The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry

A striking contribution to the
conversation that is conservatism

Wendell Berry—poet, novelist, essayist, critic, farmer—has won the admiration of Americans from all walks of life and from across the political spectrum. His writings treat an extraordinary range of subjects, including politics, economics, ecology, farming, work, marriage, religion, and education. But as this enlightening new book shows, such diverse writings are united by a humane vision that finds its inspiration in the great moral and literary tradition of the West.

In The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry, Mark T. Mitchell and Nathan Schlueter bring together a distinguished roster of writers to critically engage Berry’s ideas. The volume features original contributions from Rod Dreher, Anthony Esolen, Allan Carlson, Richard Gamble, Jason Peters, Anne Husted Burleigh, Patrick J. Deneen, Caleb Stegall, Luke Schlueter, Matt Bonzo, Michael Stevens, D. G. Hart, Mark Shiffman, and William Edmund Fahey, as well as a classic piece by Wallace Stegner.

Together, these authors situation Berry’s ideas within the larger context of conservative thought. His vision stands for reality in all its facets and against all reductive “isms”—for intellect against intellectualism, individuality against individualism, community against communitarianism, liberty against libertarianism. Wendell Berry calls his readers to live lives of gratitude, responsibility, friendship, and love—notions that, as this important new book makes clear, should be at the heart of a thoughtful and coherent conservatism.

Mark T. Mitchell is the author of the intellectual biography Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing and the forthcoming book The Politics of Gratitude: Scale, Place, and Community in a Global Age. A cofounder of the webzine Front Porch Republic, he directs the political theory program at Patrick Henry College. He lives in West Virginia.

Nathan Schlueter is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Hillsdale College in Michigan. He is the author of One Dream or Two? Justice in America and in the Thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Utopian Fiction: Recovering the Political Science of the Imagination (forthcoming). His writings have appeared in First Things, Communio, Touchstone, and Logos.