Bertrand de Jouvenel: Conserative Liberal & the Illusions of Modernity

Daniel J. Mahoney has published studies of Charles de Gaulle, Raymond Aron, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In his new book on Bertrand de Jouvenel, Mahoney continues his ever-widening exploration of the the religio-political question in modernity. Any of Mahoney's readers should recognize his characteristic strengths, once again in evidence here: the balanced critical judgment, the wide and deep learning, the spirited wit. What seems to have gone unremarked so far, however, is the overall outline of his project. With Aron, the secularized Jew, Solzhenitsyn the Russian Orthodox believer, de Gaulle--who perhaps was thinking of himself when he spoke to Malraux of men "whose Christian faith was dim but who were, nonetheless, not Voltaireans"--and now de Jouvenel, the firm and judicious Roman Catholic, Mahoney is exploring the ways that thoughtful men who were formed and in some cases animated by religious conviction found their bearings when the supreme ambitions of modernity issued in world war, tyranny, and genocide. In this book as in the others, Mahoney shows himself unmatched in his ability to introduce a thinker to new readers while illuminating him to old ones. Having suffered neglect for thirty years or more, de Jouvenel reappears as a worthy successor to Tocqueville--one situated, moreover, in a modernity whose grimness even Tocqueville had underestimated, and so forced to confront things Tocqueville could scarcely imagine. The book itself is compact, well designed, fairly priced--a companiable volume, as befits the humane and judicious spirit one finds inside it.