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Résumé :
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As we approach the end of the century, which has seen perhaps the most rapid and pervasive changes in society and culture ever, many Western writers are reexamining the consequences of these changes and are discovering that they have not necessarily all been for the good. In this book, first published in France in 1994 and now translated into English for the first time, Manent (philosophy, ?cole des Hautes ?tudes Sociales, Paris) examines what he takes to be the fundamental rootlessness of Western civilization. He argues that in freeing ourselves from the intellectual orientation of the ancient world, which studied man "as man," we have become excessively self-conscious, fixing upon the study rather of "modern man." The result of this refocusing, Manent argues, is that we have lost man "as man" as a focus of study and come to see our culture as influenced by various waves of historical, social, and political necessity. In essence, we have become divorced from the traditions that formerly helped us to anchor and sustain ourselves, and we are now drifting confused, the victims of forces that we do not control and quite probably do not understand. Manent's thesis is not new, but his contribution to the debate is the presentation of the problem in a clear and cogent fashion, and for this reason, his work is valuable
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