THE THEOLOGICO-POLITICAL?between the idea that religion is the ultimate horizon of human life and the idea that
right [droit] is the ultimate source of human self-creation or, to be more accurate, that
right is an internal principle that allows human beings to transcend themselves. These
two ideas determine, respectively, the notion of having roots in a place and a time—the
notion of tradition and of an identity between self and being (people, nation, human-
ity)—and the notion of the rootlessness, the wandering, and the turmoil of being, the
notion of a wild assertion of the self as being free from all authority, as being supported
only by the work that is being accomplished.
It is obviously my intention not to summarize Michelet’s itinerary but, by making a
digression, to shed light on the question that concerns us here. Let us go back, then, to the
starting point provided by theIntroduction to a Universal History. What is its relevance? It
is not that it reveals the author’s originality. To put it briefly, it is a condensation of the
interpretations of Guizot and Ballanche. The monarchy is seen as a leveling and centraliz-
ing agent, which has the virtue of creating conditions of equality and of making society
increasingly homogeneous. Michelet sees in Christianity the advent of a religion of equal-
ity and fraternity, of a religion based upon a love of humanity. The idea that the old
monarchy became useless once the construction of society had been completed is bor-
rowed from Guizot; the idea that the spirit of Christianity has been invested in social
institutions is borrowed from Ballanche. It is important to note that Michelet rapidly
arrives at a double reading of the history of France, that he reads it in both religious and
political terms. In his view, the distinctive feature of France is that the ‘‘feeling of social
generality’’ was born in that nation. Despite inequality of condition and of morals, and
despite the regional differences that survived until the Revolution, a people comes into
being thanks to the double effect of a principle of material unification and a principle of
spiritual unification. We will not dwell upon the formulas that signal France’s pre-emi-
nent role in ‘‘bringing heaven to earth’’; a few examples will suffice: ‘‘the moral world
found its Word in Christ, the son of Judaea and of Greece, and France will explain the
Word to the social world’’; France’s role is to ‘‘break the news of this new revelation’’;
France speaks ‘‘the Word of Europe’’ and holds ‘‘the pontificate of the new civilization.’’
We will, however, pick out at least this judgment, which he will later invert: ‘‘The name
of the priest and the king, of the representatives of what is most general, that is, most
divine in the thought of a nation lent, as it were, the obscure right of the people amystical
envelopein which it grew and became stronger’’ (emphasis added).
InThe French Revolution, Michelet transforms this ‘‘mystical envelope’’ into an illu-
sion: he completely divorces right and justice from the name of the king and the priest,
who are now seen as concealing them in order to stifle them. And yet he still finds the
basis of ancien re ́gime society in the ‘‘priestly monarchy.’’ Indeed, if we are to believe his
own account, his conversion to the struggle against Christianity and his decision to write
hisRevolutionoriginated in something similar to a religious revelation. The authenticity
of the scene he reconstructs in 1869 is irrelevant; it is an admirable illustration of how
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