Daniel J Mahoney

This book is a learned essay at the intersection of politics, philosophy, and religion. It is first and foremost a diagnosis and critique of the secular religion of our time, humanitarianism, or the "religion of humanity." It argues that the humanitarian impulse to regard modern man as the measure of all things has begun to corrupt Christianity itself, reducing it to an inordinate concern for "social justice," radical political change, and an increasingly...

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,...

"The great Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) is widely recognized as one of the most consequential human beings of the twentieth century. Through his writings and moral witness, he illumined the nature of totalitarianism and helped bring down an 'evil empire.' His courage and tenacity are acknowledged even by his fiercest critics. Yet the world-class novelist, historian, and philosopher has largely been eclipsed by a caricature that...