“…non
abbiamo potuto non vedere” (…we could not not see)—
Primo
Levi (from The Drowned and the Saved)
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| Thomas Jefferson |
« Fanaticism »
As we pivot into this new year, and just
before we jump and shoot into our futures, it is only natural that we look
backwards at the groundwork laid during the year that has, even just now,
become our yesterday. This is an unqualified good. Because History shall one
day write that the war of supremacy, or at the very least a significant conflict
in that Total War, was formally launched, yet again, between Enlightenment philosophy
and totalitarian Theocracy. The battle lines in this war of ideas began clearly
and unquestionably to take shape in 2015 as they were dug in the sandy terrain of
ideas and opinions, and the opening salvos were rude and bloody. That History to
come will not allow us to say that we have not seen.
In
the debate that must come concerning the place and role of religion in the
civil society of the 21st century, Voltaire is a wonderful starting
point. Because he takes himself seriously, mockingly. Which is a breathe of
fresh air in the rather stultifying atmosphere of pedants and pundits,
journalists, hypocrites, politicians, and other such critters.
Consider
for a second an informative interview with Rachid al-Ghannouchi, leader of
Tunisia’s Ennahda Party, a moderate Islamist political party, also known as the
Renaissance Party.
In this interview al-Ghannouchi praises the new Tunisian constitution (passed
in January 2014), saying that he does not “regard it as a secular constitution,
but as one that unites Islam, democracy and modernity.” Al-Ghannouchi rightly
points out that “There are Christian democratic parties
in many European countries, such as Germany; elsewhere, there are democratic
parties with Buddhist or Hindu backgrounds. Why should there not be Islamic
democratic parties?”
As
a new-world Hamlet may have said under these circumstances: this, is entirely the question! Why do Enlightenment
nations continue to insist on sharing the covers of civil society with
institutions of religion dedicated to anti-Enlightenment values and goals? Per
Voltaire and Jefferson, Enlightenment societies are deliberately and philosophically
constructed so as to keep competing ‘powers’ separate in the civic life of the
polis. The argument framing the core of Secularism as a sublunary and philosophical
ideal, is precisely the guarantee of freedoms in order to prevent “the
perversion of power into tyranny.” This, explains Jefferson, is why the role of
education in the civil society is especially important:
“The most effectual means of preventing [the
perversion of power into tyranny]”, are to illuminate, as far as practicable,
the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of
those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of
other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its
shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes”
(Thomas Jefferson: Diffusion of Knowledge
Bill, 1779. FE 2:221, Papers 2:526).
The religious worldview, the very
spirit of religion, is per se authoritarian;
it is the incarnation of a totalitarian mindset. The Apostle Paul reminds us in
Romans 13 that “all authority is given by god…” Of
course it is; and as an anchoring idea, this one means that all religions, or
at the very least, all theistic religions, including Christianity, are
structurally and formally theocratic, and that they therefore stand in
opposition to the wider conception of the liberal democracy. This is axiomatic.
The convert is called upon to commit to
the total ‘truth’ of the vision, to the dictatorship of ‘The Truth’, then to submit
to the authority of the ‘Truth’s’ divine representative. Thus, to turn al-Ghannouchi’s expression back upon himself as the representative
of politicized Islam: “If you sow
dictatorship, you harvest terrorism.”
In
his interview, however, al-Ghannouchi wanders around in an irrational, and even
fanatic labyrinth of disingenuous equivocation, and for the greater disinformation
of his under-informed reading audience, equivocates between “moderate
secularism” and “moderate Islam,” as though secularism is also, by definition,
some sort of religious ‘opinion’ or ‘point of view’. And yet precisely the
opposite is the case: if the notion of Enlightenment that inspired Voltaire and
Jefferson is to survive as a philosophical ideal, then the concept of
Secularism as an Enlightenment value must be more fully and forcefully
integrated into civil society. Which brings us round full circle back to
Voltaire.
The
following translation (Phrontisterion
2015) is composed of excerpted, and selected juicier bits from Voltaire’s
rather lengthy analysis of “Fanaticism,” section II (from Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, tome 7, Dictionnaire philosophique, I, Paris: Furne et Cie, 1847, 562-564.)
“If this expression [Fanaticism] is still
linked to its original sense, it is surely only by a slender thread.
Fanaticus used to be an honorable title,
signifying one who is a servant or benefactor of a temple. […] [But] does the
word fanaticus mean in this place [in
Cicero’s text], a demented fanatic, a pitiless fanatic, a horrible fanatic, as
one uses it today? Or, rather, does it signify pious, consecrator, a man who is
religious, a devout supporter of temples? Is this word in Cicero an insult or
ironic praise? […]
Today
one understands fanaticism as somber and cruel religious folly. It is a
sickness of the mind that one catches like smallpox. Meetings and speeches are
more often responsible for its transmission than books. Reading a book rarely
fires one up; because then reason calms us down again. But when a speaker who
is ardent and possessed of a wonderful imagination begins talking to poorer
intellects, his eyes are on fire, and this fire gets communicated; his speech intonations
and his gestures spark all the nerves in the audience. He shouts: God is
watching, sacrifice to Him that which is nothing more than human; fight the
battles of the Lord: and we go off and fight.
Fanaticism
is to superstition what euphoria is to fever, and what rage is to anger.
Whoever has ecstatic trances, and visions, whoever takes his dreams for
realities, and his imaginings for prophesies, is a novice fanatic of great
promise: he may soon kill for the love of God.
Bartholomew
Diaz was a professed fanatic. He had a brother in Nuremberg, Jean Diaz, who was
nothing more than a fervent Lutheran, heartily convinced that the Pope is the
Antichrist, and that he was marked with the sign of the Beast. Bartholomew, who
was even more persuaded that the Pope was God on earth, left Rome in order to
convert or to kill his brother: he assassinated him. That was just perfect; but
then we also rendered justice for justice to this Diaz.
Polyeucte, who goes
regularly to temple, and on a high holy day knocked over and broke the statues
and ornaments, is a fanatic less horrible than Diaz, but not less idiot. The
assassins of Duke François de Guise, of William of Orange, of King Henry III,
and of King Henry IV, and of so many others, were maniacs sick with the same
rage as Diaz.
The
absolutely best example of fanaticism is that of those bourgeois in Paris who, the
night of the Saint-Bartholomew,
ran around assassinating, cutting throats, defenestrating, and hacking to bits
their neighbors who did not go to Mass. Guyon, Patouillet, Chaudon, Nonotte,
and the ex-Jesuit Paulian, are nothing more than street-corner fanatics,
wretches nobody pays attention to: but then, on a day like the Saint-Bartholomew,
they go and do big things.
There
are cold-blooded fanatics, like the judges who condemn to death those whose
only crime is not to think like they think. And these judges are all the more
guilty, all the more worthy to be execrated by the human species, because, not
being carried away by an onset of rabid passion like the Clements, the
Chastels, the Ravaillacs, and the Damiens, it would seem like they could still
hear the voice of reason.
There
is no other remedy to this epidemic infection than the philosophical spirit,
which, transmitted from neighbor to neighbor, finally softens men’s manners;
and this prevents the onset of the disease. Because as soon as the disease
begins to make progress, everyone has to flee and wait until the air is pure
again. Laws and religion cannot withstand the plague of the soul. Religion, far
from being a salutary sustenance for the soul, becomes poison in infected
brains. These wretches continually have in their minds the example of Aod, who
assassinated King Eglon; of Judith, who cut off Holophernes’ head while
sleeping with him; of Samuel, who hacked King Agag into bits; of the priest,
Joad, who assassinated his queen in the stable doorway; etc., etc., etc. They
see only these examples, which, while they may have been respectable in
Antiquity, are become repulsive in our time. These unfortunates draw their fury
from the same religion that condemns them.
Our
laws are still largely powerless to stop this rabid onslaught: it is as if you
were reading statutory bylaws to a fanatic. These are folks who are persuaded
that the holy spirit spurring them on is above our laws, and that their fervor is
the only law they should observe.
What
does one respond to a man who says to you that he prefers obeying God rather than
men, and who, as a result, is sure to win heaven by cutting your throat? Like
gangrene, once fanaticism has reached the brain, the infection is almost
incurable. I have seen convulsionaires
who, all the while speaking of the miracles of Saint Paris, gradually got themselves all worked up: their eyes became enflamed,
their whole body started trembling, their faces became disfigured with fury,
and they would have killed anyone who would have contradicted them.
Yes,
I have seen these convulsionaires; I
have seen them foam at the mouth and twist their arms and legs around. They
would cry out: “We need blood.” They succeeded in getting their king
assassinated by one of his domestics, and finally settled on just going after
philosophers.
It
is almost always conniving rascals who drive fanatics onwards, and who put the
knife in their hands. These rascals are like the Old Man in the Mountain who,
according to legend, used to give idiots a foretaste of the joys of paradise,
who would promise them an eternity of the pleasures they tasted with him, on
the condition that they would go and assassinate everyone that he would
indicate to them. There has only ever been one religion in the world that has
not been contaminated by fanaticism, and that is the one practiced by educated
Chinese. Their sects of philosophers were not only exempt from this plague, but
they were in fact the remedy for it; because the result of philosophy is to calm
the soul, and fanaticism is incompatible with tranquility of spirit.
If
our sainted religion has often
been corrupted by this infernal frenzy, we have only the folly of men to blame.”
Further reading:
·
Tunisia at the
Crossroads: An Interview with Sheikh Rachid al-Ghannouch @ http://africacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Noureddine-Jebnoun_Tunisia-at-the-Crossroads_April-2014.pdf
·
An article (FR) by Monique
Legrand containing a significant excerpt of Voltaire’s entry on « Fanatisme » @ http://www.ecoledeslettres.fr/actualites/education/fanatisme-article-du-dictionnaire-philosophique-portatif-de-voltaire-1764/
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