Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
On the Politics of Faith and Reason: The Project of Enlightenment in Pierre Bayle and
Montesquieu
Author(s): Robert C. Bartlett
Source: The Journal of Politics, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Feb., 2001), pp. 1-28
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2691891
Accessed: 26/08/2010 17:21
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Cambridge University Press and Southern Political Science Association are collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Politics.
http://www.jstor.org
On the Politics of Faith and Reason: The Project of
Enlightenment in Pierre Bayle and Montesquieu*
Robert C. Bartlett
Emory University
This study seeks to contributeto our understandingof the original political goals of the Enlighten-
ment, especially in its confrontation with the Bible as a source of political guidance. It consists
primarilyof an exegesis of two seminal works of the period, Pierre Bayle's VariousThoughts on
the Occasion of a Comnet(1682) and Montesquieu'sSpirit of the Laws (1748). With clarity, grace,
and power, both works make manifest the grandeurof the Enlightenment'sphilosophic vision, the
staggering ambition of its attempt to overcome the Bible as a political authority,and the ultimate
vulnerabilityof that attempt,the full consequences of which we in the post-Enlightenmentera must
come to grips with.
*The authoris grateful to the EarhartFoundationfor a researchgrantthat made possible the com-
pletion of this study in a timely manner.
THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, Vol. 63, No. 1, February 2001, Pp. 1-28
C 2001 Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main St., Maiden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road,
Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.
2 Robert C. Bartlett
claimed to be) the divine or its representatives.And only with the achievement
of this truly revolutionarybreak or liberation could communities pursue such
ends as unfetteredhuman reason discerns, among them governmentconstituted
by individual consent, charged with the promotion of the liberty of all, hence
limited chiefly to the protection of the natural,pre-political rights of each.
Yet,howeverhopeful the principalarchitectsof the new communitywere, and
however successful they have been in fact, many of those concerned with the
study of politics today would concede or insist that the philosophy characteris-
tic of the modern Enlightenmentis incapable of determining the proper goals
of political life. Consider, for example, the influential view of the postmodern
theorist RichardRorty:
The Enlightenmentidea of 'reason' embodies ... the theory that there is a relation between
the ahistorical essence of the human soul and moral truth, a relation which ensures that free
and open discussion will produce 'one right answer.'. . . . In our century,this rationalistjus-
tification of the Enlightenmentcompromise has been discredited. Contemporaryintellectu-
als have given up the Enlightenmentassumptionthatreligion,myth,andtraditioncan be opposed
to something ahistorical, something common to all human beings qua human.... The result
is to erase the picture of the self common to Greek metaphysics, Christiantheology, and En-
lightenmentrationalism:the picture of an ahistorical naturalcenter, the locus of human dig-
nity, surroundedby an adventitious and inessential periphery (Rorty 1991, 175-76).
The present study seeks to advance our understandingof the original goals of
the earlymodernEnlightenment,and of the principalmeans used to realize them,
in order to contributeto the increasingly heated debates concerning the nature
of the Enlightenmentand the future of the liberal democracies for which it is
chiefly responsible.
Because there can be no substitutefor first-handawarenessof the Enlighten-
ment's original argumentsand aims, what follows will take the form of an ex-
egetical discussion of two seminal works of the period: Pierre Bayle's Various
Thouightson the Occasion of a Comet (1682) and Montesquieu'sSpirit of the
Laws (1748). The list of Enlightenmentphilosophersis of course long, their var-
ious aims and strategies are complex, and I have been compelled to be highly
selective from among them. Bayle and Montesquieu merit extended consider-
ation for at least three reasons: Both thinkers make very clear the aims of, and
the obstacles facing, the early modern Enlightenment;both were immensely in-
fluential in shapingthe terms of debateamong theoreticiansand statesmenalike;
and both have received ratherless scholarly attentionin the last generationthan
have Hobbes, Spinoza, or Locke, for example. This is true especially regarding
Pierre Bayle, but it holds, if to a lesser degree, even in the case of Montes-
quieu.1 A secondary aim of this study, then, is to begin to fill an important
'A complete and reliable English translationof Montesquieu'sSpirit of the Laws, for example,
did not appear until 1989, and only one comprehensive commentary on it has been published in
English, Thomas L. Pangle's Montesquieu 's Philosophy of Liberalism (Pangle 1973). As for
Montesquieu's lesser writings, perhaps scholars will be inspired to rectify the relative neglect of
them by the publication of Diana Schaub's importantstudy of the Persian Letters (Schaub 1995).
On the Politics of Faith and Reason 3
2Voltaire 1877-1880, XX:197; IX:468; XXXIX:37. For Bayle's influence on Voltaire, see
Mason 1963a.
3 See Mornet 1910, 463; Rex 1965, x; and Gay 1967, 293.
4Diderot 1765, 111:613.Consider also: "The moderns have some men such as Bayle, Des-
cartes, Leibniz, Newton whom they can, and perhapswith success, set up against the most aston-
ishing geniuses of antiquity"(Diderot 1765, 11:369).
5To give just a few examples: Leibniz's Theodicyis in large part a response to Bayle, and Herder
describes Bayle as the greatest Frenchthinker of his time who "set in motion the developments of
the century"(Herder 1967, 23:86, cited by Weinstein 1992, 1-2). In her youth, Catherinethe Great
spent two years studying Bayle's Dictionnaire, and Frederickthe Great made an abridged version
of it in order to popularize the work (see Retat 1971, 129, 310). Thomas Jefferson included the
Dictionnaire in the one hundredbooks forming the basis of the Libraryof Congress (Popkin 1967,
261), and Benjamin Franklin"was so struck by Bayle's [VariousThoughts] that he published a se-
ries of articles in the Pennsylvania Gazette in favor of Bayle's thesis that a society without religion
could be as ethical as a society of believers" (Weinstein 1992, 7; see also Aldridge 1967, 89-90,
124). Helpful general statementsof Bayle's place in the Enlightenmentinclude Cazes 1905, 69-79;
Hazard 1946, 44-45; Popkin 1959 and 1967; Gay 1967, 290-95; Retat 1971; and Labrousse 1983.
4 Robert C. Bartlett
of comets in pagan times holds true today (?72). In general, God's miraculous
use of a comet is incompatible with the characterof his providence, for God
does not in fact punish all alike simultaneously,though all alike see a comet
simultaneously.God must deceive some people, then, if he intends to presage
punishment by means of comets, and this cannot be said without impiety
(? ?74-77).
Bayle also arguesmore broadlythat "the knowledge of the futurecoming only
from God, there is no presage of contingent things that is not immediately es-
tablishedby God" (? 101; consider also ?213). Just as naturalevents can be pre-
saged only by anothernaturalevent known to share the same cause (see ?54),
so contingent or chance events can be presaged only by the immediate and ex-
plicit word of God, as Jacob, for example, knew the fate of Joseph's sons be-
cause he was "filled with a celestial revelation."In the immediatesequel, however,
Bayle also speaks of an "eternallaw of God" that would be requiredto indicate
that "an encounterwith a weasel," for example, presages some misfortune. Ei-
ther direct and explicit revelation, then, or an "eternal law of God" promul-
gated by him and knowable in principle to all men is needed for there to be
presages of contingent events. Yet, with respect to the latter, it would be "ab-
surd"to suppose that "God has made an infinite numberof these sorts of com-
binations in order to teach the futureto all men," in part because God teaches,
quite to the contrary,that he reserves to himself the knowledge of the future in
orderto "confoundfalse Gods" (? 101; Bayle refers the readerto Isaiah 41:23).
Although Bayle gives other argumentshere against this possibility, nothing he
says in his theologicalargumentproperrefutesthe possibilityof divinerevelation
and hence of miraculousinterventionin the naturalorder.We should not be sur-
prised that Bayle will turn to elaborate on and defend his theological argument
in a section that proves to be more than twice as long as the exposition of the
argumentitself.
for a sort of reputation,the esteem one can conceive for what appearsto be de-
cent and praiseworthy,and to several other motives within the competence of
all men, whether they have a religion or whether they do not" (? 146, emphasis
added). The aim of his rhetoric is clear in the lesson he draws:"Whatprevents
an atheist, either throughthe disposition of his temperamentor throughthe in-
stinct for some passion that dominates him, from performing all the same ac-
tions that pagans have been able to do?" (? 146).
According to Bayle, religion as such8 will always prove on examination to
be powerless in the face of the demands of the passions, be they conducive to
virtue or to vice. The ultimate explanation of the strength of the passions over
that of the formal demands of religion is that the passions, being grounded in
the body (? 139 and esp. ? 144), are naturalto man, whereas all religious dic-
tates are conventional and for the most part fly in the face of nature:"Whence
comes it, I beg you, that althoughthere is among men a prodigious diversity of
opinions bearing on the manner of serving God and of living according to the
laws of propriety,one nonetheless sees certain passions consistently ruling in
all countries and in all ages?" Indeed, the only thing uniting "all the sorts of
peoples who in other respects have as it were nothing in common except the
general notion of man" is the similarity of their passions, a similarity so great
that "one might say they copy one another"(? 136). Again, the will to trans-
gress the law of God or gods, found in all societies, is but "a copy made ac-
cording to nature"(?145). "We see this sort of spirit still reigning everywhere
which drags men into sin notwithstandingthe fear of hell and the pangs of the
conscience" (?145, emphasis added).
We are now preparedto consider the most infamous section of Bayle's book,
the argumentfor the possibility of a society of atheists. With it, Bayle intends
to show that the morality requisite to healthy political life is possible without
belief in God and therefore also without belief in providence or the immortal-
ity of the soul. He intends, in other words, to give the outlines of a morality
conceived by human reason alone and grounded in human nature properly
understood.
8Given the breadthof Bayle's attack on both miracles and religion, I cannot agree with the view
that Bayle set his critical sights only or even principally on Catholicism, as distinguished from Cal-
vinism (see, above all, Rex 1965, 30-74). I thereforeagree with the older generationof Bayle schol-
ars (to say nothing of the philosophes) accordingto whom Bayle denies the truthof revealedreligion
as such, however great may have been the lengths he was willing to go to conceal this fact: "[Bay-
le] has, not only an irreligious mind that rebels against feelings of the supernatural,but the taste
for aggression, and for polemics, and for irreligious jesting. Not only does he not cease I do not
say to deny God, providence, and the immortalityof soul, for he indeed refrainsfrom denying them;
I say: not only does he not cease subtly and captiously to lead his leader to the denial of God, to
the misapprehensionof providence, and to the conviction that all ends at death, but he also takes
pleasure in clearly showing to men patiently, obstinately,with the calm persistence of a drop of
water piercing a rock that they have no reason to believe in these things" (Faguet 1890, 3). See
also, inter alia, Robinson 1931, esp. 151-75; Hazard 1935; Mason 1963b; and, most recently,Wein-
stein 1992.
8 Robert C. Bartlett
Every human being is by nature concerned first with his or her own well-
being, and it is this self-concern that compels all to flee pain or harm: The
fear of pain is great, the fear of death, "the most violent of the passions,"greater
still (? 163). In accordancewith this, every healthy society must rigorouslypun-
ish legal transgression by means of corporal and capital punishment (? 161).
Yet Bayle puts more emphasis on the goods we are drawnto than on the evils
we flee: "It is certain, whatever one may say, that man loves delight [joie]
more than he hates pain and that he is more sensitive to good than to harm"
(?167). Indeed, "delight is the nerve of all human affairs" (?167). And al-
though delights or pleasures may be most associated with the body, the great-
est pleasure we can have is in fact the good opinion we hold of ourselves as
mediated or determinedby the opinion others have of us: "It is to the inward
esteem of other men that we aspire above all" (?179, emphasis added). "A
machine that could come to us in reverence ... would hardly give us a good
opinion of ourselves, for we would know that these were not signs of anoth-
er's good opinion of our merit"(? 179). The foundationof man's natureis there-
fore his self-love or vanity (amour-propre),"thatpassion inseparablefrom our
nature" (?171; also ?83). A society of atheists is possible in principle pro-
vided that human laws make use of our naturalfear of harm and, more impor-
tant, of our naturalattractionto honor or reputationin the eyes of others. Bayle's
sketch of a society of atheists is at its core an outline of a rational legislation
that exploits these two different but linked inclinations of our nature, the nat-
ural attractionto honor being but the obverse of our natural desire to flee the
pain of indignity.A society of atheists stands or falls by the possibility of main-
taining "the harsh law of honor"without recourse to belief in a divinity (? 162,
end).
Bayle contends that such a society "wouldperform civil and moral actions as
much as other societies do, provided that it punish crimes severely and that it
attachhonor and infamy to certain things" (? 172, beg.). For given that "the true
driving force of man's actions is altogetherdifferentfrom religion" (? 181), there
is every reason for the true motives of action to be effective among atheists,
"namelypunishmentsand rewards,glory and ignominy, temperamentand edu-
cation" (? 172). The "fearof being taken in society for a traitorand a rogue will
overcome [an atheist's] love of money"; "a man without religion" is "capable
of returninga deposit . . . when he sees that his good faith will earn for him the
praise of a whole city and that his infidelity could one day subject him to re-
proach,"or at the very least to "being suspected of something that would im-
pede his being taken as a decent man" (? 179). Morality properlyunderstoodis
nothing more than the policy most conducive to the survival, prosperity, and
(sober) honoring of each and all in society; it is selfishness intelligently pur-
sued or at any rate prudentlycontrolled. Supportedin this way by calculations
of advantageand by our amour-propre,morality needs no exhortationsto self-
less action to be obeyed and therefore need not promise eternal rewardor pun-
ishment as an incentive so to act.
On the Politics of Faith and Reason 9
What then is the characterof the ends or actions an atheistic society would
esteem? To clarify this, Bayle turns to the topic of "shamelessness":"It is nec-
essary to confess that this idea [of the goodness of chastity] is older than either
the Gospel or Moses; it is a certainimpressionthat is as old as the world"(? 172,
end). Bayle later elaborates:"As it is as naturalto man to value things in pro-
portionto what they cost as it is to love to be distinguished, nature alone would
have soon taughtthe inhabitantsof the same village thatit is gloriousfor a woman
not to be prodigal with her favors, which leads things naturallyand impercep-
tibly to the state in which they are seen in almost all republics"(? 180, end; em-
phasis added).Thus, "thereare ideas of honor among men that are purely a work
of nature"(? 172). Free of Christianity'sconfused and confusing interferencewith
the dictates of human nature, atheists as Bayle envisions them would attach ig-
nominy to shamelessness because doing so is sanctionedby natureitself for the
reason indicated. One must add, however, that shamelessness as a transgres-
sion would be demoted in rank in favor of those crimes that reason tells us are
most harmfulto society, murderchief among them.9 And the horrorof murder
would be felt more keenly in a society that denies the immortality of the soul
than in one that accepts it.
After his lengthy condemnationof all religion, pagan and Christian,as a check
on action, as well as his extended praise of the mores of atheists, Bayle con-
cludes by returningto the question that permitted these all-important"digres-
sions": "There is no longer any reason to say one must necessarily deny-
that comets are signs of the anger of God formed in a miraculous way, since
they are altogethersuited to keep men in the most criminal condition they could
be in" (?193, end).
9It is true that shamelessness is "morefavorableto public society" than either murderor perjury,
but this is irrelevant"before God." While apparentlysiding with "sound theology," Bayle clearly
indicates that the rankthe Bible assigns the various sins has no foundationother than the brute fact
of God's having thus commandedit. The only reasonable standardby which to judge, namely what
is "favorableto public society," sets murderas a far worse crime than shamelessness, as do human
beings generally (?169).
10Among the many examples that might be cited, see Diderot 1875, I: 259-73 ("De la suffi-
sance de la religion naturelle").
10 Robert C. Bartlett
God to man. Bayle therefore appeals repeatedly to "the idea we have of God"
(e.g., ??71, 101, 225; cf. ?65) or to what we know to be compatiblewith "God's
wisdom" (e.g., ??98, 222). Bayle is of course aware that this manner of argu-
ment is controversial:"It is not for us to find fault with what God does" (?56).
Indeed, Bayle's argumentsthus far do not confrontthe possibility of a God whose
very perfection requires that He be, in some respects at least, mysterious. In
addition, the psychology that is the basis of his political prescriptionsis some-
what puzzling; in his account of the passions, for example, he disregardsrather
than disproves the existence of genuinely religious passions, as distinguished
from those passions (e.g., fear) that give rise to religions.
Bayle avers in the present context that he is willing to disregardthe lights of
his reason if someone proves to him, "eitherby necessary reasonings or by in-
fallible authority,"that God has performeda given miracle (?223). But as quickly
becomes clear, only reason can establish the infallibility of an authority.For ac-
cording to Bayle, the infallible authorityof revelation or of God's word as de-
livered by the prophets is requiredto establish the existence and meaning of a
miracle.Yet there are and have been false prophets;how then to distinguish be-
tween true and false prophecy? "Discourses without miracles would not con-
vince" (?218), and to "confirm" Moses' mission, "God has Moses perform
astonishing miracles that are superior to the marvels of Pharaoh'smagicians,
and reduces this prince to the necessity of confessing that indeed the God of
the Hebrews is the true God" (?218). l Prophetic revelation, then, is required
to establish the existence of a miracle, but a miracle is in turn requiredto es-
tablish the existence of prophetic revelation. The circularity of these require-
ments indicates that far from establishing faith, both miracles and revelation
presuppose it. Thus neither (supposed) miracles nor (supposed) revelation can
constitute an "infallible authority,"and only "necessary reasonings"remain to
us as the source of sound conviction.12
But could not this argumentbe dismissed as simple hardheartedness,as an
obstinate deafness to God's manifest call? Or, even granting that the disavowal
of biblical authoritymust be reasonable,why is it reasonableto demandof God
l For other indications of the necessity of miracles to vouch for prophecy, see also ? 119, end;
?136, towardthe end; ? 160.
12Within the confines of the present discussion, it is impossible to enter into the highly contro-
versial question of Bayle's final view of the power or limits of human reason-his "scepticism,"
especially as regardsits consequences for religious faith. It is my contention that at least duringthe
period in which he wrote the VariousThoughts, Bayle maintained that unaided human reason is
able to understandenough of the world to know that the providential,miraculous God of the Bible
does not exist. It must remain an open question here whether Bayle's later pronouncementsof the
impotence of human reason and hence the necessity of blind faith were more the product of "pol-
icy" than "sincerity,"to make use of a distinction Bayle employs with regardto Epicurus (? 178). I
am inclined to accept the former alternative,but the reader is urged to consult the studies of Rex
(1965) and Popkin (1959, 1967, and 1979). About this much we can agree: "The position that Bayle
claimed to hold at the end of his career seems ratherelusive and hard to classify, let alone defend"
(Popkin 1959, 1).
On the Politics of Faith and Reason 11
that His actions be subject to our reason, especially since the Bible seems to
demandfaithful obedience and the strengthto endurethe tests of faith? But here
too, Bayle seems perfectly aware of such difficulties: "Youmight stop me here
to tell me that it is punishabletemerity for me to deny that God has done a thing
because my petty reason does not discover any use of it and sees, to the con-
trary,that many great abuses result from it" (?223). His strategy to overcome
these and comparableobjections, I suggest, is to supply readers with what he
hopes will be an irresistible moral or political incentive to adopt the view of
the world he sketches. For coming between Bayle's two main argumentsagainst
miracles is his lengthy and powerfulpresentationof the advantagesto be gained
by demoting the concern for religion. His deluge of examples of the atrocities
committedin the name of any and every religion, on the one hand, and his sketch
of the possibility of a decent society of atheists, on the other, together are in-
tended to induce his audience to accept this demotion of religion in favor of
both the preservationof life and the attainmentof the satisfactionstemmingfrom
the esteem of others. For those already inclined to doubt, the VariousThoughts
supplies a ready arsenal of theoretical arguments that despite or perhaps be-
cause of their highly rhetorical character,could be selectively used to trouble
any number of different audiences; the practical success of "naturaltheology"
is but one example. And for those not already inclined to doubt, Bayle's me-
thodical, insistent use of examples of the horrors committed in the name of
religion-first of paganreligion but eventuallyalso of Christianity would surely
be disturbingto anyone whose faith nurtures,and is in turn nurturedby, moral
seriousness and compassion. In other words, Bayle makes use of the very con-
cern for justice at or near the heart of biblical faith to alter or undermine our
understandingof biblical faith. And yet the acceptance of the priority of this-
worldly security and esteem, and therewith a demotion of the concern for sal-
vation in the next, seems both to require the prior knowledge that the biblical
God does not exist and, in Bayle, to substitutefor such knowledge: Only in a
world without providence do bodily security and mundane prosperity become
paramountends; let us therefore act on the basis of the belief that there is no
providence, the better to attain them.
That there is a fundamentaltension between nature or the God of "general
providence"and the biblical God is clear from ?234, the section to which Bayle
draws our attention in his "Avertissement"as dealing with a particularlysensi-
tive issue (Bayle 1994, 18-19). Bayle makes use of the remarkof Barnabusand
Paul that prior to the birth of Jesus Christ, God "sufferedall nations to walk in
their own ways" but "left not himself without witness" in the form of "rainfrom
heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our heart with food and gladness" (see the
referencesto Acts 14 in ??60, 218, and 234). The core of the conclusion to Bay-
le's theological argumentmay be stated as follows: God is nothing but imper-
sonal nature-natura sive deus which, while it provides a certain bounty,
nonetheless "suffers all nations to walk in their own ways." What for the apos-
tles was the temporarymanifestationof God's rule is for Bayle the only one we
12 Robert C. Bartlett
ought to expect. By equating God with nature, Bayle makes the biblical God
vanish into the natural world that is in principle subject to the analytical sci-
ence of physicists and philosophers.13In accordance with this denial of mirac-
ulous intervention and hence of particularprovidence, Bayle turns to discuss
prudentpolitics as the only means available to compensate for the direct rule
that naturedoes not and cannot supply.
13In Ce que c 'est que la France toute Catholique soUts le regne de Louis le Grand (Bayle 1973),
Bayle returnsto this equation of God with nature, which he there traces to Malebranche:"I find
something so unworthy of a wise intelligence in making so many particularedicts, in advancing
and retreating,in going right and going left, in retractingand explaining oneself better-in a word,
in living day to day, I mean, in making new regulationsat every Council meeting; this, I say, seems
to me so far removed from the idea of perfection ... that I begin to believe with this new Philos-
opher that God acts only througha small number of general laws" (Bayle 1973, 46). Again: "God,
preferringwisdom to all else, prefers that his conduct bear the mark of a wise agent who does not
disturbthe simplicity and uniformity of his ways in order to avoid a particulardisaster, constantly
to remedy the evils that happen in the world by opposing himself to the progress of general laws"
(Bayle 1973, 62). On the importance of Malebrancheto Bayle, consider Rex 1965, 34-40.
On the Politics of Faith and Reason 13
political philosopher, and on more than one occasion the quarrelbetween the
Federalists and anti-Federalistsconcerns, not whether Montesquieu's political
teaching is correct,but whetheror to what extent the proposed constitutionlives
up to that teaching (consider,e.g., Federalistnos. 9 and 47; see also Shklar 1987,
111-26; Pangle 1988, 67-68, 89-94). To be sure, other philosophers were cru-
cial to the development of modern liberal republicanism, Spinoza and Locke
not least, but the outlines of the new thinking and the new politics are particu-
larly clear in the liberal philosophy of Montesquieu. I turn now to the closest
point of contact between our two thinkers,to Montesquieu'sexplicit discussion
of Bayle in the Spirit of the Laws.
14Unless otherwise indicated, all references in this section will be to the Spirit of the Laws by
book and chapter and, where a more precise reference is needed, to the pagination of the Pleiade
edition (Montesquieu 1951). References to the Pensees are by numberas these appearin Volume II
of the Masson edition of the Oeuvres completes (Montesquieu 1950-55). Translationsare my own.
On the Politics of Faith and Reason 15
knowing which is the lesser evil, that one sometimes abuses religion or that there
be none among men." Not only, then, does Montesquieu concede to Bayle that
religion is sometimes productiveof evils, he insists upon it; Montesquieumain-
tains merely that atheism produces still greater evils.
The burdenof XXIV.2, however,is not so much to comparethe evils of athe-
ism with those of belief and thereby to attack atheism, as it is simply to praise
religious belief. To appreciatethe peculiar characterof this praise, one must see
the skillful way in which Montesquieu blurs the question of the truth of reli-
gion. He begins by speaking of "religion" in general and then turns to speak
of and praise "idolatry,"for from the point of view of political utility, idola-
trous religions are no less religions than is Christianity.Montesquieu's attack
on Bayle thus has a strangecharacter:It requiresor permits Montesquieuto de-
liver an extended praise of false religion. He even extols, at the end of Chap-
ter 2, the merits of the Lacedaemonianreligion. In other words, Montesquieu
objects much less to Bayle's elevation of atheism than to his demotion of idol-
atry: "In order to diminish the horror of atheism, one burdens idolatry overly
much."Whatevermay prove to motivate Montesquieu'scensure of Bayle, it ap-
pears from the outset that he does not speak in the name of Christianorthodoxy.
After introducingin XXIV5 the "unfortunatedivision" of Christendominto
Catholic and Protestant,Montesquieu turns to discuss Bayle one last time, this
in the chapter entitled "Anotherof Bayle's Paradoxes"(XXIV6).15 "M. Bayle,
after having insulted all religions, blights the Christianreligion: he dares to pro-
pose that true Christianswould not form a state that could last" (see also Pense'es
1230 in Montesquieu 1950-55, 11:328).To this Montesquieu strenuously ob-
jects: Christians"wouldbe citizens infinitely enlightened about their duties and
... would have a very great zeal to fulfill them; they would sense very well the
rights of naturaldefense; the more they would believe they owed to the religion,
the more they would think they owed to the fatherland."Devotion to an "estab-
lished" Christianchurch,then, would at the same time be devotion to the father-
land, and the duties imposed by the latter would in no way conflict with the
demands of the former. Now among the things Christianityteaches according
to Montesquieu is "the rights of naturaldefense," and Montesquieuhimself had
devoted considerableattentionto uncoveringand clarifyingprecisely these rights:
The life of states is like that of men. The latter have the right to kill in the case of natural
defense; the former have the right to wage war for their own preservation.
In the case of naturaldefense, I have the right to kill, because my life is mine, as the life of
the one who attacks me is his; similarly a state wages war because its preservationis just, as
is any other Dreservation.(X. 2. 377: see also IX as a whole)
15Montesquieurefers explicitly to Bayle once more: XXVI. 3, n.2. Robert Shackleton detects
the influence of Bayle also at XXV. 10 and 11 (that a religion once established should not be dis-
turbedand that a multiplicity of religions in a state is fine provided religious toleration exists): see
Shackleton 1959, 147. One might note in this connection also the agreement between Montes-
quieu's analysis of the things that attractand attach us to a religion and Bayle's: compare Spirit of
the Laws XXV2 with, for instance, VariousThoughts ??184, 189-90.
16 Robert C. Bartlett
This teaching concerning natural defense looks for its foundation, not to the
Hebrew or ChristianBible, but to the original and naturalcondition of human
beings in a "state of nature"very different from the Garden of Eden (see 1.2;
X.3, 378). Might it be that Christianityis as compatible with moderatepolitics
as Montesquieuinsists only when it is reinterpretedin the light of the humanly
knowable principles underlying "moderate"politics in the light of Montes-
quieu's own science of politics?
This possibility is confirmed in the final paragraphof XXIV 6. It turns out
that Bayle's blunder is due to a misunderstandingof "the spirit of his own
religion" however "astounding"it may be that one can attributesuch a mis-
understandingto "this great man."16 Bayle failed to see that the "orders for
the establishmentof Christianity"or its "precepts"are essentially differentfrom
"Christianityitself" or its mere "counsels" and that the two must therefore be
distinguished. Many of Christ'sexhortations,that is, aim at "perfection"rather
than the possible, and since perfection "does not concern men or things uni-
versally,"such exhortationsmust not be mistaken for universal commands ob-
ligating all alike (XXIV 7). When "the legislator"-Christ-"instead of giving
laws, gave counsels, it is because he saw that his counsels, if they were or-
dained as laws, would be contrary to the spirit of his laws" (XXIV 6, end).
Jesus Christ, it turns out, understood the "spirit of his laws." It would seem
that Christ was a good Montesquieuan, and Montesquieu can appear to be a
good Christianby introducingthe distinction between the orders and the coun-
sels of Christ,the formerbeing obligatory,the lattermerely exhortatory(Pangle
1973, 252-55). Thus, all the teachings of Christ that Montesquieu deems com-
patible with "moderategovernment"become Christ'sorders, whereas those he
deems incompatible become mere "counsels." Bayle made the mistake of tak-
ing Christ too literally.
In these opening chaptersof his discussion of religion, Montesquieu defends
Christianityby twice attackingthe bold impiety of Pierre Bayle. The genius of
Montesquieu's rhetoric, however, is such that he defends both idolatry and
Christianity and therebybegins to drainfrom Christianityall of its essentially
unprovableand hence controversialassertions concerning the divinity of Christ.
Montesquieuresponds in particularto Bayle's denial of the possibility of a truly
Christianpolity by reinterpretingChristianityin such a way as to make it preach
"the rights of natural defense" and defer to the "spirit of the laws." I suggest
that Montesquieuand "this greatman"Bayle do not have fundamentallydifferent
ends in mind and that they disagree only over the best strategy to attain that
end: Both philosophers envisage a day when, to the very great benefit of poli-
tics, the concern for religion in general and Christianityin particularwould fall
"6Thisbold phrase was a source of trouble for Montesquieu: see Defense, 1129-30. If I am not
mistaken, Montesquieuuses it to characterizeonly one other philosopher in the Spirit of the Laws,
Machiavelli (VI. 5, 313; cf. Preface, 231, where Montesquieu speaks of, but does not mention by
name, certain "greatmen" of France, England, and Germany).
On the Politics of Faith and Reason 17
into desuetude, the lives of citizens being taken up with other, more mundane,
and strictly speaking more naturalconcerns.
With regardto religion, as in this state every citizen would have his own will and would as a
consequence be led by his own enlightenment or his fantasies, it would happen either that
each would be altogetherindifferentto every sort of religion of whateverkind, in which case
everyone would be led to embrace the dominant religion; or one would be zealous for reli-
gion in general, in which case sects would multiply. (XIX.27, 580)
18 Robert C. Bartlett
It is not therefore by filling the soul with this great object [i.e., fear of one's own death], by
bringing it closer to the moment when it should find religion of greater importance,that one
succeeds in detaching the soul from religion; a more certain way to attack a religion is by
favor, by the comforts of life, by the hope of fortune; not by what reminds one of it, but by
what makes one forget it; not by what makes one indignantbut by what casts one into indif-
ference [tildeur] when other passions act on our souls and when those that religion inspires
are silent. General rule: in the matterof changing religion, invitations are strongerthan pen-
alties. (XXV 12, 745-46)
17Consider here Voltaire'spraise of the pacific effects of commerce, especially on religious ha-
treds, which praise anticipated by a few years Montesquieu's own and is fully in accord with its
spirit:"Enterthe London Stock Exchange, that place more respectablethan many courts; there you
see gatheredtogether deputies of all nations for the sake of the utility of men. There, the Jew, the
Mohammedan,and the Christiantreat one anotheras if they were of the same religion and give the
name 'infidels' only to those who go bankrupt;there, the Presbyteriantrusts the Anabaptist, and
the Anglican accepts the promise of the Quaker.Upon leaving these pacific and free assemblies,
some go to the synagogue, others to have a drink;this one goes to get himself baptized in a large
tank in the name of the Fatherby the Son of the Holy Spirit;this one has his son's foreskin cut off
and has some Hebrew words that he does not understandmumbled over his infant. Still others go
to their church to await the inspiration of God, hats on their heads, and all are content" (Voltaire
1877-1880, "Sixieme Lettre,"Lettresphilosophiques).
On the Politics of Faith and Reason 19
`8The best discussions of Book I are Lowenthal(1959) and Shackleton (1961). My analysis dif-
fers from these works principally in that I stress rathermore than they the (anti-)theological impli-
cations of Montesquieu'sargument.
'9On the peculiarityof Montesquieu'sdescriptionof law as a relation,see Shackleton1961, 244-46.
20 Robert C. Bartlett
(?8). But if there were no circles in fact, could one speak of the properties of
their radii? If there were no particularintelligent beings at all, would their po-
tential existence, relations,and laws be known?To whom would they be known?
It seems that such argumentshave surreptitiousrecourse to our experience of
those circles that have been traced, or to the particularintelligences we do know.
I tentatively suggest that to speak as Montesquieu does both of the radii of cir-
cles prior to their existence and, more to the point, of possible laws pertaining
to particularintelligent beings prior to the existence of any such beings, is to
presupposethe presence of an ordering,comprehendingmind apartfrom any par-
ticularbeings: It is to presupposethe mind of a god that knows the possible ex-
istence of circles (and hence their possible properties)and the possible existence
of particularintelligent beings (and hence the possible laws pertainingto them).
Montesquieuhimself suggeststhatthis is so by ultimatelyreferringto these "prim-
itive laws" as those that "god established"(?14), explicitly in contrastto those
we make; whatevermay be the role of the positive law in making such primitive
laws known to us, they seem to require a creatorgod for their existence.
Montesquieu identifies four such laws or "relations of equity" (?9): that,
given a society of men, it would be just to obey their laws; that any intelligent
being should be grateful for benefactions received; that any intelligent crea-
ture should remain in a state of dependence on the intelligent creature that
created it; and that any intelligent creaturethat has harmed another deserves
the same treatmentin return.Obedience to law, gratitude,dependence, and pun-
ishment or retaliationare thus the laws that pertain to human beings even prior
to their existence. But Montesquieu immediately proceeds to stress how little
we conform to these laws in fact: The intelligent world, like the physical, "also
has its laws that, by their nature, are invariable,"and yet "it does not follow
them consistently as the physical world follows its" (T10). Indeed, we violate
them "incessantly."This is due in part to precisely our nature, as Montesquieu
indicates. But is there not something strange about invariablenaturallaws that
we violate on account of our nature? One could of course reply that, unlike
circles with their radii, humanbeings are by naturefree and thus "act by them-
selves" (?10). But there is another,more radical, possibility. What if these very
laws or relations prove to be radically defective in terms of human nature and
hence undeserving of the name natural law? Indeed, the first supposed natu-
ral law (that it is obligatory to conform to the laws of one's society) is under-
mined by Montesquieu's political project as a whole, for so far from being
content to obey the laws under which he lives, he seeks to underminethem in
their entirety: If it is true that "changes can be proposed only by those who
are born fortunate enough to penetrate with a stroke of genius the whole of a
state's constitution,"Montesquieu eventually confesses that "I do not believe
that I have totally lacked genius": "'And I too am a painter.'" (Preface, 230-
31). Second, Montesquieu'spolitical project underminesthe view that the cre-
ated should remain in a condition of original dependence on its creator,be it
God's creatureson him or children on parents:We must rely more on prudent
On the Politics of Faith and Reason 21
20See also his characterizationof "the law of nature"in X.3, 378; on the interferenceof reason
and the passions with human procreation,consider XXIII.1, 683.
On the Politics of Faith and Reason 23
admittedat the end of Chapter 1, even man in society is such a being as "could
at any moment forget his creator;god has called him back to him by the laws
of religion" (I. 1, 234). Montesquieulater resolves the apparentcontradictionbe-
tween the knowledge of god as a naturallaw and as resulting from (positive)
religious law when, in Book XXVI, he gives a more detailed enumerationof
the various kinds of law. There he clearly places divine (and ecclesiastical) right
apartfrom naturallaw and together with the many positive laws (XXVI. 1). In
other words, Montesquieu introducesknowledge of god as the first naturallaw,
but he never speaks of it as such again.
The four naturallaws properlyso-called, then, are these: the desire for peace,
food, procreation,and the society of others. Unlike the four relations of equity
that are said somehow to exist apartfrom the positive law that establishes them,
but that nonetheless requirethe suppositionof "a society of men" to speak about
at least one and perhaps all of them (see 1.1, ?9), Montesquieu's own natural
laws are meantto apply to humanbeings as they are truly or by natureand hence
prior to all society and the effects of society on their nature:As the radii of any
given circle are all equal, so every human being acts in accord with the four
naturallaws he indicates. Montesquieuattemptsto delineate those laws that, be-
ing truly in accord with our nature, deserve the name of natural law and that
require no exhortation or sanction for us to act in accord with them. The main
purpose of Book I of the Spirit of Laws is to replace the four supposedly natu-
ral laws "god established" which,however,humanbeings violate "incessantly"-
with four genuinely naturallaws that, like the laws or axioms of geometry, are
never violated because they are deduced from the true nature of the things in
question. Howevermuch political society may distort or mutilatethe naturalde-
sires Montesquieu discerns, and however plastic those desires may be in them-
selves, they nonetheless remain present in us and can be retrieved and made
use of by the prudentlegislator.The opening and largely destructivesections of
the Spirit of the Laws are meant to preparethe way for the constructiveproject
that follows them.
If one accepts the naturallaws that Montesquieu states, there seems to be no
need to accept or even to speak of the biblical God, the just and providential
God capable of miraculous intervention in the world. It cannot be said, how-
ever, that Montesquieu establishes the truth of his own naturallaws over those
of traditionaltheology in the four or five pages of the Spirit of the Laws he de-
votes to this dauntingtask. The new naturallaws, and the understandingof the
world that goes together with them, have at bottom the characterof assertions,
and they are good or choiceworthybecause their acceptance will lead to a man-
ifestly good political order,not because they are manifestly true. For example,
Montesquieu'spolitical philosophy looks to the "state of nature"for its foun-
dation, and yet he never speaks of it at length in the Spirit of the Laws. What is
more, Montesquieuwas at the least familiar with objections to the very idea of
a "stateof nature,"for in the Persian Letters his Usbek raises the following one:
"I have never heard one speak of public law (droit public) without beginning
24 Robert C. Bartlett
Conclusion
Despite the disagreements,both apparentand real, between Montesquieuand
Bayle, they are at one on the fundamentalquestions. Both agree that religion is
responsible for greater ills than benefits, at least in well-governed polities, and
that it can safely be demoted if the task of politics becomes the pursuit of such
goods (e.g., liberty understood as security) as can clearly be traced to natural
passions, above all the fear of death and the dictates of amour-propre.To be
sure, Montesquieugoes out of his way to distance himself from Bayle's by-then
infamous assertion of the possibility of an atheistic society, but his specific crit-
icisms amountessentiallyto this: In praisingthe political utility of atheism,Bayle
was far too critical of idolatry; idolatry deserves greater praise than Bayle ac-
knowledged. By thus making idolatry the focus of his defense against Bayle's
criticisms, Montesquieuleaves almost untouchedBayle's praise of atheism.And
insofar as Montesquieu praises Christianity,he does so explicitly in terms of
the "political utility" of what he determines are its "counsels" as distinguished
from its "precepts,"a standardfully in accord with Bayle's own denigrationof
dogma in favor of deeds that in practicehas the effect of obscuringChristianity's
claim to be the one true religion. Montesquieu's denial that the state has any
reasonableconcern with "sacrilege"amountsto the privatizationof the heart of
religion, each being left to his own "fantasies"or "enlightenment,"and Montes-
quieu states clearly what he hoped such privatizationwould really amount to:
By removing religion from the state, one may eventually "detachthe soul from
religion" altogether.If Montesquieu refused to go quite so far as Bayle in toy-
ing with the possibility of a simply atheistic politics, this refusal stems from
his greater moderationor prudence, not from a disagreement over principle.
To begin to take a critical distance from Bayle and Montesquieu, it is best to
reflect on one consequence of the elevation of the concern for deeds at the ex-
pense of dogmajust noted. For that elevation leaves in some doubt the status of
their own preoccupationwith precisely "dogma"or at any rate opinions: Nei-
ther philosopher, that is, seems to leave much of a place for philosophy in his
On the Politics of Faith and Reason 25
21 See XXIV 11 and IV.8, as well as XI.6 (407: on the undesirabilityof an "excess of reason"). If
I am not mistaken, Montesquieu'sonly extended praise of reason in the Spirit of the Laws occurs at
the end of his poetic invocation of the Muses: "Youwant me to speak to reason; it is the most per-
fect, the most noble, and the most exquisite of our senses" (XX. 1, 585). But even apart from the
fact that this praise is found in a poem intended to make pleasant and charmingthe truths Montes-
quieu has discerned, which pleasure and charm evidently stem from some source other than rea-
son, Book XX as a whole is dedicated to elevating commerce as a way of life uniquely suited to
harnessing our naturalpassions in a way compatible with the new republicanism:reason is essen-
tially in the service of political life and hence in that of the passions.
26 Robert C. Bartlett
subject to death as we are but without recognizing it" (I. 1, 234). The very fore-
knowledge of our own mortality,then, has the paradoxicalresult that, by driv-
ing us deeper into religious zeal, it prompts us to overlook such means as are
genuinely availableto us to satisfy our naturaldesire to preserveourselves:"This
same delicacy of organs that makes [Indians] fear death serves also to make
them dreada thousandthings more than death"(XIV.3,478). Accordingly,"most
[beasts] even preserve themselves better than we do and do not make such bad
use of their passions" (I. 1, 234). One must conclude that if "it is not a matterof
indifferencethatthe people be enlightened"(Preface,230), the enlightenedaware-
ness of our truly naturalpassions that Montesquieu seeks to promote is none-
theless aided in a decisive way by the diminution of our natural awareness of
death and therewithof our fear of it. Hobbes taught us to focus above all on our
fear of violent death, but Montesquieu encourages us simply to forget death,
and the reason for this difference is clear enough: The problem of violent death
admits of a political solution far more readily than does death simply.
That Bayle and Montesquieu can account for philosophy only with diffi-
culty may not by itself amount to a decisive objection. If Montesquieu'sphilo-
sophic account of human nature leaves no place for the philosopher, perhaps
such a being is explicable in terms of idiosyncratic tastes and unusual capac-
ities. Only one question can concern us here: If the philosopher is not the ful-
fillment of human nature, can the life of philosophy, as distinguished above
all from a life of pious devotion, be known to be the good life? That this is an
appropriatequestion to bring to the political philosophy of Bayle and Montes-
quieu is clear from the characterof their principal works, for both manifestly
thought it essential to overturn,by means of the tools of philosophy, the tra-
ditional biblical understandingof man's relation to God and community. In-
deed, Bayle and Montesquieu were as keenly aware of the greatest obstacle
that the philosophic effort to "enlighten"politics faced, namely the claims to
knowledge of the world raised by the pious, as they were hopeful that this
obstacle could be overcome once and for all. The fundamentalquestion, then,
is whether the philosophers in question successfully refuted these claims, as
their project evidently requires them to do. As we have seen, Bayle and
Montesquieu did not deduce their politics from a completed metaphysics
from a complete account of the nature of human being, God, and world that
was as such a standing refutation of the biblical claims. They sought instead
to satisfy our most unambiguous natural needs, those for security and com-
fort, then to suppress for the sake of that new security our interest in and even
awareness of the most fundamentalquestion of metaphysics. In the name of a
greater and more rational tranquillity,both Bayle and Montesquieu elevated
deeds over opinions, morality over understanding,and thus encouraged us to
become indifferent to biblical faith, to its truth or falsity.
This gamble proved to involve a difficulty. For a political philosopher sub-
sequently arose whose rhetorical gifts were as extraordinaryas his powers of
reasoning, and he used these capacities to launch the first great assault on the
On the Politics of Faith and Reason 27
References
Aldridge,Alfred Owen. 1967. BenjaminFranklinand Natures God. Durham:Duke UniversityPress.
Augustine. [413-426] 1972. City of God. Trans. Henry Bettenson. Harmondsworth:Penguin.
Bayle, Pierre.[1820-24] 1969. Dictionnairehistoriqueet critique.Reprint.Geneva:Slotkin Reprints.
Bayle, Pierre. 1973. Ce que c'est que la France tolite Catholiquiesolls le regne de Louis le Grand.
Ed. Elisabeth Labrousse. Paris: J. Vrin.
Bayle, Pierre. [1682] 1994. Pensees diverses sur la comete. Ed. A. Prat and Pierre Retat. 2d ed.
Paris: Societe des Textes Francais Modernes.
Bayle, Pierre. [1682] 2000. VariousThoughtson the Occasion of a Comet. Ed. and trans. Robert C.
Bartlett.Albany: SUNY.
Cassirer,Ernst. 1951. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment.Trans.Fritz C. A. Koelln and James P.
Pettegrove. Princeton:Princeton University Press.
Cazes, Albert. 1905. Pierre Bayle: Sa vie, ses idees, son influence, son oeuvre. Paris: Dujarric et
Cie.
Diderot,Denis. [1765] N.d. Encyclopedieouidictionnaireraisonnedes sciences, des arts et des metiers.
Reprint. Elmsford, NY: PergamonPress.
Diderot,Denis. 1875. "De la suffisance de la religion naturelle."In Oeuvrescompletes.Ed. J. Assezat.
Paris: GarniersFreres.
Faguet, Emile. 1890. Dix-huitiene siecle. Etudes litteraires. Paris: Boivin et Cie.
Gay, Peter. 1967. The Enlightenment:An Interpretation.2 vols. New York:Alfred A. Knopf.
28 Robert C. Bartlett