Remembering paul johnson, the historian of human dignity

Buckley Jr. To Johnson, history was the story of people—flawed, creative, reasoning, exceptional—with the capacity for incredible achievement. People, he thought, were made with a purpose, and that meant history has a purpose. His book Intellectuals provided potted biographies of such revered figures as Rousseau, Marx, and Tolstoy, demonstrating what rotters they all were in their personal lives.

This was not exactly an exercise in scientific method, but it was good fun and gave pleasure to those who distrust intellectual gurus. It also gave rise to insinuations that Johnson himself did not always quite live up to the moral ideals that he so fiercely propounded in public.

Paul Johnson, who passed away on January 12th at the age of 94, was one of the great humanists of the last century.

His views, though somewhat changeable, were expressed with vigor approaching dogmatism, though they were always well-informed. You knew where you stood with him. It is customary to say of remarkable men that we shall not see their like again. Whatever may be the case with other remarkable men, this is likely to be true of Paul Johnson.

It is unlikely that anyone will tackle so huge a range of subjects again with such knowledge and verve. He had his undeniable faults, of which irascibility was just one, but he was also exemplary in his hard work few people could write so quickly and eloquently , his diligence the reading undertaken for his work and his range of reference was remarkable ; his loyalty to his friends and his devotion to his children and grandchildren.

His son Daniel is a prominent Catholic journalist and writes in this edition.

Both as a historian and as a devoted if somewhat eccentric Roman Catholic, Paul embraced the concept of the chosen people.

He was a Defender of the Faith; there are few of his calibre now. That summed Paul Johnson up: may it be so for him. Paul Johnson and the fate of conservatism , by Dominic Green.