THE THEOLOGICO-POLITICAL?But is this the only reason for its attachment to the religious? Is not political philosophy
guided by a quest for an ultimate knowledge that, although it is won in response to the
requirements of reflection, is still formulated in terms of knowledge of theOne? Is not
this the inspiration it wishes to preserve, and does it not sense that the advent of democ-
racy threatens to do away with it? I am not forgetting that, in its effective movement, it
contradicts this inspiration, places thought in the realm of the interrogative, and deprives
it of the religious element of certainty and that, in that sense, it is, as we have noted,
bound up with a political constitution that no longer permits human activities to be
placed beneath the sign of a primal law. But taking its effective movement into account
does not mean that we must ignore its representation of its aims. And does not the fact
that it is drawn toward the religious indicate that it is retreating in the face of a political
form that, by subjecting human beings to the experience of division, fragmentation, and
heterogeneity in every register, and to the experience of the indeterminacy of the social
and of history, undermines the ground on which philosophical knowledge was built and
obscures the task it sets itself? The assertion that a society can never lose its religious basis
can, in other words, be understood in one of two ways. The philosopher may mean to
say that it would be illusory for society to claim to be able to confine the principle of its
institution within its own limits. But in that case he fails to see that, whereas modern
democracy does foster that illusion, it does so by breaking down old certainties, by inau-
gurating an experience in which society is constantly in search of its own foundations. He
fails to see that it is not the dimension but the figure of theotherthat it abolishes and
that, while there is a risk involved in the loss of the religious, there is also something to
be gained by calling the law into question, that freedom is a conquest. Alternatively, he
may mean to say that religion elaborates a primordial representation of the One, and that
this representation proves to be a precondition for humanunity, but we then have to ask
ourselves about the reasons for the attractions of unity. We have to ask how much its
attractions owe to its opposite, namely, the repugnance inspired by division and conflict.
We have to ask how the philosophical idea of the One colludes with the image of a united
society. We have to ask why unity must be conceived beneath the sign of the spiritual,
and why division must be projected onto the material plane of interest.
In order to evaluate fully this reluctance to admit that there is a separation between the
political and the religious, we must go beyond the level of analysis at which we have been
working. It is in fact impossible to ignore the fact that the image of union is generated
or re-generated at the very heart of modern democracy. The new position of power is
accompanied by a new symbolic elaboration, and, as a result, the notions of state, people,
nation, fatherland, and humanity acquire equally new meanings. If we take no interest in
these notions or restrict our discussion to the function they may play in the process of
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