manent on strauss

Fabrice Paradis Bland James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions

Pierre Manents critique of Leo Strauss: Thoughts on Christianity and Modernity 1

In his last book, Democracy Without Nations: The Fate of Self-Government in Europe , 2

Pierre Manent explores the relation between modern representative democracy and the nation as

a political form. Even though he continues in this book to display a very deep concern about the

future of European national democracies, Pierre Manents immediate preoccupation with the

actual state of European nations is rooted in a more fundamental desire to understand the essence

of modernity. His main intention is to grasp modernitys genesis , i.e. the complex way 3

modernity has articulated itself with the two other spiritual masses that have preceded it in the 4

history of the West: ancient philosophy and Christianity. What is modernity for Pierre Manent?

Since its meaning has been changing throughout history, Modern appears to have no fixed

material content. The awareness of being modern rather seems to imply the formal awareness

of a difference, of my actual difference with the humanity that preceded me. Pierre Manents

interest with modernity is more precisely an interest in the coming to be of the modern

difference , a difference which, for the last two centuries, has served as an answer to the 5

question that man always is for himself.

This short text is an excerpt from a much larger essay.1

Pierre Manent, Democracy Without Nations? The Fate of Self-Government in Europe, Intercollegiate 2

Studies Institute, 2007, 130 pages.

Manent, On Historical Causality, in Modernity and its Discontents, Rowman and Littlefield, 1998, p. 3

210.

Manent, Democracy Without Nations?, p. 23.4

Daniel J. Mahoney, Modern Man and Man Tout Court: The Flight from Nature and the Modern 5

Difference, in Interpretation, Spring 1995, Vol. 22, No. 3, p. 417.

1


Pierre Manent distinguishes three different periods in modernity, and correspondingly

three different material meanings of the word modernity. From 1776 to 1848, modern

expressed mans sense of belonging to the new democratic humanity, his feeling of himself as

separated from the aristocratic humanity of the past. With the appearance of the social question

around 1848, modern takes on a new meaning. To be sure, it remains the awareness of a

difference. To be modern means to demand real social equality and to declare oneself

unsatisfied with the formal equality of bourgeois democracy. Finally, from 1968 upwards,

modern takes on the meaning that it still has today. Modern is the man who has an

overwhelming feeling of humanitys unity, and who therefore wants to abolish all remaining

separations between men, whether it be a separation between the ruler and the ruled, the teacher

and the student, a man and a women, parents and their children, members of different religions,

etc. Once this stage has been reached, modernity must necessarily turn itself against national

divisions. For Pierre Manent, this ultimate development of modernity must imperatively be

fought against. We need to understand why.

In each of its three principal historical figures, the modern thinks of himself as superior to

what preceded him. In the words of Kant, he sees himself has successfully emerging from the

self-imposed immaturity that was crippling his forefathers. Always, the maturity that is 6

supposedly reached by the modern is measured by the yardstick of what Manent considers to be

the democratic dogma: human beings are free beings who have rights . Being modern then 7

means being and wanting to be evermore democratic in that sense. According to Manent, this

Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment?, Akademie Ausgabe, VIII, 35. Our translation.6

Manent, On Historical Causality, p. 210.7

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objective is nothing but a demand for a radical transformation of mans being, a transformation

that Manent, as we have already indicated, does not indiscriminately welcome with open arms.

It is difficult, writes Manent, to be a friend of democracy, but it is necessary to be a friend of

democracy [] It is difficult to be a friend of democracy, because the democratic dogma is

destructive of the moral contents that constitute the uniqueness of humanity and therefore its

grandeur. It is necessary to be a friend of democracy because in this condition alone is it possible

to preserve under the democratic dogma, at least by reflection or analogy, and often or

sometimes in accord with the virtue of men, the reality of these moral contents . Like 8

Tocqueville before him, Manent considers modernity as a historical current, a gigantic and

inescapable democratic wave which substantially alters the world of man, a movement within

which human freedom must find a way to emerge and to preserve itself. Unlike Tocqueville,

Pierre Manent isnt satisfied with a phenomenological description of our modern difference. If

modernity is indeed a movement, an ever accelerating movement that burst onto the world scene

at the end of the 18th century, it had to be set in motion somehow. Starting from Tocqueville,

Pierre Manents reflection on democratic modernity takes the peculiar form of a physicists quest

for a dynamic formula . To fully understand modernity, contends Manent, one has to seek the 9

cause of a movement , the historical causality of a process which has irreversibly changed and 10

is still changing mans being. It is Pierre Manents preoccupation with the historical causality of

modernity that has led him to a confrontation with the political philosopher Leo Strauss.

Manent, Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, Rowman and Littlefield, 1996, p. 129.8

Manent, On Historical Causality, 210.9

Manent, On Historical Causality, 210.10

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Like Strauss before him, Pierre Manents theory of modernitys historical origins attaches

great importance to modern political philosophys part in proclaiming and recognizing the

modern change. Without a doubt, modern philosophers were very efficient in persuading men to

be suspicious of ancient philosophys pernicious prejudices. They were the first to give a clear

expression, not only to the desire for the modern change, but to the modern condition itself.

From them, we have learned to proclaim our innate individual rights to freedom and equality. As

we all know, modern political philosophys aggressive promotion of modernity had one other

very important consequence: that of presenting us with two different, successive, and

incompatible rational ways of affirming human universality . To Aristotles understanding of 11

man as a rational and political animal, modern political philosophy appended its own

revolutionary affirmation of man as a free individual being endowed with rights. Leo Strauss

famously understood this problem, the so-called problem of historicism, as an opportunity to

reopen the debate ancient and modern philosophy. The result of Strauss reexamination of this

debate is relatively well-known. In order overcome the historical plurality of ways to affirm

mans nature or universality, Leo Strauss subjected modern political philosophy to a radical

critique. For Strauss, the notion of modern natural right was nothing but a conceptual tool, an ad

hoc theory invented by a few reckless philosophers (Machiavel, Hobbes, Locke) who were more

interested in mastering nature than in understanding it. Led by his uncompromising critique of

modern natural right, Strauss had no other option but to reduce the experience of being modern,

i.e. the historical consciousness of the modern difference, to the status of a vulgar illusion, a

fallacy promoted by an ill-advised and dysfunctional philosophy. No matter what modern


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philosophy had led us to believe about ourselves, maintained Strauss, nothing could change in

the nature of man. For Strauss, man was naturally immune to the virus of history.

Pierre Manent finds Leo Strauss uncompromising notion of human nature to be

untenable . For Manent, the experience of the modern difference is the individual experience 12

of a very real historical condition. As such, it cannot be sidestepped as easily as Strauss seems to

suggest it can. Properly understood, the modern understanding of the individual Self doesnt just

superficially conceal our permanent nature. In truth, there is something in the modern that is

really unnatural . Modern political philosophys praises and promotion of democratic 13

modernity has effectively help to carry us away from nature. Now, how can one rationally

account for this most improbable transformation? It is Pierre Manents firm belief that, long

before receiving its first subjective expression in philosophy, the modern elevation of man

above his own nature, his gradually becoming a historical being, had received its most decisive

impulse from the objective dialectic of European politics and Christianity. This dialectic was

presiding over the formation of something entirely new: the nation as a political form.

Pierre Manents critique of Strauss understanding of the modern difference could be said

to rely on one single historical observation, the discovery of a fact that had eluded Strauss

attention: the political form within which Greek political philosophers had tried to understand

and interpret human experience, the Greek polis, was no longer predominant when modern

philosophy launched its first attack on Socratic political philosophy. European monarchs had



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succeeded in imposing to their vassals and to the Christian Church an entirely new political form,

entirely unknown to the Greeks: the nation. For Manent, this historical defeat of the polis had a

huge impact on the way Westerners were to organize themselves politically in the future. The

consequences of the citys disappearance werent limited to monarchical Europe. The modern

national State, the frame which has been the bedrock of modern representative democracy for the

last two centuries, was also born out of the citys defeat to the hands of the European absolute

monarchy. The monarchical nation was destined in modernity to play the exact same role the city

had played in the ancient world. It was to become the new whole within which all the elements

of our life come together and take on meaning . Consequently, to bring to light the historical 14

causality at the source of the modern movement meant for Manent to understand this most

mysterious changing of the guard, the transition from the ancient city to the nation.

In order to understand the modern difference, Pierre Manent abandons Leo Strauss too

exclusive focus on the history of political philosophy. He feels compelled rather to launch a

inquiry into the birth of a political form that has been specific to modernity, to write a history of

the national form . So far as I can tell, the very idea of a reasoned history of political forms is 15

peculiar to Pierre Manent. In any case, it is entirely absent from Leo Strauss critique of modern

political philosophy. The undeniable historical progression that has taken place in Europe from

the city to the nation doesnt impair his will to promote and provoke a return to ancient political

philosophy. Disregarding it, Leo Strauss effectively disconnects Socratic natural right from the


Manent, A World beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State, Princeton University Press, 2006, 15

p. 43.

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political form that cradled it. Why did Strauss reflect on our modern political experience in a so

un-aristotelian fashion? One may put forward the hypothesis that he had no qualms about

idealizing Socratic natural right because, as opposed to Aristotle, Strauss had no real political

interest. His main objective was to salvage the possibility of philosophy. Be that as it may, Pierre

Manents approach to modernity is certainly more Aristotelian in spirit than Strauss. On this

subject, his perspective on history is closer to his professor and friend Raymond Arons than to

Strauss. And yet, Pierre Manent does not fault Strauss more than he faults Tocqueville for

disregarding the historical novelty that the nation represents. Like Tocqueville, Leo Strauss lived

in the midst of the national era. It was easier for him to take the nation for granted. As long as the

possible disappearance of the national form stayed remote, i.e. as long as it could be 16

confidently assumed that the nation would remain the ultimate form of political life , it had to 17

be more difficult, perhaps even impossible, for one to seriously devote oneself to the clarification

of the historical origins of the nation. With respect to the nation, argues Manent in the manner of

Hegel, the owl of Minerva cannot commence its flight before the beginning of dusk . 18

Conversely, Pierre Manents inquiry into the nation is to be interpreted as a confirmation that the

dusk of the nation has begun.

Indeed, Leo Strauss historical naivety toward the nation, his downplaying of the reality

of our historical finitude, is a luxury than Pierre Manent feels can no longer be afforded. For the

first time since its creation, the nations future is really imperiled. Of course, this is especially


Manent, What is a Nation?, in The Intercollegiate Review, Fall 2007, p. 1.17

Cf. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, First Preface, in fine.18

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true of European nations. There are of course good historical reasons for that. Two World Wars

that have bled Europe dry, and the horrific crimes perpetrated by the Nazis, have significantly

contributed to the weakening of European nations self-assurance. These events are an important

motive behind the project of the European Union. It motivates the planed attempt to overcome

the national divisions with the autonomous creation of a new a-political body, a supra-national

and indefinitely extended association of individuals and sub-national cultures, all protected by

the judicial power of a State that Pierre Manent fears will be more disciplinary than 19

democratic. Manent never tires to criticize his fellow Europeans for the self-congratulatory way

they like to think of a post-national Europe as the new leading light of modern democratic

humanity. But, the European project isnt for him just a proof of Europes chronic deficiency in

manliness. More seriously, Manent sees it as being rooted in an illusion, an illusion which

encourages the assumption that modern representative democracy will be able to survive outside

of its old national frame. Pierre Manent refers to this illusion as the democratic empire . 20

This last expression is not chosen randomly. Like the city and the nation, the empire is a

political form in its own right, and a natural one at that. Its origin, contends Manent, is an idea, a

confused yet very compelling idea. The idea of the empire is the idea, both natural and

noble, of the gathering of the human race under one sole governor who is the instrument and

symbol of its unity . Why then does Manent understand the illusion of the democratic empire 21

to be specific to modernity? What gives the noble idea of the gathering of the human race the



Manent, The City of Man, Princeton University Press, 1998, pp. 205-6.21

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uncanny power it has recently been wielding over democratic modernity? The modern illusion of

the democratic empire is fostered by our nurtured tendency a tendency that the democratic

empire fuels back in return to conceive of the individual as the most basic element with which

our societies are to be constructed.

For Manent, America is not immune from the effects of this uncanny dialectic. Most

recently, the democratic empire has also animated Americas foreign policy. The influence of

the vague idea of human unity is mostly visible in the so-called neo-conservative rationale 22

behind the late invasion of Iraq by American military troops. Ironically, the neo-conservative

foreign policy manifested the same idealistic contempt toward the historical presuppositions of

modern democracy than the Old Europe they so much despised . They too understood the 23 24

universal validity of individual human rights as a sufficient justification for the foreign policy

they wanted America to adopt. They too seemed to hold these individual rights as providing a

sufficient warrant for the smooth functioning of modern representative democracy. Under the

spell of the democratic empire, argues Manent, both the European nations and America have

shown little appreciation for the historical presuppositions of modern representative democracy.

In Europe in particular, the total disregard of the fact that our modern democracies have come

into the world in pre-existing historical nations is endangering the survival of these very nations,

and by extension the political freedom that they had made possible (balkanization of European

nations, mounting concern throughout Europe with immigration, resurgence of extremist



For a critique of neo-conservatism which present a similar argument, see Daniel J. Mahoney, 24

Conservatism, Democracy, and Foreign Policy, in The Intercollegiate Review, Fall 2006, pp. 3-13.

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political parties, mutual estrangement of Europe and America, etc.). To counteract this fateful

trend, Pierre Manent has taken upon himself to remind us of the frailty of modern being and

freedom. Modernity, he contends, is not natural to man. It is rather, as Tocqueville understood it,

the feature of a distinct breed of humanity . Now, continues Manent, modernitys 25

distinctiveness, our self-awareness as individual selves, would never have been possible in a city.

It presupposed the prior availability of the nation. Just like the Greek who was a polis-tical

animal, the modern is to considered as a national animal. Manent goes so far as to say that if

nations were to disappear, each of us would as a consequence become a stranger, a monster to

himself . 26

What is missed by those who labour under the illusion of the democratic empire is the

long and painful modification of the human soul which first gave the modern his peculiar

capacity to live in national communities. This modification of the human soul also underlies

what Manent describes as one of the fundamental traits of modernity: the clear-cut separation

of political power and religion . The numerous problems encountered by the US in Iraq is a 27

painful reminder of the fact that a political bodys capacity to govern itself through democratic

representation hinges on the objective predominance of national ties over other possible human

Cf. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book II, op. cit., p. 318: There are certain vices and certain 25

virtues that were attached to the constitution of aristocratic nations and that are so contrary to the character of the new peoples that they cannot be introduced into them. There are good inclinations and bad instincts that were foreign to the first and that are natural to the second; ideas that naturally present themselves to the imagination of the ones and that the mind of the others rejects. They are like two distinct humanities, each of which has its particular advantages and disadvantages, its goods and its evils that are proper to it.


Manent, The Truth, Perhaps, in Modern Liberty and its Discontents, p. 35. 27

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ties, tribal or religious. For Manent, since they are both objective modes of communion , 28

religion and political freedom cannot but objectively interfere with each other. Such an idea

certainly goes against our very own democratic and tolerant way of apprehending religion. As

moderns, we tend to deprive religion of any objectivity to equate it rather with an interior

sentiment, a subjective disposition . As such, we assume that religion can thrive without 29

necessarily having any noticeable impact on the way our political existence is organized. In the

view of Manent, this secular understanding of religion is both erroneous and dangerous. An

extreme consequence of the modern separation between Church and State, it also proves to be a

serious threat to the latters survival. Indeed, comforted by this faulty conception of religion, we

run the risk of underestimating the political importance of religion both for ourselves and for

others.

Our recent inability or unwillingness to see religion as the great collective fact, the

objective political fact that it has always been in the history of the West has done a great deal 30

to deprive us of any defense against the illusion of the democratic empire. We should now know

better. In Islamic countries in particular, the objective character that religion can have has

recently become quite obvious. For the last seven years, Islams objectivity obstinately has

manifested itself repeatedly in putting up strong resistance to any attempted democratization of

it, either domestic or foreign. Time and time again, the Islamic law has proven a stumbling block

to the numerous efforts put into modernizing the Middle-East. Where could we find similar

Manent, Democracy Without Nations?, p. 49. 28


Manent, Democracy Without Nations?, p. 46. 30

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traces of Christianitys objective causality? Pierre Manent reckons that Christianitys objectivity,

i.e. the decisive importance it has for our concrete way of life, can be observed in its unique

contribution to the emergence of the modern nation.

In our opinion, it is on this particular point that the gap between Leo Strauss account of

the modern difference and Manents becomes blindingly obvious. In Strauss history of

philosophy, Christianitys contribution to the modern project is presented as subjective and

negative in nature. Modern philosophy was necessitated by the spiritual constraints that

Christianity was putting on human nature, constraints which were limiting the scope of

philosophical freedom. In explicit contrast to Strauss, Manents appreciation of Christianitys

role in the genesis of modernity is more objective and positive. Would it not have been of

Christianity, points out Manent, the West would most certainly still be trapped in the alternative

that the Greeks thought was natural for man: the agonizing choice between the freedom of the

city and the power of the empire. Thanks to Christianity, we have finally been able to escape the

Cornelian dilemma of freedom and security. As Manent sees it, the modern nation is an

advantageous synthesis of the city and the empire, a synthesis that would not have been possible

without Christianity. For our enjoyment of the benefits afforded to us by the nation, we are

indebted to Christianity. Moreover, and since it can never be fully paid off, this debt has to be

acknowledged. Now, specifies Manent, this debt isnt just a debt of gratitude. In fact, Pierre

Manent has nothing but contempt for those proponents of the secularization theory who, with

grateful thanks, are in effect reducing Christianity to a forgotten page in the history books.

Acknowledging our debt to Christianity is for Manent a matter of bringing our own situation to

light in order to act upon it more prudently.

12


To be sure, this isnt an easy task. Because it is historical, the nation confronts us a

disconcerting enigma . On the opposite, and because of their naturalness, the two other 31

political forms the city and the empire are much easier to define. As far as the city is

concerned, Manent fully agrees with Strauss who understood it as the complete association

which corresponds to the natural range of mans power of knowing and of loving . Similarly, 32

the empire is easily assessed. It is a natural political idea , the idea of an all-encompassing 33

gathering of all men under one rule, ultimately the gathering of the whole human race, or the

whole human kind under the same rule . The same level of clarity is simply not attainable with 34

respect to the nation. To come to terms with our own political form, we are then forced to adopt a

more historical perspective. A rapid survey of the history of the West reveals that, for a long

time, the city and the empire were the only available political forms . The emergence of the 35

nation was only a slow process, a process that was originally neither deliberate nor democratic.

The modern nations ancestor is the national monarchy . European nations were gradually 36

forged in response to the pressure exerted on the monarchs by another entity that one cannot

really describe as political: the Christian Church. Originally, the nation was an ad hoc answer to

a problem entirely specific to the West: the so-called theological-political problem . 37


Cf. Strauss, Natural Right and History, University of Chicago Press (1950), 1974, p. 254, n. 2. 32

Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism, Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 3.33

Manent, What is a Nation?, p. 3.34


Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism, p. 3.36


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The theological-political problem is created by the unexpected appearance in its midst of

a political community of a particular group, in this instance the Christians, who pretend to be

incomparably superior to [] the rest of the political body . To tighten our grip on this 38

problem, it is useful to look back briefly at Aristotles Politics. According to Aristotles depiction

of the polis, the just political order must emerge from a balancing act between the two main

conceptions of human excellence that are being put forward by the different parts of the city: the

aristocratic conceptions of the few, and the democratic conceptions of the many. Provided that

there is no common denominator between these two conceptions of human excellence, the

establishment of the just political order always requires prudence. To overcome the difficulty

generated by their mutual incompatibility, Aristotle relies on the agency of a legislator whose

careful calculation will allow for a compromise to be reached between the few and the many. In

turn, this compromise will insure the fragile unity of the city. The eruption of the Christian claim

in the midst of the city fundamentally alters this situation. Since the Christian alternative of

damnation and salvation is absolutely incommensurable with the other, natural conceptions of

human excellence promulgated in the city, it does not allow the process of arbitration between

the citys different parts to go on as before. Hence, it presents man with a problem that Aristotles

Politics simply cannot solve , a theological-political problem. To solve this problem, argues 39

Manent, it will ultimately become necessary to sever man from the complexity of groups and

goods, both natural and supernatural, to decompose human sociability, both natural and

supernatural, and then finally to reconstruct the political body from the element that survives at

Manent, Christianity and Democracy: Some Remarks on the Political History of Religion, or, on the 38

Religious History of Modern Politics, in Modern Liberty and its Discontents p. 102.

Cf. Aristotle, Politics, III, viii.39

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the end of this effort of abstraction: the free individual . This new, reconstructed political body 40

will become the nation.

The problem that the construction of the nation was to solve resulted from the ambiguous

position adopted by the Christian Church toward the political world. The modern separation

between the religious and the political was originally thought of as a way to circumvent this

ambiguity, an ambiguity which is a consequence of the Christian understanding of mans nature.

In affirming the continued goodness of the creation even after the Fall, the Christian Church

acknowledges the earthly citys capacity to organize itself more or less autonomously. The

Christians are indeed summoned by Christ himself to render unto Caesar the things which are

Caesars . But for all that, never does the Church advocate an absolute separation between the 41

temporal and the spiritual. She cannot accept her own reduction to pure subjectivity, i.e. her own

secularization. As the only truly perfect society, the Christian Church sees herself as duty bound

to insure the salvation of her members. Her divine mission is to lead men to their own salvation.

Therefore, she must be allowed to have a say in the way men lead their individual life and

organize their life in common. The head of the Church, the pope, must hold the plenitude of

authority or power (plenitudo potestatis) . Consequently, and even though the Church 42

understands the necessity for her to remain aloof from the temporal, Christianity is not and


Religious History of Modern Politics, in Modern Liberty and its Discontents p. p. 103.

St. Matthew, 22:21.41


Religious History of Modern Politics, p. 108.

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cannot be a purely apolitical religion. In Manents own words, the spiritual needs temporality,

that grace needs nature and liberty . 43

Pierre Manent sees the Christian articulation of the temporal and the spiritual, of the city

of men and the city of God to be the pivot, both evident and mysterious, on which human

history turns . Because of her refusal to abandon the city of men to itself, the Christian Church 44

will have played a very important role in the historical genesis of the European nations.

Indirectly, it will also have contributed to the genesis of our modern difference. Like we already,

her contribution to this genetic process wasnt only negative. According to Manent, the transition

from the city to the nation would never have been possible without the transformation that the

human soul underwent thanks to the Christian virtue of charity. What we must account for is the

formation of an unnatural political body, a political form which strikes a middle ground between

two natural opposites: the city and the empire. Admittedly, the nation has one important thing in

common with the empire. Its size is too great to be, like the city, readily surveyable

[eusunoptos] . For this reason, the nations unity cannot rely exclusively on natural perception. 45

It must also involve imagination. That being said, the national imagination has a very singular

character. It is at the same time quite ample and neatly circumscribed . In spite of its more 46

important size, the nation demands, this time more like the city, the existence of a certain kinship

between its members. The nations unity is not to be obtained by the sole attractive power of the

Manent, Charles Pguy: Between Political Faith and Faith, in Modern Liberty and its Discontents, p. 43

93.

Manent, Charles Pguy: Between Political Faith and Faith, p. 93.44

Aristote, Politics, 1326b, trad. Carnes Lord, University of Chicago Press (1984), 1985, p. 205.45


16


ideal unity of mankind. It has to be a real unity, a unity greater and even more pervasive than the

citys.

The nation must then realize what Aristotle and latter on Rousseau thought to be

impossible: a real unity or political kinship which exceeds mans natural power to know and to

love. Pierre Manent contends that the nations overcoming of mans naturally limited capacity to

know and to love one another was positively prepared by the Christian virtue of charity.

Through charity, writes Manent, the Church goes deeper than the city and farther than the

empire. To be sure, Manent never goes so far as to say that Christian charity could ever become

the true animating principle of a real political association. The Christian city was to remain a 47

celestial one. And yet, the Christian teaching about charity was nevertheless able to substantially

modify the way human beings relate to each other. It was able, explains Manent, to alleviate the

pressure of those naturally close to me while drawing closer those who live faraway, thereby

weakening the grasp of localism and assuaging at the same time the vertigo of faraway

domination . 48

Once again, and in spite of the important role played by charity in its genesis, Pierre

Manent understands the nation to be a profane political body . Even though national kinship 49

could only be formed with the help of Christian charity, the modern nation was born out of a

secular quest: the quest for a political form better able to resist the Churchs pretension to

indirectly rule over it. In this quest of a new kind of political unity, the national monarch was to

Manent, What is aNation?, p. 5.47

Manent, What is a Nation?, pp. 6-7.48


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play a decisive role. One could say that in the European absolute monarch, one is presented with

the first truly effective nation-builder. The absolute monarchy had one important advantage: it

could mesh better with Christianity than either the city or the empire. On the one hand, as

opposed to the city, its objective unity made it possible for the monarchical power to conform to

the Paulinian axiom according to which there is no authority that doesnt come from God . On 50

the other hand, the monarchical powers claim to national sovereignty was limited in nature. It

did not directly challenge the Churchs aspiration to universal monarchy. To the contrary, given

the fact that the level of political activity in a monarchical regime was always lower than what it

could be in a city, it was to be expected that the inhabitants of national monarchies would not be

prevented to be good Christians by any pagan attachment to their earthly city. And yet, in the

long run, the secular power of national monarchs gradually became strong enough to limit to a

minimum the temporal claims that, from time to time, the Church felt obliged to make. Seen in

this light, the European national monarchy appears less as a particular and static regime than as a

long historical process . For Manent, it is this process that has oriented the history of Europe, 51

propelling Europe out of the old dynamics, the ancient, or natural, conflict between city and

empire , and into our national predicament. Powered by the Church, the national monarch 52

plowed for centuries the European soil, thereby unknowingly planting the seed of the national

democratic bodies that were destined to end his reign.

Saint Paul, Epistle to the Romans, 13:1.50



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manent on strauss

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