Modern Age - Winter 2018 - 62

Modern Age

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Winter 2018

nature, but that motivate, illuminate, and guide man-made laws."
Against the dogmatism of ever more explicit "human rights" that
close off democratic deliberation and hence the need for the
great and crowning virtue of prudence in moral and political life,
Manent restores practical reason to its rightful place. 
His starting point is acting man, who is always confronted with
the question, "What is one to do?" Human action is key to his
analysis. He insists that we human beings are not bereft of guidance, since practical reason can draw on the motives that together
constitute a flourishing life: the pleasant, the useful, and the just
or noble. We are not playthings of those motives but political
and moral agents who pursue the good in the situations in which
we find ourselves. Our motives are not up to us; they belong to
our nature as human beings, "but the way these human motives
become" our action is up to us.
The indeterminacy of moral-political life allows one to choose
between virtue and vice, better and worse. The good is never
"determinate" but needs to be completed by virtuous human
action. Nor are we prisoners of some unbridgeable gap between
the "is" and the "ought," as Machiavelli and many modern philosophers insist. As Manent says in a lovely formulation, "in reality
there is neither a leap or chasm nor an abyss between 'is' and
'ought,' but only a gentle slope along which we can confidently
walk." At the end of an earlier lecture, Manent discusses how
conscience-not understood as pure subjectivity but rather as
a portal to and sign of truth and virtue-allows us to respect the
indeterminacy of action while avoiding relativism or arbitrary
choice. Machiavelli radicalizes the tension between the "is" and
the "ought" in the direction of nihilism, and Luther places all his
hopes in faith alone. Human beings-and Christians-cease to
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Modern Age - Winter 2018

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Contents
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Modern Age - Winter 2018 - Contents
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