Tough Love: A Response to Richard J. Bernstein’s “Is Politics ‘Practicable’ without Religion?”

In my response to Bernstein, I explain more fully what I mean by a faith of the faithless. My conception of faith is neither a traditional theism nor an evangelical atheism, but the fidelity to an infinite demand. I show that a careful reading of Rousseau exhibits a series of déclages (Althusser’s term)—dislocations or displacements—that are relevant for confronting contemporary political aporiae around the relations between association, law and religion. I explain what I mean by the role of fictions in politics and the possibility of a supreme fiction. Along the way, I also discuss the question of love, which is not just some utilitarian mutual exchange of favors, but something much more radical with considerable political consequences.