“…non abbiamo potuto non vedere” (…we could not fail to see)—
Primo Levi (from The Drowned and the Saved)
A fundamental philosophical problem for the 21st century, which is also perhaps the most ignored, if not deliberately snubbed, question in the history of modern and contemporary philosophy, is the very practical relationship between the democratic state, and religions that strive to define a place for themselves within the confines of the democratic state.
Philosophical reflection on this question is an unmitigated good, because in the composition of the History of democracy, the story will eventually be told, one day, of the war for supremacy between Enlightenment philosophy and totalitarian Theocracy, and of the significant battles and conflicts in that Total War of ideas.
Contemporary battle lines in this ageless war of ideas began to clearly and unquestionably take shape, again, in 2015, as combatants dug into the sandy terrain of ideas and opinions. And the opening salvos were rude and bloody. History to come will not allow us to say that we have not seen.
In the various debates concerning the place and role of religion in the civil society of the 21st century, Voltaire and his 18th century is a wonderful starting point. Because Voltaire, as always, takes himself very seriously, mockingly. Which is a breathe of fresh air in the rather stultifying atmosphere of pedants and pundits, journalists, hypocrites, politicians, and other such obscuring critters.
Consider for a second an enormously un-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?”
Now, as a new-world Hamlet may have said under these circumstances: this, is entirely the question! But the question needs to be turned on its head to come to some semblance of interesting philosophical perspective and democratic truth: 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?
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, and consequentially enlightenment democracy, 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), which constitutes the body of this philosophical reflection, 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 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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· India, France and Secularism
(Reprised and reworked from an original essay published on Phrontisterion in January 2016.)
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