The Statesman as Thinker

“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