An Intellectual History of Liberalism - Softcover

Manent, Pierre

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691029113 ISBN 13: 9780691029115

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1996

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Pierre Manent is director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and coeditor of the journal La Pensée politique.

From the Back Cover

Highlighting the social tensions that confront the liberal tradition, Pierre Manent draws a portrait of what we, citizens of modern liberal democracies, have become. Through quick-moving, highly synthetic essays, he explores the development of liberal thinking in terms of a single theme: the decline of theological politics.

Reviews

Manent has written a concise and graceful essay on the history of liberal thought._ [This] book makes clear that even the most emphatically political liberalisms always involve more than opinions about forms of government. Liberalism, as he reconstructs it, is an elaborate edifice of beliefs, practices and institutions. To neglect any one of these elements is, in Manent's account, to endanger the whole.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691029113
• ISBN 13: 9780691029115
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 152