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December 3, 2018|Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Auguste Comte, Aurel Kolnai, European Union, Humanitarianism, Orestes Brownson, Pope Francis, Soloviev, The Idol of Our Age

The Sacred Rites of Humanity: A Conversation with Daniel Mahoney

by Daniel J. Mahoney|

Daniel Mahoney discusses his new book The Idol of Our Age and how humanitarianism corrupts politics and religion.

August 9, 2017|Humanitarianism, Immanuel Kant, Pierre Manent, Progressivism, The Resistance

Religion of Humanity

by Paul Seaton|

 

We can’t help it, we’re human, we necessarily have worldviews.  Everybody does.  The Resistance does too, rough hewn, in the aggregate, and tacit as it may be.  Now it is time to take a look squarely at the Resistance’s main object of concern:  Humanity itself.  The Resistance declares itself “inclusive” and it hates “exclusion.”  Its vision and its concern encompass all of humanity.  But not all “humanisms” are created equal.  But what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.  Who is to say that Resistance humanism is unquestionable?

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August 4, 2017|Christianity, Humanitarianism, Pierre Manent, Progressivism, Resistance

Progressivism in the Resistance

by Paul Seaton|

 

In a first installment (“Resistance, in the light of 1776”), following the lead of Pierre Manent, the Resistance came to sight as a way of looking at things characterized by 1) a binary view of legitimate and illegitimate views (in keeping with Hilary Clinton’s “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it” litany); 2) a quasi-religious cast (“political orthodoxy” and “heresy,” observed Manent); and 3) a novel form of democracy characterized by terms such as “diversity,” “multiculturalism,” and “inclusion,” but with its own blind spots and exclusions.  As I put it:  it is “rather exclusive in its inclusivity and monolithic in its view of diversity.” 

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June 1, 2017|

Pierre Manent’s Defense of the Nation-State

by Paul Seaton|

Palais Bourbon (seat of the National Assembly) in Paris at dusk.
"The nation-state extended civic life, the condition of ‘living free’—which until then had been the privilege of only a small number."

Responses

Within the Triangle of Politics, Philosophy, and Religion

by Aurelian Craiutu

One could hardly agree more with Paul Seaton when he writes, in the June Liberty Forum essay, that the elegant voice of Pierre Manent is one that we should listen to carefully these days, as our liberal democracies are on the defensive on both sides of the Atlantic, threatened by the rise of populism and…

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Walking in the Shadow of Globalism

by Samuel Gregg

In the wake of the rubble and death left strewn across Europe from the Atlantic to the Volga after two brutal wars in the space of 30 years, it was understandable that many Europeans wanted to severely tame the nation-state in 1945. What a stark domestication could portend, though, was hardly thought about. That supranational…

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Manent, Vox Clamantis in Deserto

by Guillaume de Thieulloy

It has been a great pleasure for me to read Paul Seaton’s stimulating Liberty Forum essay dedicated to the political thought of Pierre Manent. With chagrin, I can report to Law and Liberty’s readers that Manent is better known and more read by American scholars than by French ones. Let this response to Seaton be an…

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Pierre Manent: Lux Gallica ex Tenebris

by Paul Seaton

Perhaps the nascent Manent fan club can meet in Paris at the Café de Flore later this summer? There we could raise un verre or two to Manent, expound on our views, and hash out whatever differences we might have. Who knows, perhaps the man himself could join us? Pending that reunion, a brief response…

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On the “Religion of Humanity”

by Aurelian Craiutu

In my response to Paul Seaton’s Liberty Forum essay, I mentioned once the phrase “religion of humanity” that can be found in Manent’s works. As Professor Seaton points out, this is an important concept that the French philosopher uses to explain the current trend toward homogeneity in the world. Seaton claims that the term was…

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May 26, 2017|Humanitarianism, Islamic Terrorism, Manchester Bombing

The Impotence of the Kantian Republic

by Theodore Dalrymple|

People lay flowers and messages in St Ann's Square in Manchester, England, placed in tribute to the victims of the May 22 terror attack at the Manchester Arena. (BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images)

When a young man such as Salman Abedi, the Manchester bomber, blows himself up, killing as many others as he can take with him, it is only natural for us to ask why he acted as he did. His behavior is so extraordinary, as well as evil, and so far beyond the range of normal, that we are inclined to seek for an answer in his personal psychopathology. Only the mad would do such a thing; and since he did it, we conclude that he must have been mad.

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August 12, 2013|Anger, Charles Dickens, Humanitarianism, Othello, Samuel Johnson

On the Pleasures of Humanitarian Anger

by Theodore Dalrymple|

I never see the International Herald Tribune except in airport lounges or in the lobbies of hotel where it seems to be given away like improving literature or left as missionaries were once said to leave tracts on trains in the hope of converts. And thus it was, the other day, that I happened upon a copy and, having a few minutes to wait, read it.

The cartoon in the paper was what mainly sparked my interest. It showed Pope Francis, arms outstretched in a gesture of ecumenical welcome, his face beaming with self-approbation, denying that he was one to judge a homosexual. To his side and slightly behind him was a woman demanding to know about his attitude to women.

If cartoons are supposed to raise a laugh this one failed by quite a wide margin but there was nevertheless a certain amount of irony in it, though I suspect that it was unintended. For the woman was dressed in a T-short, her body was pear-shaped and her countenance, framed by a pudding-bowl coiffure of black hair, was that of an angry, belligerent and above all self-righteous termagant.

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Book Reviews

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

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The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

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Liberty Classics

Rereading Politica in the Post-Liberal Moment

by Glenn A. Moots

Althusius offers a rich constitutionalism that empowers persons to thrive alongside one another in deliberate communities.

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James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

In The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper defended democracy against both mob rule and majority tyranny.

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Podcasts

Stuck With Decadence

A discussion with Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat discusses with Richard Reinsch his new book The Decadent Society.

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Can the Postmodern Natural Law Remedy Our Failing Humanism?

A discussion with Graham McAleer

Graham McAleer discusses how postmodern natural law can help us think more coherently about human beings and our actions.

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Did the Civil Rights Constitution Distort American Politics?

A discussion with Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell discusses his new book, The Age of Entitlement.

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America, Land of Deformed Institutions

A discussion with Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin pinpoints that American alienation and anger emerges from our weak political, social, and religious institutions.

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About

Law & Liberty’s focus is on the classical liberal tradition of law and political thought and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law & Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

The opinions expressed on Law & Liberty are solely those of the contributors to the site and do not reflect the opinions of Liberty Fund.
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