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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 a series of 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.
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History, LiberalismShowing 6 featured editions. View all 6 editions?
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1
Histoire intellectuelle du libéralisme: dix leçons
1997, Hachette littératures
in French
- [Nouv. éd.]
2012788653 9782012788657
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2
An Intellectual History of Liberalism
July 22, 1996, Princeton University Press
Paperback
in English
0691029113 9780691029115
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3
An intellectual history of liberalism
1995, Princeton University Press
in English
0691034370 9780691034379
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4
An intellectual history of liberalism
1995, Princeton University Press
in English
0691029113 9780691029115
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5
An intellectual history of liberalism
1994, Princeton University Press
in English
0691034370 9780691034379
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6
Histoire intellectuelle du libéralisme: dix leçons
1987, Calmann-Lévy
in French
2702115578 9782702115572
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First Sentence
"HOW SHALL we begin?"
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