A Book Review… From Whence Our Legitimacy
By JOHN LYON Remi Brague, The Legitimacy of the Human. South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s Press; 2017. Translated by Paul Seaton. “Who can tell mankind that it ought to have being?” From whence, in other words, the warrant for our being? The whatness of human being may be indubitable: We act, we do, in a more or less species-specific manner. But from whence our legitimacy? We live in an intellectual climate in which the oxymoronic phrase “man makes himself” appears to dominate. (That “man makes himself,” Brague observes, “can be said, because language is an obedient child. But can it be thought?”) In this climate self-assurance ironically requires the periodic issuance of bills of rights, plus the deduction therefrom of…Continue Reading