Description
We are all prey to competing narratives about “modernity,” its political form, and its overall intellectual and spiritual character. In particular, the growing post-liberal movement has begun to craft accounts of modernity and modern politics that can feel overly simplistic. In reaction, defenders of the liberal order often seem animated chiefly by direct opposition to the concerns that nationalist movements in America and abroad have brought to the fore. The result is a kind of bipolarity: Liberalism-as-it-has-been (perhaps with a few tweaks) versus a quasi pre-modern nationalism presented as the only truly grounded way of thinking and living politically.
The French political philosopher Pierre Manent stands outside this polarity. A longtime Euroskeptic, appreciative of the modern nation-state as a political form, critic of modern humanitarianism, and proponent of natural law, he is nevertheless an important voice within the French liberal tradition. Born in 1949 in Toulouse, Manent studied at the École Normale Supérieure, served as assistant to Raymond Aron at the Collège de France, and co-founded the journal Commentaire. A former director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Centre de recherches politiques Raymond Aron), he is widely regarded as one of the most penetrating political philosophers writing in France today, known especially for his recovery of the French liberal tradition and his profound analyses of Western political forms.
The present reading group [led by Dr. Matthew Minerd] will engage his thought across a number of his major works. It grew directly out of my own experience teaching political philosophy: I found I could not quite stomach the semi-reactionary narrative taking shape within me, yet I also remained a deep critic of key elements of modern thought. With America now celebrating its Semiquincentennial, it seemed a fitting moment to reflect seriously on my own political commitments while undertaking a sustained, unhurried dive into the work of a significant thinker. The circle will therefore be at once a shared encounter with Manent’s texts and an occasion to let those texts illuminate the live political questions of our own moment. Our focus will remain squarely on Manent’s thought, but we will always read him with an eye to the contemporary phenomena he himself is addressing. Whatever the backgrounds of the participants, the topics these works explore will prove unmistakably relevant to politics throughout the contemporary world.
Reading Circles
The Thought of Pierre Manent
Democracy without Nations?: The Fate of Self-Government in Europe (4 weeks) [March–April]
This work, now over twenty years old, retains clear relevance today in light of the current crisis of the nation-state as a political form. The book is an extended essay on some of the consequences of late–twentieth-century changes in European governance. As an essay, it is largely exploratory, though clearly committed to questioning the European consensus of the early twenty-first century. Paul Seaton recommended that we begin with this work rather than A World beyond Politics, since the latter is considerably denser and more demanding as an entry point.
The Religion of Humanity: The Illusion of Our Times (6 weeks) [April–June]
This volume functions as a collection of essays centered on the temptation to think of human society in terms of the abstraction “Humanity.” We will focus especially on the implications of this tendency for political rationality, philosophical anthropology, and the often-unacknowledged religious dimension of modern political life. This text pairs well with Manent’s earlier The City of Man, which participants may wish to consult alongside our reading.
Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy (5 weeks) [July]
By this point, we will have a preliminary sense of Manent’s concerns as a contemporary political thinker. It is important, however, to note that he has also devoted major studies to close readings of key figures in modern thought (Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Montaigne, Pascal). Although we will later read his work on Pascal, one could profitably read the Machiavelli volume in advance of Seeing Things Politically (or, time permitting, Natural Law and Human Rights).
In a First Things review of Manent’s book on Montaigne, Benjamin Storey summarizes a central theme that becomes increasingly important in Manent’s later work:
Manent’s recent work has focused on the history of political forms, from the ancient city to the modern nation-state. This inquiry has been animated by a concern for the future of European democracy now that its functional framework, the nation-state, has been called into question. The decline of the nation-state, Manent suggests, has been driven by impatience with legal limits such as borders, assumed to be arbitrary. Montaigne: La vie sans loi reveals that the deepest root of this European malaise—from which America is not immune—is the mode of self-understanding that originates in Montaigne, the view that all laws and limits are fundamentally arbitrary and that liberation from such constraints is the goal of the human search for wisdom. Overcoming that malaise will require a renewal of our desire to govern ourselves, in the belief that the created world is a place in which reason can discover laws worth following, not merely because they give us space for comfortable passivity but because rational self-government is an indispensable element of true human dignity.
As we will see, this theme is crucial for understanding Manent’s later work. Importantly, however, Manent does not reject the nation-state; on the contrary, he defends its ongoing significance, along with certain elements of liberalism connected to its historical genesis. The Tocqueville volume was recommended to me by Paul Seaton in the context of discussions about “post-liberalism” and the perceived “dissolving power” of American culture. Those interested may also read An Intellectual History of Liberalism at this stage. We should bear in mind, however, that these are earlier works: while many themes persist, they should not be treated as definitive interpretive keys for Manent’s later synthesis.
Metamorphoses of the City: On the Western Dynamic (10 weeks) [August–October]
This text functions as something like the structural center of our “symphony.” By “most important,” I do not mean most immediately accessible, but rather most synthetic and demanding. By this point, we will already have encountered Manent’s distinction between political forms (not to be confused with political regimes). Here, we see him develop a far more comprehensive account of political rationality as it unfolds through successive historical forms of political life in the West.
Natural Law and Human Rights: Toward a Recovery of Practical Reason (6 weeks) [November–December]
This volume is also synthetic, though more concise. Although based on a series of lectures, it presents Manent’s position in a more settled and programmatic way than some of the earlier works. Here, he articulates his understanding of political rationality in terms that should help us draw together questions of anthropology, “Humanity,” liberalism, and the nature of political form that have remained somewhat implicit in our previous readings. Ideally, I hope to have read the Montaigne volume before we arrive at this text, since it provides important background.
Seeing Things Politically: Interviews with Bénédicte Delorme-Montini (6 weeks) [2027]
I have placed this volume later in the sequence because, by this point, we should be sufficiently familiar with Manent’s thought to appreciate the nuances of these interviews. While we are certainly not “experts,” we will be better equipped to recognize how familiar themes reappear here in a more personal, accessible, and sometimes more concrete register, shaped by the dialogical format of the interviews.
Challenging Modern Atheism and Indifference: Pascal’s Defense of the Christian Proposition (12 weeks) [2027]
We conclude with this work partly because it is Manent’s most recent major book, but also because it gathers together many of the cultural, anthropological, religious, and political questions that have been present throughout our reading. By ending here, we can approach this text with a much richer sense of how Manent’s engagement with Pascal fits within the broader trajectory of his political thought—even where it pushes beyond the strict bounds of political philosophy. Had we begun with this work, we would have lacked the conceptual and historical context needed to situate its claims properly.
Details
This reading circle is open to all enrolled Lyceum Members, free of additional charge. At $115/year—including access to not only this but all other reading circles, Trivium courses, Language Foundations courses, and access to our complete archives—that is quite the bargain! However, you must enroll to participate.
Discussion sessions will occur on Thursday evenings at 6:00–7:00pm ET (see world times here), beginning on March 19 and running throughout most of the year and into 2027, with breaks between each text.
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