Introduction
At the end of the Social Contract,Footnote 1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau describes two types of religion “considered in relation to society”: “the Religion of man and that of the Citizen.”Footnote 2 The former is described as “without Temples, without altars, without Rites, limited to the purely internal cult of the Supreme God, and the eternal duties of morality.”Footnote 3 Unlike the religion of man, the religion of the citizen, as its name suggests, fulfills the purpose of religion as it relates to the state. The religion of the citizen is argued to be Rousseau's ideal, and there is good reason for this.Footnote 4 Rousseau praises the religion of the citizen because “it combines divine worship and love of the laws, and in making the fatherland the object of the Citizens’ worship it teaches them that to serve the State is to serve its tutelary God.”Footnote 5 The followers of the religion of the citizen fear breaking civil laws, not only because of fear of civil punishment, but because doing so would “be impious.” The religion of the citizen is also politically useful on the battlefield where citizens must be willing to risk their lives for their country. To die defending the fatherland “is to be a martyr.”Footnote 6 With political life as its sole concern, the religion of the citizen appears to succeed at promoting the ideal citizen and state.
Despite his praise of the ancients and the religion of the citizen, Rousseau severely qualifies the usefulness of this religion. He concludes:
it is bad in that being founded on error and lies it deceives men, makes them credulous and superstitious, and drowns the true cult of the divinity in a vain ceremonial. It is furthermore bad when, becoming exclusive and tyrannical, it makes a people bloodthirsty and intolerant; so that it breathes only murder and massacre, and believes it performs a holy deed in killing whoever does not accept its Gods. This places such a people in a natural state of war with all others, which is most prejudicial to its own security.Footnote 7
The condemnation of the religion of the citizen is taken further in the Geneva Manuscript (ca. 1756).Footnote 8 Although his description of religion of the citizen, its benefits, and disadvantages is mostly the same, Rousseau is significantly harsher in the original unpublished version, referring to these citizens as “fanatics,” a word that does not appear in the civil religion chapter in the Social Contract (1762). Moreover, Rousseau, in Geneva, reveals a greater concern for humanity.Footnote 9 Whether his treatment of the religion of the citizen in the original version is consistent with the second is an open question.Footnote 10 But Rousseau's criticism should at least create some doubt about whether the ancient system is truly Rousseau's political ideal, or whether it is only preferable when compared with the moderns.
Rousseau's criticisms of the religion of the citizen seem incongruent because he usually expresses admiration for the ancients. “The ancient politicians forever spoke of morals and virtue; ours speak only of commerce and of money,” he notes in the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts.Footnote 11 Later, in his remarks on Poland, he compares the Greeks and moderns, writing that the public performances and competitions of the former were “constantly kindling in [the Greeks] emulation and glory, brought their courage and their virtues to that pitch of energy of which nothing now gives us any idea and which the moderns are not even capable of believing.”Footnote 12 Rousseau rarely lacked praise for the Spartans and republican Romans for their virtue and their absolute devotion to the state.
It is important to keep in mind Rousseau's intended use of the ancients. While he sincerely praises the Spartans and Romans and uses them as examples to make plain the degeneracy of the moderns, he does not usually encourage a complete return to the ancient institutions of Sparta or Rome.Footnote 13 Even while praising the ancients, he does at times express dissatisfaction with them. When praising them in the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, he describes the education of Spartans as “in truth monstrous in its perfection.”Footnote 14 In a fragment on Sparta, he writes that “if I honor Lacedaemonia, I honor the truth even more,” and that their “crimes horrify us.”Footnote 15 Rousseau may admire the virtues and even the vices of the ancients, but he usually rejects a complete return to the ancient system.
Scholars generally agree Rousseau thought a shared religion to be necessary for politics. As Timothy O'Hagan puts it, “some kind of shared religion is essential to provide ideological cohesion and counter the centrifugal forces of the individual modern order.”Footnote 16 Where they differ is on the “kind of shared religion.” For example, scholars disagree on whether his theological-political thought is conservative or revolutionary. Ronald Grimsley argues that Rousseau is a traditionalist and “emerges as a defender of the ultra-conservative religious standpoint.”Footnote 17 Lee Ward argues the opposite. He claims Rousseau is much closer to the philosophes than he was willing to let on. Rousseau has much more in common “with the secularizing tendencies of the Enlightenment,” and by “rediscovering [his] relationship to the Enlightenment” it is possible to observe the “underlying thread uniting his classically inspired public entertainments for Geneva and the revolutionary Festivals of Reason in Year II.”Footnote 18 There is further disagreement on how much government control the use of religion requires. For Lester Crocker, religion is just another way that Rousseau harms individual freedom in service to the all-encompassing state.Footnote 19 Helena Rosenblatt argues the complete opposite. Rousseau intends to secularize the state in the service of individual freedom: “Rousseau's argument in his chapter on civil religion was thus much more about laicizing the state than it was about coercing belief.”Footnote 20
What I hope in this article to contribute to the scholarship is to make clear that absolute state control of religion, as seen in the religion of the citizen, is not the shared religion Rousseau thinks ideal for the legitimate state. Religion requires ties to the state, but Rousseau considered the religion of the citizen to be more damaging than salutary. That is, while it has qualities that are useful, its other qualities undermine the ends of the state. This article will explore why. It will argue that the religion of the citizen, in most circumstances, leads not to longevity but to tyranny. Rousseau's argument rejecting the religion of the citizen in the Geneva Manuscript can be theoretically compatible with the argument rejecting the religion of the citizen out of self-interest and state preservation in the Social Contract. Finally, I will show that one vice of the religion of the citizen—its fanaticism—is never a requirement of the healthy state.Footnote 21
Serious Reasons: Why the State Requires Religion
In the Geneva Manuscript, Rousseau writes, “As soon as men live in society they must have a Religion that keeps them there. A people have never subsisted nor ever will subsist without Religion, and if they were not given one, it would make one itself or soon be destroyed.”Footnote 22 The state requires religion to aid in its creation and preservation.
Foundings of states require religion because it leads individuals to see their particular interests in the common good, allowing for acceptance of the laws and the state's creation. A founder who tries to reason with the people will be unable to make himself understood. An individual “appreciating no other scheme of government than that which bears directly on its particular interest has difficulty perceiving the advantages he is supposed to derive from the constant privations required by good laws.”Footnote 23 The solution is for the “fathers of nations to resort to the intervention of heaven,” he writes, “and to honor the Gods with their own wisdom, so that peoples, subject to the laws of the State as to those of nature, and recognizing the same power in the formation of man and in that of the city, freely obey the yoke of public felicity, and bear it with docility.”Footnote 24 His favored examples are Lycurgus, Numa, and Moses. These men used religious institutions to create citizens with a common character, encouraging patriotism. Describing these three founders, Rousseau writes, “All of them sought bonds that might attach the Citizens to the fatherland and to one another, and they found them in distinctive practices, in religious ceremonies which by their very nature were always exclusive and national.”Footnote 25
Religion also provides another important aid to the state, the afterlife. “In every state that can require its members to sacrifice their lives, anyone who does not believe in the afterlife is necessarily a coward or a madman.”Footnote 26 Religion calms the fears of those who may be called to die for the state, allowing for its preservation.Footnote 27 This, however, is only one of the advantages the afterlife provides to the state. In the Emile, Rousseau suggests belief in punishment in the afterlife may be an important deterrent for tyrants. Regarding the Persian myth of the bridge of Poul-Serrho, Rousseau asks, “If one took this idea from the Persians by persuading them that there is no Poul-Serrho or any place like it where the oppressed wreak vengeance on their tyrants after death, is it not clear that this would put the latter very much at their ease, and would deliver them from the care of placating these unfortunates?”Footnote 28 It further provides hope for the just in a world where the wicked seem to get ahead. If there were no afterlife where they were rewarded and the wicked punished, there would be no reason for them to behave with justice in this life.Footnote 29
It is for these reasons that Rousseau declares that “it is important for the State not to be without Religion, and it is important for serious reasons.” However, he adds that it “would be still better to have none at all than to have a barbarous and persecuting one that, tyrannizing the Laws themselves, would thwart the duties of the Citizen.”Footnote 30 Though the religion of the citizen, at least initially, appears to satisfactorily fulfill the requirements of religion and the state, it proves ultimately destructive of the main aim of the state: its preservation.
Error, Deception, Superstition, and Vain Ceremony
Rousseau's criticism of the religion of the citizen can be divided into two categories. The first set of criticisms is there from the very start. From the beginning, the religion of the citizen is “founded on error and lies” and “deceives men, making them credulous and superstitious, and drowns the true cult of the divinity in a vain ceremonial.”Footnote 31 The second sort of vices, though not initially a part of the religion of the citizen, are the necessary consequence of the first. “It is furthermore bad when, becoming exclusive and tyrannical, it makes a people bloodthirsty and intolerant; so that it breathes only murder and massacre, and believes it performs a holy deed in killing whoever does not accept its Gods.”Footnote 32 This section will address the first category of criticism.
At first this negative evaluation of the religion of the citizen can seem at odds with other recommendations Rousseau makes for the legitimate state: deception by the legislator is necessary to the founding of that state, and ceremony is a necessary part of maintaining citizen identity. Because of these contradictions, it could be that Rousseau is being disingenuous when he concedes that these aspects are bad. But I argue that these criticisms of the religion of the citizen may be compatible with Rousseau's earlier recommendations in the Social Contract.
Error and Lies
There is a seeming contradiction between the role of the legislator and Rousseau's criticism of the religion of the citizen. The legislator's use of religion in the founding of a state suggests that deception can be wise and salutary. Because people are unable to understand beyond their “particular interest,” the legislator, when founding a state, uses the gods to persuade others to accept “good laws.”Footnote 33 But the religion of the citizen, in being “founded on error and lies,” is described as “bad” for deceiving men. And while the religion of the citizen promotes obedience to the law, it also promotes superstition and vain ceremony. In this way, it would seem to fall under the false uses of religion Rousseau describes unfavorably in his chapter on the legislator. “Any man,” he writes, “can carve tablets of stone, bribe an oracle, feign secret dealings with some divinity, train a bird to speak in his ear, or find other crude ways to impress the people.”Footnote 34 The differences between the wise use of religious deception in the chapter on the legislator and the error and lies of the religion of the citizen may be more about the proper use and abuse of religion. In other words, using religion is easy, but using religion well is difficult and rare.
The difficultly, according to Rousseau, is that using religion well requires wisdom. Comparing the legislator with hucksters, Rousseau writes that “empty tricks form a passing bond, only wisdom can make it lasting.”Footnote 35 The best criterion for determining whether institutions are wise is duration. It is noteworthy that while Rousseau praises Numa and Lycurgus for their use of religion, within this chapter he does not use them as examples of longevity. This is not to say that their institutions are not wise, but only that theirs might not be best according to the standard Rousseau sets forth. Instead he praises two monotheistic religions for having the wisdom to last: “Jewish Law which still endures” and “Ishmael's child [Islam] which has ruled half the world for ten centuries.”Footnote 36 In comparison, in Political Economy, he praises Rome for following Numa's institutions for five hundred years.Footnote 37
Neither Jewish law nor Islam is a religion of the citizen in the way he describes in the chapter on civil religion. For example, the Jews did not give up their God when conquered, as was standard practice.Footnote 38 The religion of the citizen is usually described as a means to an end, in which religion leads to the state, but the reverse is true for Jewish law and Islam. Comparing different systems of legislation, Rousseau writes, “there is within each People some cause which orders these maxims in a particular manner and makes its legislation suited to itself alone. Thus formerly the Hebrews and recently the Arabs had religion as their principal object, the Athenians letters, Carthage and Tyre commerce, Rhodes seafaring, Sparta war, and Rome virtue.”Footnote 39 For the Hebrews and Muslims, as opposed to the religion of the citizen, law leads to religion, not the other way around. Rousseau seems to be suggesting that religion may become so instrumental that truth and rationality are compromised. In this case, it is neither wise, nor does it lead to the long-lasting law Rousseau praises.
The religion of the citizen, in being purely instrumental, does not seem to have the wisdom to endure for more than a short period of time. Although using religion in a way that involves lies and trickery may be useful for politics, its usefulness is only temporary. For example, when describing the Roman curia, Rousseau lists the conditions to be met before the curia assembled. One condition was the use of auguries that “held in check a proud and restless people and, when necessary, tempered the ardor of the seditious Tribunes.”Footnote 40 But the latter, he adds, could always find ways to overcome this restraint. Moreover, this “crude way to impress the people” eventually became useless, because although the people believed it, the government did not. Finally, Rousseau writes, “ambition eluded everything.”Footnote 41 When Rousseau writes that the religion of the citizen contains “error and lies,” he is most likely suggesting that, like the trickery of false religions, it is very likely to hold people together for a short period of time, but will quickly diminish or be used by those who want to satisfy their ambition.
Credulous and Superstitious
The religion of the citizen also leads to superstition.Footnote 42 Superstition, Rousseau writes in the Emile, originates in “ignorance of the things which surround us and what is going on about us.”Footnote 43 This ignorance leads to fear.Footnote 44 The religion of the citizen therefore keeps men in ignorance. Yet superstition, according to Rousseau, is not an inherent or a necessary part of religion. In Letters Written from the Mountain, he writes that instead of attacking the “true principles of Religion,” he attacks “cruel superstition.”Footnote 45 Rousseau claims that he “distinguish[es] with so much care” religion from superstition and asserts that nothing is more dangerous to true religion than “defenders of superstition.”Footnote 46
Defenders of superstition defend it “because that is how Peoples are led.” But this is distinct from religion, which supports the state through patriotism and civic virtue. Superstition, on the other hand, is “how [people] are led to their doom.” Accordingly, it is in the interest of tyrants alone.Footnote 47 Rousseau describes superstition as “their most terrible weapon and that in itself is the greatest harm it has ever done.”Footnote 48 From this, Rousseau derives a litany of superstition's crimes. Rather than lead people to accept wise laws, it “brutalizes the simple,” rather than use wisdom, “it persecutes the wise,” and rather than lead to freedom, “it puts Nations in chains.”Footnote 49 If the standard for legitimate authority is to ensure that people are as free as they were before, then superstition, in leading to tyranny, destroys the possibility of legitimate authority.Footnote 50
Vain Ceremony
Like the criticism of the lies of citizen religion, Rousseau's criticism of vain ceremony also seems strange. When it comes to citizenship, Rousseau emphasizes the role of ceremonies in leading to friendship and common identity among citizens. Ceremonies are what he praises Moses for in Government of Poland: “To keep his people from being absorbed by foreign peoples, he gave it morals and practices which could not be blended with those of other nations; he weighed it down with distinctive rites and ceremonies.”Footnote 51 He advises the Polish to do the same if they wish to maintain their distinction among Europeans. “These practices,” he tells them, “even if they are indifferent, even if they are in some respects bad, provided they are not essentially so, will have the advantage of making the Poles fond of their country and give them a natural revulsion to mingling with foreigners.”Footnote 52 If Rousseau typically finds shared ceremony an important aspect of citizenship, there is a question as to why it is a problem in the religion of the citizen.
The problem Rousseau finds in “vain ceremony” has less to do with the role of ceremony in citizenship than with the role of ceremony in religion. Rousseau thinks ceremony is not an inherent part of religion but is a necessary part of patriotism.Footnote 53 When he encourages certain ceremonies to promote patriotism, they have no necessary connection to religion. For example, Rousseau encourages the Poles to have their own distinctive ceremonies, ceremonies that have nothing to do with religion. He praises the Poles for their “distinctive mode of dress” and tells them to “let not the King, nor the Senators, nor any public figure ever wear any but the national dress, and let no Pole dare show himself at court dressed in the French fashion.”Footnote 54 Even the distinctive rites and ceremonies that Rousseau praises in the ancients do not have an absolutely necessary connection to religion. These ancient legislators “kept the Citizens frequently assembled in exercises which increased their pride and self-esteem together with their vigor and strength, in spectacles which … remind[ed] them of the history of their ancestors, their misfortunes, their virtues, their victories.”Footnote 55 Rousseau thinks patriotism could be separated from religion without doing much harm to the patriotism necessary for the state.
Moreover, it could be that not all ceremonies, particularly when connected to religion, lead to the ends Rousseau intends them for. The consequences of superstition can lead to gruesome outcomes. As we turn to Rousseau's criticisms of the bloodthirst and cruelty of citizen religion, it appears that these ceremonies, especially when connected to religion, harm rather than help.
Bloodthirst, Intolerance, Murder, and Massacre
Turning now to the second category of criticism of the religion of the citizen, Rousseau writes it is “furthermore bad” when it becomes “exclusive and tyrannical.”Footnote 56 This is a curious qualification to give for the destructive characteristics of citizen religion. Exclusion and intolerance, especially regarding foreigners, are not vices for Rousseau. One of the purposes of the religion of the citizen is to promote exclusivity because exclusivity sustains love of one's own laws and patriotism. Intolerance, moreover, would not only be a necessary consequence of the state's exclusivity, but would enforce and maintain it. While exclusivity is a good thing for Rousseau, it could be that when combined with tyranny—a problem to which the religion of the citizen is highly susceptible—it inevitably leads to these more damaging consequences.
Heinrich Meier dismisses these characteristics of the religion of the citizen as an instance of Rousseau “draw[ing] upon all rhetorical registers.”Footnote 57 Such a “spectacular statement of its work of devastation,” he argues, “stands in conspicuous contrast” to earlier descriptions of ancient religion.Footnote 58 His reasoning is that Rousseau describes ancient gods as “not jealous” and as beings who “divided the empire of the world among themselves.”Footnote 59 He explains that the jealous god is found only among monotheistic ancient Hebrews.Footnote 60 Ronald Beiner describes the difference between pagan and monotheistic religion in similar terms. Monotheism is either “conquering and proselytizing (Islam),” or “simply conquering, or genocidal (Judaism).” He argues that for Rousseau, paganism is a “‘benign theocracy,’ or a fairly tolerant national religion,” particularly in the case of Rome.Footnote 61 Beiner and Meier use Rousseau's description of the massacre of the Canaanites by the Jews to suggest that he is only referring to monotheistic religions of the citizen when he criticizes the religion of the citizen for its intolerance and bloodthirst. But this is overstated.Footnote 62 Rousseau's criticisms are compatible with his earlier descriptions of both pagan and monotheistic religions of the citizen.
Beginning with intolerance, both Meier and Beiner are correct that pagan religions of the citizen would treat the idea of proselytization with indifference, particularly as compared with Christianity, unless they conquered another nation. In that way, it is accurate to say that the religion of the citizen was tolerant. There were no “wars of Religion,” and because of this, Rousseau describes the ancients as having “mutual tolerance” in the Geneva Manuscript.Footnote 63 But it would be wrong to conclude that pagan religion of the citizen could never cause intolerance in the same way that a monotheistic religion of the citizen would. While different religions might peacefully coexist when they are not within the same borders, this changed when one was conquered. For example, the Babylonians’ and Syrians’ persecution of the Jews, whose religious practice they “regarded as a rebellion against the victor,” is consistent with Rousseau's critical assessment of the religion of the citizen.Footnote 64
Rousseau's example of ancient toleration is from one nation, in this case Rome, conquering another. When Rousseau writes that the Romans “let the people of Tarentum keep their irate Gods,” they are tolerant only because “they regarded those Gods as subject to their own and forced to pay them homage.”Footnote 65 In “State of War” he describes it as political shrewdness. “Leave their angry Gods to the Tarentines, Fabius said when he was invited to carry off to Rome the statues and paintings…. So true it is that a clever conqueror sometimes harms the vanquished more by what he leaves them than by what he takes from them.”Footnote 66 Toleration, it seems, for the ancients only comes after empire. Given Rousseau's rejection of empire, it is doubtful that the Roman system of toleration would be his ideal.
Both Meier and Beiner equate the more violent tendencies of the religion of the citizen with monotheistic religions. But Rousseau associates bloodthirst with all citizen religions.Footnote 67 Prior to his criticism, he writes that the religion of the citizen “regards everything outside the single Nation which adheres to it as infidel, alien, barbarous; it extends the rights and duties of man only as far as its altars.”Footnote 68 An implication of regarding everything outside one's borders as almost inhuman would be an increase in the willingness to use violence, whereas a recognition of common humanity would presumably make a person less inclined to use violence. But, once again, Rousseau's concern about “blood thirst” and “murder” appears to contradict his recommendations regarding the treatment of foreigners.
Usually Rousseau lacks reservations about the mistreatment of foreigners. He states in the Emile that “every particular society, when it is narrow and unified, is estranged from the all-encompassing society. Every patriot is harsh to foreigners. They are only men. They are nothing in his eyes.”Footnote 69 And while he concedes that the poor treatment of foreigners “is a drawback,” he concludes that it is “not compelling.”Footnote 70 He makes similar recommendations to the Polish. “Give a different bent to the Poles’ passions,” he advises, “and you will give their souls a national physiognomy which will set them apart from all other peoples, which will keep them from merging, from feeling at ease, from inter-marrying with them.”Footnote 71 The point is to establish friendship among citizens.Footnote 72 Being “humane” to foreigners only seems to be an obstacle to this endeavor.
But in other places Rousseau does reject cruel treatment of foreigners, even when done out of a noble sentiment like patriotism. He writes in his Discourse on the Virtue Most Necessary for a Hero that “some, intoxicated with love for the fatherland, have found nothing to be illegitimate in its service and have not hesitated to use for its benefit odious means which their generous souls could never have resolved to use for their own.”Footnote 73 The religion of the citizen increases love of fatherland and fellow citizens, and could exacerbate impulses to murder and to harm noncitizens. About the ancient treatment of foreigners, Rousseau writes,
it was long believed … that it was permissible to rob, pillage, and mistreat foreigners, and especially barbarians, until they were reduced to slavery. This led to a questioning of strangers, without offending them, as to whether they were Brigands or Pirates, because this trade, far from being ignominious, was then considered honorable. The first Heroes, like Hercules and Theseus, who made war on Brigands, nonetheless engaged in brigandage themselves, and the Greeks often used the term peace treaties for treaties made between peoples who were not at war. The words foreigners and enemies were long synonymous for several ancient peoples, even among the Latins.Footnote 74
That is, enmity with foreigners was the norm and peace the exception. Rousseau writes in his Geneva Manuscript that this attitude was so pervasive that even after Christianity “generalized” the “healthy ideas of natural right and the brotherhood of all men,” the influence of the ancient system could still be seen in laws. “And even the ancient acts of violence, not only against declared enemies but also against anyone who was not a subject of the Empire, can still be found authorized in many respects in the Laws of Justinian, so that the humanity of Romans extended no further than their domination.”Footnote 75 While Rousseau promotes separateness from foreigners, he thinks there is a limit to how badly one should treat them.
Moreover, the religion of the citizen could also lead to bloodthirst and the massacre of fellow citizens. Early in the civil religion chapter, Rousseau criticizes modern “erudition” for thinking all the different gods of the ancients could be the same, “as if chimerical Beings bearing different names could have anything in common!”Footnote 76 Two of the gods he lists are Moloch and Baal, both infamous for blood lust. His vivid description of religion in “Fragment of Revelation” features many of ancient religion's more infamous religious sacrifices, from the practice of sacrificing infants in Carthage to the burying alive of vow-breaking Vestal Virgins in Rome. “Now tender infants were thrown into flames from cedar wood, now grown men were immolated through the falsehoods of a decrepit old man, while groaning denatured Fathers plunged the knife into the bosom of their own daughters. Young people in elegant and pompous adornment that still enhance their beauty were buried alive for having listened to the voice of nature.”Footnote 77 Even though this work is not published, it suggests the bloodshed and murder Rousseau might have had in mind when he criticized the religion of the citizen. What Rousseau describes here is not the “gentle sentiment” of patriotism of the Political Economy, but superstitious massacre, which he considers a crime against justice.Footnote 78
Consequences
Humanity and Self-Preservation
One significant difference between the Social Contract and the Geneva Manuscript is the emphasis on humanity in the latter. While both contain almost identical descriptions of the religion of the citizen, in the original version, Rousseau rejects the religion of the citizen in defense of humanity. That is, he suggests that particular societies might owe something to the universal society. Because the religion of the citizen can be bloodthirsty and intolerant, he concludes that “it is not permissible to strengthen the bond of a particular society at the expense of the rest of the human race.”Footnote 79 He returns to this theme a few paragraphs later and more forcefully adds that “if pagan superstition, despite this mutual tolerance and in the midst of culture and a thousand virtues, engendered so many cruelties, I do not see how it is possible to separate those very cruelties from that very zeal, and to reconcile the rights of a national religion with those of humanity.”Footnote 80
But this would seem to contradict the reason Rousseau gives for rejecting the religion of the citizen in the Social Contract. There, Rousseau does not reject citizen religion on the basis of humanity; concern for humanity is absent. Rather, Rousseau argues that it threatens the preservation of the state. He concludes the paragraph by stating that it “places such a people in a natural state of war with all others, which is most prejudicial to its own security.”Footnote 81 The religion of the citizen, it seems, threatens the whole purpose of the state. Because the Geneva Manuscript was not published, it is necessary to determine whether his argument in defense of humanity is consistent with his argument in the Social Contract, where he rejects the religion of the citizen for more utilitarian reasons.
The contradiction in these two works reflects a tension in Rousseau's work as a whole, between his tendency to favor a strong, patriotic state and his concern for the rights of humanity.Footnote 82 For example, in the Discourse on Inequality (1754) the purely conventional distinction of societies and states here seems to do more harm than good. He describes the outcome of the division of peoples into different societies: “From it arose the National Wars, Battles, murders, reprisals that make Nature tremble and that shock reason, and all those horrible prejudices that rank among the virtues the honor of spilling human blood.”Footnote 83 These wars are against the natural inclinations of man, not only to preserve himself (as a naturally “timorous” being), but against his natural “pity.”Footnote 84 And while man in society is almost a different being from man in nature, “the state of society which constrains all our natural inclinations can … not annihilate them.”Footnote 85 Humanity, at least as understood by Rousseau, seems to suggest the ability to recognize that man should not kill or harm man for any reason other than self-preservation—a problem that an increase in prejudice and xenophobia created by the religion of the citizen would indeed seem to exacerbate.Footnote 86 And indeed, within the Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau praises those “few great Cosmopolitan Souls who cross the imaginary boundaries that separate Peoples and, following the example of the sovereign being that created them, embrace the whole of Mankind in their benevolence.”Footnote 87
But in other places, Rousseau does not seem to show much consideration for humanity, except in order to disparage the concern for it. In the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750), he criticizes those who “smile disdainfully at such old-fashioned words as Fatherland and Religion.”Footnote 88 Typically, he thinks the concern for humanity is an excuse to treat one's fellow citizens terribly. For example, in the Emile (1762), he advises that one should “distrust those cosmopolitans who go to great length in their books to discover duties they do not deign to fulfill around them.”Footnote 89 Those who make arguments in defense of the rights of humanity do not defend the rights of fellow citizens. They can love others in the abstract, because it does not necessarily lead to any action. He cynically declares that “a philosopher loves the Tartars so as to be spared having to love his neighbors.”Footnote 90
The promotion of humanity, according to Rousseau, discourages patriotism. Friendship, common identity, and love of laws are necessary if the state is to preserve itself. The rights of humanity seem ultimately irreconcilable with these aims. In Letters Written from the Mountain, Rousseau writes that they are “incompatible in their energy, and especially among an entire people.” One cannot be a patriot and a lover of humanity at the same time. “The Legislator who wants them both will get neither one nor the other. This compatibility has never been seen and never will be, because it is contrary to nature, because one cannot give the passion two aims.”Footnote 91 Encouraging patriotism alone remains the best way to encourage humane action at least among citizens, while the promotion of humanity only results in inhumanity not only among citizens, but among all peoples too.
But in this same work, Rousseau brings these two ends, humanity and state interest, together. He writes that the sovereign oversees “the part of Religion that deals with morality, that is to say justice, the public good, obedience to the natural and positive Laws, the social virtues and all the duties of man and Citizen.”Footnote 92 That is, government has oversight over religion not only as it pertains to the interests of the state, but also as it pertains to humanity. It could be that there is a difference in encouraging the duties of man and love of humanity. In encouraging the duties of the citizen, the sovereign should avoid encouraging duties that harm humanity. Religion of the citizen, as described in both Social Contract and Geneva Manuscript, harms the duties of both. Rousseau confirms the argument in both these works when he writes that religions of the citizen “are useful to the State as parts of its constitution…. But they are harmful to the human Race and even to the State in another sense.”Footnote 93 If this is true, there remains a question as to how this works practically, particularly given how negatively Rousseau thinks citizens should treat foreigners. Even if it is ideal that the interests of the state and the rights of humanity are both respected, this ideal seems to be impossible.
Rousseau addresses this problem in one of his first political writings, Political Economy (1755). Even here, where he is at his most republican, he establishes the humane sentiments he later includes in the Geneva Manuscript and Letters Written from the Mountain. Rousseau ranks the duties man owes to different societies by reference to the latter's size. The general rule he provides is that “particular societies are always subordinate to those that contain them.”Footnote 94 It is thoroughly possible that “a given deliberation may be advantageous to the small community, and most pernicious to the large one.”Footnote 95 Ideally, he writes, the “duties of the citizen take precedence over those of the senator, and those of man over those of the citizen.”Footnote 96 But Rousseau has moderate expectations. He knows men will hardly, if ever, do anything out of a concern for humanity. Even though the duties of man should take precedence over the duties of citizens, “unfortunately personal interest is always inversely proportional to duty, and increases in direct proportion as the association grows narrower and the commitment less sacred.”Footnote 97 Rousseau never criticizes men for their inclination to act on closer interests, because he knows that it is their nature. Most people cannot comprehend humanity as it is too abstract.Footnote 98
These reasons could be why Rousseau drops the Geneva Manuscript’s humanitarian argument for the Social Contract’s utilitarian one. He does not drop his rejection of the religion of the citizen on the basis of humanity. Rather, he knows that motives of self-interest and self-preservation persuade more effectively than motives of humanity. Thus, he uses personal interest, the “preservation of the state,” in service of more “humane” ends.
In order to understand how that could be true, it is necessary to once again return to the purposes of the social contract and state. Rousseau writes that the social contract is formed when the “primitive state can no longer subsist, and humankind would perish if it did not change its way of being.”Footnote 99 Later he writes that the “surest sign” a people is prospering is not their wealth, but “their number and their population.”Footnote 100 When people are free they are more likely to have children and this increase in population suggests satisfaction with their government, whereas in a tyranny, they will be less likely to increase the population.
The religion of the citizen threatens life in that it can lead to excessive violence, against both its own citizens and those outside the state. But while this may seem a clear threat to humanity's preservation, the problems with the religion of the citizen go deeper than bloodshed alone. Rousseau warns throughout the Social Contract that peace alone should not be the end of the state. Rather than being good for citizens, he usually describes it as harmful. “Life is also tranquil in dungeons. Is that enough to feel well in them?” Peace is no guarantee of well-being. “The Greeks imprisoned in Cyclops's cave lived there tranquilly, while awaiting their turn to be devoured.”Footnote 101 Later he writes that the occasional outbreak of violence is good for a people.Footnote 102 “Riots, civil wars, greatly alarm chiefs, but they do not cause the true miseries of peoples…. Their real prosperities or calamities arise from their permanent state.”Footnote 103 And it is the constant state of war, which Rousseau thinks the religion of the citizen encourages, that harms the ends of both preservation of the state and humanity.
The two arguments in the Geneva Manuscript and the Social Contract can be made compatible in this way: the religion of the citizen through its encouragement of bloodthirst, cruelty, murder, and massacre is particularly amenable to conquest and empire. Even though Rousseau writes that the gods divided the world among themselves, all the ancient examples he gives in the chapter “On Civil Religion” in the Social Contract involve one state conquering another. Almost immediately he associates the religion of the citizen with conquering peoples and expanding borders: “there was no other way to convert a people than to enslave it, nor were there any other missionaries than conquerors, and since the obligation to change their cult was the law of the vanquished, it was necessary to be victorious before talking about such a change.”Footnote 104 While the gods of citizen religion were not jealous, the people certainly could be.
When states are satisfied with their borders, it is better both for the state and for humanity. Conquering creates more problems for citizens than they might initially realize. He writes that “nothing is more downtrodden or as miserable as conquering peoples.”Footnote 105 But what makes conquering people miserable is not excessive bloodshed. Rousseau focuses instead on the relation between conquering and expenses: “An appetite for conquests is one of the most perceptible and dangerous causes for such an increase in public needs and expenditures.”Footnote 106 The more expensive the government becomes, the more taxes government imposes.Footnote 107 These new taxes threaten citizens by threatening their livelihood. When the taxes increase so much as to create a tax over bread, it threatens the very existence of citizens.Footnote 108 Excessive taxes “work as directly as possible at depopulating the country; and hence at ruining it in the long run…. For there is no worse scarcity for a nation than a scarcity of men.”Footnote 109 Thus, Rousseau concludes that that government “under which the Citizens, without resort to external means, without naturalizations, without colonies, populate and multiply, is without fail the best: That under which a people dwindles and wastes away is the worst.”Footnote 110 That is, the state that can grow without becoming an empire and incurring its detrimental increase in taxes is the best.
Rousseau grants that initially conquests can occur because of necessity, as was the case with Rome.Footnote 111 He writes in the Social Contract that “all peoples have a kind of centrifugal force by which they constantly act against one another and tend to enlarge themselves at their neighbors’ expense.”Footnote 112 The religion of the citizen, however, through its propensity for violence, can exacerbate this “centrifugal force” by promoting the passions to benefit themselves at their neighbor's expense.Footnote 113 The motives for conquering are not often apparent. Its ends are never what the citizens might think they are. Rousseau explains that the conqueror's “genuine motive is not so much the apparent desire to aggrandize the nation as the hidden desire to increase the chiefs’ domestic authority with the help of an increase in troops and under cover of the distraction which the objects of war cause in the minds of citizens.”Footnote 114 This, in turn, might lead to a “permanent state,” that of empire, which is unlikely to lead to freedom.
Fanaticism and Patriotism
Rousseau's rejection of the religion of the citizen has other notable consequences which are not included in the Social Contract. In the Geneva Manuscript, Rousseau specifically associates fanaticism and the religion of the citizen; the Social Contract only refers to its outcomes. Zev Trachtenberg that argues Rousseau drops fanaticism from the latter because it remains “essential to political life” and that his “ideal citizen remains the civic fanatic.”Footnote 115 There is general agreement that Rousseau requires fanaticism in order to have patriotic citizens.Footnote 116 Removing the religion of the citizen removes fanaticism, and therefore, so the argument goes, removes patriotism.
Trachtenberg cites the Emile in support of his argument. In a footnote directed to the philosophes, Rousseau appears to praise fanaticism. Responding to Pierre Bayle's “incontestable” argument “that fanaticism is more pernicious than atheism,” he writes that Bayle failed to mention a characteristic of fanaticism “which is no less true … that fanaticism, although sanguinary and cruel, is nevertheless a grand and strong passion which elevates the heart of man, makes him despise death, and gives him a prodigious energy that need only be better directed to produce the most sublime virtues.”Footnote 117 Trachtenberg argues that fanaticism only needs to be “better directed” in order to show that Rousseau thinks fanaticism is salutary when it promotes appropriate ends, such as patriotism and the state. While Rousseau praises fanaticism here in preference to the indifference and self-interest of atheism, it is a stretch to say he is giving a general endorsement of fanaticism.Footnote 118
It is important to remember that Rousseau agrees with Bayle's argument that fanaticism is “sanguinary and cruel.” In characterizing fanaticism as violent, Rousseau also agrees with Voltaire, who equates fanaticism with violence and death. The enthusiastic, Voltaire explains, “takes dreams for realities and his fancies for prophecies.” The fanatic “supports his madness with murder.”Footnote 119 Rousseau maintains this characterization of fanaticism in his other writings. Whether in the Christian world (“The abominable doctrines are those that lead to crime and murder, and make fanatics”) or in the ancient (he describes religion of the citizen as “engender[ing] so many cruelties”), fanaticism is a destructive passion.Footnote 120 Moreover, in contributing to intellectual error, Rousseau associates it with “all the pettinesses that characterize the ordinary person.” He includes in his list of “pettinesses” both fanaticism and cruelty, vices he describes as having their “source in weakness of the soul.”Footnote 121 It is fanaticism's cruelty and its basis in error, none of which Rousseau ever denies, that makes it dangerous to the state.
Moreover, Rousseau also views fanaticism as a short-lived passion. Patriotism, which Trachtenberg describes as a type of civic fanaticism, is intended to be a long-term passion in support of the state. But “fanaticism is a crisis state that cannot last forever.”Footnote 122 That is, whether patriotic or religious, fanaticism is to be avoided. Rousseau adds, “It has its fits that are more or less long, more or less frequent, and it also has its respites, during which people are composed. Returning to themselves at those times, people are completely surprised to see themselves fettered by so many absurdities.”Footnote 123 Instead of being useful, fanaticism leaves a people encumbered with an excessive number of laws and rules they are unable to follow.
What, then, could Rousseau possibly mean when he writes that fanaticism only needs to be “better directed”? It cannot mean that Rousseau would wish fanaticism be maintained for civic purposes. Based on his characterization of fanaticism this seems impossible. What may be the case is that fanaticism can be directed, not towards what Trachtenberg describes as a “mitigated fanaticism,” but instead, a passion closely associated with it. Rousseau consistently makes clear the need for passion in politics. For example, the state requires patriotic citizens who love their country. But even patriotism encouraged to “its highest pitch,” as Rousseau recommends for the Poles, is never described as fanaticism. Rather, it is “patriotic zeal” that will protect the Polish from the Russians.Footnote 124 What Rousseau could mean by the better direction of fanaticism is the maintaining of its underlying passion, zeal.
Rousseau does distinguish between fanaticism (fanatisme) and zeal (zèle). While fanaticism is violent and cruel, zeal can be salutary.Footnote 125 The difference between the two is the place of reason in each. Fanaticism is completely without reason. Rousseau wants passion in the state, but not thoughtless passion. In Discourse on the Virtue Most Necessary for the Hero, he writes the “purest soul can lose its way even on the path of goodness if mind and reason do not guide it, and all virtues are corrupted without the collaboration of wisdom.”Footnote 126 Virtues should be guided by reason. Without it, they turn into their extremes and into vice: “Firmness easily degenerates into obstinacy, gentleness into weakness, zeal into fanaticism, valor into ferocity.”Footnote 127 All the negative aspects of religion of the citizen culminate in the thoughtlessness fanaticism requires. Not only does it keep the citizen in error, but it keeps him in fear, through superstition. Unable to reason, even about his own interest, he becomes fanatical and bloodthirsty or vulnerable to tyranny.
That Rousseau wants to avoid the cruelty and fanaticism of citizen religion becomes clear in his advice to Poland. For example, citizens in the ancient world associated the word “foreigner” with the word “enemy.” Though Rousseau encourages the Poles to be both patriotic and wary of foreigners, he does not encourage them to reach this level of civic fanaticism. Even when a Pole becomes king through Russian interference in their elections, Rousseau cautions them against executing the king. He presents them with two alternatives: “Either have his head cut off as he deserves; or without regard to his first election which is null and void, have him elected anew with other Pacta conventa by which you will make him renounce [the authority of] appointment to high offices.”Footnote 128 He recommends the second option because it is “not only more humane, but also the wiser.”Footnote 129 Rousseau does seem to think that citizens are able to be patriotic without fanaticism and its accompanying dangers. He encourages them to be citizens, while respecting humanity.
Conclusion: The Civil Profession of Faith, a Solution?
The problems of the religion of the citizen should lead scholars to question whether this is the system Rousseau eventually plans to return to (Meier) or regrettably rejects (Beiner), and whether his ideal state requires the fanatic citizen (Trachtenberg).
As this analysis has shown, the failures of the religion of the citizen threaten both state and humanity. Internally, the religion restricts believers to a thoughtless fanaticism through its deception. It maintains this deception by encouraging superstitious belief. Because they are kept in ignorance, citizens are more likely to be swayed by tyranny. They are in the perfect condition for a tyrant to turn their zeal into fanaticism. Externally, it maintains a constant state of war and encourages empire (as well as harm of fellow citizens) owing to its increased inclination to violence and cruelty. The state requires passionate citizens for its preservation. But the religion of the citizen creates fanatics, as opposed to zealous citizens. When Rousseau rejects the religion of the citizen, he rejects not only the ancient system as a whole, but also the type of fanatical citizen that it creates.
Rousseau concludes his discussion of the religion of the citizen in the Geneva Manuscript by declaring: “It is better … to bind the citizens to the state by weaker and gentler ties, and to have neither heroes nor fanatics.”Footnote 130 Despite its accompanying problems, the state still requires religion to connect citizens to the state and to each other. But as Rousseau writes in the Social Contract, that religion cannot “exceed the bounds of public utility”—a fault of the religion of the citizen. It turns out that less may be required to be a good citizen than the all-encompassing religion of the citizen. As Rousseau describes the civil profession of faith, it is this civil religion which contains the “sentiments of sociability, without which it is impossible to be either a good Citizen or a loyal subject.”Footnote 131 The “weaker and gentler ties” to the state are the belief in “provident Deity, the life to come, the happiness of the just, the punishment of the wicked, the sanctity of the social Contract and the Laws.”Footnote 132 There is only one negative dogma: “intolerance.”
But does this constitute a possible solution to the problems of fanaticism in the religion of the citizen with the need the state has for religion?Footnote 133 Religion of the citizen fulfills the need for religion insofar as it combines love of the laws, patriotism, and the gods. But as Rousseau shows, absolute government control over religion eventually undermines the state, hindering religion's usefulness. It could be that an increase in individual religious freedom, as seen in the civil profession of faith, as opposed to absolute control by the sovereign seen in the religion of the citizen, is more likely to satisfy the most important aim of the state, its preservation. For example, if the sovereign's oversight is limited to questions of morality, it could lead to a tempering of both superstition and fanaticism. Recognizing the sanctity of the laws and enforcing toleration may lead to zeal, whereas the inclusion of vain ceremony to those laws and encouraging xenophobia may lead to fanaticism. Rousseau describes the benefits of the civil profession of faith in the Geneva Manuscript: “The state will have its cult and will not be the enemy of anyone else's. With divine and human laws being always united on the same object, the most pious theists will also be the most zealous citizens.”Footnote 134 In that way, it is possible that a civil religion with minimal dogma, such as the civil profession of faith, encourages a salutary zeal while preventing destructive fanaticism, truly combining “what right permits with what interest prescribes, so that justice and utility not be disjoined.”Footnote 135
