Civil Religion in Modern Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Tocqueville ed. by Steven Frankel and Martin D. Yaffe

Abstract

Reviewed by: Civil Religion in Modern Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Tocqueville ed. by Steven Frankel and Martin D. Yaffe Michael Brodrick FRANKEL, Steven, and Martin D. Yaffe, editors. Civil Religion in Modern Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Tocqueville. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020. 234 pp. Cloth, $26.50 This accessible collection of thoughtful scholarship, written for scholars and students alike, explores the relations between politics and religion in early modern and modern political philosophy. There is a decided focus on the contemporary relevance of the subject matter. Each chapter offers in-depth analysis of primary texts that brings them alive for the reader. Beginning with Machiavelli, Francis Bacon, Hobbes, and Spinoza, the volume then pivots to consider Locke, Montesquieu, Hume, Rousseau, the American founders, and Tocqueville. Several chapters on civil religion in America complete the volume. Timothy Sean Quinn (chapter 1) sees Machiavelli as the originator of liberal critiques of religion that recommend those aspects of religion that are conducive to the longevity of states and reject those that do not. For Machiavelli the corruption of institutional Christianity encouraged passivity and otherworldliness. That was not conducive to republicanism. However, Christianity as originally understood and as understood by, for example, Franciscan and Dominican revivals can provide significant support for republicanism. Martin Yaffe (chapter 2) carefully analyzes Francis Bacon’s New Organon and New Atlantis to show how Bacon “co-opts” biblical theology to shape a civil religion supportive of innovation and progress. The upshot of Yaffe’s analysis of New Atlantis is that Bacon made Christianity play a supporting but not a leading role in the public and private life of a fictional town dedicated to scientific advancement. Mark Shiffman (chapter 3) shows how Hobbes redefines traditional categories of Christian personhood, such as humility and grace, to support obedience to state authority, setting up what we think of today as conflicts between private judgment and propaganda. Traditional Christian personhood presupposes real freedoms that limit governmental authority. As long as that account of persons remains compelling, modern states must provide substitutes for those freedoms. But if Hobbes’s view that modern states depend on producing counterfeit freedoms by explaining away Christian personhood is correct, then one might understandably worry about the sustainability of modern states. Steven Frankel (chapter 4) seeks to defend Spinoza’s critique of miracles against the charge of incoherence. Spinoza’s critique includes two distinct critiques, an earlier and a later, that contradict each other. But this, Frankel argues, is part of a dual strategy to advance those superstitions that elevate reason, while providing an account of revelation that leaves room for philosophy. Spinoza’s strategy both checks philosophers who aspire to political power and directs the superstitious toward reason. This sort of strategy resonates today in concerns about replacing religious superstitions with secular ones. Nasser Behnegar (chapter 5) addresses an impasse in the scholarly interpretation of the relation between Locke’s political thought and Christianity. Behnegar undertakes for the first time a comprehensive [End Page 628] review of the biblical quotations found in Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, comparing the meaning of each passage in the biblical context to the doctrine Locke would have it support. The results suggest Locke wanted to share his departures from the bible with his more sophisticated readers while giving others the impression that his political thought was, in fact, consistent with biblical teaching. Andrea Radasanu (chapter 6) examines echoes of Machiavelli in Montesquieu’s account of the transformation of Rome from a pagan republic to a Christian empire. Viewing Machiavelli as the inspiration for Montesquieu’s approach to the relation between religion and politics helps us better understand Montesquieu’s final word on the need for religion. Montesquieu, Radasanu argues, seems to want to free politics from reliance on religion as such. Paul Carrese (chapter 7) argues that Montesquieu is the source, albeit often unacknowledged, of the American harmonizing of the spirit of liberty and the spirit of religion. From the 1750s onward, Montesquieu’s philosophy shaped Protestant conceptions about blending liberty and religious belief in America. Alexis de Tocqueville would later draw on Montesquieu’s principle of blending diverse views in his efforts to understand and improve the...