Radical Political Theology by Crockett Clayton;

Author:Crockett, Clayton;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion/Philosophy
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2011-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

Now since we have the rare good fortune to live in a commonwealth where freedom of judgment is fully granted to the individual citizen and he may worship God as he pleases, and where nothing is esteemed dearer and more precious than freedom, I think I am undertaking no ungrateful or unprofitable task in demonstrating that not only can this freedom be granted without endangering piety and the peace of the commonwealth, but also the peace of the commonwealth and piety depend on this freedom.10

For Spinoza, superstition is incompatible with a free society. Therefore, the task of his religious analysis, which in many ways was antitheological or at least secular in its theological orientation, is to deliver humankind from its ill-founded superstitions and to expose the mystery of despotism to the light of reason. In this way, he divests the sovereign of divine authorization and makes the case for a popular sovereignty wherein authority “is vested in all the citizens, and laws are sanctioned by common consent.”11 As Matthew Stewart puts it, “[Spinoza’s] fundamental aim is to replace the reigning theocratic conception of the state with one founded on secular principles.”12

While the welfare of the people is now raised as the highest and final good—an immanent value befitting a democratic age—this has profound implications for the status of religious authority and the proper place of religion in society. As Spinoza writes, “the welfare of the people is the highest law, to which all other laws, both human and divine, must be made to conform.”13 In the words of Kant, this would be a “religion within the limits of reason alone” but also a religion circumscribed by the will of the people as the right of the state. From here, we cannot help but wonder, once the force of religion is acquired solely from the right of the state, what is to prevent it from becoming yet another tool in the state’s apparatus of power? With Spinoza’s delimitation of religion, what begins as the defense of freedom—specifically, the freedom of conscience for the citizen and the freedom of the state from religious control—has the stated effect of consolidating the state’s power. In so doing the irony emerges that religion has been destroyed as an autonomous intermediary, thereby weakening one of the most potent checks on the state’s potential abuse of power.

Spinoza articulates a justification of virtue as power, and he links democratic republicanism with the modern state specifically as it emerged in Holland, albeit only temporarily. The de Witt brothers were murdered in 1672 near the end of his life, and Holland took a more autocratic turn with the consolidation of power by the Stadtholder William of Orange.14 In his unfinished Political Treatise, Spinoza defines sovereignty as the communal “right, which is defined by the power of the people … and is possessed absolutely by whoever has charge of affairs of state.”15 If this power “belongs to a council composed of the people in general, then the state is called a democracy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.