Pierre Manent about Natural Law and Human Rights

Abstract

This essay aims to introduce the proposal of Pierre Manent, the French Catholic philosopher, to reconstruct natural law, mainly in his book on Natural Law and Human Rights, originally published in 2017. Manent’s book is also interesting as a sharp criticism of the discourse of natural human rights. He starts out from the obvious contrast between the human rights discourse in a European and a non-European context, which reveals its internal logical contradiction. This is followed by a historical reconstruction of the early modern rise of the human rights discourse, as it took place between Machiavelli and Hobbes, resulting in the decline of the reference to natural law. This synchronic and diachronic analysis is followed by the substance of Manent’s own proposal. First, he introduces his view of politics, based on the dialectic of command and obedience, in the life of the active political agent. This is followed by the least convincing part of his book, a thin concept of natural law, narrowed down to the three motivations of human action: the pleasant, the useful and the honest (together with the just and the noble). Yet this is followed by a highly relevant, Aristotelian–Thomistic account of reflective human action, based on practical
wisdom and the common good. Manent proposes to lead the human rights discourse back to its proper place in contemporary public discussions.