Dissertation sur la politique des Romains dans la religion (French Edition)

Raison d’État

In his Considerations on the causes of the greatness of the Romans and of their decadence , Montesquieu shows how the ecclesiastics came to insert themselves more and more into political matters and details the harm that resulted from it Romains , xxii , OC , t. In thus manner, morality and utility are united and the tragic possibility of a necessary but immoral action is excluded.

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Montesquieu has recourse to an analogous strategy: The reference here is to the architectonic conception of politics in Aristotle. Augustus knows how to deceive men. In this, he can elicit a degree of admiration: Augustus in this sense had been a great politician. It was the Huguenot Innocent Gentillet who opened the hostilities. Montesquieu mentions the religious wars in several places.

Toleration

The king had the Duke de Guise eliminated solely because he was becoming too popular; the Sixteen were hanged because they had committed crimes. That bad faith already existed in Roman times Romans , vi, p.

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Cooperation is thus necessary, and it presupposes confidence, which cannot arise where there is bad faith. More moderation in the councils is needed.

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If Machiavelli did not forbid the prince to be good, he nevertheless recommended that he always be prepared to become mean — violent or devious — if the circumstances so required, political prudence informing the prince when that must be the case. For Montesquieu, ruse leads to the abasement of human nature, and a politician that uses one risks appearing weak.

Norbert Campagna

In English common law, two witnesses are required to find someone guilty. But the party guilty of high crime may well have got rid of all the witnesses; rather than give up on a guilty verdict, the English legislator has reserved the right to make personal laws in this sort of case.

The following article does not apply to those who envisage recourse to means outside the law: Finally, he notes that the state, while able to police incoming sects, must tolerate them once they have been established in the country XXV, In the section of this work on toleration he defends his espousal of religious pluralism in maintaining that states should be cautious in allowing the introduction of new religions into their territory, thereby legitimating the move in China to ban Catholic missionaries. He suggests here that while one might consider the good of Christianity to have a universal application, the way of politics in the spread of religion should give way to the way of God who may move in somewhat curious and mysterious ways to spread his truth.

The bottom line here appears to be one step bolder than the last. No wonder the ecclesiastical critics were not satisfied by his responses. The pope had issued the famous bull Unigenitus dei filius in to condemn the writings of Quesnel, a Jansenist sympathizer, but it sparked a long crisis and acrimonious debates over the role of papal and monarchical authority within the Gallican Church.

By external toleration he means the willingness to allow the presence of a religious practice outside the dominant culture.

By internal toleration he means both acceptance and approval of these rites and beliefs. He argues that the grounds for each form of toleration are very different. The first involves no clear challenge to an established set of beliefs as it is founded on a need for public peace. In contrast, internal toleration involves a degree of acceptance of the other and their beliefs as a valid expression of religious sentiment, a disposition he felt was not accessible to believers of all sects.

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Internal toleration cannot, by implication, be the basis for a public or universal defense of toleration. My conscience tells me not to approve in my heart those who think differently from me; but my conscience also tells me that there are circumstances when it is my duty to tolerate them externally. In so doing, Montesquieu seeks to uphold the tradition of an established church, which for him most importantly provides a certain bridle or check on the powers of the king, while at the same time avoiding the consequences of religious oppression which had often flowed from the union of political and religious power.

Rebecca Kingston

For Montesquieu, while the institutions of political and religious power may be intertwined in the person of the Catholic King, the principles of politics and religion are to be regarded as distinct. Politics cannot afford to be governed by a particular theology because it must respond fundamentally to those distinct principles for which all governments are established, principles which concern the quality of earthly life bracketing questions of future salvation. As he argues, such arrangements did not make the rulers worse Catholics because all in their conscience could still question internally the validity of different beliefs.

The effect of such a policy would be twofold. On the one hand, it would reinforce the authority of the king as leader of the Gallican Church against the conciliators of his day, that is the lower clergy who claimed a right to have a say in decisions concerning the Church.

On the other hand, the ban on deliberation would greatly impede effective enforcement of the policy by denying upper clergy the right to pursue their questioning. One strand of argument traced to les politiques or reason-of-state theorists held that in the interests of social peace and the consolidation of power in the state, rulers should tolerate sectarian diversity and avoid regulating religious matters except when the general peace was threatened.

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He argued that this approach often ignored the independent power and significance of various social conventions and institutions. By implication, while it would justify acceptance of religious diversity on the part of the state, it provided no strong grounds for religious groups themselves to tolerate one other.

Pierre Rétat

One strand of argument traced to les politiques or reason-of-state theorists held that in the interests of social peace and the consolidation of power in the state, rulers should tolerate sectarian diversity and avoid regulating religious matters except when the general peace was threatened. The spread of Stoicism and of the idea of a pervasive world spirit again lessened the need for dogma and in this context, Montesquieu notes, toleration flourished in the ancient world. He goes on to reflect on the benefits of having several religions in one state including encouraging the industriousness of the more marginal groups and the more rigorous moral discipline engendered by competing sects. Still, those who might wish to see in these arguments a foreshadowing of modern liberalism in its defense of diversity must note that here the conscience is not solely a realm of freedom, but is to play for Montesquieu an important political and hence public role in restraining the overreaching impulses of European monarchs. It is an approach which can find some resonance in the tradition of natural law revived in the late 17 th century by Grotius and Pufendorf who sought to build a theory of social peace and toleration by calling all individuals back to basic common principles of social life. It is in the function of director that he delivers the funeral eulogy of the Duc de la Force, the first protector of the Academy.

Another strand of argument was grounded in a broader scepticism about the possibility of religious truth. It advanced that toleration was a necessary policy given the impossibility of certainty over the right means to salvation. For Montesquieu this again was a questionable basis for toleration as he felt that it was a stance which weakened the force of religion, particularly in its ability to provide a check on political power.

While Montesquieu, like Locke, does concede that matters of religious conviction often are driven by different considerations than those of politics, that is, concern for the ideal as opposed to the practical, he also was more sensitive than Locke to the nature of religion as a social institution which thereby could be shaped by a whole series of cultural and political factors.