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  • 15 - Civil Religion and Political Unity

  • Edited by David Lay Williams, DePaul University, Chicago, Matthew W. Maguire, DePaul University, Chicago
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau's <i>Social Contract</i>
    Published online:
    28 March 2024
    Print publication:
    22 February 2024, pp 321-338

  • Summary

    Rousseau’s treatment of civil religion in Social Contract IV.8 is best understood as an effort to grapple with religion’s relationship to national unity and international unity. Put in terms of a question, Rousseau asks: What form of religion brings both national unity and international unity? Restated in Rousseau’s specialized terminology, the central question at the heart of this chapter is: what (if any) religion is capable of bringing unity to, and thereby reconciling, particular society and general society? The aim of this chapter then is to show that the civil religion of Social Contract IV.8 is developed with an eye towards political unity – and indeed not political unity in any ordinary sense, but political unity that is at once national and international, at once a unity of the particular society and a unity of the general society.