Recovering the Moral Contents of Life

The last time I wrote about the French political philosopher Pierre Manent for City Journal, I explored his “theological-political reflection” in light of the publication of his 2015 book Situation de la France, which appeared a year later in English as Beyond Radical Secularism. In this study, Manent expresses reservations about militant secularism, affirms the “Christian mark” of France and other European nations, and sympathetically treats the contribution Jews have made to European civilization. Manent makes the challenging argument that the successful absorption of French and European Muslims depends on European democracy maintaining its civilizational soul. Muslims must not enter an empty space—a “wasteland”—where they would be free to affirm the umma instead of becoming loyal citizens of the countries in which they now live. Further, Manent reflects on “political action and the common good,” contending that the human good is not unsupported, and that we do not live in a merely arbitrary world; political action, he maintains, should be guided and informed by the old cardinal virtues: courage, prudence, temperance, and justice.