals whose hunter-gatherer heritage creates an irrepressible need to belong to groups. The West has oscillated between identity and universalism for centuries. After the Reformation's religious wars, Enlightenment thinkers like Montaigne and Kant pursued universal reason,…
Barack Obama, speaking to young leaders in Chicago in October 2019, attacked call-out culture: "If all you're doing is casting stones, you're probably not going to get that far." The founders of Stonewall and Black Lives Matter echo this, insisting that real change happens through personal…
Human dignity has been systematically eroded over centuries of scientific discovery. Copernicus displaced Earth from the centre of the universe. Spinoza argued that freedom is an illusion governed by necessity. Marx reduced human motivation to economic forces, Darwin revealed humanity as one branch…
Secularisation is accelerating across the West. In Britain, 53 percent of people now claim no religious affiliation. In the United States, 40 percent of Millennials identify as "nones." George Washington warned in his farewell address that "national morality can prevail" only with "religious…
By Jonathan Sacks
Subject
Themes
Western liberal democracies face a crisis that is not primarily political or economic but moral. Over the past half-century, a profound shift has occurred from "We" to "I," from shared responsibility to radical individualism. This cultural climate change began in the 1960s, when morality was effectively outsourced first to markets through economic liberalism and then to the state through welfare expansion. The consequences now manifest in four interconnected crises: divisive populist politics, declining personal happiness despite material abundance, widening economic inequality, and the assault on free speech across university campuses.