Michael P. Zuckert – författare

Is  Leo Strauss truly an intellectual forebear of neoconservatism and a powerful force in shaping Bush administration foreign policy? The Truth about Leo Strauss puts this question to rest, revealing for the first time how the popular media came to perpetuate such an oversimplified view of such a complex and wide-ranging philosopher. More important, it corrects our perception of Strauss, providing the best general introduction available to the political thought of this misunderstood figure.  Catherine and Michael Zuckert—both former students of Strauss—guide readers here to a nuanced understanding of how Strauss’s political thought fits into his broader philosophy. Challenging the ideas that Strauss was an inflexible conservative who followed in the footsteps of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt, the Zuckerts contend that Strauss’s signature idea was the need for a return to the ancients. This idea, they show, stemmed from Strauss’s belief that modern thought, with its relativism and nihilism, undermines healthy politics and even the possibility of real philosophy. Identifying this view as one of Strauss’s three core propositions—America is modern, modernity is bad, and America is good—they conclude that Strauss was a sober defender of liberal democracy, aware of both its strengths and its weaknesses.  The Zuckerts finish, appropriately, by examining the varied work of Strauss’s numerous students and followers, revealing the origins—rooted in the tensions within his own thought—oftheir split into opposing camps. Balanced and accessible, The Truth about Leo Strauss is a must-read for anyone who wants to more fully comprehend this enigmatic philosopher and his much-disputed legacy.

Our ideas of statesmanship are fraught with seeming contradictions: The democratic statesman is true to the people’s wishes and views—but also capable of standing against popular opinion when necessary. The statesman rises above conflicts and seeks compromise between parties—but also stands firmly for what is right. Abraham Lincoln, perhaps more than any other political figure in US history, affords us an opportunity to evaluate the philosophical, political, and practical implications of these paradoxical propositions. Asking whether and how Lincoln acted in a statesmanly manner at critical moments, the authors of this volume aim to clarify what precisely statesmanship might be; their work illuminates important themes and events in Lincoln’s career even as it broadens and sharpens our understanding of the general nature of statesmanship.

One of Lincoln’s abiding themes was foreshadowed in his Lyceum Address, delivered when he was not yet thirty: the call for the prevalence of a sort of public opinion that he characterized as a political religion. As it relates to democratic statesmanship, what does Lincoln’s political religion have to do with religion per se? How, in his role as statesman as a master of democratic speech, did Lincoln handle the two major issues he faced as a political leader: slavery and the war? In attempting to meet the demand that he use acceptable means to achieve his ends, did Lincoln—can any statesman—keep his hands clean? Are there inevitable transgressions that a statesman must commit? These are among the topics the authors take on as they consider Lincoln’s democratic and rhetorical statesmanship, on occasion drawing comparisons with his contemporaries Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas or even such a distant forerunner as Pericles.

Finally, framing statesmanship in terms of three factors—knowledge of the political good of a community, circumstance, and the best possible action in light of these two—this volume renders a nuanced, deeply informed judgment on what distinguishes Lincoln as a statesman, and what distinguishes a statesman from a (mere) politician.

The culmination of years of work on Abraham Lincoln’s political thought, Michael Zuckert’s A Nation So Conceived argues for a coherent center to Lincoln’s political ideology, a core idea that unifies his thought and thus illuminates his deeds as a political actor. That core idea is captured in the term “democratic sovereignty.” Zuckert provides invaluable guidance to understanding both Lincoln and the politics of the United States between 1845 and Lincoln’s death in 1865 by focusing on roughly a dozen speeches that Lincoln made during his career. This reader-friendly chronological organization is motivated by Zuckert’s emphasis on Lincoln as a practical politician who was always fully aware of the political context of the moment within which he was speaking.

According to Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg, America was new precisely because it was born in dedication to the first premise of the theory of democratic sovereignty: that all men are created equal. Lincoln’s thought consisted in an ever-deepening meditation on the grounds and implications of that proposition, both in its constructive and in its destructive potential. The goodness of the American regime is derived from that ground and the chief dangers to the regime emanate from the same soil.

Covering all significant speeches and writings of Lincoln both in his pre-presidential and presidential days, A Nation So Conceived is devoted to exploring the paradoxical duality of “created equal.” In a nearly comprehensive study of Lincoln’s thought, Zuckert uses lessons he learned from decades of teaching to reveal how Lincoln understood both its truth and its pathological consequences while offering an assessment of his aims and achievements as a statesman.