Pierre Manent and the Tradition of European Political Thinking about Religion and Politics Cover Image

Pierre Manent şi tradiţia gândirii europene despre religie şi politică
Pierre Manent and the Tradition of European Political Thinking about Religion and Politics

Author(s): Radu Carp
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences
Published by: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti
Keywords: european political thinking; religion; politics; modernity; identity

Summary/Abstract: Pierre Manent is viewed as a French thinker that develops in modern times the liberal tradition of political thinking. One of the most important issues of Manent’s thinking that was not enough underlined it is the relationship between religion an politics and how this evolved from the beginning of Christianity until the main consequences of modernity. Manent view on religion and politics is the core of this paper analysis. The main contributions of Manent, such as Naissances de la politique moderne. Machiavel, Hobbes, Rousseau (1977), Histoire intellectuelle du libéralisme (1987) La cité de l’homme (1994), Cours familier de philosophie politique (2001), La raison des nations. Réflections sur la démocratie en Europe (2006) are analyzed from this perspective. Our conclusion is that in the way Manent deals with the relationship between politics and religion there are some constants that may be found in all his work. These are: the relationship between the Church and the different forms of political organization in Europe (Civitas, Imperium, monarchy); the fact that Christianity is one of the few current relevant concepts for political, due to the failure of totalitarian ideologies; the idea that secularization in Europe is not irreversible; we live in ”an age of separations”, and Church-State is one of these separations; we witness the religion transformation process and the État laïque cannot survive to État-nation; the role of Islam in modern societies and his perpetual finding of a political form; the relationship between Judaism, state and nation; the issue of the Christian identity of Europe.

  • Issue Year: 7/2007
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 448-454
  • Page Count: 8
  • Language: Romanian