This is an acclaimed and intense study of the monastic life. Against All Reason is a survey of the religious life in western Christendom -- of the various "life styles" of religious orders both Catholic and Protestant, of the philosophy which underlies them, of the whys and wherefores and of the destiny of the religious life in the twentieth century. Moorhouse views the situation of the traditional religious life as one that is undergoing radical change, not only in externals but in the concepts -- such as that of obedience -- which has given to that life its particular cast. Where will it all end? Perhaps, he says, at a point at which the religious will be indistinguishable, except for his vows and his communal existence, from the ordinary Christian.