Abstract

The political conflict over "the family" is often characterized as the center of the "culture war." This is a dangerous misunderstanding of nature and scope of this conflict. In order to achieve an understanding of "family values" and their accompanying "family facts," it is helpful to pursue the various ideological approaches to these facts and values by exploring the three major political camps involved in this dialectical conflict. These camps are: the Family Values Campaign; the Family Values Campaign Resistance; and the Libertines. Yet, it is necessary to further subdivide these general approaches into six more coherent ideal typical theses in order to achieve a more accurate and clear understanding of the underlying fact and value cleavages beneath these political camps. These six theses are: Traditional Form Thesis; Modern Form Thesis; Justice Form Thesis; Liberty Form Thesis; Moderate Libertine Thesis; and Strong Libertine Thesis. Each of these ideal typical theses represents a coherent and unique approach to the family and its internal and external relations. After I have clarified the political and doctrinal fields of "dialectical conflict" through empirical investigation, I proceed to philosophically explore the possibilities for different combinations of doctrinal syntheses upon which political syntheses might be founded. Three questions are important: Which synthesis is most doctrinally coherent? Which synthesis is most favored by political conditions? Which synthesis is morally superior? I argue that the answers to these questions all point to one synthesis---the "Enlightenment Democratic Form Thesis . The moral justification for this synthesis is based upon values basic to the Enlightenment