Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau
- Part II Responses to (and Partial Incorporations of) Civil Religion within the Liberal Tradition
- 9 Baruch Spinoza
- 10 Philosophy and Piety
- 11 Spinoza's Interpretation of the Commonwealth of the Hebrews, and Why Civil Religion Is a Continuing Presence in His Version of Liberalism
- 12 John Locke
- 13 “The Gods of the Philosophers” I
- 14 Bayle's Republic of Atheists
- 15 Montesquieu's Pluralized Civil Religion
- 16 The Straussian Rejection of the Enlightenment as Applied to Bayle and Montesquieu
- 17 “The Gods of the Philosophers” II
- 18 Hume as a Successor to Bayle
- 19 Adam Smith's Sequel to Hume (and Hobbes)
- 20 Christianity as a Civil Religion
- 21 John Stuart Mill's Project to Turn Atheism into a Religion
- 22 Mill's Critics
- 23 John Rawls's Genealogy of Liberalism
- 24 Prosaic Liberalism
- Part III Theocratic Responses to Liberalism
- Part IV Postmodern “Theism”
- Conclusion
- Index
- References
14 - Bayle's Republic of Atheists
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau
- Part II Responses to (and Partial Incorporations of) Civil Religion within the Liberal Tradition
- 9 Baruch Spinoza
- 10 Philosophy and Piety
- 11 Spinoza's Interpretation of the Commonwealth of the Hebrews, and Why Civil Religion Is a Continuing Presence in His Version of Liberalism
- 12 John Locke
- 13 “The Gods of the Philosophers” I
- 14 Bayle's Republic of Atheists
- 15 Montesquieu's Pluralized Civil Religion
- 16 The Straussian Rejection of the Enlightenment as Applied to Bayle and Montesquieu
- 17 “The Gods of the Philosophers” II
- 18 Hume as a Successor to Bayle
- 19 Adam Smith's Sequel to Hume (and Hobbes)
- 20 Christianity as a Civil Religion
- 21 John Stuart Mill's Project to Turn Atheism into a Religion
- 22 Mill's Critics
- 23 John Rawls's Genealogy of Liberalism
- 24 Prosaic Liberalism
- Part III Theocratic Responses to Liberalism
- Part IV Postmodern “Theism”
- Conclusion
- Index
- References
Summary
[R]eligion…is one of the greatest instruments of morality and civilization which God ever decided to employ.
– Alexis de TocquevilleIf I spoke badly…about the devout, it is only because I am revolted every day when I see petty people in their gossipy circles with their foolish affairs who are capable of every sort of despicable and violent action talking devoutly of their holy religion. I am always tempted to shout at them: “Rather than be Christians of this kind, be pagans with pure conduct, proud of your soul and with clean hands!”
– Alexis de Tocqueville[I]t is certain that the greatest part of the peoples of the earth are still plunged in the frightful shadows of infidelity.
– Pierre BayleOne enters into disputes concerning dogma, and one in no way practices morality. Why? Because practicing morality is difficult and pursuing disputes concerning dogma is very easy.
– MontesquieuI saw that there were professions of faith, doctrines, forms of worship that were followed without belief, and that, since nothing of all that penetrated either heart or reason, it influenced conduct very little.
– Jean-Jacques RousseauThe civil-religion theorists were not oriented toward the possibility of secular politics. As Joshua Mitchell writes, for Hobbes the “alternatives are either a ‘Christian Commonwealth’ (Part III [of Leviathan]) or a ‘Kingdom of Darkness’ (Part IV [of Leviathan]). A secularized world is not a genuine possibility; the attempt to deny religion its due leads not to a world enlightened by autonomous reason, but rather, ironically, one dominated by superstition and steeped in the kingdom of darkness!” A secularized world first becomes a possibility in Bayle (and of course Rousseau is explicit in his rejection of Bayle). Hence one could say that Pierre Bayle is the first thoroughgoing anti-civil-religion theorist in the Western tradition. In fact, Sally Jenkinson argues that Bayle was unique among early modern political philosophers in his rejection of civil religion:
[It was] accepted by natural law philosophers such as Grotius, Hobbes, Selden, Spinoza, Harrington and Locke, no less than by Gallican Catholics such as Richelieu and Bossuet…that a civil religion, whose clergy was subordinate to the secular authority, was a requisite part of the internal process of orderly government. All parties would agree, though for subtly different reasons, that society itself was cemented through holding in common certain [religious] beliefs, [and that the clergy] should form a corps of civilizing educators. The notion that a religion so understood was vital to the public good was so generally insisted upon that in contesting it Bayle would find himself confronting all parties – Catholics and Protestants, lay men and clergy.
What Bayle offers, according to Jenkinson, is “a general critique of post-Reformation [E]rastian theory,” and all the predecessors or contemporaries of Bayle cited in the preceding quotation count as various kinds of Erastian, that is, civil-religion, theorists. One might add that Rousseau represents the culmination of this Erastian tradition, because he sums up the underlying notion with the very conception of a “civil religion.”
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- Civil ReligionA Dialogue in the History of Political Philosophy, pp. 176 - 188Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010