The Indispensible Virtues of the Statesman

A lecture and dicussion with Prof. Daniel J. Mahoney.

Description

Prof. 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, and revolutionary fanaticism; Lincoln preserving the American republic and putting an end to chattel slavery; Churchill defending liberty and law and opposing Nazi and Communist despotism; de Gaulle defending the honor of France during World War II; and Havel fighting Communism before 1989 and then leading the Czech Republic with dignity and grace.

Prof. Mahoney makes sense of the mixture of magnanimity and moderation that defines the statesman as thinker at his or her best. That mixture of greatness, courage, and moderation owes much to classical wisdom and to the noble desire to protect the inheritance of civilization against rapacious and despotic regimes and ideologies.

Event Overview

Join Common Sense Society–Hungary on Wednesday, April 26 for a lecture and evening discussion with Prof. Daniel J. Mahoney.

Gates will open at 6.00 p.m. and the discussion will begin at 6.30 p.m.

Wine, drinks and finger food will be served after the formal part of the evening.

Chatham House rules apply.

Please note that this event is for members only. Not a member yet? Consider becoming a member of Common Sense Society–Hungary. If this is your first event at CSS and want to get to know us, you are welcome to join for a teaser.

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This event is realized in collaboration with the Danube Institute.

Featured Speaker

Prof. Daniel J. Mahoney is Professor Emeritus at Assumption University, Senior Fellow at the Real Clear Foundation and The Claremont Institute, and Senior Writer at Law and Liberty. He is currently a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute. He is a specialist in French political philosophy, anti-totalitarian thought (especially Solzhenitsyn), and the intersection of religion and politics. He is the author or editor of twelve books including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent From Ideology (2001); The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order (2010); The Other Solzhenitsyn: Telling the Truth About a Misunderstood Writer and Thinker (2014); and The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity (2018). His book The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation was published in 2022.