Rousseau and the paradoxes of civil religion

Abstract

This work aims to analyse two paradoxes about the relationship between Religion and policy in Rousseau’s thinking, noting that we understand paradoxes as extremely positive aspects of his work. The first is the proposition of a civil religion in the last chapter of the Social Contract. The second, the language change from political right to positive right when presenting the positive dogmas of civil religion, he writes more from the point of view of the legislator than of the theorist of political right. The analysis of these paradoxes necessarily implies reflection on other concepts present in the Social Contract and other works by Rousseau, as well as in the research work on his thinking. From that analysis, we found that both paradoxes are justified within the work itself and, therefore, are not contradictory, because the author was aware of the theoretical difficulties of approaching the topic of relations between politics and religion, therefor, he had to dare to propose theses that had little acceptance from their contemporaries.