The Statesman as Thinker - by Daniel J Mahoney (Hardcover)

About the Book

"This book addresses the role of the thoughtful statesman in sustaining free and lawful political communities. It aims to restore fundamental distinctions, between the noble statesman, the run-of-the mill politician, and the despot who subverts freedom and civilization, that have largely been lost in contemporary political thought and discourse. Reducing politics to the mere "struggle for power," to a barely concealed cynicism and nihilism, tells us little about the true nature of political life. This book provides thoughtful and elegant portraits of, and reflections on, a series of statesman who struggled to preserve civilized freedom during times of crisis: Solon overcoming insidious class conflict in ancient Athens; Cicero using all the powers of rhetoric and statesmanship to preserve republican liberty in Rome against Caesar's encroaching despotism: Burke defending ordered liberty against Jacobin tyranny and ideological fanaticism in revolutionary France; Lincoln preserving the American republic and putting an end to the evil of chattel slavery: Churchill eloquently defending liberty and law and opposing Nazi and Communist despotism with all his might; de Gaulle defending the honor of France during World War II; Havel fighting Communist totalitarianism through artful and courageous dissidence before 1989, and then leading the Czech Republic with dignity and grace until his retirement in 2005. There are also collateral treatments of Washington; Pyotr Stolypin (the last great leader of Russia before the revolutions of 1917); Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Nelson Mandela. This book explore the writing and rhetoric of statesman who were also political thinkers of the first order (particularly Cicero, Burke, Lincoln, Churchill, de Gaulle, and Havel). It attempts to make sense of the mixture of magnanimity (greatness of soul, as Aristotle called it) and moderation or self-restraint that defines the statesman as thinker at his or her best. That admirable mixture of greatness, courage, and moderation owes much to classical and Christian wisdom and to the noble desire to protect the inheritance of civilization against rapacious and destructive despotic regimes and ideologies"--

Book Synopsis

In his newest book, Daniel J. Mahoney offers refreshing historical antidotes to the displays of despotism in today's political arena.

"A brilliantly written and researched tribute to the pantheon of classically trained and thinking men of action." --Victor Davis Hanson

In The Statesman as Thinker, Daniel J. Mahoney provides thoughtful and elegant portraits of statesmen who struggled to preserve freedom during times of crisis: Cicero using all the powers of rhetoric to preserve republican liberty in Rome against Caesar's encroaching autocracy; Burke defending ordered liberty against Jacobin tyranny in revolutionary France; Tocqueville defending liberty and human dignity against blind reaction, democratic impatience, and revolutionary fanaticism; Lincoln preserving the American republic and putting an end to chattel slavery; Churchill defending liberty and law and opposing Nazi and Communist despotism; de Gaulle defending the honor of France during World War II; and Havel fighting Communism before 1989 and then leading the Czech Republic with dignity and grace.

Mahoney makes sense of the mixture of magnanimity and moderation that defines the statesman as thinker at his or her best. That admirable mixture of greatness, courage, and moderation owes much to classical and Christian wisdom and to the noble desire to protect the inheritance of civilization against rapacious and destructive despotic regimes and ideologies.

Review Quotes

"Daniel Mahoney offers a timely tribute to history's rare 'great-souled' leaders whose broad learning and moral ethos were not mere adornments but were at the heart of their mastery of politics, singular moderation, and visions of historic greatness awaiting their nations. A brilliantly written and researched tribute to the pantheon of classically trained and thinking men of action." --Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and author of The Dying Citizen

"Confronting the root cause of our current civic crisis, Prof. Mahoney conducts a most challenging and convincing effort to recover the full meaning of statesmanship and political greatness. Steering us through a gallery of expertly sketched historical portraits, of noble 'lives' at the intersection of thought and action, he persuasively advises us to 'aim higher.' --Pierre Manent, director of studies at EHESS, Paris, and author of Metamorphoses of the City

"A study in the realism of virtue that is statesmanship. Daniel Mahoney's practiced pen ranges in a field of the greatest names, displaying a gathered treasury of noble thoughts guided by his own political acumen and aiming toward the 'unforced melding' of the moral and intellectual virtues." --Harvey C. Mansfield, professor of government, Harvard University

"This grand book is the culmination of three decades of studying greatness of soul. Mahoney explores the richly diversified combinations of the virtues, classical and Christian, in a select few philosophically minded statesman. Each finely drawn portrait delivers 'true realism, ' scorning the contemporary culture of repudiation without falling into blind hero worship. We are indebted to Daniel J. Mahoney for reminding us of human excellence and awakening our capacities for admiration and gratitude." --Diana Schaub, Loyola University Maryland

"Daniel Mahoney has written a study of high statesmanship as a vocation requiring magnanimity, courage, foresight, and moderation. He embodies his argument in subtle studies of thinker-statesmen such as Burke, Lincoln, Tocqueville, Churchill, De Gaulle, and Havel. He writes in nobly Augustan prose that is also enticingly readable. He tests their statesmanship against Aristotle and Cicero, regretting that 'modern political philosophy and modern social science can only explain away such statesmen.'" --John O'Sullivan, senior fellow, National Review Institute

"The true statesman may have to be a great-souled figure, as Lincoln put it, part of the 'tribe of the eagle, ' soaring above of the laws but for the sake of being the saviors, not the destroyers, of a republic. With his searching depth, Daniel Mahoney gives us in this book the minds of statesmen, led by Lincoln, Churchill, and de Gaulle, who could set the standard even for the most celebrated figures in the ancient world. And all of this done by Mahoney with the characteristic flow and grace of his writing." --Hadley Arkes, professor of jurisprudence emeritus at Amherst College and author of First Things

About the Author

Daniel J. Mahoney is professor emeritus at Assumption University (where he taught from 1986 until 2021) and is senior writer at Law and Liberty. He has written extensively on statesmanship, French political thought, the art and political thought of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, conservatism, religion and politics, and various themes in political philosophy. His most recent books are The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order (2011, reissued in 2021), The Other Solzhenitsyn (2014, reissued in 2020), and The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity (Encounter Books, 2018). He has written extensively for the public prints.