Conservative Humanism for a Postmodern Age

Graham McAleer and Alexander Rosenthal-Pubul have written what will assuredly be one of the most important books of 2024. The Wisdom of Our Ancestors: Conservative Humanism and the Western Tradition is a triumph of political theory. Although the book certainly has shortcomings, our authors deserve praise for demonstrating that conservatism is not a mere ideology: it is a serious philosophical position. 

The West faces an “internal crisis” and “external threats,” they argue, because it has lost confidence in its civilizational identity. Liberals fail to understand our Abrahamic and Greco-Roman roots, and various “postliberal” movements at home and abroad fail to acknowledge the modern developments from those foundational principles. McAleer and Rosenthal-Pubul seek to outline a via media between these extremes, “conservative humanism.” 

Our authors deserve particular praise for their clear-eyed response to Aleksandr Dugin, the avatar they choose to represent postliberalism. Dugin is a Russian political theorist with considerable influence in both the Kremlin and global right-wing movements. He has been a staunch advocate of Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine because he considers it an attack on liberalism and the West. McAleer and Rosenthal-Pubul critique his “baroque metaphysics” for their postmodern relativism. The kind of politics Dugin advocates is a definitive break with the Western tradition, and, therefore, cannot be countenanced by conservatives.

Read more at the Russell Kirk Center.