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The “Separation” of Religion and Polities: The Paradoxes of Spinoza

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Hillel G. Fradkin
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Extract

Benedict Spinoza is the first philosophical proponent of liberal democracy. In his Theologico-Political Tractate he calls for the liberation of philosophy from theology and for the subordination of religion to politics. Though Spinoza may have not influenced the American Founding Fathers directly, both the clarity and the paradoxes of his arguments are perhaps the best guide to understanding better the present-day conflicts over religion and politics in the United States. Spinoza's insistence on the prerogative of the political sovereign to exercise absolute authority in the sphere of moral action necessarily complicates religious values. But the “inconveniences” resulting from liberal democracy are justified in terms of justice.

Type
Religion and Politics
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , Fall 1988 , pp. 603 - 627
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1988

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References

Notes

1. One should note that there are of course other modern regimes which have also had as their goal the separation of religion and politics, most importantly and interestingly the various Communist regimes. Indeed they go further than the American regime by attempting to eliminate religion altogether. These, however, have sought and been obliged to pursue this goal by forgoing democratic government in its original modern meaning: i.e., consent of the governed. They are therefore not liberal democracies and do not understand themselves as such.

2. Despite prolonged Catholic resistance to the historical school of biblical criticism, the latter has by now found its way not only into Catholic seminaries but into the pronouncements of the American Catholic Church. See the Bishops' Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy, Part I, Par. 31. Reported in “Origins,” NC documentary service, 15 November 1984, 14: 22/23.

3. Hereafter referred to as the Tractate. All quotations are taken from the Elwes translation: Works of Spinoza, vol. 1, trans. Elwes, R. H. M. (New York: Dover Publications, 1951).Google Scholar

4. Tractate, chap. 20.

5. For this summary see chaps. 16 and 17.

6. Here and following the source is chap. 19.

7. See especially chap. 14.

8. Ibid.

9. Chap. 19.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. This discussion summarized chap. 20.

13. Chap. 20.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Chap. 19.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Chap. 20.

31. Ibid.

32. Chap. 19.

33. Ibid.

34. Chap. 20.

35. See Tractate, Introduction.

36. Chap. 19.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid.

39. See Strauss, Leo, “Preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion” in Liberalism, Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968), pp. 224–59Google Scholar as well as his “Niccolo Machiavelli,” in History of Political Philosophy, ed. Strauss, Leo and Cropsey, Joseph, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar