Manent's 'Beyond Radical Secularism' is a profound book. In its own powerful way it asks the question: What values are at the core of modern France? By extension, that same question should be asked of all modern Western nations. For Manent the question is framed within the reality of France's encounter with radical Islamic terrorism. His book was first published there after the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack, but before the terrorist carnage in Paris that took place during November 2015. This English translation (by Ralph C. Hancock) was published in July 2016.
Manent contrasts the cultural views of "an average Western and the average Muslim" (p. 13). For Westerners, Manent claims that "we" view the primary role of society to be the guarantor of individual rights, while Muslim society "is first of all the whole set of morals and customs" (p. 13). The central problem is, of course, how peaceful reconciliation can be achieved. How can the individual rights of Muslims be respected in a nation that has effectively banished religion and spirituality from the public sphere? How can we reconcile the West's respect for basic human rights, especially basic women's rights, with a culture that holds contrary values? How far can the bounds of multiculturalism be stretched while retaining meaningful social cohesion?
One suspects that the prototypical Western nation has been hollowed out of any objective moral standards or spirituality ("spiritual evisceration" is Manent's term - p. 68), and therefore lacks the community-forming mechanisms necessary for the retention of core beliefs, common convictions, and, ultimately, true social cohesion. In a world where the overwhelming emphasis is upon our subjective rights, materialism, and personal well-being, "we" have become what Tocqueville feared. "We" are held together by the most tenuous bonds, having largely shunted aside the "common beliefs" … the culture, convictions, customs, and morality ... of our ancestors. Tocqueville wrote, "… without such common belief no society can prosper; say, rather, no society can exist; for without such ideas there still may be men, but there is no social body …" (DA).
One thing should appear obvious: Smugly assuming "we" are "on the right side of history" is not working. Manent characterizes a current prevalent and naive viewpoint: "Humanity is irresistibly carried along by the movement of modernization, and modern humanity, humanity understood as having finally reached adulthood, is a humanity that has left religion behind" (p. 10). He writes of "modern humanity" as incredulous that any religion could be the source of personal animation in the enlightened 21st Century. This secular posture leaves modern humanity smugly "waiting only for the slower ones to kindly join him" (p. 61).
Sometimes the greatest measure of a book's worthiness is the quality of the questions it forces us to ask ourselves, the humility that comes with the realization that good answers are very hard to come by, but also the sense of urgency it creates for the crucial undertaking. In the Preface Manent writes, "Eventually, as Machiavelli said, some 'extrinsic accident' such as war or revolution forces the members of a nation to 'recognize themselves' and to take up again the frayed reins of common life" (p. 3). Now should be one of those times.
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