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 public 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

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 individual 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 according 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 themselves: 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. Indeed, it can actually only require them to pay taxes (26). Thus, unlike the Third Republic, which held authority because it “represented a nation that all held sacred,” our current state suffers from a “radical loss of authority” (35). Yet secularism, despite its resistance to the importance of religious faith, ultimately requires a “secular faith” that invites citizens to place their hope in the moral and spiritual power of the state (24). But since the state is actually weak and offers citizens nothing common enough to inspire them, they are left with a lack of confidence in their ability to govern themselves. Just as Europeans have lost faith in self-government, they have, not by coincidence, also lost faith in Providence and the “primacy of the Good” (69). Instead of praying for divine guidance, as the Americans still do, Euro- peans have relied on the global marketplace as an “artificial providence” (71). Manent explains that this has only furthered their abandonment of 360 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 43 / Issue 2 self-government: “Never have there been so few arguments against divine Providence, since we have organized ourselves in order to have less and less need of free will, in order to have less and less need to carry out a complete action” (71). The implication is that a belief in divine Providence is necessary for self-government because it entails the freedom of the human will, thus requiring human deliberation and action, whereas the artificial providence of the global marketplace does not. Thus, this artificial providence needs to be replaced in order to recover confidence in self-government and common action: “As vacillating and prone to fail as we are, it makes sense to put our common goods, so mysteriously substantial and durable, under the protection and the direction of Providence” (70). In the midst of human weakness, Christian hope makes possible the classical virtues necessary for self-government. “Europe was great through its nations when it was able to mix Roman virtues, courage, and prudence, with a faith in a God who is friend to every person” (112). Crucial to recovering a common life, Manent contends, is maintaining a political form, and the form he proposes is the nation. Though borders within the European Union have largely been dissolved, suggesting nations no longer truly exist, this homogeneity is “superficial,” just as religious neu- trality within society is superficial (36). There remains a true diversity among national ways, and that diversity must be maintained rather than replaced by an ideological and bureaucratic “European unity” (88). In addition to recognizing the reality of the nation of France, secularists and Muslims alike must also recognize the religious, particularly Catholic, bases of French culture, which is a part of the common life of France: “The future of the nation of a Christian mark is a cause that brings us all together” (115). The denial of France’s Christian moral culture is dangerous because it causes secularists to overestimate the power of secularism and underestimate Islam’s resistance to it (68). If secularism persists, Manent warns, the inevitable result will be the “Islamization by default” of Europe (82). Islam, being the only remaining association with a form of common life, will inevitably expand within a weakened Europe that denies its own national borders and misunderstands its own society. Manent does not entertain visions of returning to a particular golden age in French history, but seeks a “politics of the possible,” which will involve a “compromise” between French Muslims and the rest of the French citizenry (46). Given the undeniable growth of Islam within France, along with the weakened authority of the Republic, Manent concludes that “our regime must Book Review: Beyond Radical Secularism 361 concede” (45, emphasis original). At this point, it is only possible to address Islam from a “defensive” position. This means that we must allow Muslims to live according to their own moral principles without allowing them to force those principles into law. The regime of individualism did not place many conditions upon Muslims when they entered France, so they should not be compelled to give up their own way of life: “Having been accepted as equals, they thus have every right to think that they were accepted ‘as they were’” (45). Muslims, in turn, must accept a few reasonable conditions on their entrance into French life. The “tacit immigration contract” with Muslims upon their arrival included the requirement of monogamous marriage; hence polygamy is impermissible (49). The burqa must also be prohibited because it prevents human beings from recognizing each other. “The visibility of the face is one of the elementary conditions of sociability, of this mutual awareness that is prior to and conditions any declaration of rights” (49). Additionally, France should command that its Muslim citizens be independent from the Muslim countries that provide them with imams and financial and admin- istrative support. If they are required to make a sacrifice for the nation, their commitment to it will be solidified. Further, Muslims must allow France to preserve certain fundamental features of the regime, including complete freedom of thought and expression, as well as well as France’s “physiognomy” (47). Manent’s book is relatively modest in its aims: “If I have one ambition, it is that the analysis I propose of the European experience might be adequate to allow us to see Islam as an objective reality, instead of its remaining the reflection of our self-misunderstanding” (69). Europeans have a hollow view of Islam only because they do not understand the power of religion in human life and its role in shaping and sustaining culture, including their own. Manent masterfully leads his readers through this important self- examination, and Hancock conveys his subtle nuances and distinctions in his excellent translation. Still, the book raises an important question. While Manent demonstrates the insufficiency of a Kantian concept of justice that lacks a role for the divine, one may ask whether there is sufficient common ground between Christians and Muslims over the nature of divine justice such that Muslims will become sincerely dedicated to a nation stamped with a “Christian mark.” Manent’s important book provides the framework that makes discussion of this question possible.