ABSTRACT
H. Tristram Engelhardt explicitly claims that the libertarian character of a defensible general secular morality is not antagonistic to the moralities of concrete moral communities whose peaceable commitments may be far from libertarian. The arguments in The Foundations of Bioethics are not opposed to sentiments within particular, peaceable, moral communities. The moral life lived in two dimensions: that of a secular ethic that strives to be contentless and thus is able to span numerous moral communities, and the particular moral community within which one can achieve a content-full understanding of the good life. At several points Engelhardt observes that Roman Catholicism made the mistake of trying to provide rational grounds for being Catholic. He suggests that prior to the Reformation the Christian West envisaged a single authoritative point of view available, not only through grace, but also through rational argument.
