Brooks discusses his own issues with commitment, and this informs much of the moral project of the book. As he notes in the introduction, after a turbulent and isolating time in life during which his marriage fell apart, he became politically estranged from his party, and he re-evaluated his religious heritage, Brooks entered into the “valley” between the two mountains. His commitments in life were either void or in need of re-evaluation. This concomitance of influences seems to have sent him on a personal journey toward the discovery of the second-mountain ethos.

The importance of personal commitment in The Second Mountain, though, does not focus (usually) on Brooks’s personal story. Brooks believes that there is universal truth to the importance of personal commitment. Throughout the text, he provides myriad examples from different traditions to buttress his point. Brooks is not presenting a revolutionary moral philosophy. He is, instead, rearticulating a perennial moral viewpoint with an original “two mountain” metaphor. The need for such work arises, coincidentally enough, as a result of his personal commitment to his vocation, writing, especially with regard to contemporary culture.

Brooks believes there are four fundamental commitments that a person ought to pursue: vocation, marriage, community, and philosophy or faith.