Certain certainties ...

... Book Review: Moral Combat - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

To write a history of morality, Mr. Burleigh must steer between the conventions of the historians and the ethicists. On the one hand, he makes no claim to knowledge of the under lying ethics of war. On the other, he does not regard morality, as some historians might, only as one factor among others, to be understood dispassionately. He insists on the ineluctable historical presence of morality in our lives, which leads him to his basic insight: that those who did evil believed that they were doing good.