Daniel J. Mahoney’s new book, “Recovering Politics, Civilization, and the Soul,” is an analytical study as well as a work of praise for the contributions of two modern conservative philosophers: the French philosopher Pierre Manent, and the British philosopher Roger Scruton.
Politics. Civilization. Soul.
The title of the book seems to be in no specific order: politics, civilization, soul. Which comes first? Which comes last? What is the proper sequence?Perhaps there is no “proper” sequence, but in the introduction, Mahoney addresses these three in the order he has given them. He references Aristotle’s notion that politics is the “enduring and humanizing imperative to ‘put reason and actions in common.’” It is the “moral enterprise.”
He follows with civilization, which according to the author is the “state of human flourishing where ordered liberty is tied to law and self-limitation” among other stated goals.
Manent and Scruton
Mahoney has chosen Manent and Scruton because he believes that they “demonstrate how we can recover the continuity of civilization, the dignity of the political vocation, and an appreciation of the ensouled human person.” Though he notes that the two attack philosophy from different angles, he states another reason he chose these two was because they, similarly, are “profoundly countercultural … in their openness to the wisdom inherent in the Christian religion.”There are 11 essays in the book, each moving along the sequence of politics, civilization, and the soul. There are no shallow exceptions to these works. Each essay requires the reader’s full attention as it addresses the depth of the West’s recent past and current turmoil. Although Mahoney makes historical references going as far back as centuries ago, his primary era of concern is post-1968, something he notes as the “thought of 1968” (that is, “the new antinomianism [that] confuses liberty with the liberation of the desires”).
Mahoney takes the reader through just how Scruton, who passed away in 2020, and Manent addressed this radicalism of thought and perversion of liberty. Their works, which are consistently mentioned and referenced, brought reason to philosophical imbecility and balance to civilizational instability.
Liberty is always liberty under law, or it ceases to do justice to the nature of man and society. A free, decent, and stable democratic order should never confuse the freedom to choose one’s way in life with a radical relativism that gives us permission to choose our ‘own conceptions of good and evil.’
Scruton and Manent understood that liberty is not an abstraction. It is a concrete ideal necessary for upholding its standards. While the university intellectuals pushed for redefining the terms of reality, Scruton and Manent (and other clearheaded thinkers of the era) promulgated reason substantiated by experience and the rudiments of Christianity.Their writings, as Mahoney makes clear, reached across the Iron Curtain to those seeking refuge from the intellectual idiocy that graduated from the university and became the logic of the secret police and governing overlords. Behind the Iron Curtain, as Scruton noted, “crime is not an action, but a state of being.”
As Mahoney makes clear in his thoughtful essays, we owe Scruton and Manent much for their continual struggle against what Mahoney constantly refers to as the “ideological Lie” and what Scruton termed “the culture of repudiation”―it is the tyranny of a perverted, misconstrued, and deconstructed liberalism.
Their works are plenteous and provide a well-lighted path to what is required for recovering our politics, our civilizations, and, yes, even our souls.
Mahoney’s work is a fine contribution and a worthy tribute to these two pillars of modern Western civilization.
