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In Prophetic Statesmanship: Harry V. Jaffa, Abraham Lincoln, and the Gettysburg Address, Edward J. Erler presents the lesser-known, late-life scholarship of renowned Lincoln scholar, Harry Victor Jaffa. Through a deep reading of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural, Erler considers some of Jaffa’s startling discoveries about Lincoln, Aquinas, Aristotle, and America’s political founding—discoveries that sometimes seem to contradict Jaffa’s own prior writing and often contradict the existing scholarly consensus.
In 1959, Jaffa established himself as a foremost Lincoln scholar when he published Crisis of the House Divided, a revolutionary breakthrough in the understanding of Lincoln’s political philosophy. But by the time Jaffa published A New Birth of Freedom (2000), he had developed a deeper understanding of what is known as the “theological-political question,” the conflict between theology and politics in philosophical thought. Jaffa referred to this development as his “second sailing.”
Jaffa was never able to flesh out his evolving ideas about the “theological-political question,” as it concerns Abraham Lincoln, while he was alive. At the behest of Jaffa, his student Edward Erler wrote this book to do just that.
With his own scholarly aplomb Erler explores Jaffa’s scholarship on Aristotle’s presence in the American founding; Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Aquinas’s surprising, shared—albeit concealed—vision of participatory government; the union of divine law and natural law in the American founding; and the primacy of prudence as supreme political virtue; among other topics.
This is a book for anyone interested in the past and future of American political thought.
"Harry Jaffa was a man of many wise words and died at age 96 with more to say. He asked Ed Erler, a scholar of political philosophy in his own right—and Jaffa’s student, neighbor, friend, and confidante—to say them for him if he could, completing the final volume in Jaffa’s planned Lincoln trilogy. Prophetic Statesmanship not only delivers on Jaffa’s unfulfilled promise to examine the Gettysburg Address, but offers a synoptic and incisive account of Lincoln’s peerless statesmanship. Erler understands, and imitates, Jaffa’s Lincoln scholarship as an exercise in Socratic dialectic."
—Glenn Ellmers, author of The Soul of Politics: Harry V. Jaffa and the Fight for America
"From start to finish Erler’s magnificent account of Harry V. Jaffa’s lifework defies other scholars to best it. In fulfilling his teacher’s command to complete his Gettysburg project, the seven chapters of Prophetic Statesmanship recall Plato’s Laws. The tension between philosophy and theology requires Jaffa’s focus on the virtue of prudence to expose false accounts of natural right and equality today."
—Ken Masugi, Senior Fellow, Claremont Institute
"At [Henry] Jaffa’s insistence and on his behalf, Erler carries to completion the Civil War book series that began with Crisis of the House Divided (1959) and continued with A New Birth of Freedom (2000)—a book which, despite its title, did not cover the Gettysburg Address. How to deal with Jaffa’s apparent correction or repudiation of his classic earlier book? Erler takes up this difficult question."
—Claremont Review of Books
Edward J. Erler is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute and professor emeritus of political science at California State University, San Bernardino. He is the author of The American Polity: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Constitutional Government and co-author of The Founders on Citizenship and Immigration. He has also authored Property and the Pursuit of Happiness. Erler was a member of the California Advisory Commission on Civil Rights from 1988-2006 and served on the California Constitutional Revision Commission in 1996. He has testified on birthright citizenship and on voting rights on two occasions before the House Judiciary Committee and on other civil rights issues before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Erler earned a BA from San Jose State University, financed by the GI bill for services rendered, and an MA and PhD in government from the Claremont Graduate School.