Why are conservatives conservative, and liberals liberal? Seeking out sources of the two casts of mind, Levin sifts through the political philosophies espoused by Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. Their major writings, Reflections on the Revolution in France and Rights of Man, respectively, both premised their ideas about government and revolution on basic ideas about human nature and society. Engaging with these ideas, Levin endeavors to map the intellectual links that led Burke to be skeptical about radical political change and Paine to champion it. Paine reached his conclusions from a starting point that imagined people as autonomous individuals, who are rationally free to construct their society and design their government. Burke’s concept was drastically different: reason is but a part of human nature, which includes passions, impulses, and appetites. Society and government cannot be entirely rational constructions but are, rather, evolutions through generations of experience; political change should, therefore, be gradual, not abrupt. Making intricate contrasts between Paine and Burke throughout, Levin perceptively demonstrates the philosophical routes to liberalism and conservatism for politics-minded readers. --Gilbert Taylor
“The Great Debate’s architecture is clever and intellectually persuasive… a thoughtful introduction to this famous paradigmatic opposition.”
-Washington Post
“The Great Debate is a masterful and loving piece of work, the kind of solo performance that commands mute attention and makes even a crinkled cough-drop wrapper sound like an errant clang of the gong. It does more than announce Levin’s arrival; it is, in itself, a refutation—this time with an inerrant clang—of the factitious notion that intellectual conservatism is a bygone thing.”
-Commentary
“Levin enters into another great debate that riles academia: between historians insisting upon the uniqueness and specificity of events, which defy abstractions and generalizations, and philosophers impatient with the ephemera and contingency of events, which do not rise to the level of truth and certainty. Here too he rises to the occasion, satisfying the scruples of historians and philosophers alike. From a debate raged about an event centuries ago, he deduces truths that illuminate some of our most vexing political and social problems today.”
-Weekly Standard
“In a Burkean manner, Mr. Levin enriches through wisdom rather than prescription. He gives us something more than a manual of past lessons—namely, the historical framework to achieve greater understanding.”
-Wall Street Journal
“[A] wonderful book.”
-Los Angeles Times
“In this lively and probing book, Levin, one of the most influential conservative writers in the United States, looks at the ideas of Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, towering figures in the late-eighteenth-century transatlantic Enlightenment....The Great Debate won’t settle any of the political disputes roiling U.S. politics today, but those who read it carefully will find it easier to understand their opponents-and perhaps even to find some common ground.”
-Foreign Affairs
“A dazzling, engaging, clearly written examination....If America puts its faith in the political Right again, it is the perceptive mind of Yuval Levin that will help provide the answer.”
-The Standpoint, UK
“A judicious, nuanced, and accessible précis that reveals both Burke and Paine to be complicated and compelling thinkers. This sympathetic treatment of the two men, in turn, allows Levin to paint an intellectual picture of right and left that is more gray than black and white, something all too rare today.”
-Democracy Journal
“[Has] potential to have long-lasting impact on a reader…Levin's book forces the reader to stop and create space for thought and reflection, and does not spoon-feed easy answers or applications to today's politics. It does, however, raise serious questions about whether the new obsession with ‘data-based’ decision-making, the Nate Silver-ization of journalism and politics, could be taken too far if we come to believe that everything in public life can be answered by the scientific method. It also poses significant queries worth grappling with for those rightly concerned about the growing gap between rich and poor. Levin echoes Burke's challenge to reformers to proceed with caution, and with humility.”
-Huffington Post
“[An] extremely absorbing book… indeed it makes one despair for the future of Burkeans in American politics—but you’ll have to read this excellent book to know why.”
-Jesse Norman, American Conservative
“While a passionate critic of the French revolution, Burke supported the claims of the American colonies to independence – while never uttering the word ‘revolution’, of course – on the grounds that the British crown had broken with tradition and custom by imposing new taxes. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that is has taken an American to bring Burke’s ideas so vividly back to life.”
-Guardian, UK
“The Great Debate’s excellent writing about 18th-century history and political theory will inform and educate readers.”
-Washington Independent Review of Books
“[An] excellent book.”
-Norman Stone, Spectator, UK
“Yuval Levin, widely acclaimed as one of his generation’s most important conservative thinkers, has written a book that richly deserves the attention it is receiving. Levin writes with admirable clarity—and absolutely no jargon or pretense—about the foundations of our current political situation.”
-Public Discourse
“In this rigorous yet accessible work, Levin contextualizes the positions of British philosopher Edmund Burke, who has been viewed as both the founder of modern conservatism and an example of classical liberalism, and Thomas Paine, the author of several classic political texts, including Common Sense and The Rights of Man.”
-Shelf Awareness
“Levin’s critique of liberalism is powerful and to be expected. But what makes his book much more interesting is his truly trenchant critique of his fellow conservatives as well. And it is a critique well-taken. I’d be much tougher on them, but this book is a tonic for a new discourse.”
-Andrew Sullivan, The Dish
“Must-read primer on America’s ideological faultline…[a] wonderful new book…a readable intellectual history that fairly crackles with contemporary relevance. The must-read book of the year for conservatives—especially those conservatives who are profoundly and genuinely baffled by the declining popularity of the GOP as a national party.”
-American Conservative's State of the Union Blog
"A fascinating new book."
-New Criterion
“If you want some deep insight into the issues that divide us today including those about taxation, you need to pick up Yuval Levin’s The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine and the Birth of Right and Left.”
-Forbes
“The Great Debate is an entertaining story and an enlightening exposition of the debate that led to a sea change in governance for European cultures. Because both men and their ideas are often invoked by those who would lead us, it behooves us to know the true ideas of these two men.”
-Roanoke Times
“Mr. Levin, the editor of the journal National Affairs and a former aide to both Speaker Gingrich and President George W. Bush, provides a valuable service by dusting off the writings of Burke and Paine and by clearly, concisely, and accessibly summarizing them in a way that highlights their relevance to contemporary politics and policy…The monarchist Burke and the religious skeptic Paine, an early supporter of the bloody French revolution, would seem to be unlikely models for today’s American politicians of either party. But Mr. Levin has made a convincing case that, 200 years later, we can still learn from both men.”
-New York Sun
“A fine new book.”
-Ramesh Ponnuru, Bloomberg View
“Erudite, sympathetic, and evenhanded accounting....The Great Debate should be read as a philosophical corrective to the anti-statist modes of American conservatism and as an encouragement to those trying to build on the basis of what we’ve inherited, including the governmental innovations of the twentieth century.”
-First Things
“Two seminal thinkers anticipate the modern split between progressives and conservatives in this insightful study of 18th-century political theory. National Affairs editor Levin presents a lucid analysis of the ideological confrontation between Paine…and Burke...he succeeds in establishing the continued relevance of Burke’s thought and prescient critique of revolutionary excesses.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Making intricate contrasts between Paine and Burke throughout, Levin perceptively demonstrates the philosophical routes to liberalism and conservatism for politics-minded readers.”
—Booklist
“The Great Debate brilliantly brings out the richness of the tradition underlying our politics. It reminds us that politics is an intellectually serious thing that deserves better than the shallowness and cynicism that fills our political conversations. It reminds us that the right and left are each rooted in a desire to see politics serve the cause of human flourishing, even if they understand that cause very differently. And by the way, Burke was right.”
—Peggy Noonan, columnist, The Wall Street Journal
“Yuval Levin’s lucid and learned investigation of our origins is not only a study in the history of ideas, it is also a summons to first principles. Like Burke and Paine, Levin believes that philosophies are buried in the shabbiness of politics. His book is both clarifying and complicating: he writes sympathetically about both sides of the heroic disputation that he describes, and so his book will have the salutary effect of shattering ideological complacence. In our infamously polarized climate, The Great Debate may even be a public service.”
—Leon Wieseltier
“The Great Debate is an exciting, narrative adventure in the contest of ideas. With two world-shaking revolutions as background, Levin brilliantly explains how two great minds shaped the broad debate between left and right that still governs our political debates today.”
—William J. Bennett, former Secretary of Education and author of America: The Last Best Hope
“The ...