First Things RSS Feed - Daniel J. Mahoney https://www.firstthings.com/author/daniel-j-mahoney en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:54:04 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/daniel-j-mahoney 60 The Art of Admiration https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/04/the-art-of-admiration https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/04/the-art-of-admiration Mon, 12 Apr 2021 06:00:00 -0400 Not Forgotten:
Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse Cast of Characters, Most of Them Admirable
by george weigel
ignatius, 221 pages, $17.95

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]]> Aurel Kolnai and the Assault on Creation https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/08/aurel-kolnai-and-the-assault-on-creation https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/08/aurel-kolnai-and-the-assault-on-creation Tue, 04 Aug 2020 06:00:00 -0400 As the culture of repudiation takes on pathological forms, aiming to replace Western civilization and American republicanism with a project of pure negation, those who wish to preserve our inheritance might profitably turn to thinkers from the past who can illumine the totalitarian nihilism all around us. One lesser-known thinker who truly belongs in the pantheon of anti-totalitarian thought is Aurel Kolnai (1900-1973), a Hungarian-born Jew who converted to Catholicism in 1926 under the influence of G. K. Chesterton’s writings.

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]]> Cosmopolitan Dream https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/05/cosmopolitan-dream https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/05/cosmopolitan-dream Sun, 01 May 2016 00:00:00 -0400 The Lure of Technocracy
 by jürgen habermas
translated by ciaran cronin
polity, 200 pages, $22.95

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]]> Solzhenitsyn's Red Wheel https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/05/solzhenitsyns-red-wheel https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/05/solzhenitsyns-red-wheel Fri, 01 May 2015 00:00:00 -0400 It is not uncommon for readers of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s final novel, The Red Wheel , to draw comparisons with another Russian masterpiece, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace . Like its predecessor, The Red Wheel is a massive, sweeping work, six thousand pages divided into four “knots”—“Narratives in Discrete Periods of Time”—and incorporating actual historical events that changed the course of Russian history, and of human civilization, too. It commences as a historical novel, but in sections it turns into dramatic history with no fictional characters at all, only historical ones. Both epics delve into the deepest moral and religious concerns, and the status of the two authors as moral authorities in their own times adds to the ­parallel.

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]]> The Art of Liberty https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/08/the-art-of-liberty https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/08/the-art-of-liberty Wed, 01 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400 The following is a response to Patrick J. Deneen’s “Unsustainable Liberalism.” The other response, by Paul J. Griffiths, can be found here .

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]]> Clarifying War https://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/12/clarifying-war https://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/12/clarifying-war Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500 Moral Combat: Good and Evil in World War II
by michael burleigh 
harper, 672 pages, $29.99

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]]> The Moral Witness of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn https://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/10/the-moral-witness-of-aleksandr-solzhenitsyn https://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/10/the-moral-witness-of-aleksandr-solzhenitsyn Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400 With his passing a year ago—on August 3, 2008, at the age of eighty-nine—the world was obliged to come to terms once again with Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn. It was time to sum up and take stock of the Russian Nobel laureate, antitotalitarian writer, and courageous if unnerving moral witness. The response was more abundant and on the whole more respectful than one might have anticipated.

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]]> Zinovy Zinik and “The Solzhenitsyn Reader” https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2007/03/zinovy-zinik-and-the-solzhenit https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2007/03/zinovy-zinik-and-the-solzhenit Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0400 In May 1982, the Russian Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn took time off from his work on The Red Wheel , his magisterial literary-historical account of the origins of the Bolshevik Revolution, to respond to his detractors in the Russian émigré community. He had some able and eloquent defenders among the émigrés. But after his exile to the West in February of 1974, the critiques multiplied in journals such as Andrei Synyavski’s Syntaxis in Paris.

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]]> Tsars & Commissars https://www.firstthings.com/article/2006/05/tsars-commissars https://www.firstthings.com/article/2006/05/tsars-commissars Mon, 01 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400 Russian Conservatism and Its Critics: A Study in Political Culture
by Richard Pipes.
Yale University Press, 216 pages, $30.

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]]> Traducing Solzhenitsyn https://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/08/traducing-solzhenitsyn https://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/08/traducing-solzhenitsyn Sun, 01 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0400 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is one of the great souls of the age. He is also among its most maligned and misunderstood figures. It is hard to think of another prominent writer whose thought and character have been subjected to as many willful distortions and vilifications over the past thirty years.

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