Long known and respected for his scholarship on liberalism, regime types, and the nation, Pierre Manent has also contributed to discussions on natural law, prudence, and agency in the face of contemporary confusions about meaning and the human good. On his account, Europeans have attempted a religion of Humanity devoid of human nature or a substantive good; in fact, any definition or limiting principle risks exclusion, and thick meaning must be prohibited so that Humanity can be celebrated.
Nonetheless, it remains the case, as Manent has carefully articulated, that living well requires virtuous action, and classical reflections on courage, wisdom, moderation, and justice retain their force and relevance. Still, Manent has always recognized the importance of Christianity for the taxonomy of political form—and also for living well. Cardinal virtues, while needed, cannot replace theological virtues, and the human, however naturally virtuous, remains all too human and thus in need of grace.
In his new book, deftly translated by Paul Seaton, Challenging Modern Atheism and Indifference: Pascal’s Defense of the Christian Proposition, Manent takes up the need for grace with a thorough account of the thought and work of Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century thinker best known for his famous “Wager” about God’s existence and his strident criticisms of the Jesuits’ moral laxness.
One will learn quite a bit about Pascal from the book, of course, but Manent is not here narrowly interested in a scholarly tome but draws on Pascal to explore the meaning and challenge of Europe at the present moment. Europe, he suggests, no longer knows what to do with Christianity and has, in fact, chosen to ignore its own history for a “new birth” and a “new baptism” of “erasure.” Just as Humanity is imagined without form or shape, so, too, Europe “wants to be nothing but the possibility of all possibilities, but it does not want to be Christian.”
Christianity emerged as the proclamation of an authoritative Word, but Europe has granted sovereignty of the state over the Church, not only in matters of law but even of morality and doctrine. This decision, Manent suggests, was taken in the 17th century at just the moment when “the Christian proposition” was powerfully reconsidered and articulated by Pascal, who can assist us as we attempt our own phrasing of the proposition in its doctrines and teachings as well as in the “practical and active meaning” of making a proposal, inviting all to God and his Church.
According to Pascal, the Jesuits and casuists significantly altered the Augustinian account of grace. In repentance, humans discover both their own powerlessness in the face of sin as well as the efficaciousness of God’s work. The Jesuits and Molinists, however, taught the sufficiency of grace such that human free will seemed capable of independent liberation. Moreover, Pascal charged the Jesuits with an immoderate concern to “keep on good terms with all the world” by acting as if sinners were rare and sin quite difficult to accomplish, primarily by divorcing intention from act. An act might be bad in itself, but unless the intention to choose badness for its own sake was present—and it rarely is since we choose what we take to be good, i.e., what we desire—no sin is committed.
As confessors, Jesuits claimed the prerogative to “direct the intention” of those in their care, and in so doing could turn a bad act into a good one, or at least an indifferent one. The goodness or badness of an act belongs not to the act but to the “subjective conscience that accompanies” the action. Meaning inheres in the idea. Manent takes this transformation to be quite decisive, for not only does it diminish sin and place perfectibility in our own power rather than the act of God—the basis of modern progressivism—but it evacuates the meaning and purpose of the commands of God. Commands are either irrelevant or intolerable, and genuine progress occurs without commands in the domain of right ideals.
This isn’t going to work out well, however. For what we find in ourselves is concupiscence. We are governed by inclinations to hate others and to aggrandize our own selves. Concupiscence cannot be escaped by our own power, and it pertains to every aspect of “economic, social, and political life.” Erasing this fact is why, at least in part, “Europeans today refuse to consider soberly and impartially” the reality of force in political life.
All men hate each other; each moi is the enemy of the others. These are stable and nonreformable dispositions, and the custom of each polity exists to control and order these passions. Custom, of course, can be unjust, and it is a perennial question if the laws of a regime are merely customary or naturally just. For Pascal, says Manent, we are not actually free in a manner allowing us access to “universal and stable criteria of justice” but are prisoners of custom. There are natural laws but our reason is too corrupted by sin and concupiscence to know them well, let alone to follow and obey them.
We do, however, have the commands of God and the commands of custom, and while concupiscence moves our voluntary actions, force moves us in quite another way. Yet society must begin with force, which is the “condition of the existence” of order and of justice. Not all force is just, to be sure, but goodness will not be brought about in this fallen world in the absence of command and force. As Daniel J. Mahoney writes in the foreword, the “party of reason” quickly jettisons custom and tradition and so “unnecessarily ‘trouble[s] the world’ with [its] schemes and abstractions.” Idealism, utopianism, and contemporary humanitarianism are not realistic enough, not intelligent enough, falsely assuming that justice can create and sustain its existence.
Here I am relating themes familiar in Manent’s other writings, now with the support of Pascal—namely, the nonideological and anti-utopian sobriety of his political thought. We are capable of acting, and yet we act under limitations, and it is the naive refusal to acknowledge limits that so bedevils Europe and its feckless leadership today. Manet has broader interests as well, and the text helpfully explores Pascal’s various proofs for Christianity, including a wonderful chapter correcting the usual presentation of the Wager that makes the argument seem intellectually cheap and self-serving, along with discussions of the work of Christ, the meaning of the Gospels, and the experience of revelation and Pascal’s own sense of the profound love of God.
In Challenging Modern Atheism and Indifference, Manent has provided an introduction to Pascal’s thought as well as a serious exploration of the political, personal, and religious needs of our moment. He is one of a very few political theorists rising to the challenge of his time, and it is a privilege to read him.
