This is the second in a series of four reviews of Aurelian Craiutu’s Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals.
Tocqueville 21 Forum on Aurelian Craiutu, Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
Review by Ewa Atanassow, Bard College Berlin
A Letter to Aurelian Craiutu
Dear Professor Craiutu,
I’ve just finished reading your new book Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals and I’m writing to share my reflections. As a scholar of political philosophy and classical liberalism, I have long pondered what makes moderation so elusive. The experience of this highly charged academic year, rocked by mobilization and radicalism unseen since 1968, has only made this question more pressing. So it was with a sense of urgency that I turned to your book.
As signaled in its title, the book consists of a series of letters addressed to young people passionate about politics and taken by the promise of radical change. Yet the titular question, I find, is nicely ambiguous. It could be read as rhetorical, in the sense of “Given where the alternative has gotten us, why not give moderation a chance?” (I imagine this is where you hope your readers will land after reading the book.) But the title also poses a genuine question about what pushes young people today toward the extremes.
I know you’ve tackled the question of moderation in previous works. These, however, were mostly intended for a scholarly readership. Seeing that the issues they tackle are not merely academic, I commend you for addressing this new book to a broader audience—in particular, the young. I hope the book finds its way into the hands of many students, and that they see aspects of themselves in your imagined correspondents, Lauren and Rob—student representatives of the radical Left and Right, respectively, in American politics today.
Though Lauren and Rob hold radical and radically incompatible views, they seem to agree in their contempt for the liberal order. They want BIG change. As their teacher, you take on the role of mediator not only across the generational divide but also of the partisan one. Your letters seek to hone the students’ understanding of contemporary US politics by taking them on a journey across time and many cultures. The book covers a vast intellectual ground and draws on an impressive array of sources from political and moral ideas, literature, history, and art. But you also seem keenly aware that simply lecturing at students—no matter how impressive one’s erudition—is not enough. Hence, your choice of a dialogic format.
From my own experience in the classroom, I have found conversation to be a more promising way to engage with and potentially transform student opinions. Even so the urge to lecture can be hard to resist. I sensed a similar struggle while reading your book. Though designed as an exchange, much of it channels one voice: your own, and many of the letters read as mini-lectures. By contrast, the book’s most successful parts, in my opinion, are precisely those in which a discussion erupts between you and the students, and between the students themselves. These moments do not simply give the reader opportunity to witness directly your interlocutors’ objections and how you deal with them. As you argue at one point, dialogue is integral to the spirit of moderation. And these bits exemplify what it means to be moderate, not merely in theory but in conversational practice.
The dialogic moments also indicate that, perhaps more important than getting students to listen to us, is helping them listen to each other. Your book points to the intimate link between this pedagogical goal and the democratic political culture that we struggle to preserve. Liberal democracy, your book seems to suggest, cannot thrive if its citizens lack mutual understanding and respect. By guiding young people to recognize each other’s worries as legitimate and learn to appreciate difficult conversations, we can vitally contribute to shaping their civic skills and attitudes.
In the book you also describe your personal experience of growing up behind the Iron Curtain. Seeing firsthand what life under totalitarianism is like has grounded your own commitment to liberalism and moderation, as it did mine. Most of our students, of course, have not had similar experiences and you rightly point out that the liberal euphoria of 1989 is “incomprehensible for younger minds today.” These young minds see their own country and institutions as having failed them. Taking democracy’s advantages for granted, they tend to fixate on its flaws. But this is where pedagogy becomes so powerful – and so important. As your book shows, political moderation crucially begins, or could begin, in the classroom. By encouraging students to rethink notions they consider self-evident, and recognize the complexity of issues that may appear simple, the dialogue with teachers and peers can help them discover a different side of the political culture they’ve inherited, and give them reasons to want to keep it alive.
And yet the classroom is not an island. As this dramatic year taught us, it cannot but be affected by the world it inhabits. Technological immersion has become a defining aspect of our world, so much so that reading and writing letters (the ploy that frames your book) have become rarefied activities. I may be too pessimistic, but I worry that the qualities your book expects of its readers –curiosity, sustained attention, and openness to being challenged – are in short supply in a generation whose attention span is measured in tweet lengths rather than printed pages. This, above all, makes me question whether your message is likely to reach those who most need it.
Then there are the difficulties inherent in the subject itself. As you demonstrate so deftly, from Thucydides and Cicero to Gandhi and Ionesco, how to moderate political zeal has been among the thorniest problems of democratic politics. The core challenge, as you state early on, is that moderation is simply not a “magnetic idea.” Difficult to define, and still more difficult to practice, moderation may well be healthier for the soul and truer to our humanity. But it does not have the heroic appeal of a just cause, or the simple attraction of plain power politics.
Though fully aware of these challenges, you have not allowed them to weigh you down. And I admire the creativity and resolve you have brought to the unpopular task of defending moderation. As you argue, in today’s polarized climate, to advocate for moderation is nothing short of iconoclastic. Not simply radicalism’s other, the ethos of moderation is radical and audacious in its own way. Against the shrill and hyperbole that dominates current political debates, your book’s spirited and calm self-reflection is a welcome reminder that there is another, better if also more difficult path; and that as teachers and citizens we must point the way by our own example.
Thank you for writing this book.
Yours,
Ewa Atanassow