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Publication
Vintage (2008), Edition: Reprint, 341 pages
Description
"The quest to bring political life under God's authority has been revived, confounding expectations of a secular future. In this book, Mark Lilla reveals the sources of this age-old quest - and its role in shaping Western thought." "As Lilla shows, the urge to reconnect politics to religion remained strong and took novel forms in modern European thought. By the Second World War a forceful political messianism had arisen, justifying the most deadly ideologies of the age." "Making us question what we thought we knew about religion, politics, and the fate of civilizations, Lilla reminds us of the modern West's unique trajectory and what is required to remain on it."--Jacket.
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LibraryThing member neurodrew
According to this detailed intellectual history, political thought in Europe, uniquely, is dominated by the “Great Separation”: the liberation of political thought from theology. The separation occurred in the 17th century as a reaction to the destruction of the Thirty Years war. Lilla argues
The discoveries of natural philosophy undermined religious authority “A cosmos this old and complex hardly seemed crafted with man solely in mind, as a primer in ethics authored by God”. Quoting David Hume, “the whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery” Hugo Grotius and Herbert of Cherbury were modern Stoics, seeing nothing but the operation of natural laws, with God, if existing, a remote clock-maker. Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan (1651) puts the responsibility for religion and morals on man: “Seeing there are no signs nor fruit of religion but in man only, there is no cause to doubt but that the seed of religion is also only in man”. The seed was man’s fears and ignorance.
Rousseau and Immanuel Kant reacted against the separation of religion and morals, Kant arguing that the idea of God served an important function in the operation of reason: “I have found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for fate”. Religion was a reaction to a human need. Eventually, Hegel would argue that the separation of religion and politics could not be sustained, and eventually the state would subsume the functions of religion. The modern state would be the locus of world history “the divine will as present spirit, unfolding as the actual shape and organization of a world”
In the 19th century German theologians began to think that Protestantism and the German state were the final and best state of development of religious thought, and developed a liberal theology that was supposedly self evident to reason (as in the Declaration of Independence - “We hold these truths to be self-evident...”). These theologians thought man to be naturally good, reasonable, and the Protestant religion and ordered state to be the superior enlightenment, blessed by God. Per the author “When blessing begins, thinking stops” This strain of thinking would lead to theological apologetics for the Nazi movement in Weimar Germany, or to Karl Barth arguing that participation in politics is a meaningless game
The author sums the genius of the great separation in this way: “we have chosen to limit our politics to protecting individuals from the worst harms they can inflict on one another, to securing fundamental liberties and their basic welfare, while leaving their spiritual destinies in their own hands”
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that it was an unusual tension in Christian theology produced by the doctrine of the incarnate God in Jesus Christ that created the conditions necessary for the separation of theology from politics to occur. There is no way of reconciling a god involved in human affairs with one remote and inscrutable, and therefore, no way of assuring interpretation of his will on earth. Without the certainty that God’s will is understandable it is impossible to base political actions on his will. Hobbes and Hume, most prominently, understood God as a creation of the human mind, and therefore did not appeal to God’s law to justify the political system. The discoveries of natural philosophy undermined religious authority “A cosmos this old and complex hardly seemed crafted with man solely in mind, as a primer in ethics authored by God”. Quoting David Hume, “the whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery” Hugo Grotius and Herbert of Cherbury were modern Stoics, seeing nothing but the operation of natural laws, with God, if existing, a remote clock-maker. Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan (1651) puts the responsibility for religion and morals on man: “Seeing there are no signs nor fruit of religion but in man only, there is no cause to doubt but that the seed of religion is also only in man”. The seed was man’s fears and ignorance.
Rousseau and Immanuel Kant reacted against the separation of religion and morals, Kant arguing that the idea of God served an important function in the operation of reason: “I have found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for fate”. Religion was a reaction to a human need. Eventually, Hegel would argue that the separation of religion and politics could not be sustained, and eventually the state would subsume the functions of religion. The modern state would be the locus of world history “the divine will as present spirit, unfolding as the actual shape and organization of a world”
In the 19th century German theologians began to think that Protestantism and the German state were the final and best state of development of religious thought, and developed a liberal theology that was supposedly self evident to reason (as in the Declaration of Independence - “We hold these truths to be self-evident...”). These theologians thought man to be naturally good, reasonable, and the Protestant religion and ordered state to be the superior enlightenment, blessed by God. Per the author “When blessing begins, thinking stops” This strain of thinking would lead to theological apologetics for the Nazi movement in Weimar Germany, or to Karl Barth arguing that participation in politics is a meaningless game
The author sums the genius of the great separation in this way: “we have chosen to limit our politics to protecting individuals from the worst harms they can inflict on one another, to securing fundamental liberties and their basic welfare, while leaving their spiritual destinies in their own hands”
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LibraryThing member nmele
A very interesting history of political theology, and through it of the evolution of at least the Western world's view of and attitude toward religion, religious belief and religious tolerance. Classy book, well written, on an important subject.
Subjects
Awards
Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year (Nonfiction — 2007)
The New York Times Notable Books of the Year (Nonfiction — 2007)
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
341 p.; 7.97 inches
ISBN
1400079136 / 9781400079131