How much folly could have been avoided if our contemporary leaders truly understood the deeper patrimony of ordered liberty? To maintain ordered liberty, our leaders need to gird up and learn to wield the five swords of imagination, because all must be swung simultaneously with trained virtuosity.
Kudos to Gleaves Whitney for his insightful and well-crafted essay on Dr. Kirk’s book The Sword of Imagination. This piece and the book on which it is based are a tonic for anyone concerned about redeeming the time. Contemporary myopia limits vision to merely the political as the only serious realm capable of improving the miserable state of humankind. But the Sage of Mecosta knew better.
Russell Kirk told us that those who would do battle with the errors of their time should be equipped with not just one but five “swords of imagination.” As Gleaves Whitney summarizes, leaders need the historical imagination to understand what humankind has been. They need the political imagination to know what humankind can do in community. They need the moral imagination to discern what the human person ought to be. They need the poetic imagination to perceive how human beings can best use their creative energies. And they need the prophetic imagination to divine what human beings will be, given the choices they make.
Russell Kirk’s rich historical imagination allowed him to break free of the prevailing interpretation of America’s patrimony and give us the brilliant overview of the deeper rootedness which runs through the history of five cities: Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and Philadelphia. Dr. Kirk helped us see that we have inherited the ordering of the soul from the ancient Hebrews, the ordering of the mind from the ancient Greeks, the ordering of the polity rooted in virtue from ancient Rome, the hope of redemption from Christian Jerusalem, common law and contracts from London. Together, the incremental growth of these truths over 3,000 years produced the tree of ordered liberty—a sapling of which was planted in the American colonies and took shape in our Constitution in Philadelphia.
How much folly could have been avoided if our contemporary leaders truly understood the deeper patrimony of ordered liberty? To maintain ordered liberty, our leaders need to gird up and learn to wield the five swords of imagination, because all must be swung simultaneously with trained virtuosity. Battle in the political realm without anchoring in the moral realm rewards the brutish. Political conflict untethered from deep understanding of the historical realm releases the fantastical and the fanatics, who silence the prudent. Neglecting the poetic realm leaves the soul exposed to fatal blows of despair. The sharp prophetic sense of understanding what may yet come to be has been dully suffocated by ideological gases.
Russell Kirk knew that the economic blends into the political, and the political into the ethical, and the ethical into the religious. Until we can sharpen our vision and learn to wield the five swords of imagination, we will continue to be marginalized as a movement. Party politics are intellectually bankrupt, and we need to do serious thinking, writing and teaching to replenish the vision, drawing on the deeper wellsprings of truth.
Let me offer a challenge to the readers and writers of The Imaginative Conservative. What ten books would you recommend as the absolute essential reading list for leaders today, which would equip them to wield the five swords of imagination and lead effectively? I ask this because I have been pained to see the shortsighted and sometimes downright ignorant responses of would-be leaders. (“Honey, go home and read some books!” was my uncharitable response to one, uttered in the privacy of our living room.) So here is my challenge to you: What do you suggest the wise and virtuous leader today ABSOLUTELY must read?
When Russell Kirk was asked by President Nixon what he should read, he answered Notes Toward the Definition of Culture by T.S. Eliot. So I will make that my first nomination. What are yours?
This essay was first published here in August 2010.
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
The featured image, uploaded by Brian Henley, is a photograph of the statue ‘Gallos’, located at Tintagel Castle. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Great question, Barbara. My nominations are as follows:
The Bible
The Illiad, Homer
The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
The Republic, Plato
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas
Divine Comedy, Dante
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville
Leisure as the Basis of Culture, Joseph Pieper
The Bible
From Dawn To Decadance
T.S. Eliot and his Age
The Demoralization of Society (Himmelfarb)
The Greek Fathers (Fortescue)
Augustine's Confessions
Near'r My God
Washington's Crossing (Fischer)
The Fight For Jerusalem
Thomas Moore's Letters From The Tower
1a) The Bible. Read the lectionary daily. Preferably with your children. It is instructive to remember – the Bible was the first honest history of both Moses and their Kings. We give the honor of “First Historian” to Herodotus, but that title should be shared with the Jews.
1b) One Book to rule them all, One Book to find them,
One Book to bring them all. Standing in the light to bind them.
Far and away, Kirk’s Book “The Roots of American Order” stands alone in 20th century literature (yes, ahead of Tolkien and Lewis). Because of it’s sweep, I put it ahead of every ancient book we might read. Kirk’s Book alone gives all of those books context – it binds them. Alas, I did not find Kirk’s masterpiece until my 60th year.
Why is it so important? The Jews have 633 laws, the West has 3500 years of history. Which are the salient points? For the Jews, those are the 10 commandments. For the West, it is Kirk gives us the mantra: “Jerusalem, Athens, Rome and London lead to Philadelphia.” By combining Jerusalem with the others, Kirk cut the Gordian Knot of education for me. Our Four Roots nursed our fledgling republic, culminating in our Constitution. Every other book should be seen through Kirk’s lens. Otherwise we get Presidents who think we are no more exceptional than the Greeks.
Every college should teach Kirk’s book as a course, and every high school should have an 8th grade version. Every high school student should know both the Ten Commandments and a simplified version titled perhaps “Kirk’s Rudiments of American Order.” If a real scholar cannot write that, I may have to one day.
In short, our children shouldn’t wait until their 60th birthday to learn what I have belatedly found.
p.s. Every high school student would then have this “elevator speech”:
“Philadelphia rests on the roots of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London. America has inherited the ordering of the soul from the ancient Hebrews, the ordering of the mind from the ancient Greeks, the ordering of the polity rooted in virtue from ancient Rome, the hope of redemption from Christian Jerusalem, common law and contracts from London. Together, the incremental growth of these truths over 3,000 years produced the tree of ordered liberty—a sapling of which was planted in the American colonies and took shape in our Constitution in Philadelphia.” Yes, I am teaching this mantra to my children.
So, the top ten in order:
Top Ten List:
1a) The Bible (daily, of course follow the lectionary)
1b) Russell Kirk’s The Roots of American Order.
3) Esolen’s The Politically Incorrect Guide To Western Civilization (another very good synopsis for every man)
4) Aristotle’s Politics
5) Thucydides’s Peloponnesian War (I did not read this book until I was 45. Another crime against my educaiton.)
6) Mike Duncan’s The Storm before the Storm (I am more interested in Duncan’s “Fall of the Roman Republic” than Gibbon’s Roman Empire…
7) Two works of Shakespeare: The Tempest followed by King Lear
8) Chernow’s Washington: A Life
9) McClay’s Land of Hope
10) Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
11) Then start over and read these again.