By PAUL KRAUSE
No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men, by Anthony Esolen. Available as hardcover and as Kindle at amazon.com.
Anthony Esolen is one of the finest cultural and literary critics currently alive. His Catholicism and traditionalism, though, mean he doesn’t receive the accolades of the city of man despite being far more insightful, witty, and eloquent than those barbarous butchers of language and culture who win prizes from prestigious universities and book clubs. But for Catholics, Esolen’s writings are unrivaled.
In his new book, No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men, Esolen wades into stormy seas to offer an apologia for the need of strong men and duty to God, family, and country — all the things scorned by our cultural and intellectual establishment.
What makes a good writer and public intellectual is their command of language, eloquence, and wit, and ability to weave the great treasures of culture together for a compelling story. That is what made Dr. Samuel Johnson great. That is what made G.K. Chesterton great. That is what made C.S. Lewis great. And that is what makes Anthony Esolen great.
Esolen’s book is not just a salvo in the ongoing culture and gender wars, it is also a work of literary criticism and intellectual engagement with three millennia of culture and what culture informs us about questions of manhood, gender, and bravery. “I am writing a book that should not have to be written,” Esolen writes. But we are certainly thankful that he did.
In our age when feminists and their male-feminist allies assault the family, assert that most — if not all — social evils are the product of “toxic masculinity,” and that women and society would be better off without men, Esolen returns to the beginning. “Men and women are made for one another,” he reminds us after discussing John Milton’s Paradise Lost and the relationship of Adam and Eve. “Male and female stand and fall together.”
A century ago, virtually everyone knew this. Today, not so much. While older generations of Americans still agree with these basic truths, this is why Esolen’s work is so sorely needed — many younger Americans do not. This book is not just written for the choir. It is written for young adults and adults with children who must be safeguarded from a pernicious education system.
The reason why our sick and dying education system venomously targets children, young boys especially, with its gender and transgender ideology, is because boys are weak and vulnerable where men are strong and determined. “When you can’t persuade the men [of toxic masculinity], you go for the little boys confined to the classroom.” As Esolen rightly rebuts, “Enough.”
Over the course of six chapters and just under 200 pages, Esolen provides a tour-de-force pilgrimage through culture, literature, and Bible about the nature of manhood: strength, agency, the team, family, vision, and God the Father. In doing so, he seamlessly weaves these seemingly disparate aspects of masculinity into a cohesive and logical vision of how male energy is directed to the Good, True, and Beautiful rather than the erotic self which often leaves destruction and despondency in its wake. Uniting with others is the ultimate goal.
Because humans are social creatures, Esolen also deconstructs and demolishes the usual feminist and transgender talking points that are pontificated without opposition as if universal truth in classrooms.
Far from boys being socialized into toxic males, male nature leads them to team competition with positive rules and regulations to teach them the value of competitive companionship which has implications for “the team,” the family, the nation, and spiritual leadership. This is something to be celebrated, not condemned and dismantled.
Much of what Esolen says has resonance with me, a millennial, who often invented and played games outdoors with my younger brother, cousins, and neighbors.
We would, as Esolen observes, invent games with rules so that all could enjoy which implicitly promoted the value of teamwork and companionship. This, in turn, would manifest adventure and leadership; adventure and leadership, of course, are two hallmark traits of masculinity. This prepared me for high school athletics.
Part of the general thesis of the book is how natural masculinity, the spirit of adventure, action, and conquest, eventually gets channeled into productive civilizational pursuits. The taming of nature and the creation of infrastructure from which civilization arises are all positive creations of the male drive acting on behalf of others.
This, though, doesn’t mean women and children are not involved. Au contraire, precisely because men are married and have a family, or looking for a family, they embrace public service creation. We all benefit from this spirit of self-sacrifice for others, for our community, for our family — like Aeneas and so many other great figures in our cultural poetry and literature.
Esolen is also at his best, befitting the fact he is a professor of literature, when drawing on the rich oasis of Western poetry and what it tells us about civilization and the spirit of men, women, and the family. Not only is “No Apologies” an apologia for civilization and masculinity in an age of anti-civilization and hatred and belittling of all things male, but it is also an apologia for Western culture and literature and why it matters and what truths these texts tell us.
In the end, the order of love that arises from masculinity serving others is what is communicated by Christianity and its theology of God the Father as the origin and starting point of creation. The imitation of God the Father, by men, is an orderly love that creates and directs all to the orderly love that gave rise to the cosmos and the beautiful things the heavens hold.
Recovering this spirit is needed for the rescuing of civilization. Or, perhaps, the spirit needed for building a new civilization out of the ashes of our current dying civilization.
Sometimes Troy is already lost, but the new city that awaits us is even greater than the old. This is a challenging task, an adventurous task, one that demands the very best in us. But especially of men and the lives they live and work they do for others. Esolen reminds us of this noble and heroic call.
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