Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-94d59 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T03:23:33.503Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A World Beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2006

Peter Augustine Lawler
Affiliation:
Berry College

Extract

A World Beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State. By Pierre Manent. Translated by Marc LePain. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. $35.00.

Has the world outgrown politics? The conviction that it has, according to the French political philosopher Pierre Manent, is what animates sophisticated European thought today. The self-understandings of the creature, the parent, and, above all, the citizen have increasingly been displaced by that of the individual. And what an individual is is determined by the individual, and whatever he or she decides for him- or herself is dignified and deserves our respect. The idea of dignity is being liberated from any particular human content, from any particular conception of human goodness or morality. That means, among other things, that the idea of human rights has been liberated from any conception of civic or national obligation. So the idea of compulsory national military service is an affront to the individual's dignity, and in the name of human dignity the Europeans increasingly seem even to believe that they can unilaterally become pro-choice on war.

Type
BOOK REVIEWS: POLITICAL THEORY
Copyright
2006 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)