The “siècle des Lumières” and accompanying French Revolution were, and often still are, characterized as mass movements of antagonism towards faith and religion. As the Catholic faith of the old regime crumbled, the revolutionary spirit of the time promised to do away with orthodoxy and create a new egalitarian society based on freedom. Ideas like these were fueled by the French philosophes, with thinkers like Voltaire referring to orthodox religion as “the mother of fanaticism and civil discord” and “the enemy of mankind” (Gliozzo, 1971, p. 274). However, later critics of the Revolution recognized that, in fact, the secular values of the Revolution had formed their own type of fanatic political theology.
The secular fundamentalism associated with the Revolution is still echoed today, as exemplified in the New Atheist Movement and the ever-increasing emphasis on laïcité (secularism) in modern France. There are two questions that must be addressed concerning the secular values of the Revolution in order to understand its modern day implications: What were the origins of the violence, terror, and fundamentalism used to combat orthodox religion and values during the French Revolution, and how can …show more content…
It is during these precise moments that the sovereign must take control as the fate of a state is jeopardized. Schmitt feared that anarchic freedom or democracy could not successfully handle chaotic situations because, as with monotheistic religion, God is the only one who can perform miracles while a single, strong sovereign is the only one who can navigate through the “exception.” States develop in the wake of these exceptions, and for Schmitt the revolutionary French governments did not succeed in their creation of a modern state because their liberal ideas failed to end the exceptions of the time in a sufficient
The secular fundamentalism associated with the Revolution is still echoed today, as exemplified in the New Atheist Movement and the ever-increasing emphasis on laïcité (secularism) in modern France. There are two questions that must be addressed concerning the secular values of the Revolution in order to understand its modern day implications: What were the origins of the violence, terror, and fundamentalism used to combat orthodox religion and values during the French Revolution, and how can …show more content…
It is during these precise moments that the sovereign must take control as the fate of a state is jeopardized. Schmitt feared that anarchic freedom or democracy could not successfully handle chaotic situations because, as with monotheistic religion, God is the only one who can perform miracles while a single, strong sovereign is the only one who can navigate through the “exception.” States develop in the wake of these exceptions, and for Schmitt the revolutionary French governments did not succeed in their creation of a modern state because their liberal ideas failed to end the exceptions of the time in a sufficient