An Intellectual History of Liberalism

By Pierre Manent and Jerrold E. Seigel

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Release date: Dec 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9780691207193

Book preview

Liberalism

CHAPTER I

Europe and the Theologico-Political Problem

HOW SHALL we begin? Where do we begin? The period preceding the establishment of liberal regimes is conventionally called the ancien régime—an entirely retrospective or negative designation to which another, positive or prospective one is bound to be preferable. This might be called the era of absolute or national monarchies. It is the notion of sovereignty that gives form to the latter. As it prevailed in Europe, this notion was radically new in history. To understand it, we have to understand the world from which it emerged and the world it then reorganized. In short, however intimidating the task, we must take a prospective view of European history—more precisely of the problem of European history—from the fall of the Roman Empire.

What were the political forms at men’s disposal after this event? At their disposal does not mean that these forms were already fully constituted; on the contrary, it was a time of general disintegration. But they were present in men’s consciousness as significant, and perhaps desirable, political possibilities.

The first form was obviously the empire, which had collapsed in the West but remained in the East. It is impossible to overemphasize just how powerful the idea of empire was in men’s minds, even long after the Roman Empire had fallen. Every king wanted to be emperor in his kingdom. The Holy Roman Empire died officially only in 1806, and was followed by two Napoleonic Empires, Bismarck’s Reich, and the Third Reich. Even today people still speak of the idea of the World State. What is the content of the idea of empire? It is the bringing together of all the known world, of the orbis terrarum, under a unique power. The idea of empire does not refer primarily to the conquering zeal of a few individuals (Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, or Napoleon). It corresponds instead to men’s unity, to the universality of human nature, which wants to be recognized and addressed by a unique power. It is a natural political idea.

The city-state was the other significant model. A city-state is potentially present from the moment a sufficient number of men are assembled in one place. Like the empire, this type of political organization enjoyed great prestige, a reflection of the Roman Republic’s glory (and also, through Rome, of the glory of Athens and Sparta). This prestige remained considerable in Europe wherever certain city-states reached a high degree of political power, economic prosperity, or intellectual eminence: the Hanseatic towns, Venice, or Florence for example. In decline after the monarchies’ triumph, it returned to nourish hopes for a new civic life, for freedom (though within a national framework, which changed profoundly the original idea). The idea of the city-state implies a public space where citizens deliberate on everything concerning their common affairs. It is the idea of man’s controlling his conditions of existence through human association. It is an eminently natural political idea.

The most striking fact about Europe’s history is that neither the city-state nor the empire, nor a combination of the two, provided the form under which Europe reconstituted its political organization. Instead, monarchy was invented.¹

The third form was the Church. To be sure, the Church cannot be placed on the same plane as the empire and the city-state. Organizing men’s social and political life is not its raison d’être. But by its very existence and distinctive vocation, it posed an immense political problem to the European peoples. This point must be stressed: the political development of Europe is understandable only as the history of answers to problems posed by the Church, which was a human association of a completely new kind. Each institutional response created in its turn new problems and called for the invention of new responses. The key to European development is what might be called, in scholarly terms, the theologico-political problem.

The Church posed two problems to the European peoples, one circumstantial, the other structural. The circumstantial problem is well known: in the general disintegration following the barbarian invasions, the Church had to take on social and political functions not carried out by civil authorities. Thus an unnatural amalgam of secular functions and specifically religious ones was formed. The structural problem is also well known, but it is important to formulate it precisely.

The definition that the Church gave itself embodied a contradiction. On the one hand, the good that it provided—salvation—was not of this world. This world, Caesar’s world, did not interest it. On the other hand, it had been assigned by God himself and by his Son the mission of leading men to salvation, for which the Church, by God’s grace, was the unique vehicle. Consequently it had a right or duty to oversee everything that could place this salvation in peril. But since all human actions were faced with the alternative of good and evil (except those actions considered immaterial), the Church had a duty to oversee all human actions. And among human actions, the most important were those carried out by rulers. Therefore, in accordance with its raison d’être, the Church had to exercise its vigilance with the keenest attention, seeing to it that rulers did not order the ruled to commit acts that endangered their salvation or allow their subjects the liberty to commit such acts. Thus the Church was led—logically and not circumstantially—to claim the supreme power, the plenitudo potestatis. The definition of this potestas varied considerably, depending on whether it was conceived of as directa or indirecta, but the political impact of its claim remained essentially the same. This claim reached its full extent with the Gregorian reform at the end of the eleventh century. At that time the ecclesia christiana was considered the only true

Reviews for An Intellectual History of Liberalism

[vgrigoriu-671201 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Very difficult to understand what the author is trying to say. Maybe the translator is to blame, maybe it's the excess of pronouns.
Even if one would be able to get past the verbiage, I'm not sure the ideas would be that interesting.