Manent Mercredi #11: more on Manent from the Liberty Law Forum

Further to my last Manent Mercredi, more from Paul Seaton at the Liberty Law Forum:

If I had to venture a French thinker who has significantly influenced Manent’s thinking about the nation, I would propose Charles Péguy (1874-1914). Among other things, Péguy introduced the concept of “communion,” which has a spiritual dimension lacking in the Greek koinōnía, and his writings helped Manent see how the nation synthesizes the temporal (past, present, and future) and historical phases of a people’s existence. There are some beautiful passages in this vein in the book I translated, Democracy without Nations?

[...]

In Manent’s view, oft repeated, the post-Maastricht EU has been constructed in the light of an Idea of Humanity as already (or virtually) united, with no significant collective differences.What is normative is the autonomous individual and harmonious Humanity. As a result, all other human groupings lose normative status, especially nations and religious communions, and are seen as threats, or as material to be remade along ideological lines. Moreover, this view of integrated Humanity is enforced. Rigorously. 

More here.

Seaton discusses a number of alternative 'takes' on Manent which are linked to in his article and are worth pursuing. My tuppenceworth (admittedly a tyro's tuppenceworth offered in the spirit of one who is interested but does not know) is that I find in Manent a number of themes from Leo Strauss which I find helpful: in particular, the 'political' as a sphere of human practice irreducible to philosophy or religion, but which maintains a creative tension with them, and the importance of engaging with classical thought as a root to the perennial problems of politics. In addition, however, Manent has a greater focus on the potential of modernity, coupled with an interest in two contemporary concrete issues: the EU and the place of Islam in Europe. (I found Aurelian Craiutu's essay helpful here.)

Manent Mercredi #10: on the nation

From the Law and Liberty website, a good essay by Guillaume de Thieulloy on Manent's thought, focusing especially on his views on the nation state and on his (comparative) neglect in France:

Accurate glosses of other thinkers and charming writing are the main assets of the writings of my former teacher. Nor is this by chance—for Manent rightly thinks of himself as an heir, as we all are. We received our forma mentis from our ancestors and especially from the classics. Manent, in his latest book (Beyond Radical Secularism), proffered the classic authors as an access point for young French people (including those whose parents were not culturally French) to a shared vision of the world and of the human being. The appeal he made in this 2016 book was very powerful and striking. Unfortunately, the education system in our country worked, and still works, toward the creation of a “new human being,” after the revolutionary tabula rasa. If we are seeking the common good, we need a common language and some common heroes, common legends, and common history. So, the French rulers who pretend to promote the ethic of “vivre-ensemble” (living together)—especially with those who have immigrated into France—while at the same time abandoning education in the classics are deceiving the rest of us, or themselves.

Manent’s public profile is now that of a promoter of the European nation-state—or perhaps more precisely, a defender of that nation-state which is being so harshly attacked by European “elites.” That defense includes, of course, the American “daughter” of the European nation-state. It also includes, in some aspects, the Jewish mother of the European nation-state, which has been for so many centuries a nation without a state. He’s indeed one of the rare influential writers who doesn’t seem to think that “progress” implies the vanishing of this very specific “political form.”

See more here. (The earlier essay by Paul Seaton referred to by de Thieulloy is also worth reading and can be found here.)

Manent Mercerdi #9: after Macron?

I can't find anything that Manent has written specifically on the election of Macron to the French presidency, but the following excerpts from recent commentary might suggest a Manentian approach:

"The perils in question [of the project of 'significant numbers of the bien pensant [who] came to view both nations and classes as social forms to be steadily overcome' ] lay centrally in hoping for the democratic consent of the governed, while simultaneously eroding the main historical source of what Manent calls social ‘communion’. For it is principally the nation that, since the nineteenth century, has been the political focal point of identity, loyalty and accountability in Europe. Insofar as the EU has sought to shift these foci to other, supranational institutions and imperatives, it has embarked on an unprecedented project, one that is unparalleled, indeed, anywhere else in the world.

"In short, below each nation lies ‘civil society’, which remains politically and economically an insufficient object of aspiration; above each nation lies a putative ‘great, enormous European nation’, of indeterminate boundaries and without historical or cultural ballast. Between these sub- and supranational poles the EU finds itself without real moorings, refusing, as Manent puts it, to ‘define itself politically’, and hence taking on the character of ‘an imperious, indefinite, and opaque movement’."

(from 'What French philosophy can tell us about the EU, nationhood, and the decline of social democracy', Tom Angier here )


'Whereas the state can be neutral about religion and morality, society can never be neutral. In fact, the state’s neutrality, its formless character, is present precisely to protect the myriad beliefs, moral codes, and religious practices that comprise society. A secularism that preserves a flourishing society of diverse religious practice is completely different from a secularism that socially engineers a religiously neutral society. The latter would be a bland formless void, devoid of religious devotion, beauty, or character.

'The secularists who advance such a vision assume that Islam will reform by incorporating itself into France. In assuming this, they think that Islam should no longer be an objective value but rather be recognized as a subjective choice—a manifestation of individual rights rather than objective religious law. Muslims, of course, do not agree with this. For practicing Muslims, Islam is not a subjective choice. When Westerners treat it as one, they render themselves incapable of dealing with terrorism and the integration of Muslim immigrants.

'Manent argues that a radical secularist society, one that is formless because it refuses to be shaped by any religious inheritance, is incapable of inviting outsiders to join it. Just as a house must have walls for the host to invite a guest into it, so a society must have customs, ceremonies, and convictions to invite outsiders to join. But a radical secularist society has none of these things: no borders, no common customs, no ceremonies, no education about a common national life, no patriotism. Without common political life, a country has nothing to offer those coming from outside.'

(from 'Vive la Résistance!' in the Washington Free Beacon, by Ian Lindquist here)

'Now, with the rise of Islamic immigration, France faces the ultimate test of its own new political ideals: the growing strength of a minority that rejects diversity, rejects the supremacy of the individual, and therefore rejects the very ideology that allowed the minority to grow.
The only solution, Manent argues, is for France to insist that Muslims accept a role as French citizens, as participants in a common enterprise. But that cannot be if native French citizens do not first acknowledge their role as citizens rather than autonomous individuals.

'What is the difference between citizens and individuals? Citizens recognize their duties along with their rights. Small children will always behave as individuals. In a healthy society their parents behave as citizens—because there is no better way to train people in the habits of accepting responsibility than giving them the care of their own children.'

(from Phil Lawler, 'Apres moi le deluge', Catholic Culture, here)

Manent Mercerdi (8): Contemporary Thinkers website

As part of my regular plug for the work of French Catholic political philosopher Pierre Manent, I include this week an excerpt from an essay about him from the excellent website Contemporary Thinkers. (This website contains material on a wide range of modern political thinkers. Its companion, Great Thinkers, contains similarly helpful material on pre-twentieth century political thinkers.)

In Manent’s more recent works, Democracy without Nations? (2006, trans. 2007) and especially A World without Politics?: A Defense (2001, trans. 2006), he has explored the “political forms”—city, empire, church, and nation—through which human beings decide on matters of common importance. The most recent political form, the nation, has started to become questionable. One immoderate interpretation of the historical destiny of democracy argues against the rationality of national boundaries. “Pure democracy,” Manent writes of this view, “is democracy without a people—that is, democratic governance, which is very respectful of human rights but detached from any collective deliberation.”

But as a point of fact, the nation-state and not “democratic governance” has produced the framework within which Western peoples became modern. Only the modern state asserted sovereignty over all parts within it, yet retained the integrity of those parts through its representative character. What concerns Manent is the replacement of the sovereign state and representative government by a manner of governance “more and more functional-bureaucratic and less and less political.” In place of a sovereign people, a “procedural democracy” has appeared that allows a people to make a democratic choice only when that choice reflects a preexisting conclusion from universal human rights.

[...]

Today, Manent argues, the principles of democratic equality and scientific rule, when taken to their conclusions, threaten to do away with the political framework through which we have always decided matters of common importance. When decisions are made on the basis of global human rights or the prescriptions of technocratic science, the political form is lost. Yet, we have no political history outside the political forms that have shaped the West. To abandon them in favor “humanity” is a risk whose consequences we may not be prepared to fathom.

[From essays by Gladden Pappin on Manent here]

Pierre Manent Mercredi (7): reconciling human experience with religion

From Le Regard Politique, my translation. (The English version of the work is Seeing Things Politically.)

Those works which successfully combine a faithfulness to human experience with a religious perspective are rare. Or, to be exact, in my opinion. there is only one work, only one text in which the two perspectives are strangely, paradoxically reconciled. Unsurprisingly it's the Bible, especially the Old Testament in which you get, at the same time, directly and immediately, human experience in its ignorance of God, and yet also, mysteriously, a presence of God which does not suppress or cover up the authenticity of that experience. The text of the Psalms especially is shocking because, in a chaotic and popular language, it maintains a balance that only the greatest spiritual masters of religion can maintain so perfectly: it is a text where human beings at the same time complain, scream, protest, want to kill their enemies, are afraid of death, are sick, and yet, also, mysteriously, there is an experience of of something which is radically different from any human experience but which does not prevent this human experience from being lived and described in all its truth, in all its nudity.

(p.88)

My commentary:

Manent emphasises here a characteristic position: a refusal of an easy reconciliation between different perspectives. (He talks elsewhere of living within a tension between religious, political and philosophical perspectives.) There is an echo here of twentieth century theological debates on natura pura: roughly, whether there is a sharp division between a (philosophical) perspective on nature uninformed by revelation and a theological perspective informed by revelation. (My sympathies are with the defenders of a concept of natura pura for what it's worth.)

Manent Mercredi (6): Leo Strauss and the freedom to believe

 

 

 

 

From Le Regard Politique, my translation. (The English version of the work is Seeing Things Politically.)

 

[Leo] Strauss shows that at any rate some people can free themselves entirely from social pressure in order to conduct themselves freely, by being capable at the same time of understanding their own interests and the prejudices of society, and yet also conveying to the careful reader of the text their real meaning which is a long way from the prejudices of that society. In that sense, Strauss is indeed a great liberator.

 

[...]

 

Strauss thus helped me to...reconsider european history. The theories of secularisation appeared to me more and more like sociological fairy tales based...on the premise that there were ages of faith when people were necessarily religious...Theories of secularisation subject the human spirit to necessity -and it's also by necessity that the human spirit frees itself from the necessity of religion. Let me put this as simply as possible: if there were many atheists in the ages of faith, and if there remain some believers in the age of secularisation, then we need to reconsider all our theological and political history.

 

(pp61-63)

 

 

My commentary:

 

Put roughly, Strauss argues that philosophers concealed their atheistic tendencies in societies dominated by religion by writing texts which could, on the surface, be read in accordance with orthodox religion, but to careful readers would reveal their intended, esoteric meaning.

 

Manent uses this claim to emphasise the real possibility of free thought in societies such as ours where there is overwhelming social pressure to conform to an orthodoxy of secularity. The human spirit remains free to find and articulate philosophical and religious truth whatever social pressures are put on it. Instead of a view of history driven by sociological necessity and divided neatly into periods of faith and periods of secularisation, we should instead look for a far more complicated spiritual history where the freedom of spiritual search is concealed but nonetheless exists.

 

Two common themes, I think, from Manent here. First, the importance of human free agency (particularly in politics) in deciding how we live, as opposed to postulating deterministic sociological laws. Secondly, the dismissal of seeing our age as specially modern, rather than being simply subject to the same perennial human questions (here, of religious belief).

 

 



Manent Mercredi #5: contra René Girard

 

 

From Le Regard Politique, my translation. (The English version of the work is Seeing Things Politically.)

If I might put it this way, Girard brings with him the apocalypse of social science, 'apocalypse' meaning, as you know, 'revelation'.

I'm not going to lay out, this isn't the place, the thought of Girard, but just some of his principles in order to explain my attitude to him. For Girard, human civilisation rests on the mechanism of the scapegoat: human beings, naturally prone to violence, to random violence, become reconciled by putting to death the scapegoat...Such is the violent origin, the violent root of every human civilisation, according to Girard.

Now, Christianity puts an end to this violent ritual of civilisation. for, according to Girard, it reveals the secret of the human world, the secret of human civilisation, the secret which all civilisations and religions before Christianity have failed to recognise: the victim is innocent....

I have always found this doctrine powerful, impressive, and at the same time, it has always seemed to me untenable and even dangerous. For naturally, one of its consequences, or one of the presuppositions of this doctrine, is that the human order has no substance or legitimacy of its own; in any case, the political order loses any substance and legitimacy because, if the basis of the truth of civilisation, of human society, is random violence and we are all the same, then there is no reason to distinguish between political societies, between political regimes, to recognise that any particular regime is nevertheless better than another, or that some cause is more just, even if only a little more just than another cause...

You are therefore led, in a situation where you make an equivalence between the enemy and us, to give preference to the enemy. It is this which I describe as the perverse tendency of a certain sort of Christianity with respect to politics. It transforms in an overly quick and unwise way the Christian claim that we are in a sense all sinners into a political claim destructive of any political morality: ultimately, between human causes, there is no difference in justice or in honour.

(pp.101-104)


Commentary:

Manent's dislike of Girard lies in the way that Girard depoliticises politics. Rather than the difficult but important art of politics in exploring how to govern as well as possible in difficult and confusing circumstances, Girard substitutes a religious desire to cure politics.

As well as displaying Manent's usual suspicion of the drive to replace the political attitude by morality or spirituality, this also hints at the important role played in political thinking by respecting the existence of genuine and unresolvable tensions. There are better and worse uses of violence and better and worse objects of hostility: to wish these away is indulge in fantasy rather than to accept a lived tension between the demands of Christian revelation and human political reason, between politics and religion.

See also From “René Girard’s Lesson of Shadows” by Pierre Manent here.

Manent Mercredi (4): Europeans are lost

This interview of Pierre Manent, former director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, was conducted by the newspaper Il Foglio in the wake of the ISIS murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel. (English version from First Things.)

The French are exhausted, but they are first of all perplexed, lost. Things were not supposed to happen this way. … We had supposedly entered into the final stage of democracy where human rights would reign, ever more rights ever more rigorously observed. We had left behind the age of nations as well as that of religions, and we would henceforth be free individuals moving frictionless over the surface of the planet. … And now we see that religious affiliations and other collective attachments not only survive but return with a particular intensity. Everyone can see and feel this, but how can it be expressed when the only authorized language is that of individual rights? We have become supremely incapable of seeing what is right before our eyes. Meanwhile the ruling class, which is not a political but an ideological class, one that commands not what must be done but what must be said, goes on indefinitely about “values,” the “values of the republic,” the “values of democracy,” the “values of Europe.” This class has been largely discredited in the eyes of citizens, but it occupies all the positions of institutional responsibility, especially in the media, and nowhere does one find groups or individuals who give the impression of understanding what is happening or of being able to stand up to it. We have no more confidence in those who lead us than in ourselves. It is neither an excuse nor a consolation to say it, but the faults of the French are those of Europeans in general.

Manent Mercredi (3): oppositional thinking

From Le Regard Politique, my translation. (The English version of the work is Seeing Things Politically.)


Fundamentally, what annoys me in the work of some  contemporaries that I have touched on, such as Louis Dumont, but even in such as a writer like Heidegger, is that their thought is dominated by a polarising and in the end polemical approach. A sort of battle of the giants is revealed to us between the new and the old, but the new and the old are each still thought of in terms of the other: the modern is defined by being the negation of the ancient, which is itself defined by being the anticipated negation, so to speak, of the modern.

[...]

The evolution [of my thought] of which I am speaking consisted in freeing myself as much as possible from the polemical posture which is shared by the two great parties of the Modern and the anti-modern. And which is even, in the final analysis, shared by those who look for impartiality in a 'neutral' polarity, 'without conqueror or conquered', between 'holism' and 'individualism', whose attempts I've followed with sympathy: they may modify the tone, but not the basis of the debate for it is still a principle of opposition, a polarity of contraries, which organises their thought. Opposition and hostility are not only some of the most powerful forces in human life; they often penetrate the most intimate depths of thought. It seems to me that, in the more recent period of my work, by reducing, if I can put it like this, the element of hostility which was included in my thought, I have arrived at an expanded understanding of the questions which have occupied me from the beginning.

[pp137-8]

Commentary:

It's easy to apply this to the current public world. The tone of mutual hostility which exists between (say) pro and anti-Trump partisans is clear. But Manent I take it is going beyond this. (The following should be read more as speculation rather than an interpretation of Manent.) An analysis, say, such as feminism which rests essentially on an opposition between male and female interests, and between the patriarchal past and the progressive future, covers up real life complexities and other possible political approaches and resolutions.  And the solution here is less about opposing feminism (because that simply reproduces the oppositional thought) but disregarding it entirely. Ideological thinking such as feminism traps even its opponents into being opponents.

In politics, Manent's main focus, I think leads to an obvious way forward. One constantly wrestles to free oneself from the black and white thinking associated with identification with or opposition to a particular ideology, and instead tries to reduce (note the hint that full success is impossible) the influence such ideological approaches have on you in favour of a prudential attention to reality and human nature.

[The focus on feminism isn't something I found in Manent. But it occurred to me while writing this that opposition to binary, oppositional thinking is something that feminism regularly pays at least lip service to. The irony of this of course is that it's hard to think of many other ideologies which currently produce so much oppositional thought and action both within its own ranks and as a reaction.]

Daniel J. Mahoney's essay on Manent is interesting:

This focus on practical philosophy—on deliberation and action—has become increasingly central to Manent’s work. He rejects a social science rooted in the fact-value distinction as estranged from the deliberations and choices that confront acting man. Contemporary discourses about “values” are remarkably vacuous, he maintains, since they ignore the structure of human action and render human choice arbitrary or groundless—in Max Weber’s famous formulation, men choose their gods, who may turn out to be demons. Behind soft democratic relativism, with its endless evocation of arbitrary “values,” lies an inexpiable “war of the gods,” a neo-Nietzschean metaphysic that destroys the moral integrity of liberal democracy. Manent’s thought points in a more truthful and salutary direction.

[Here]

Manent Mercredi (2): Trump and Brexit

Pierre Manent on Brexit:

Once the result was known, very violent attacks have been launched on both sides of the English Channel against the voters of Brexit… This is the highest comedy, the comedy of repetition. We have known for about ten or fifteen years that the European peoples are perplexed, dissatisfied, very concerned. They have largely lost confidence in the governing class and in the so-called elites. This is reflected by the protest votes, either in referendums as in 2005 in the Netherlands and in France, or just recently in the United Kingdom, or in the usual elections, by the important gains of so called populists. And each time, it is the same comedy: the members of the Council of European family look incredulous as if the Arc de Triomphe and Buckingham Palace had exchanged their seats. They briefly fall silent, choked on a genuine indignation. Then they dump on the voters by all available channels the great waters of their contempt: According to them, the vote was decided by an unworthy plebs, lazy and ignorant, xenophobic and regressive. They rediscover the long discredited argument in favour of restricted suffrage. In short, the European Union should have introduced us to the ultimate stage of democracy, and it has instead  reconstituted a self-aware oligarchy, assured of their right, and quite content to impose their views on the recalcitrant majority.

Interviewer: How to explain that, according to you, our leaders no longer feel obliged to convince their fellow citizens?

Until a fairly recent date, the social divisions of our country were covered up and overcome by participation in the nation as a political community. This is no longer the case today. The right and left have renounced the role that had been theirs since these families of thought began to exist. The right has abandoned the 'people as nation', and stopped seeking justice and unity by a unifying reference to the nation: farewell to gaullism. The left has abandoned the working class, and stopped seeking justice and unity by a unifying reference to the people who are "exploited": farewell to socialism. Right and Left  no longer give themselves the task of representing the French in their concrete reality, to govern them in the best way possible, but instead aim to lead them toward a new society, a new world in which they would disappear as French to resurface, better and wiser, as Europeans.

...The more "European construction" progressed, the more the springs of democratic political life were distorted. That life is based on a moral exchange between people and rulers: the people puts its trust in rulers, who justify this confidence by governing in a fair, prudent and honourable manner. When the reference to Europe intervenes between the governed and rulers, the representative mandate gives way to an ideological mandate. The political class is no more accountable to the people of the electors, but to the idea and the "criteria" of Europe. Since nobody can define positively what is "Europe", it will instead be defined negatively: to build Europe, it is undo, and first delegitimize the nations. This is the politics of ideology, i.e. policy of the impossible, since the nations of which one wants to ruin the legitimacy remain the only really alive and strong constituents of European life. Political legitimacy and political reality are moving away from one another. The political class is more and more ideological.


(Interview from Le Figaro 1 August 2016. Non paywall version here. My translation (or, more exactly, tidied up machine translation for speed.) )

Commentary:

Thinking about the success of Trump today, I wonder how much is a result of progressive politics being based on this imposition of a goal to make voters better. If you go on telling people that they are xenophobes, patriarchal and just generally not good enough as they are, how long before they begin to get irritated? One of Manent's constant themes is the depolitisation of politics. Instead of appealing to voters with existing concrete lives and interests, liberal elites aim to impose moral ideals which existing voters invariably are failing to live up to. (And which, absent any substantive content to 'progressive', tend to be defined negatively by destroying the already existent.)

New series: Manent Mercredi

As part of my services to alliteration, I'm going (until I get bored anyway) to institute Pierre Manent Wednesdays in which I'll excerpt and perhaps comment on some of his writings. He strikes me as one of those Catholic thinkers who should be better known in Scotland and the rest of the UK. (Admittedly a long list...)

The 'Contemporary Thinkers' website gives a good overview of his work here.

I don't claim to have any particular expertise in Manent's thought: indeed, one of my reasons for doing this is to force me to engage more seriously with his work myself. If I had to give a rough idea of why I think this might be worth doing, I'd suggest:

1) He appears to be utterly orthodox in his Catholic belief and practice and yet sensitive to the way that religion, politics and philosophy are not always easy bedfellows.

2) He is realistic about the difficulties globalisation brings to Europe without fantasising about the possibility of undoing existing conditions.

3) Whilst sympathetic to 'identitaire' concerns about preserving French culture, he has a deep appreciation of American political thought.

Anyway, let's kick off with an extract from an autobiographical collection of interviews Le Regard Politique. (There is an English translation Seeing Things Politically but I'll be using my own (imperfect) translations from the French.)

On the distinction between compassion and charity:

It is true that democratic feeling, compassion for your fellow man, often produces the same actions as charity. The perspective, however, is radically different. Fellow feeling is a subtle development of self love. Because I see him as my fellow man, I identify myself with my fellow man who is suffering and therefore I want to rid him of his suffering as I would want to be freed from mine. At the same time, of course, compassion supposes that I do not suffer myself. My moral imagination needs, so to speak leisure, needs to have some room so that it can pay attention to the suffering of others. If I am suffering myself, at least with a certain intensity, this ability is taken away from me. And as Rousseau, to whom we owe the most rigorous analyses of humanitarian compassion, emphasises, even the most sincere compassion carries with it, along with the identification with the other suffering person, the satisfaction and pleasure of not suffering oneself.

Charity is completely different. In the strict or fullest sense of the term, it's a disposition, a virtue that human beings cannot acquire or produce by their own efforts. Technically, if I might venture to put it like this, charity is God's own love, the love with which God loves human beings and, in the first place, the love with which God loves himself in the trinitarian exchange. Therefore, in the true sense of the term, a charitable person is someone who shares, by the grace of God, in the love of God. That's a theological definition so we can put it aside for now. But even if we regard this disposition from a simply human point of view, we can see that charity involves aspects that distance it from democratic compassion. Charity, in effect, ignores the return to oneself which belongs to the life of fellow feeling, because charity doesn't involve an identification with the other suffering person, or a feeling of satisfaction and pleasure in not suffering oneself.

[...]

[The charitable person] doesn't love him [ie his fellow man] because he is his fellow, he doesn't love him because he is this particular person, he loves him because he is the image of God.

[pp222-223]


Commentary:

Putting aside any deeper analysis here, the identification of the element of self love and pleasure in one's own state in compassion strikes me as insightful into much of what passes for altruism in modernity. Virtue signalling is a clear instance of this. Moreover, much of the progressive commentary on the refugee crisis assumes an incredibly patronising stance: much of it is shot through with a sense of our home as a secular heaven to which we delight in inviting those we choose. Manent's contrast of compassion with the rather more objective and detached charity does hint at the appalling sentimentality that dominates many discussions of beneficence.