Source of American Caesarism

Harry V. Jaffa’s Crisis of the House Divided (Doubleday, $6.50) is: 1) a political history of the United States through the years preceding the Civil War; 2) an analysis of the political thought of the spokesmen (Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas) for two of the alternative courses proposed during those years; and 3) a creative venture in political philosophy that—unless the United States be as sick intellectually as some of us believe it to be—will provoke the most profound and far-reaching debate of our generation about American politics.

Some of the book’s readers (who this reviewer hopes will be legion) will no doubt wish that Jaffa had written his three books one at a time. Like Bergson, he is a subtle and seductive teacher of philosophy who, however, makes great intellectual demands upon his pupils. But what Jaffa proves, if he does not prove anything else, is that political history is inseparable from the history of political philosophy, and that neither can be grasped by the man who is not a political philosopher in his own right.

WK

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Willmoore Kendall

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Abraham Lincoln

Civil War

Declaration of Independence

Harry V. Jaffa’s Crisis of the House Divided (Doubleday, $6.50) is: 1) a political history of the United States through the years preceding the Civil War; 2) an analysis of the political thought of the spokesmen (Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas) for two of the alternative courses proposed during those years; and 3) a creative venture in political philosophy that—unless the United States be as sick intellectually as some of us believe it to be—will provoke the most profound and far-reaching debate of our generation about American politics.

Some of the book’s readers (who this reviewer hopes will be legion) will no doubt wish that Jaffa had written his three books one at a time. Like Bergson, he is a subtle and seductive teacher of philosophy who, however, makes great intellectual demands upon his pupils. But what Jaffa proves, if he does not prove anything else, is that political history is inseparable from the history of political philosophy, and that neither can be grasped by the man who is not a political philosopher in his own right.