Natural Law and Human Rights: Toward a Recovery of Practical Reason

by Pierre Manent, Ralph C. Hancock (Translation), Daniel J. Mahoney (Foreword)

Pierre Manent is one of France's leading political philosophers. This first English translation of his profound and strikingly original book La loi naturelle et les droits de l'homme is a reflection on the central question of the Western political tradition. In six chapters, developed from the prestigious �tienne Gilson lectures at the Institut Catholique de Paris, and in a related appendix, Manent contemplates the steady displacement of the natural law by the modern conception of human rights. He aims to restore the grammar of moral and political action, and thus the possibility of an authentically political order that is fully compatible with liberty rightly understood. Manent boldly confronts the prejudices and dogmas of those who have repudiated the classical and (especially) Christian notion of "liberty under law" and in the process shows how groundless many contemporary appeals to human rights turn out to be. Manent denies that we can generate obligations from a condition of what Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau call the "state of nature," where human beings are absolutely free, with no obligations to others. In his view, our ever-more-imperial affirmation of human rights needs to be reintegrated into what he calls an "archic" understanding of human and political existence, where law and obligation are inherent in liberty and meaningful human action. Otherwise we are bound to act thoughtlessly in an increasingly arbitrary or willful manner.

Natural Law and Human Rights will engage students and scholars of politics, philosophy, and religion, and will captivate sophisticated readers who are interested in the question of how we might reconfigure our knowledge of, and talk with one another about, politics.

Genres: Philosophy, Law, Catholic, Politics

132 pages, Hardcover

Published February 28, 2020

About the author

Pierre Manent est directeur d' etudes a l' Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales, membre fondateur de la revue Commentaire.

Reviews

[Ethan Adkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many scholars coming from the Catholic tradition have written that natural law is the antidote to secular human rights. This is in a sense Manent’s argument as well. The difference with Manent from others that I have read is the specificity of critique of the liberal order. Manent investigates the thinking of the enlightenment philosophers that intellectually constructed the basis for the modern liberal order. What he reveals is that the moral relativism and passivity we are encountering in the West is inherent in the intellectual design. The system is more or less bankrupt and the West has hamstrung itself into a situation where it refuses to make moral and political judgment. While the liberal order’s successes are plain to us, it’s anthropology is ultimately extremely dark. Hobbes’ conception is particularly harrowing. Man is a beast who desires nothing else than power and pleasure. The ancients, Aristotle, thought human motivations were more complex. Man did things out of pleasure, utility, and nobility or honor. Law was the measure and rule of human action. But in modern thought, law is no longer the order intrinsic to human nature, which is the basis for much of the positive law that humans command. Law is now a set of guardrails as humans expand into freedom as they define it, keeping them from harming themselves and others.

Behind all of this critique and analysis is the shadow of the law, by this, Manent means law metaphysically, in particular, the natural law, especially as it is articulated by Aquinas. To Manent, the Western acceptance of homosexual behavior and the increasing denial of the most obvious binary in the human race, that of the sexes, shows the complete unreality and meaninglessness of the modern liberal order and maybe the summit of modernity’s flight from law. In this respect, Manent echoes much of CS Lewis’ Abolition of Man.


Manent is a shrewd political philosopher, and digs deeply into the sources of modernity to reveal that all of this chaos and lack of practical reason, the reason that answers, “what shall we do?” is inherent in its design. Pure subjectivity cannot lay down a common rule and cannot conceive of a common good. The liberal order is basically one of movement of goods, people, and ideas and citizens are subjects that are more and more rootless, unable to act and respond to the changes around us. Where will the West go to find resources to help us wisely govern ourselves? Maybe modernity is becoming absurd enough in its beliefs that it may turn to that which it left behind: natural law and a more dignified anthropology that sees man not as a beast but as a creature made in the image of God.

[Madeleine Eliot · Rating 1 out of 5]

some philosophers should not be paid to think. this guy is one of them

[Mark O'mara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe it is just me but I found this hard going. Might be partly the translation - a French academic thing! - and the writing style but seems long winded and dense where a good edit would have given the very good ideas a more succinct expression.

[Alonso Perez-Lona · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some nice bits. Sadly, with less rambling all the substance could probably have fit in 50 pages or so.