Mahoney, Daniel J.

English

Digital Commons @ Assumption College

Digital Commons @ Assumption University Political Science Department Faculty Works Political Science Department 8-23-2017 Review of Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in the Age of Extremes by Aurelian Craiutu Daniel J. Mahoney Assumption College, dmahoney@assumption.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.assumption.edu/political-science-faculty  Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Mahoney, Daniel J. "Review of Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in the Age of Extremes by Aurelian Craiutu." VoegelinView (Aug. 23, 2017). https://voegelinview.com/faces-moderation-art-balance-age-extremes/. This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Political Science Department at Digital Commons @ Assumption University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Political Science Department Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Assumption University. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@assumption.edu. Daniel J. Mahoney August 23, 2017Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in the Age ofExtremesvoegelinview.com/faces-moderation-art-balance-age-extremes/Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in the Ageof Extremes. Aurelian Craiutu. University ofPennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2017. Aurelian Craiutu is a political theorist and historian of ideas who has made the study ofmoderation the guiding thread of his intellectual project. Born in totalitarian Romania, heexperienced firsthand both the evils of Manicheanism and ideological thinking and,consequently, the need for balance and sobriety in political life and reflection. He is anoutstanding specialist of nineteenth century French political thought. In a series of excellentbooks, Craiutu has drawn on the wisdom of a diverse group of French thinkers fromMontesquieu and Guizot to Tocqueville and Remusat who attempted to defend the most soberversions of modern liberty. In 2006, he published a book in Romanian entitled In Praise ofModeration which broadened his project to defend and articulate a tradition of moderationbeginning with that great avatar of political responsibility, Aristotle. His 2012 book, A Virtue forCourageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748-1830, ended with a chapter-length “Decalogue of Moderation” that explored what Craiutu calls the “complexity, difficulty,and richness of this virtue.” Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in the Age of Extremespicks up that exploration with clarity, grace, and impressive learning. In its pages, Craiutuexamines five twentieth century figures, a Frenchman, two Englishman, an Italian and a Polewith ancillary treatments of other partisans of moderation. All were unequivocal opponents of“extremism and fanaticism in all its forms” and each pleaded for moderation, civility, anddialogue. Craiutu’s portraits are deftly drawn and that is, perhaps, the greatest virtue of hisbook. But the significant differences among these figures remain insufficiently explored.In a beautiful passage near the beginning of the book, Craiutu eloquently captures thetransvaluation of values in the age of ideology with the help of the great Albert Camus. In thetwentieth century, those infected with ideological fanaticism saw moderation as “a cloak forpusillanimity” and drew dark political conclusions. Craiutu cites Camus’s The Rebel to highlight“the dark side of the past century,” when one witnessed “slave camps under the flag offreedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or the taste for the superhuman.” Against thisassault on moderation, moral clarity, and good sense, Craiutu appeals to a tough-minedliberalism, open to conservative insights. With the Italian liberal socialist Norberto Bobbio, oneof his exemplary moderates, Craiutu argues that the moral progress of human beings rarely1/4keeps up with the march of economic, political, and technological power. This is, of course, afundamentally classical or conservative insight. It is always a mistake to conflate technologicalprogress with some permanent transformation and improvement of the human soul.Craiutu’s best drawn portrait is of the French conservative liberal Raymond Aron, who neverceased to defend Western civilization on both liberal and conservative grounds. In his June1939 speech to the Societé française de philosophie in Paris, Aron drew a penetrating contrastbetween democratic and totalitarian states. He opposed pacifism, emphasized the need torecover the full range of civic and martial virtues, and pleaded with his compatriots to“conserve” the best of the Western and democratic traditions. In May 1968, Aron, a forcefuladvocate of the reform of an increasingly sclerotic French university, opposed the antinomianLeft as it assaulted the liberal university and de Gaulle’s Fifth French Republic, a regime hebelieved worthy of defense. At the end of his life, he spoke about the “moral crisis” of theWestern democracies where civic virtues were thoughtlessly abandoned in the name ofgeneralized hedonism and radical individualism. Aron defended authority but neverauthoritarianism. And, of course, Aron, who read Marx carefully and not without somesympathy, was the scourge of the “Marxist vulgate” and the “opium of the intellectuals.” Hismoderation had a conservative cast (although Craiutu at times tries too hard to save him fromconservatism). Aron also worried that freedom, a noble ideal, had degenerated into agroundless decisionism that was coextensive with nihilism. By the end of his life, Aron was justas much an opponent of postmodern relativism as he had been of totalitarian fanaticism andextremism. Contra Weber, whom he did so much to introduce into France, Aron did not believein “axiological neutrality” or the inability of reason to adjudicate between moderation andfanaticism, civilization and barbarism. In Leo Strauss’s words, Aron aimed to reconnectwisdom and moderation and to bring a fighting spirit to a liberalism that could defend itself withcourage and honor against totalitarianism and nihilism. Aron represents that spirited andconservative-minded liberalism heralded by the Romanian Nicolae Steinhardt who in 1937insisted that liberals needed “strong convictions” and even a willingness to use violenceagainst those determined to destroy civilization. There is nothing tepid, fearful, or relativisticabout such tough-minded liberalism. It leans toward conservatism (without simply beingconservative) since it aims to conserve the patrimony of civilization.Craiutu’s portraits of Isaiah Berlin and Michael Oakeshott are intelligent and altogetherrespectful. It is hard not to admire Berlin’s critique of historical determinism or his greatportraits of Churchill in 1940 or of the Russian writers Anna Akhmatova or Boris Pasternakunder the Stalinist juggernaut. These are masterpieces in their own right. But Craiutu simplyaccepts Berlin’s unexamined claim that he is a “pluralist” and not a “relativist.” No doubt, Berlinsaw the ugly consequences of a thoroughgoing relativism and wished to avoid it. But he hadan excessively weak conception of reason since it seemed altogether powerless to say muchof anything about the choice-worthy character of various human ends and purposes. He wentmuch further in a relativistic direction than Aron (especially the later Aron) and was more orless insensitive to the “moral crisis” unfolding all around him.2/4Likewise, Craiutu expertly traces Oakeshott’s critique of a tyrannically instrumental rationality(“rationalism”) and his elegant defense of a civil association that allows law-abiding men andwomen to pursue myriad human projects. Oakeshott’s was an enduring contribution and hewrote as only a civilized man could write. But Oakeshott’s abrupt dismissal of any connectionbetween conservatism and religion seems to be rooted in a radical conventionalism that optsfor tradition rather than antinomianism through an act of will. Oakeshott is a traditionalist, if heis a traditionalist, because we have nothing but tradition to rely upon. Convention goes all theway down. Craiutu acknowledges that Oakeshott “was aware of the relativity of his own views.”Craiutu speculates that today he would be comfortable with anti-foundationalism since no truefoundations can be found for our beliefs in “philosophy, art, religion, or politics.” Here,Oakeshott sounds like a more conservative-minded Richard Rorty.I’m afraid that Craiutu is so worried about the dangers of monism and “black-and-white-contrasts” that he forgets that the assault on the very distinction between truth and falsehood,good and evil, is at the heart of twentieth-century totalitarianism. Havel and Solzhenitsyn gaveit a name: the ideological Lie. Craiutu greatly admires the Polish philosopher LeszekKolakowski, the greatest liberal critic of Marxism in the twentieth century, but is perplexed thathe ended close to Pope John Paul II near the end of his life. But perhaps liberalism needs the“conservative foundations,” rooted in reason and revelation, that it is not very good at renewingor sustaining. One needs to be skeptical about ideological abstractions but not about thefundamental and primordial distinctions between truth and falsehood and good and evil. Suchskepticism leads to the abyss and only validates the immoderation of ideologues and fanatics.Skepticism can turn on moderation and can become an instrument of a nihilism that erodesmeaningful moral and political distinctions. This, too, is a lesson of the twentieth century—andthe twenty-first.My impression is that Bobbio’s liberal socialism was never a viable political option. Early on, heexpected too much from dialogue with Communists who refused dialogue in principle. Yet, hisdefense of mitezza (meekness) is the other side of the coin from Aron’s and Steinhardt’sadmirable and spirited defense of liberal and Western civilization. Modesty has its place andshould not automatically be confused with relativism or excessive self-doubt. One cannot helpbut be impressed by Bobbio’s decency and his repudiation of all the fanaticisms that did somuch to fray the civic bonds in western societies. A self-declared “liberal socialist,” Bobbio alsoknew that the humane left must defend modern liberty against “overzealous progressives, fromthe liberty of subsequent generations.” There is great insight in that formulation, a reminderthat liberty too can become immoderate and unduly “progressive.”I am most ambivalent about Craiutu’s last exemplar of moderation, the Polish dissident andjournalist Adam Michnik. He courageously fought the Communist dictatorship in Poland andpromoted much-needed dialogue between left-leaning intellectuals and the Church. But he hadlittle sympathy for the deepest concerns of traditional Poland and opposed lustration, or anyserious effort to hold Communists to account for their tyranny and to weed them out ofgovernment. In the 1990s, he became General Jaruzelski’s friend, all in the name of misplacedmoderation. Today, Catholic Poland has returned to her old religious and national traditions,3/4and has restarted a lustration policy that might have been better applied in the 1990s. And Imust confess that I am not impressed by Michnik’s friendship with Danny Cohn-Bendit, themastermind behind the May events in Paris in 1968. Michnik could only see Cohn-Bendit as afellow antiauthoritarian. What would Aron or Steinhardt say about a liberalism that cannotdistinguish between legitimate authority and a misplaced authoritarianism?At its best, Faces of Moderation makes an excellent case for moderation as a “cardinal virtuerelated to civility, self-control, equipoise, temperance, and prudence.” Many of Craiutu’sportraits support such a judgment. But Craiutu never really distinguishes between themoderation of an Aristotle and Burke (for surely they were moderates) and the “moderation” ofthose who fail to respond with courage and determination to “the culture of repudiation” (thephrase is Roger Scruton’s) all around us. Does moderation need to move ever more Left,accommodating postfoundationalism, relativism, and the culture of repudiation, all in the nameof avoiding “moral absolutism”?  Or does it defend the prerequisites of civilization with courageand lucidity, finding a middle path between moral zealotry and moral relativism? This wasAron’s path, and a path worthy of emulation. All of these questions come to the mind of thereader of Aurelian Craiutu’s most thoughtful and welcome book.4/4

Review of \u3cem\u3eFaces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in the Age of Extremes\u3c/em\u3e by Aurelian Craiutu

https://digitalcommons.assumption.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1028&amp;context=political-science-faculty

Review of \u3cem\u3eFaces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in the Age of Extremes\u3c/em\u3e by Aurelian Craiutu

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Digital Commons @ Assumption College