The Common Mind by Andre Gushurst-Moore
A hallmark of the current age is the ease with which it embraces any number of rival moral narratives in the name of “open-mindedness” or “diversity.” Indeed, the thousand and one “isms” that are impossibly espoused serve only to erode further even the very concept of a common culture. As the engineered absence of shared first principles leads to a welter of proposed ad hoc solutions, whatever common ground remains continues to shrink until the traditional core of Western civilization is drained of all meaning and content.
Andre Gushurst-Moore’s book is not only an engrossing tour de force featuring twelve modern Christian humanists; it is also a critical work in the ongoing effort to recover a unity of life, of understanding, of principles—in short, a common mind. In response to the profound unease brought on by the new formless form of Western culture, The Common Mind offers hope that consensus—in its truest and best sense—is still recoverable.
The Common Mind traces the theme of the sensus communis, inherited from the medievals, through the lives and writings of twelve literary figures in the modern age, ranging from Thomas More and Jonathan Swift to C. S. Lewis and Russell Kirk. It is this quality, argues the author, which, like natural law, serves as the bedrock of orthodoxy, of social and political order, and which, by its presence or absence, determines the nature of every society. The Common Mind is an altogether uncommon achievement: a rich, multivalent reading of our present cultural condition through a brilliant procession of literary portraits.
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Further praise for The Common Mind
“André Gushurst-Moore takes us on a majestic ride across centuries of English and American literature.”—Dale Ahlquist
“A gem of a book.”—Bruce Frohnen
“Christian Humanism is the tradition in our culture that stands against the disintegrating spirit of the age. In the tradition of Russell Kirk, André Gushurst-Moore presents a rich and enticing portrait of this still-vibrant tradition of Anglo-American thought.”—Stratford Caldecott
About the Author
ANDRÉ GUSHURST-MOORE is a writer and teacher of English. He is currently Director of Pastoral Care at Downside School, attached to the Benedictine abbey in Somerset, where he has also been a House Master and Head of the English Department. His work has appeared in the Catholic Herald, the Salisbury Review, the St Austin Review, the Chesterton Review, the University Bookman, American Arts Quarterly, and the Political Science Reviewer.
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