Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Natural Law and Human Rights: Toward a Recovery of Practical Reason

Natural Law and Human Rights: Toward a Recovery of Practical Reason

Manent, Pierre
Hancock, Ralph C.
Mahoney, Daniel J.

Paperback

Series: Catholic Ideas for a Secular World

PhilosophyGeneral LawSocial Movements

ISBN10: 026810722X
ISBN13: 9780268107222
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: Feb 15 2021
Pages: 176
Weight: 0.46
Height: 0.38 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

This first English translation of Pierre Manent's profound and strikingly original book La loi naturelle et les droits de l'homme is a reflection on the central question of the Western political tradition. In six chapters, developed from the prestigious Étienne Gilson lectures at the Institut Catholique de Paris, and in a related appendix, Manent contemplates the steady displacement of the natural law by the modern conception of human rights. He aims to restore the grammar of moral and political action, and thus the possibility of an authentically political order that is fully compatible with liberty. Manent boldly confronts the prejudices and dogmas of those who have repudiated the classical and Christian notion of liberty under law and in the process shows how groundless many contemporary appeals to human rights turn out to be. Manent denies that we can generate obligations from a condition of what Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau call the state of nature, where human beings are absolutely free, with no obligations to others. In his view, our ever-more-imperial affirmation of human rights needs to be reintegrated into what he calls an archic understanding of human and political existence, where law and obligation are inherent in liberty and meaningful human action. Otherwise we are bound to act thoughtlessly and in an increasingly arbitrary or willful manner. Natural Law and Human Rights will engage students and scholars of politics, philosophy, and religion, and will captivate sophisticated readers who are interested in the question of how we might reconfigure our knowledge of, and talk with one another about, politics.

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