Beyond Struggle and Power: Heidegger's Secret ... - Interpretation

Book Review: Public Vision, Private Lives
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III.
As for religion, Cladis and Rousseau are more on the same
page, though perhaps not as much as Cladis thinks. For Cladis (a professor of
religious studies), the term “religion” encompasses a remarkably broad variety
of phenomena (6–7). He opposes “essentialism” in religious studies, because to
refer to any quality as “essential” to religion implies one religion might be more
truly “religion” than others. Otherworldly qualities like belief in God or the
afterlife deserve no special stress, and Cladis contends there is great benefit in
considering seemingly secular concepts like the general will and the wise legislator
as legitimately religious phenomena (191, 197, 212). Generally speaking,
Cladis looks for the sacred dimension of worldly phenomena, and the worldly
dimension of sacred or otherworldly phenomena. In the religious study at
hand, he is especially interested in how both the common moral beliefs which
bind individuals to a community and the “cultivated interior life” qualify as
forms of religion (7). To some, this approach would seem to strip religion of all
meaning, purpose, and, well, recognizability, but Cladis does not see things this
way. As mentioned earlier, he sees himself and Rousseau as defenders of religion,
particularly against claims by secular liberals that religion should be an
exclusively private matter. By broadening “religion” so, he makes it more suitable
for its role as a private and public good.
Cladis and Rousseau agree about many elements of civic religion.
Rousseau certainly intends the private good sincerity and the public good
toleration to reinforce each other much as Cladis envisions. In many of his
writings on religion, Rousseau argues that the content of one’s religious belief
is less important than that one came to it sincerely (“3rd Promenade,” “Letter
to Franquieres,” Rousseau 2000; “Letter to Voltaire,” Rousseau 1992;
“Profession of Faith,” Rousseau 1979). Sincerity will then provide people with a
moral basis for positively respecting other individuals and communities of different
faiths. Toleration at the constitutional or public level will thus be
supplemented by sincerity on the private level. People may continue to disagree
about transubstantiation, but if they recognize each other as sincere in their
respective beliefs, perhaps they will be less apt to reach for the thumbscrew, or
worse. It is also true that Rousseau looks for the sacred in the secular and vice
versa, like Cladis does. Rousseau sanctifies toleration by making it a dogma, an
obligatory article of faith, and he secularizes miracles, revelation and Scripture
by casting doubt on their sacred, otherworldly status. And, most similar of all