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Winter 2017 Volume 43 Issue 2 Winter 2017 Volume 43 Issue 2 199 Hilail Gildin On Rousseau’s Confession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar 215 Daniel P. Maher Simon Stevin’s Vita Politica: Pre-provisional Morality? 233 Rafael Major Poetry and Reason: A Midsummer Night’s Dream 255 Ying Zhang Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing: The Beginning and the End of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed An Exchange: 279 Lee Ward The Challenge of Modernizing Seventeenth-Century English Political Texts: A Response to Foster 287 David Foster A Reply to Lee Ward Review Essay: 289 Robert Goldberg Homer on the Gods and Human Virtue: Creating the Foundations of Classical Civilization by Peter J. Ahrensdorf Book Reviews: 319 Stephen A. Block Principle and Prudence in Western Political Thought, edited by Christopher Lynch and Jonathan Marks 333 Eric Buzzetti The Socratic Turn: Knowledge of Good and Evil in an Age of Science by Dustin Sebell 341 Bernard J. Dobski The Philosopher’s English King: Shakespeare’s Henriad as Political Philosophy by Leon Harold Craig 347 Joshua D. King Humanitarian Ethics: A Guide to the Morality of Aid in War and Disaster by Hugo Slim 353 Peter McNamara The Foundations of Natural Morality: On the Compatibility of Natural Rights and the Natural Law by S. Adam Seagrave 357 Deborah O’Malley Beyond Radical Secularism: How France and the Christian West Should Respond to the Islamic Challenge by Pierre Manent; translated by Ralph C. Hancock 363 Lorraine Pangle Xenophon the Socratic Prince: The Argument of the Anabasis of Cyrus by Eric Buzzetti 369 Nathan Pinkoski Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet by Leon Harold Craig 375 Manu Samnotra Arendt’s Judgment: Freedom, Responsibility, Citizenship by Jonathan Peter Schwartz ©2017 Interpretation, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of the contents may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher. ISSN 0020-9635 Editor-in-Chief Timothy W. Burns, Baylor University General Editors Charles E. Butterworth • Timothy W. Burns General Editors (Late) Howard B. White (d. 1974) • Robert Horwitz (d. 1987) Seth G. Benardete (d. 2001) • Leonard Grey (d. 2009) • Hilail Gildin (d. 2015) Consulting Editors Christopher Bruell • David Lowenthal • Harvey C. Mansfield • Thomas L. Pangle • Ellis Sandoz • Kenneth W. Thompson Consulting Editors (Late) Leo Strauss (d. 1973) • Arnaldo Momigliano (d. 1987) • Michael Oakeshott (d. 1990) • John Hallowell (d. 1992) • Ernest L. Fortin (d. 2002) • Muhsin Mahdi (d. 2007) • Joseph Cropsey (d. 2012) • Harry V. Jaffa (d. 2015) International Editors Terence E. Marshall • Heinrich Meier Editors Peter Ahrensdorf • Wayne Ambler • Marco Andreacchio • Maurice Auerbach • Robert Bartlett • Fred Baumann • Eric Buzzetti • Susan Collins • Patrick Coby • Erik Dempsey • Elizabeth C’de Baca Eastman • Edward J. Erler • Maureen Feder-Marcus • Robert Goldberg • L. Joseph Hebert • Pamela K. Jensen • Hannes Kerber • Mark J. Lutz • Daniel Ian Mark • Ken Masugi • Carol L. McNamara • Will Morrisey • Amy Nendza • Charles T. Rubin • Leslie G. Rubin • Thomas Schneider • Susan Meld Shell • Geoffrey T. Sigalet • Nicholas Starr • Devin Stauffer • Bradford P. Wilson • Cameron Wybrow • Martin D. Yaffe • Catherine H. Zuckert • Michael P. Zuckert Copy Editor Les Harris Designer Sarah Teutschel Inquiries Interpretation, A Journal of Political Philosophy Department of Political Science Baylor University 1 Bear Place, 97276 Waco, TX 76798 email [email protected] Book Review: Beyond Radical Secularism 357 Pierre Manent, Beyond Radical Secularism: How France and the Chris- tian West Should Respond to the Islamic Challenge. Translated by Ralph C. Hancock, with introduction by Daniel J. Mahoney. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s, 2016, 160 pp., $24.00 (cloth). Deborah O’Malley Baylor University [email protected] The French political philosopher Pierre Manent authoredBeyond Radi- cal Secularism shortly after the January 2015 Islamic terrorist attack at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical French magazine dedicated to secularism and atheism. In this slim but critical book, Manent addresses the problem of the continual expansion of Islam within France’s borders. While Manent offers concrete solutions to the problem, his larger aim is to properly diag- nose its true nature. He posits that the inability to find a meaningful place for Muslims within French society is actually a symptom of an even more serious problem in France and in Europe more generally: the philosophy of individualism and its requirement of the radical separation of religion and society. In short, Manent uses a contemporary political problem to urge France to reexamine and recover its soul. France, which has experienced an influx of Muslim immigration in recent years, has faced great difficulty in incorporating Muslims into its pub- lic life. The attack at Charlie Hebdo and the terrorist attacks that occurred in Paris a few weeks after this book was released are undeniable evidence of that. Manent explains that the difficulty in assimilation has occurred because the average Westerner and the average Muslim have incompatible views of society. For Westerners, society is “first of all the organization and the guar- antee of individual rights,” whereas for Islam society is a whole set of morals © 2017 Interpretation, Inc. 358 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 43 / Issue 2 and customs, rooted in divine law, that provides “the concrete rule of a good life” (13). One entails the “extremism of subjective rights” while the other embraces the “extremism of objective rule” (15). The increasing dedication on both sides to these radically incongruous visions of law and politics leaves them in a perpetual struggle. The predominant solution offered for the problem of France’s incompati- bility with its Muslim citizens has been laïcité. Manent is careful to distinguish two different ways of understanding the term laïcité, and his translator, Ralph Hancock, differentiates these two ways by using the terms “secularity” and “secularism.” The former is simply the separation of institutional religion and the state, while the latter demands a “militant” neutralization of religion in society (18n2). Manent’s project is a critique only of the latter, and he refers to its supporters as “secularists.” Secularists hope that a religiously “neutral” society will ultimately lead Islam to “reform” itself “by the regime of individ- ual rights” (18). This hope is futile, Manent argues, because society can “never be ‘neutral’” when it comes to religion (19). France itself has been “stamped mainly but not exclusively by Catholic Christianity, including also signifi- cant Protestant and Jewish elements” (19). The actual French experience, he explains, encompasses the “trinity” of the secular state, a morally Christian society, and the sacred nation (20). The secular republic is therefore an “imagi- nary city” (23). Hence, rather than embarking on a fruitless analysis of how Islam can copy this fictional European process of secularization, Manent’s readers should “take up the task of seeing more clearly what it is we see” (12). Europeans can begin to see more clearly by gaining a proper perception of religion and its role in public life. Manent argues that they “hardly know how to speak of religion as a social or political fact, as a collective reality, as a human association” (9). Rather, they see it is a private feeling or emotion that is “incommunicable.” Given that the dominant, “enlightened” and “progres- sive” European worldview is that religion must no longer be taken seriously as a powerful motivation for political action, political Islam caught liberals and socialists by surprise. But, he warns, Islam has a role to play “on the stage of history” just as Europe once did (39). The French secularists, seeing religion as a purely individual and emotional experience, ignore this reality only at the peril of France. Europeans are unable to see religion as a meaningful reality in part because they fail to see human beings as fundamentally social creatures. According to the principle of secularism, each individual has the right to fol- low the morality of his choice so long as this morality does not limit the equal Book Review: Beyond Radical Secularism 359 right of other citizens to do the same (18). Hence, the “sharable contents of life” are invalid if they do not please each individual, leaving very little to be held in common. Yet, Manent points out, if human life actually began accord- ing to this principle, “neither families, nor cities, nor religious communities would ever have been created” (85). This explains why, in a regime that is rooted only in unlimited individual rights, associations including churches and even nations are thought to have only “pretensions to existence.” Rul- ing opinion contends that they are pretended realities “invoked only to block newcomers” rather than having intrinsic significance (67). Indeed, secularists do not even consider Islam a social reality, despite its obvious “community- forming power” (39). Manent argues that in order to live successfully with European Muslims, we must understand them as they understand them- selves: as a whole. But we must understand ourselves this way as well: “Our Muslim fellow citizens will be able to raise the question of their relationship to the social and political whole only if the question of the whole is raised by all, and this over the whole range of the political body” (79). In other words, Muslims can be true citizens of France only if France has a common life to offer them. Secularism’s inability to recognize the need for common life has contrib- uted to the current problems with French Muslims not only because it fails to provide them with a place in society, but also because it requires citizens to place their hope in a state that secularism itself has severely weakened. When the function of politics is reduced to the mere protection of individual rights, the state no longer presents goals for common action or requires common action from the citizens.
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