From City-State to No-State

If you are interested in the various political, philosophical and religious systems of thought that have been at war with each other, or in troubled co-existence with each other, in the Western world since the Renaissance, you may enjoy reading this review by Daniel DiSalvo of two books by French philosopher Pierre Manent, one of the rare Frenchmen to shun both extreme Left and extreme Right positions. The review focuses on Manent's discussion of four types of "political forms": the ancient city, the empire, the Church and the nation-state, and the relative failure of each. On Manent's rejection of the EU "constitution", DiSalvo notes:

Interestingly, Manent publicly opposed the EU “constitution,” which went down to defeat in a 2005 referendum in France. He rejects the EU’s aspiration to be something of a universal humanitarian empire on the grounds that it eliminates the possibility for a genuine politics. In the EU project, Manent hears the siren song of a “religion of humanity” that flees politics into hollow notions of human self-deification.

The whole article appears at the City Journal. Thanks to the reader who sent it.

In 2007 I posted a translation of an interview with Manent, conducted by Elisabeth Lévy, in which he described the consequences of the "denationalization" of Europe.

French readers can consult this page for another, more recent interview with Pierre Manent centering on the fate of Europe. Here is the explanation he gives for political correctness:

The role of "political correctness" can be explained by a divorce between action and words. We no longer expect a word to be linked to a possible action, so the word is taken seriously as if it were itself an action. If this word displeases someone, it is considered as a terrible action. Until now, freedom consisted in measuring words by the yardstick of visible actions. "Political correctness" consists in measuring words by the yardstick of invisible actions.