This analysis of the thought and action of Charles de Gaulle
explores the intellectual foundations of Gaullist statecraft.
Mahoney's careful exegesis of de Gaulle's major writings and
speeches, reveals a penetrating political thinker as well as a
major political actor. He explains de Gaulle to an American public
that too often sees him as a posturing figure suffering from an
exaggerated and misplaced sense of personal and national grandeur.
Mahoney shows that de Gaulle's defense of the "grandeur" of France
is tied to a fundamentally classical view of human nature and
politics. In elucidating de Gaulle's political self-understanding,
Mahoney highlights the foundation of his noble but elusive
moderation.
Mahoney shows how de Gaulle repeatedly and explicitly rejected
the cult of the Nietzschean superman, the Bonapartist separation of
grandeur from moderation, and all temptations of personal and
ideological despotism. He explicates de Gaulle's self-understanding
as a statesman or "man of character" who comes to the service of a
democratic political order in a time of crisis. He articulates de
Gaulle's relationship to classical and Christian thought, his place
in the French tradition, his profound debts to the Catholic
poet-philosopher Charles Peguy, as well as his important affinities
with Alexis de Tocqueville on the need to remain faithful to the
dual imperatives of democracy and grandeur.
In addition, the book discusses the principal moments of de
Gaulle's statecraft from his "appeal" to resistance in June, 1940,
and his founding of a new French Republic in 1958, to his
articulation of a "Europe of Nations" in the 1960's. In doing so,
Mahoney thoughtfully clarifies the Gaullistunderstanding of the
"problem" of democracy: The democratic statesman must correct the
corrosive acids of modern individualism, while accepting that
democratic individualism sets the inescapable contours of political
action in our time.
Written in clear and non-technical language for both a scholarly
and general audience. De Gaulle will be of interest to students of
modern European political history, contemporary political theory,
and those concerned with statecraft or statesmanship.
General
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