De Gaulle: Statesmanship, Grandeur, and Modern Democracy

by Daniel J. Mahoney

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 Gaullist understanding of the "problem" of 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 l

210 pages, Paperback

First published May 14, 1996

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

De Gaulle by Daniel Mahoney takes an academic look at the writings of De Gualle and tries to assess his role as a statesman and where De Gaulle believes France should fall in the post World War II hierarchy. This book is about the political philosophy and not his life so if you are looking for a traditional biography you are going to be disappointed. The writing is highly academic which although I usually enjoy I was just not going with it on this one. The pedantic style and the time spent trying to justify misconceptions and how he “really” would have felt on a given topic is one thing but somehow this one just missed the mark for me. There is a lot of good info in here about De Gaulle but it was just not the book I was looking for on the topic of who he was as a person. This is what his political philosophy was.