An Intellectual History of Liberalism Pierre Manent ; translated by Rebecca Balinski.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Manent, Pierre.

Contributor:

Balinski, Rebecca

Seigel, Jerrold E.

Series:

New French Thought

New French thought

Standardized Title:

Histoire intellectuelle du liberalisme. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Liberalism.

Liberalism--History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

3rd printing, 1st paperback printing.

Manufacture:

Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2021

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J : Princeton University Press, 1996.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Europe and the theologico-political problem

Machiavelli and the fecundity of evil

Hobbes and the new political art

Locke, labor, and property

Montesquieu and the separation of powers

Rousseau, critic of liberalism

Liberalism after the French Revolution

Benjamin Constant and the liberalism of opposition

François Guizot : the liberalism of government

Tocqueville : liberalism confronts democracy.

Notes:

Original title: Histoire intellectuelle du liberalisme.

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780691207193

0691207194

OCLC:

1227051255