Pierre Manent [1949–] teaches political philosophy at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He returns to Boston College each fall to teach courses in the Department of Political Science. He was previously assistant to Raymond Aron at the College de France. He was one of the founders of the quarterly Commentaire, and remains a regular contributor. He has published numerous books and articles, many of them translated into English. (from faculty profile on Boston College website)

"...Pierre Manent came of age intellectually during the turmoil of the Fifth Republic, which culminated in the attempt by the New Left in May 1968 to bring down the government. United in a dogmatic rejection of liberal society, this amalgam of leftist movements and ideologies was, like Marx, convinced that bourgeois civilization had hollowed out 'the contents of life.'...In the wake of the student revolt, Manent converted to Catholicism. He then became a student of and eventually an assistant to Raymond Aron, from whom he learned a different reading of the liberal tradition, especially in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville. For a time, Manent was an editor of the neoconservative journal Commentaire. A teacher at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris since 1992, Manent is perhaps the brightest light in a new generation of French intellectuals who think through the history and implications of liberalism without Marxist blinders...." (from book review by Russell Hittinger in online edition of First Things, December 1998): 42-44)

His publications include An Intellectual History of Liberalism (1987), Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy (1996), Modern Liberty and its Discontents (1998), The City of Man (1998), and his most recent work, A World Beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State (2006).