An Intellectual History of Liberalism
Highlighting the social tensions that confront the liberal tradition, Pierre Manent draws a portrait of what we, citizens of modern liberal democracies, have become. For Manent, a discussion of liberalism encompasses the foundations of modern society, its secularism, its individualism, and its conception of rights. The frequent incapacity of the morally neutral, democratic state to further social causes, he argues, derives from the liberal stance that political life does not serve a higher purpose. Through quick-moving, highly synthetic essays, he explores the development of liberal thinking in terms of a single theme: the decline of theological politics.
The author traces the liberal stance to Machiavelli, who, in seeking to divorce everyday life from the pervasive influence of the Catholic church, separated politics from all notions of a cosmological order. What followed, as Manent demonstrates in his analyses of Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Guizot, and Constant, was the evolving concept of an individual with no goals outside the confines of the self and a state with no purpose but to prevent individuals from dominating one another. Weighing both the positive and negative effects of such a political arrangement, Manent raises important questions about the fundamental political issues of the day, among them the possibility of individual rights being reconciled with the necessary demands of political organization, and the desirability of a government system neutral about religion but not about public morals.
HistorySocial HistoryPhilosophyHistory & SurveysPoliticalPolitical Science
RELEASED1996
PUBLISHERPrinceton University Press
LENGTH128
LANGUAGEEN
Pierre Manent ( born 6 May 1949, Toulouse) is a French political scientist and academic. He teaches political philosophy at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, in the Centre de recherches politiques Raymond Aron. Every autumn, he is also a visiting teacher in Boston College at the Department of Political Science. After graduating from the École Normale Supérieure, he became assistant to Raymond Aron at the Collège de France. He was one of the founders of the quarterly *Commentaire* and remains a regular contributor. Manent is a key figure of the contemporary French political philosophy and his work has helped the rediscovery of the French liberal tradition. A eurosceptic and a classical liberal, he has been called by *The Weekly Standard* "the most profound of the Euroskeptical philosophers". **Source**: [Pierre Manent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Manent) on Wikipedia.
An Intellectual History of Liberalism
Highlighting the social tensions that confront the liberal tradition, Pierre Manent draws a portrait of what we, citizens of modern liberal democracies, have become. For Manent, a discussion of liberalism encompasses the foundations of modern society, its secularism, its individualism, and its conception of rights. The frequent incapacity of the morally neutral, democratic state to further social causes, he argues, derives from the liberal stance that political life does not serve a higher purpose. Through quick-moving, highly synthetic essays, he explores the development of liberal thinking in terms of a single theme: the decline of theological politics.
The author traces the liberal stance to Machiavelli, who, in seeking to divorce everyday life from the pervasive influence of the Catholic church, separated politics from all notions of a cosmological order. What followed, as Manent demonstrates in his analyses of Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Guizot, and Constant, was the evolving concept of an individual with no goals outside the confines of the self and a state with no purpose but to prevent individuals from dominating one another. Weighing both the positive and negative effects of such a political arrangement, Manent raises important questions about the fundamental political issues of the day, among them the possibility of individual rights being reconciled with the necessary demands of political organization, and the desirability of a government system neutral about religion but not about public morals.
HistorySocial HistoryPhilosophyHistory & SurveysPoliticalPolitical SciencePolitical IdeologiesConservatism & Liberalism
RELEASED1996
PUBLISHERPrinceton University Press
LENGTH128
LANGUAGEEN
Pierre Manent ( born 6 May 1949, Toulouse) is a French political scientist and academic. He teaches political philosophy at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, in the Centre de recherches politiques Raymond Aron. Every autumn, he is also a visiting teacher in Boston College at the Department of Political Science. After graduating from the École Normale Supérieure, he became assistant to Raymond Aron at the Collège de France. He was one of the founders of the quarterly *Commentaire* and remains a regular contributor. Manent is a key figure of the contemporary French political philosophy and his work has helped the rediscovery of the French liberal tradition. A eurosceptic and a classical liberal, he has been called by *The Weekly Standard* "the most profound of the Euroskeptical philosophers". **Source**: [Pierre Manent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Manent) on Wikipedia.
