True Conservatism: Reclaiming Our Humanity in an Arrogant Age [Hardcover]

Drawing on the riches of Western tradition, Anthony T. Kronman defends a humane conservatism for our enlightened age
 
Rigorous and philosophically demanding, Kronmans book invites principled argument from every side.Kirkus Reviews
 
As the party of the left has grown more strident, its conservative critics have responded in kind. Each year conservatives do a poorer job of defending their position as a citadel of human values without lapsing into an angry assault on ideals that they and progressives share. It becomes harder to see the enduring appeal of a true conservatism that celebrates the worth of custom and inheritance; the splendor of what is excellent and rare; the expansive solidarity of our friendship with the dead; and the dignity, indeed necessity, of our longing for a connection to the eternal and divinewhile affirming that these timeless human goods are compatible with the modern ideals of equality, toleration, and reasoned argument.
 
In this bracing book, Anthony T. Kronman defends a conservative philosophy of life that respects our enlightened ideals but decries the damage their arrogant simplification causes in our moral, political, and spiritual lives. Drawing on the work of Aristotle, Cicero, Spinoza, Burke, Hume, Madison, Tocqueville, Lincoln, Arendt, Heidegger, and others, he argues that humanismisconservatism, today as in the past. He reminds us that our humbling parameters make possible every form of human greatness, every human glory, every human love worthy of the name.

“Well-written, erudite, and humane. . . . A sparkling book, a tribute to the essential connection between true conservatism and deep engagement with, and respect for, ‘the best that has been thought and said.’ His learning is impressive, his writing pellucid, his ratiocination lacking neither courage nor civic spirit.”—Daniel J. Mahoney,National Review