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Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau on Civil Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Ronald Beiner
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Book 4, chapter 8, of the Social Contract, on civil religion, presents a puzzle. According to Rousseau, no state has ever been founded that did not have religion as its base. But which religion? Christianity is not an option. Paganism is not an option. Monotheistic theocracy is not an option. What does that leave? By a process of elimination, we are left with an Enlightenment religion of tolerance and mutual forbearance, which even readers sympathetic to Rousseau (or perhaps especially readers sympathetic to Rousseau) might say is no religion at all. I argue that Machiavelli and Hobbes share Rousseau's fundamental concern, which is that the otherworldly aspirations of Christianity are subversive of political requirements, but each of them thinks he can solve the problem by “de-transcendentalizing” Christianity: Machiavelli, by treating the papacy as if it were a pagan institution; Hobbes, by reinterpreting the New Testament as if it were the Old Testament. The article examines why Rousseau rejects the Machiavellian and Hobbesian solutions to his problem, and why he has no solution of his own to offer.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , Fall 1993 , pp. 617 - 638
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1993

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References

1. Rousseau, Jean-jacques, On the Social Contract, ed. Masters, Roger D., trans. Masters, Judith R. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978), p. 127.Google Scholar

2. Ibid.: “Hobbes...dared to propose the reunification of the two heads of the eagle, and the complete return to political unity, without which no State or government will ever be well constituted. But he ought to have seen that the dominating spirit of Christianity [‘l‘esprit dominateur du christianisme’] was incompatible with his system.” The reference to “the spirit of Christianity” on p. 126 bears the same implication, viz., that it is Christianity in general, not Catholicism in particular, that tends to bifurcate sovereignty.

3. Ibid., p. 130.

4. Ibid., p. 126.

5. Ibid., p. 130.

6. Ibid., p. 126. The text reads: “Plusieurs peuples cependant, même dans l'Europe ou à son voisinage, ont voulu conserver ou rétablir l'ancien système, mais sans succès: l'esprit du christianisme a tout gagné.”

7. Ibid., p. 131. My italics.

8. Ibid., p. 130. The text reads: “laissant à part les considérations politique, revenons au droit, et fixons les principes.”

9. In an illuminating essay on “Civil Religion in America” (Daedalus 96, no. 1 [Winter, 1967]: 1–21)Google Scholar, Robert N. Bellah argues that the American political tradition discloses a veritable civil religion that draws upon biblical symbols and imagery, but invests them anew with a peculiarly political function. This civil religion represents a unique religious construction insofar as it subsumes and appropriates images of the Old Testament without being Jewish, and subsumes and appropriates symbolism of the New Testament without being Christian. Rather than being in any way sectarian, the American civil religion takes these materials given in the Biblical tradition and forges from them the liturgical basis for a distinct religious community embracing the entire nation. (As Bellah points out, the French revolutionaries of 1789 also sought to forge a new civil cult, the latter involving a more militant break with Christian norms.) It may well be the case that Rousseau had something very much like this in mind with his own proposal of a civil religion. However, this still leaves unresolved why Rousseau, through most of the civil religion chapter, treats various world religions as if they were real options, capable of directly constituting alternative political communities, rather than providing merely a pool of religious motifs which republican statesmen and legislators could draw upon for their own purposes.

10. Löwith, Karl, Meaning in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 29.Google Scholar

11. Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Discourses, ed. Crick, Bernard (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), p. 141.Google Scholar

12. Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Prince, ed. Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 48.Google Scholar

13. Discourses, ed. Crick, , p. 140.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., p. 139.

15. Ibid., pp. 288–89.

16. Ibid., pp. 278–79. My italics. I have substituted “indolence” for Walker's “laissez faire,” and converted “virtu” to “virtue.”

17. According to my interpretation of The Prince, focused on chapters 6, 7, 11, 25, and 26 of the book, Machiavelli's interest in Cesare Borgia concerns the prospect, offered by the Borgias (Cesare and his father, Pope Alexander VI), of paganizing the papacy. This project foundered when Cesare allowed Julius II to capture the papacy, thereby revitalizing the Church. As Machiavelli puts it in chapter 11, whereas Alexander's intent was not “to make the Church great, but rather the duke [Cesare],” Julius, by contrast, “did everything for the increase of the Church and not of some private individual” (Mansfield ed., pp. 46–47). Cf. Burckhardt, Jacob, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (London: Phaidon Press, 1960), pp. 71–74Google Scholar; Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, section 61. However, I lack the space to develop this reading of Machiavelli in the present essay.

18. Hobbes, Thomas, De Cive, chapter 16, para. 16: Man and Citizen, ed. Gert, Bernard (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1972), p. 327.Google Scholar

19. Ibid., p. 323. Cf. Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Macpherson, C. B. (London: Penguin, 1985), pp. 506–507.Google Scholar

20. Man and Citizen, pp. 315, 323, 324.

21. Ibid., pp. 314–15.

22. Ibid., p. 323.

23. Ibid., pp. 315, 323.

24. Ibid., p. 338. Hobbes's italics.

25. Ibid., p. 257.

26. Ibid., p. 260.

27. Cf. Leviathan, pp. 674–75.

28. Ibid., p. 143.

29. Ibid., p. 424; cf. pp. 368, 445–47.

30. Ibid., pp. 507–508.

31. Ibid., pp. 424, 447, 448, 515.

32. Ibid., pp. 413, 447, 517.

33. Ibid., pp. 480–81, 512, 515, 518, 520. The shock value of this reduction of Christ to Moses is enhanced when one bears in mind John Aubrey's report that Hobbes shared the Machiavellian view of Moses as an armed prophet: see Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. Dick, Oliver Lawson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 317.Google Scholar

34. Leviathan, pp. 512, 514, 517.

35. Ibid., p. 516: “He taught all men to obey in the mean time them that sate in Moses seat.”

36. Ibid., pp. 480–81, 485 ff. Hobbes also debunks the idea of the devil: pp. 488–89. (The “Devil” refers to worldly enemies of the Hebrews, such as the Canaanites; “Hellfire” refers to the Jerusalem garbage dump!).

37. Ibid., p. 544. Cf. p. 617.

38. Ibid., p. 447.

39. Ibid., pp. 181–83, 179.

40. Discourses, ed. Crick, , p. 288Google Scholar. In imitation of Machiavelli, Hobbes, speaks of “how the Religion of the Gentiles was a part of their Policy”: Leviathan, pp. 173–78.Google Scholar

41. Although Rousseau writes that “Mohammed had very sound views” (Social Contract, ed. Masters, , p. 126)Google Scholar, given Rousseau's resolute anti-imperialism it is hard to believe that he had as much sympathy for Islam as this suggests. More likely, it is simply the aspect of “reuniting the two heads of the eagle” that appeals to Rousseau, especially relative to Christianity.

42. This is the implication of Rousseau's statement that only with the Jewish god (i.e., the first monotheistic religion) does one shift from the pagan idea of national gods among the gods of other nations, to the imperialistic idea of a jealous god (Ibid., p. 125). Rousseau states that in relation to the Ammonites, the Jewish god was merely a pagan god, so to speak, but in relation to the Canaanites (and presumably other peoples as well) the god of Israel was a “jealous god” (i.e., a god who sanctioned genocide: “peuples proscrits voués a la destruction”—proscribed peoples slated for destruction). This gave rise to holy wars, or wars of religion, which, according to Rousseau, is a strictly monotheistic concept. On the other hand, while the concept of holy wars originates with Judaic monotheism, Rousseau emphasizes that the Jews tend to be the victims rather than the oppressors in such wars. Having been vanquished, they refuse obstinately to recognize the gods of their masters, and their monotheistic claims render them objects of persecution (as is later true for the Christians as well). Thus, it might be said, they introduce wars of religion negatively, by inviting other peoples to enforce submission to rival gods, rather than positively, by striving to expand the dominion of the Hebrewgod.

43. Ibid., p. 201.

44. Ibid., p. 128.

45. A further problem with the “Protestant” interpretation is that the polemic against Catholicism is blatant enough in the Social Contract that Rousseau would have aroused Catholic wrath in any case.

46. Masters ed., p. 154, n. 137. See also p. 203, n. 3.

47. Ibid., p. 160.

48. Ibid., p. 162. Cf. Burke's, polemical opposition between “kind” and “kindred” in Letter to a Member of the National Assembly,” in The Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 4 (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), p. 300.Google Scholar Ironically, the prime target of Burke's critique in this context is Rousseau himself!

49. In Geneva Manuscript, pp. 160–61, Rousseau goes further, claiming that all religions naturally lend themselves to political abuse, leading to “the furies of fanaticism” and untold bloodshed.

50. Löwith, , Meaning in History, p. 130.Google Scholar

51. Masters ed., p. 200.

52. Ibid., p. 131.

53. Hence he writes in the Geneva Manuscript: “It is not permissible to strengthen the bond of a particular society at the expense of the rest of the human race” (p. 196). This moral universalism is strongly qualified, though not entirely abandoned, when Rousseau formulates the more thoroughgoingly particularist vision of the Social Contract. The text cited in this note provides a telling example: in the final version (p. 128), Rousseau deletes the reference to the human race, and substitutes an appeal to the security of the state (“sa propre surete”).

54. Ibid., p. 198; cf. p. 130.

55. Ibid., pp. 126–27. Rousseau and Hobbes clearly share a dim view of what Rousseau calls “the religion of the priest” (p. 128).

56. Once again, Protestantism is offered in the Geneva Manuscript as a supplementary option, and is recommended as superior to the alternatives previously rejected. It “binds the citizens to the State by weaker and gentler ties,” turning away from the society of “heroes and fanatics” that engenders pagan zealotry (p. 197). It offers a religion of tolerance, forgoing pagan virtues in order to avoid pagan vices. If it were in fact possible to describe this as a proper civil religion (“splitting the difference” between Christianity and Machiavelli, as it were), then there would indeed be a Rousseauian solution. The linchpin of my whole interpretation is the presumption that when Rousseau came to pen the Social Contract in its definitive version he thought through this possibility much more fully, and deliberately renounced it.

57. As if to prove my point, the very thinkers who are condemned in the Geneva Manuscript for their cosmopolitanism are praised by Rousseau in the Second Discourse as “great cosmopolitan souls, who surmount the imaginary barriers that separate peoples”! Rousseau, Jean-jacques, The First and Second Discourses, ed. Masters, Roger D., trans. Roger D., and Masters, Judith R. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964), p. 160.Google Scholar

58. Kolakowski, Leszek, Modernity on Endless Trial (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 179.Google Scholar

59. The topic of Nietzsche's civil religion deserves full treatment in a separate essay, but let us at least mention here that for Nietzsche, in common with Machiavelli (Discourses II: 5), the highest politics consists in the founding of new religions. In fact, one might speculate that Nietzsche's sole aim in writing Thus Spoke Zarathustra was to prove that a single human being can sit down and invent a religion. What Moses and St. Paul did can be done again.

60. Habermas and Modernity, ed. Bernstein, Richard J. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), p. 197.Google Scholar

61. Republic, Book 10: 619 c-d; cf. Phaedo, 82 b-c. For commentary, see Gadamer, Hansgeorg, “Plato and the Poets,” in Dialogue and Dialectic, trans. Smith, P. Christopher (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 61–62Google Scholar, esp. n. 9.

62. I have been helped in thinking through this analysis by co-teaching the political theory graduate core course at the University of Toronto with two of my colleagues, Joe Carens and Tom Pangle. I want to thank the two of them, as well as the students in the course in the years I co-taught it, for many valuable suggestions.lam also grateful to Edward Andrew, James Booth, Stanley Hauerwas, and Clifford Orwin for generous critical responses to my article.