their community’s limitations, only that they have no unmediated knowledge of that objective truth, no methods of testing or verifying that a prophet’s words properly describe that reality. Yet I am left wondering if this distinction makes any difference. If any prophetic claim to the truth is mediated and limited by its community, does it actually matter if there is an objective truth outside the community to which it refers? In theological terms, if the prophetic voice necessarily refers to the ultimate truth—that is, God—but each prophet’s concept of God is so conditioned by their location, time, and context, is prophetic realism even possible? Libby’s examples suggest that it is not. And if a prophet’s main task is internal critique of a community’s efforts to live up to the moral standards it has set for itself, it is not clear that realism, or correspondence to a reality outside itself, is as necessary an ingredient to the prophetic voice as Libby contends. His account of each thinker actually demonstrates the ways that non-foundationalism overruns any commitment to realism. As Libby puts it, for each of them ‘truth/reality is reduced to or conflated with some aspect of its communal expression’ (p. 158). Simply, truth collapses into community. For Hauerwas, truth, and therefore the prophetic voice, is reduced to the church; for Walzer, the same, except in his secular framework it is a particular political community; for West, it is an overly generalized account of democratic practices. This is a simple mixture of message with medium. This conflation of truth with a commitment to the community that expresses that truth leads Hauerwas and Walzer to neglect marginalized voices, and West, while explicitly attending to the margins, to reduce the prophetic to democracy and neglect the deeper normative commitments of the prophetic voice. Despite arguing for how, conceptually, one might maintain a commitment to both realism and non-foundationalism, and arguing for why this dual commitment might be helpful, Libby never convincingly argues for how it might be possible. While his insightful assessments of each thinker are well worth the read, his examples actually work against his main argument because their failures to reconcile non-foundationalism with realism are so revealing of the difficulty of that task. While Libby rightly criticizes these scholars primarily for the way they fail the prophetic credential of attending to the marginalized, and therefore of upholding the values of justice and peaceableness, with this focus he fails more deeply to demonstrate the ways their failures of realism might be overcome, if that is indeed possible. While I appreciate his attempt and, especially his treatment of all three figures, for now, this reader is left in doubt.

中文翻译：

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书评：劳伦斯·马塞克，意图、性格和双重影响

他们社区的局限性，只是他们对客观真理没有直接了解，没有测试或验证先知的话是否正确描述了现实的方法。然而，我想知道这种区别是否有什么不同。如果任何对真理的预言性主张是由其社区调节和限制的，那么它所指的社区之外是否存在客观真理真的重要吗？用神学术语来说，如果先知的声音必然是指终极真理——即上帝——但每个先知对上帝的概念都受其地点、时间和背景的限制，那么先知现实主义是否可能？利比的例子表明事实并非如此。如果先知的主要任务是对社区为达到其为自己设定的道德标准所做的努力进行内部批评，那么现实主义，或与外部现实的对应，就像利比所说的那样，是预言之声的必要成分。他对每位思想家的描述实际上表明了非基础主义超越了对现实主义的任何承诺的方式。正如 Libby 所说，对于它们中的每一个，“真相/现实都被简化为或与其公共表达的某些方面混为一谈”（第 158 页）。简而言之，真理崩溃到社区中。对豪尔瓦斯来说，真理和预言的声音都归于教会；对于沃尔泽来说，也是一样，除了在他的世俗框架中，它是一个特殊的政治共同体；对于西方来说，这是对民主实践的过度概括。这是消息与媒体的简单混合。将真相与对社区的承诺相结合，表明真相导致 Hauerwas 和 Walzer 忽视边缘化的声音，和西方，虽然明确地关注边缘，但将预言归结为民主，而忽视了预言声音更深层次的规范承诺。尽管在概念上争论如何保持对现实主义和非基础主义的承诺，并争论为什么这种双重承诺可能会有所帮助，但利比从未令人信服地争论它是如何可能的。虽然他对每位思想家的深刻评估都值得一读，但他的例子实际上与他的主要论点背道而驰，因为它们未能将非基础主义与现实主义调和，如此揭示了这项任务的难度。虽然利比正确地批评了这些学者，主要是因为他们没有达到关注边缘化人群的预言证书，因此没有维护正义与和平的价值观，由于这种关注，他未能更深入地展示他们的现实主义失败可能会被克服的方式，如果这确实可能的话。虽然我很欣赏他的尝试，尤其是他对所有三个人物的处理，但就目前而言，这位读者仍有疑问。