A book like Pierre Manent’s The City of Man doesn’t come along every day. Originally published in France in 1994 and now brought out in English by Princeton University Press, its is a fundamental book, and it raises a fundamental question: What is man?

Manent is a Frenchman, a student of the political philosopher Raymond Aron, and a professor of philosophy in Paris at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes — which could be rendered into English as the “School of Tall Studies” in a translation somewhat worse than the version of The City of Man by Marc A. LePain. In our increasingly under-educated country it may be pointless to say, but I’ll say it: One good reason for learning French is to read prose like Pierre Manent’s.