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The Permanence of the Theologico-Political? Claude Lefort There was, in the nineteenth century, a widespread and lasting conviction that one cannot discern the transformations that occur in political society—that one cannot really take stock of what is appearing, disappearing , or reappearing—without examining the religious significance of the old and the new. In both France and Germany, philosophy, history , the novel, and poetry all testify to that. This conviction is not, of course, entirely new, and it can be traced far back in history. I am not thinking of the work of theologians and jurists, or of their disputations over the links between the authority of kings and emperors, and that of popes; no matter how they exercised it, their thought was still confined within the limits of a theologico-political experience of the world. It is, it seems to me, in the sixteenth century that we detect the first signs of a modern reflection upon politics and religion; it is then that a new sensitivity to the question of the foundations of the civil order is born as a result of the combined effects of the collapse of the authority of the Church and of the struggles that accompanied the Reformation, as a result both of the assertion of the absolute right of the prince and of challenges to that right. It is, however, still true to say that at the beginning of the nineteenth century a much wider debate is inaugurated as a result of the French Revolution. It is while that event is still a living memory that there arises a feeling that a break has occurred, but that it did not occur within time, that it establishes a relationship between human beings and time itself, that it makes history a mystery; that it cannot be circumscribed within the field of what are termed political, social, or economic institutions; that it establishes a relationship between human beings and the institution itself; that it makes society a mystery. The religious meaning of this break haunts the minds of the men of the period, no matter what verdicts they may reach—no matter whether they look for signs of a restoration of Catholicism, for signs of 1 48 THE T HEOLOGICO-POLITICAL? a renewal of Christianity within Catholicism or Protestantism, for signs of the fulfillment of Christianity in political and social life, outside the old framework of the Churches, or even for signs of its complete destruction and of the birth of a new faith. To mention only the case of France, we might say that at one extreme we have legitimists like De Maistre, that at the other we have socialists like Leroux, and that, between the two extremes, we have such individual thinkers as Ballanche, Chateaubriand, Michelet, and Quinet; they all speak the same language, and it is simultaneously political, philosophical, and religious. It is true—and let us not forget it—that the same period sees the assertion of a new state of mind, of a tendency (traces of which can be found in the sixteenth century, and which became clearly outlined during the French Revolution) to conceive of the state as an independent entity, to make politics a reality sui generis, and to relegate religion to the domain of private belief. As early as 1817, Hegel was already denouncing this tendency in terms that foreshadow its future developments. Arguing in the Encyclopedia that ‘‘the state rests on the ethical sentiment, and that on the religious,’’ he adds this valuable commentary: It has been the monstrous blunder of our times to try to look upon these inseparables as separable from one another, and even as mutually indifferent. The view taken of the relationship of religion and the state has been that, whereas the state had an independent existence of its own, springing from some source and power, religion was a later addition, something desirable perhaps for strengthening the political bulwarks , but purely subjective in individuals:—or it may be, religion is treated as something without effect on the moral life of the state, i.e., its reasonable law and constitution, which are based on a ground of their own.1 Before long, similar criticisms became widespread in France, but they were based upon different premises, were inspired by humanism or by a socialism tinged with a new religiosity, and were addressed to adversaries who came to the fore when the reign of Louis-Philippe ensured the triumph of a pragmatic...

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