Short description:

Pierre Manent is one of France&&&39;s leading political philosophers. This first English translation of his profound and strikingly original book La loi naturelle et les droits de l&&&39;homme is a reflection on the central question of the Western political tradition.

Long description:

This first English translation of Pierre Manent?s 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 Étienne 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. Manent boldly confronts the prejudices and dogmas of those who have repudiated the classical and 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 and 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.

?In a remarkable book titled Natural Law and Human Rights: Toward a Recovery of Practical Reason, Manent responds to Montaigne?s challenge. Here Manent persuasively defends the enduring relevance of the old cardinal virtues?courage, justice, prudence, and moderation?and of a conception of non-arbitrary conscience that can provide practical reason with rich moral content.? ?The New Criterion

Table of Contents:

1. Why Natural Law Matters

2. Counsels of Fear

3. The Order of the State without Right or Law

4. The Law, Slave to Rights

5. The Individual and the Agent

6. Natural Law and Human Motives

Appendix: Recovering Law?s Intelligence