In the XVII century Europe tore itself to pieces in wars of religion. Catholics and Protestants fought each other in different scenarios throughout the continent. Each side leant on its faith, on a revealed truth that served both as a moral compass and as an understanding of what the world was like and how the human being fitted in it.
From a XXI century perspective, it would be easy to take a cynical stance and focus on the realpolitik phenomena of these wars: Catholic France siding with the Protestants against the Catholic Habsburg Empire, German noblemen using Protestantism to oppose the political power of the Pope, etc. However, that would be missing the point. At the time, the view of the world was deeply religious and faith structured to a great length the behaviour of both states and individuals.
From a XVII century perspective, let alone from the Medieval one, it wouldn´t make sense to separate state and church. If there is a divinely revealed truth, it is absurd to act without taking it into account. There could be disagreements between the kings and the pope regarding organizational matters, like who should choose the bishops, but leaving religion out of politics would have been at least as absurd as ignoring science when making political decisions in our age. If you know the truth, you are bound to use it and build your projects on it.
The wars of religion had a traumatic effect on Europe. No side received God´s help to impose its Truth on the other. The incompatible views of reality could not reach an agreement either. The conflict led to an impasse, based on dissociative mechanisms, that allowed a truce to stop the bloodshed. The principle “cuius regio, eius religio” established that each region would use its particular religion, that of its king. Each territory would follow its own path, taking it for the true one, without imposing it on the rest. This patchwork created by the geographical dissociation would evolve overtime into a different type of dissociation.
Nowadays, religion has been pushed to the private realm. States function as if there was no religion, no revealed truth, and church-state separation is the norm. This is not an agreement on the falsity of religion, with a laic worldview, but a dissociation of religion out of the political scene. This dissociation left a gap to be filled with a new dominant discourse for the public sphere.
Science was used in an attempt to fill the gap. Reason replaced God as the criterion of truth and morality, and efforts were made to build a rational discourse to frame reality and human endeavours. This project collapsed.
Kant established that science was only valid to study phenomena, not to understand reality itself, human nature or morality. Thus, a new criterion was needed to identify the right path for human action.
Democracy was called for. If we dissociate the revealed truth, and science doesn´t provide answers at the human level, some sort of political consensus can be reached by using the will of the majority as a criterion of agreement.
I won´t go now into the flaws of democracy and the limitations of the majority rule, the degeneration of will into the whim of consumers or the dilution of any truth in the postmodern world. However, it´s clear that social chaos is looming over us, as illustrated by the periodical riots we see in countries like France and the United States.
The socio-political instability that afflicts us can be interpreted as the failure of the illustrated project that replaced religion and tried to build a new model of civilization without a God, although most people wouldn´t take their conclusions that far.
Actually, contrary to Nietzsche´s view, God is not dead. It´s dissociated from the political organization and confined to private life, but it frequently re-emerges in the public discourse, especially in the United States.
Dissociated elements can reappear with unexpected force rearranging the whole picture. The Islamic world turned towards religion at the end of the XX century following its disenchantment with the West and with nationalism. Iran suffered an Islamic revolution that turned it into a theocracy. The West appears to be far from a similar process, but who can measure the strength of what is dissociated or predict its course? We may not be so godless as it seems.
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