THE THEOLOGICO-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 realitysui 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 theEncyclopediathat ‘‘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 bul-
warks, but purely subjective in individuals:—or it may be, religion is treated as some-
thing 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.^1Before 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 or even cynical politics, which Victor
Cousin painted in more favorable colors as eclecticism. This ‘‘bastard philosophy,’’ to use
Leroux’s expression, certainly celebrates the indestructible virtues of religion, but it does
so in order to subordinate them to the preservation of a political order that, to cite Hegel
once more, is based on a ground of its own.
We therefore have to recognize that what is now the dominant conception of politics
goes back a long way. Its origins seem to merge with those of the bourgeois spirit—with
the spirit of a bourgeoisie that has become politically dominant. Without wishing to dwell
on the vicissitudes of ideology that drove it from the intellectual scene, we ought, then,
to say that it is not in the work of the thinkers we first mentioned that we find the first
signs of our modernity, but in eclecticism. The ‘‘monstrous blunder’’ that Hegel de-
nounces would therefore appear to designate the truth of modern times, the truth of our
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