Commentary
Liberalism and progressivism, in their most radical and aggressive forms, increasingly identify freedom with self-will and with the comprehensive repudiation of classical and Christian wisdom and the larger moral inheritance of the Western world. In “The Wisdom of Our Ancestors: Conservative Humanism and the Western Tradition,” just published by the University of Notre Dame Press, Graham James McAleer and Alexander S. Rosenthal-Pubul challenge this forced severing of modern liberty from a venerable tradition of conservative humanism that grounds and elevates human freedom. RealClear Books is pleased to publish the Foreword to the book by the political theorist Daniel J. Mahoney which highlights the book’s broad themes and contemporary relevance.
FOREWORD
Daniel J. Mahoney
A particularly discerning twentieth-century political philosopher, Leo Strauss, insisted that it is “better to understand the low in light of the high” rather than the other way around. That is the approach adopted by Graham James McAleer and Alexander S. Rosenthal-Pubul in this rich, learned, and invigorating book. Their aim is both high and serious: to establish the ennobling links between conservatism, Christian humanism, and classical wisdom at their wisest and most humane. In this laudable aim, in this welcome synthesis, they succeed admirably.
