In the October issue of First Things, Pierre Manent has an article titled Human Unity Real and Imagined. He argues the European Project is a manifestation of Auguste Comte’s ‘Religion of humanity’ which does not constitute a real community of action. It is not clear why he thinks this, but based upon similar criticisms others have made, it is either because of the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’ or its abstract understanding of human nature. He says the Catholic Church is “the only real universal community.”
At the same time, he also thinks the origins of this European project are Catholic, not secular: “It was thus not by chance that the first and decisive impulses for the European project came from Catholic statesmen. Robert Shuman, Konrad Adenauer, and Alcide De Gasperi” Moreover, Manent is not against international institutions altogether. He believes they can be useful instruments for the sake of cooperation between nations.
The stronger version of the Internationalist argument is still being made in Catholic circles today. Our current Philosopher-Pope, as Peter likes to call him, famously said in Caritas in Veritate that there is an “urgent need of a true world political authority” and the UN should be reformed in such a way that it had “real teeth.” Pope Benedict does not seem as critical as Manent about European or even International unity.
It would be interesting to read Manent’s take on this encyclical, especially since it was these very passages which generated a lot of discussion. Anyone know if he has written about it?
November 17th, 2012 | 1:10 pm
Jason, as a longtime reader, and sometime translator, of Manent, and a longtime observer of people reading him who aren’t familiar with his oeuvre, I regularly find that Pierre’s thought is very difficult for people to grasp. It’s impossible to do so on the basis of one piece, or a handful. A comment-box comment can’t remedy that, of course; here are a few pointers. Pierre’s a political philosopher (and a Catholic). He has a normative view of human nature as political, of the nature and essential requirements of political community, and of what he calls “the political condition of mankind”. To a certain extent, the first two are Aristotelian (but only in a certain sense; he’s certainly not Thomistic Aristotelian, or MacIntyrean Aristotelian). Political community, for him, contains the elements that Aristotle talks about in Books VII & VIII of the Politics: the “matter” of territory and population; the “martial” elements of sword and shield; and the “moral” elements of some rough consensus about justice and nobility. A political community contains, and defines, all of these in a real “concrete universal” (Hegel’s term, without all the Hegelian baggage). As such, it necessarily establishes some sort of “us” vis-a-vis “the others” (it doesn’t have to be conflictual or bellicose!). Man as a political animal needs these concrete universals as stages for exchanging speeches — serious speeches about serious things — and as manageable vehicles for performing internal and external deeds. Man as citizen, however, needs to be conjugated with man as individual or person, man as believer, man as family-member, etc. So, his “Aristotelianism” is conditioned and qualified by Europe’s Christian and liberal history. I could go on … .
On the contemporary European scene, Manent is a partisan of the nation, as the concrete universal that still exists and which can serve these political purposes. He acknowledges, though, that we’re far from the hubris of the late-19th century nation-state, as well as the post-colonial shrinking and transforming of them. They are decadent, they are weak, they are in dire need of refurbishing. But they are real and they provide cadres of collective activity. He, however, is not adverse to European union, given the aforementioned debilities, but he is in favor only as long as it recognizes and implements the requirements of authentic political existence, starting with defined borders and territories.
However, in his judgment, the underlying and overarching “Idea of Humanity” that guides and shapes European construction since at least the Maastricht Treaty is antithetical to the nature of political community, not to mention the political condition of mankind. It’s an idea and an imaginary reunion or unity of mankind that does not exist and cannot exist short of the parousia; this idea and image, though, guides lots of EU and European speech and deed and inaction, disabling Europeans from recognizing the real condition of the world, which includes the fractured character of humanity and the continued existence of real political communities, which continue to have their own material and moral interests (Chateaubriand).
The foregoing synopsis, of course, needs much more development. To start, you should turn to the last three chapters of A World beyond Politics? and to the little work I translated, Democracy without Nations? He also has a chapter entitled “The Religion of Humanity” in A World beyond Politics? which would be relevant. Manent’s been tracking depoliticizing ideas and trends in Europe for a long time.
The topic of Manent’s view of the Catholic church in general, and the contemporary Catholic church in particular, is too big to broach here. As I said, he is a Catholic, a convert in fact. He’s a fan of the Pope as a theologian and, to a certain extent, as a culture-analyst; he however does not believe that cultural analysis is adequate to understand either contemporary Europe or politics. For him, political philosophy is the architectonic discipline.
Hope the foregoing helps a bit.
November 17th, 2012 | 2:04 pm
Breaks went out on the old Toyota pickup (built by the people that brought you Pearl Harbor) today and I had the very same feeling an hour later when I read:
“Our current Philosopher-Pope, as Peter likes to call him, famously said in Caritas in Veritate that there is an “urgent need of a true world political authority” and the UN should be reformed in such a way that it had “real teeth.”
Surely our “philospher-pope” misspoke?
November 17th, 2012 | 2:05 pm
er….brakes, not breaks!
November 17th, 2012 | 3:16 pm
thanks to Paul, of course. And Jason’s post really does point to a basic tension in Catholic thought these days.
November 17th, 2012 | 4:33 pm
Paul recommends the last few chapters of “A World Beyond Politics?”
I haven’t read those later chapters carefully yet, but am currently half-way through teaching the book, and wanted to say that the early chapters wrestle with the questions Jason raises, and shows why they are so important not only to understanding Europe, but to understanding democracy as well.
November 17th, 2012 | 10:52 pm
Jason, thanks for reminding us of that essay–I had neglected to read it when it came out.
It is a minor point compared to what Manent thinks now, and to what the Catholic church thinks now, but I think it worth mentioning that Konrad Adenauer was not as pro-European-unity, at least in the contemporary EU sense, as this post suggests. He was nearly as much a patriot for Germany as he was an advocate for European unity…i.e., my sense is he was more like De Gaulle than meets the eye, but knew that German patriotic leadership had a very different role to play. If we scratch the surface with the French Shuman and the Italian De Gasperi, we might find similar “nationalism.” Those who know, please chime in.
November 18th, 2012 | 12:08 am
Bob, I agree that Pearl Harbor was an atrocity, but what do Michael Bay and Ben Affleck have to do with your brakes?
November 18th, 2012 | 8:51 am
Patrick, after you read A World?, you’ll want to track down a 2004 lecture, “The Autumn of Nations?”, which appeared in the Jewish journal Azure. And after that, you’ll want to pick up the book, La raison des nations, which I translated and was published by ISI as Democracy without Nations? And then … . As I said, Pierre’s been tracking the depoliticization of Europe for decades now, and it’s an ongoing theme.
Carl, PIerre tends to contrast the original vision of “the European project” by the post-war founding fathers to that of “the Idea of Humanity,” or, as he puts it: “democracy without a [real, concrete] demos”.
November 18th, 2012 | 9:45 am
It’s Sunday, so I’m either inspired or tempted to link this thread with the Heaven thread of a few days ago, and to my reservations about N. T. Wright. The connection is the theme of “the Church and the world,” a phrase that neither Manent nor Wright would like. Wright looks at things as a believer (that’s not surprising), but as a certain kind of believer: a biblical scholar, and in particular, a NT scholar. His Christianity is biblical/NT Christianity.
What’s wrong with that, you ask? What does it leave out, I respond? Everything after the Bible, until the modern biblical scholarship that made his distinctive way of reading Scripture possible. In a word, there’s no place or role for philosophy (much less, political philosophy) in his articulation of faith, the Church, redemption, and so forth. He’s very not-Catholic, in other words. He’s, as it were, 1/2 of Ratzinger’s vision of theology: Ratzinger famously contrasted his view with Karl Rahner’s: Karl employs modern philosophy (i.e., Kant & Heidegger), while my instinct (said Ratzinger) is to repair to the Bible and to the Fathers. The addendum: “the Fathers” means: openness to Greek philosophical logos. Some years ago Wright and Richard John Neuhaus had a friendly exchange in the pages of our host journal; in it RJN observed that Wright takes delight in distinguishing himself and his readings (of Paul, of the Kingdom, of ….) from the (vast majority of the) Tradition, to present himself as the first in a long time to see things … awright. Probably somewhat unfair, but it captured something true.
As a result of his perspective, he has a very distinctive take on the Church (“new creation”) and its relationship to creation, fallen creation, and redeemed-and-being-redeemed creation. The Church is God’s new creation in Christ. This is a very powerful vision, to be sure. But, as I said, it’s somewhat frozen in time; perhaps better put: it privileges Paul and the Gospels in a way that has its implications and consequences for ecclesiology and many other things. Is the Pauline Christology simply adequate, or did the Church need to consort with Hellenistic thought to better articulate her faith in the great Councils?
It’s from this “biblical” perspective that he looks out “beyond” the Church and considers “the world,” in the instant case: the political life of human beings. When he looks there he sees pretty much what a contemporary center-left European does, His political ideal — here I speak succinctly, perhaps even opaquely — is global democracy of some sort or another (perhaps akin to the proposition made in Caritas, which is found earlier in John XXIII).
Manent, in contrast, is a political philosopher. He looks at the world through the lenses of reason, of reason trained in political philosophy (see above). In that optic, the Church does not show up as the bride of Christ, or the in-breaking of God’s redemptive purposes (and Person) in the world, it shows up a a quasi-political body (this is NOT a politicized or sociological take on the Church!!!), as one of the great “spiritual masses” (Hegel) that organize(d) humanity and which orient men in time and space (and beyond). It has its own forms of unity, its own motives of action, its own forms of authority, … . All this is contained in his phrase “real universal community” (which he gets from Augustine, sort of).
So, with Wright and Manent we have two very powerful and illuminating AND INCOMPLETE takes on the nature of the Church and its relationship, de facto and normatively, to the other “great bodies” that together constitute the human world, which, in Manent’s phrase, “is political, insofar as it is human”.
Or at least, that’s how I see things between them.
Have a great Sunday.
November 18th, 2012 | 1:55 pm
Pete, I was just saying I was shocked by the ‘philosopher-pope’s’ choice of words; about as shocked as I was when the brakes failed on the truck.
I like this pope (I usually like popes), and perhaps I’m reading too much into his words, and I was hoping one of our academics might clarify his meaning.
I mean: We have “..urgent need of a true world political authority” and the UN should be reformed in such a way that it had “real teeth.”
Really?
November 18th, 2012 | 2:58 pm
Paul, Good on exactly why the Wright stuff is at best half-right.
November 19th, 2012 | 9:13 am
On Rahner vs Ratzinger: Rahner at least had the right general idea about how theology should be done: on top (as it were) of the best available (stretching from the ancients to the present day) philosophical understanding. And philosophy means not just the ‘political’ kind, pursued in an isolated silo, but metaphysics, epistemology, mind, language, logic, nature, ethics, etc. This could be regarded as a “scholastic” ideal. Rahner’s mistake (IMHO) was to take Kant and Heidegger as the best representatives of recent philosophy (in his late work it seems to me to be basically all Heidegger, no Kant, but no matter). The best representatives of contemporary Catholic philosophy have rather combined a deep revitalization of the Greeks and Scholastics with an appreciation of crucial modern insights from Frege and Wittgenstein, bypassing German Idealism altogether. Thus we see the complete poverty of contemporary ‘theology’ while contemporary Catholic philosophy burgeons in comparison (Anscombe, Geach, Dummett, van Inwagen, Stump, Zagzebski).
November 19th, 2012 | 9:19 am
I might also have mentioned John Haldane, who occasionally contributes to FT, as a representative of the latter tendency.
November 19th, 2012 | 5:17 pm
It looks to me that HT and I come down pretty much on the same spot when it comes to the relevant facts and merits of Rahner’s theology. We both agree that he employed Kant & Heidegger to a great degree, starting with “Spirit in the World”, and that that led to unfortunate theological consequences (“Anonymous Christian[ity]” anyone?). Of course in a comment-post, it’s impossible to provide a thorough review of all of the volumes of Theological Investigations (and there are aspects of his thought that are quite good, including a magisterial treatment of “concupiscentia”, not to mention some beautiful Ignatian reflections); hence the Ratzinger statement, which itself was not intended as a full statement of the characteristics (or merits) of Rahner’s thought by his erstwhile collaborator. (One could look at the “Principles of Catholic Theology” and “Truth and Tolerance” for more extended treatments by the theologian-Bishop-Cardinal.)
I did seem to strike more than one nerve, though, with the post, since HT also displayed his capacity for (moderate) snideness with his “silo” comment and his exasperated (?) brief exposition of what true “Catholic philosophy” is and entails today. HT probably has a certain conception of what “political philosophy” is, which led to his (mild but) slighting remark about it. What I, or Manent, mean by it may be something different, though. One would be hard-pressed to judge on the basis of a post or two.
However, the real issue his comments raise — one that I am personally and professionally interested in, and some of our more systematic-minded readers and commentators as well — is, how the genuinely catholic Catholic intellectual should conduct his or her mind? I tried to indicate that Wright embodies a (particular biblical) faith without openness to philosophy, while Manent practices a high form of philosophical analysis, but brackets his own faith, which is unsatisfying to the demands of faith. As for HT’s comments, I’m certainly not averse to the various disciplines he (?) listed (and we both would agree there are many more), but how they are arranged and ordered is a real issue. Merely denigrating “political philosophy” and listing other disciplines that a catholic/Catholic mind should pursue doesn’t get us very far. And the list of eminent practitioners, many of whom I read, some with profit, doesn’t get me very far in this regard. I strongly suspect that this is not the place to pursue this topic, since it can very quickly get academic and pedantic, but I thought I’d at least acknowledge that it was, and is, worth pursuing. Cheers.
November 19th, 2012 | 8:50 pm
An addendum: upon rereading HT’s post, I see that he might simply be attributing the “silo” location/characterization of “political” philosophy to Rahner; if so, I have no idea of what Rahner had in mind. But if HT is reporting Rahner rather than making his own characterization, I withdraw the thought that he’s being (directly) snide. Still, the question of the natura et ordo scientiarum is in play.
November 20th, 2012 | 1:00 pm
Well, I didn’t really mean to be snide, Paul, with the ‘silo’ comment. Apologies if it reads that way. I did mean to be a bit *sharp* however, and stress that philosophy in my view is a sort of seamless garment, and is especially so with regard to its proper ‘appropriation ‘ by theology. I have observed that the political philosophers/scientists here (and the people they read and refer to) appear to have no serious interest even in a subject like contemporary ‘analytic’ virtue ethics, which is substantial and generally very Aristotelian in its inspiration — let alone post-Fregean philosophy of language, say. In this they are very unlike the Scholastics, who all took language, logic, ethics and metaphysics very seriously (see Geach’s Reference and Generality). I believe John Haldane, certainly a species of conservative, has remarked somewhere that the closest analogue of Scholasticism in philosophy today is the analytic ‘school’. I agree with him.
Thanks for reading what I said carefully and responding.
November 20th, 2012 | 2:35 pm
I had a vague recollection that you’d remonstrated with Peter a while back about not knowing contemporary virtue-ethics. This is a delicate matter. No one can be universally cognizant; we have to pick-and-choose, and often our options are significantly shaped by our disciplines, our encounters, our personal likes-and-dislikes, circumstances beyond our control, …. ; in other words, we’re human and our intellectual life is too. I am fascinated by the topic of “Europe,” but there’s no way I can keep up with everything about Europe that crosses my path and that looks interesting. (FYI: Same thing’s true with “virtue”.) What’s true about myself, I tend to recognize and allow for in others. In general, even though I’m a professor of philosophy, I don’t find that the academic disciplines and academic practitioners of philosophy today nearly satisfy me in my quest for wisdom, or at least better understanding of the world, both as it is today and sub specie aeternitatis; in particular, I usually find academic philosophy and philosophers remarkable unhelpful when it comes to politics. So, I turn elsewhere for light and wisdom. No doubt I miss a lot of good stuff in the journals, etc. that way, but I also find that when I talk to fellow academic philosophers, I can bring to their attention interesting thinkers that the discipline doesn’t consider. For example, Aurel Kolnai. I introduced him to a rather well-known Catholic ethician recently, and he’s ordered his books. I look forward to hearing from him what he thinks about this superb 20th century Catholic moral philosopher.
Thanks for your response. Gotta go teach … .
November 20th, 2012 | 5:04 pm
Paul, of course I understand we can’t keep up with everything. I’m not a professional academic, and have little time for *any* of the stuff I’m most interested in. But if you organize conferences with titles like Stuck with Virtue and you’re a professional philosopher, you might once in a while have a glance at a book on virtue ethics outside your usual reading (gentle dig, Peter; no harm intended). I myself am cursed with a too-wide curiosity and desire to understand things.
Thanks for the tip on Kolnai, whom I’d never heard of. I’ll check him out — I frequently like off-the-beaten-path thinkers. Incidentally, I see the well-known analytic philosopher Barry Smith has an interest in him, so once in a while even those dryasdust academics hit pay dirt (as the Wittgensteinian Peter Winch developed a fascination with Simone Weil). The journal Analysis usually doesn’t have much on politics, but recently they published an interesting reductio ad absurdum of libertarian thinking applied to foreign ownership of a country’s property — so you never know.
November 20th, 2012 | 6:27 pm
And thanks for the Analysis hat tip; can’t have too many critiques of libertarianism — “creepy and creeping” (or galloping) as it is today. I particularly relish reductio-critiques.
On the Kolnai front, start with Ethics, Value & Reality. Or, if you like quirky but penetrating political philosophy, do Privilege and Liberty.
November 21st, 2012 | 8:59 am
The article I was thinking of is “A problem for conservatism” by Mark T. Nelson in Analysis 69(4), 2009. Apparently the author teaches at a Christian college, Westmont.
November 21st, 2012 | 10:16 am
hope to see more Seaton-HT exchanges in the future…
November 21st, 2012 | 2:06 pm
Thanks, Carl. I’ll be dropping in from time to time. I forgot that in addition to making a serious argument, Nelson’s article is actually funny. I haven’t got online access to Analysis, but here’s how it begins:
“President Anheuser W. Bush was having a bad day.” [...] “Here it was, the eve of the American Tercentennial, and America had no place to celebrate it, because the last remaining piece of American soil had been sold off.”
November 21st, 2012 | 5:31 pm
Wicked funny, whetted my appetite even more, HT.
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