INTRODUCTIONomnipotence to two recent theories of power and society: the analysis of panopticism in
Foucault and that of the spectacle in Debord. He shows how, even though both thinkers
shared a fundamental mistrust of theological interpretations of modernity, their analyses
of the use of power and vision to organize and oppress deploy a series of similar theolog-
ico-political operations and themes. In both, humans are defined by the limitations of a
finite individual’s gaze, and consequently are mired in social structures and power rela-
tions that exploit this limitation. For these thinkers, human entanglement in visually
encoded interpersonal relations results in submission to social structures that enforce the
metaphor of theoscopy, that is to say, the projection of a perfect, divine gaze on the very
form of modern society. By pursuing the seemingly theological dimensions of these theo-
ries of power, Geroulanos seeks to understand the role of tropes, traditions, metaphors,
and practices normally attributed to religious thought in a post–‘‘death of God’’ concep-
tion of the political and the social. He suggests that what replaces God and Man is in fact
an emptiness that calls out to be called ‘‘God’’ anew.
Thierry de Duve essays a ‘‘translation’’ of central Christian and theological virtues
(faith, hope, and love) into the republican triad of ‘‘liberty, equality, and fraternity.’’ To
remind us of the transcription of the New Testament ‘‘maxims’’ into a decidedly political
register, de Duve asserts, would mean, first of all, ‘‘to demystify the modern claim to
secularism and state its failure, to provide a (hasty and partial) explanation for the stub-
born persistence or the vengeful return of the religious in the public sphere’’ (p. 654).
Thus, he writes, when the French Revolution ‘‘translated the Christian maxim of love as
‘fraternity,’ it merely took cognizance of a virtuality contained from the very start in the
doctrine of Christ.... The only love that saves is universal love: this is the point that
articulates the political and the religious, and it applies identically to St. Paul and to
Marat’’ (p. 656). But something more paradoxical is at work. A more important claim to
make, in de Duve’s view, is that ‘‘the motto of the French Revolution takes charge of the
three Christian maxims and that it is only by doing so that it opposes superstitious,
unenlightened religiosity’’ (p. 654). De Duve takes this last idea from Gauchet’sThe Dis-
enchantment of the World, which defines Christianity as the ‘‘religion of the exit from
religion.’’ But he takes Gauchet’s argument one step further, suggesting that the ‘‘signs
pointing to the exit from religion already contained in the Christian maxims’’ do their
work ‘‘even more so’’ in these traditional virtues than in their presumed ‘‘lay translation’’
(p. 655). In consequence, there is a longer way to go with the maxims faith, hope, and
love before one can see how their translation by liberty, equality, and fraternity really
does point to a possible exit from religion, a telos that de Duve, with Gauchet, considers
both historically and empirically inevitable, as well as politically and ideologically desir-
able. This is their shared ‘‘optimism.’’
De Duve considers non-Christian possible exits from religiosity, as well. One way of
walking this path would be ‘‘to ‘gender’ the postreligious virtualities of Christianity left
unattended by the Revolution,’’ rethinking the way in which, in Christianity, women have
PAGE 8383.................16224$ INTR 10-13-06 12:34:33 PS