(iPoster) The Secular Confessional State: Immanence and Transcendence in Modern Natural Law

• In Event: Poster Session: Foundations of Political Theory 2 (Historical) & Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Foundations of Political Theory 2 (Historical)

Abstract

Historians of political thought have long noted a connection between two trends in the development of modern theories of the state: secularization and territorialization. Recent scholarship explains the connection between these two developments in terms of the immanence of political authority. According to this explanation, the emergence of political secularism results from a move from transcendent theories of political community to immanent theories of political community. The universalist aspirations of pre-modern political theory were gradually replaced by immanentist theories that limited authority to particular territories. However, this narrative is partially undermined by another significant trend in both modern political thought and modern practice: confessionalization. The idea of the immanent territorial state was accompanied not by the growth of political secularism but rather by the territorialization of religious disputes.

This paper is an attempt to explain these two seemingly contradictory developments from the perspective of natural law theory. We argue that both confessionalization and territorialization were underwritten by a significant shift in natural law theory. Scholastic philosophy (from Thomas Aquinas through Francisco Suárez) posited a transcendent view of natural law as independent of particular communities. This view resulted in an idea of the state as both non-territorial and non-confessional. The transcendence of the state resulted in a particular kind of political secularism. In the work of Francisco Suárez, for example, this placed secular state authority on equal footing with—and thus not subject to—ecclesiastical authority. Samuel Pufendorf marks a decisive break from the scholastic tradition to “modern” natural law theory. For Pufendorf, political authority is no longer based on a transcendent moral order but rather on natural human sociability. But, as we demonstrate in this paper, Pufendorfian immanentism formed a natural alliance with post-Westphalian confessionalism. In sum, the secularization of natural law theory in the 17th and 18th centuries secularized the state in one sense while de-secularizing it in another sense.

Authors

• Benjamin Mueser, Harvard University

• Nathaniel Mull, Colgate University