ABSTRACT
Modern readers of the Social Contract typically encounter Book 4 Chapter 8 – ‘Of Civil Religion’ – with one of two reactions. The first response is simply to ignore it; the second is to see the chapter as further confirming evidence of illiberal and totalitarian elements in Rousseau’s thought. Neither of these opposing views is justified, but they are united in contrasting sharply with the reactions of Rousseau’s own contemporaries. Along with the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar from Emile, the chapter on civil religion was seen as the most scandalous of Rousseau’s writings. Those texts led to the suppression of both books in Geneva, and the condemnation of Emile by the Paris Parlement drove Rousseau into foreign exile. The views that Rousseau expressed in them about Christianity and its lack of contribution to the spirit of social solidarity outraged and surprised his fellows even more than his prescription of the death penalty for citizens who act as if they do not believe the tenets of faith they have acknowledged has appalled hostile modern commentators. And yet this allegedly most illiberal of chapters contains some striking concessions by Rousseau to modernity and pluralism and 178anticipates in interesting ways some modern approaches to toleration, such as John Rawls’s concept of an ‘overlapping consensus’ of ‘reasonable comprehensive doctrines’.
