- Title
- No Gods, no masters: the sine qua non of political rule?
- Creator
- Jose, Jim
- Relation
- Not So Strange Bedfellows: The Nexus of Politics and Religion in the 21st Century p. 195-208
- Relation
- http://www.cambridgescholars.com/not-so-strange-bedfellows-14
- Publisher
- Cambridge Scholars Publishing
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2013
- Description
- One of the enduring aspirations to emerge during the French revolution was that of ni dieu, ni maitre, loosely translated as neither God nor master. The sentiment was clear; the hierarchical order of the estates of pre-revolutionary France was to be dismantled. In its place, a new social and political order predicated on liberty, equality and fraternity, the verities of the declaration of the Rights of Man, would see each individual man (and for the briefest of moments, individual women) as masters of their own fates, citizens beholden neither to a god nor a master. That hierarchy and privilege reasserted itself, that gods and masters were not eliminated, and that the Church as an institution survived more or less unscathed, did not dilute the indelible impact of the idea of citizens as masters of their own political destinies. Moreover, as the English also demonstrated during the seventeenth century, the legitimacy of the political order was not divinely ordained (i.e. beholden to God) but rested on what philosopher John Locke termed the consent of the governed. While for Locke the idea of "the governed" was narrowly conceived, for succeeding generations, especially those who made the French Revolution, the idea of "the governed" radically expanded to include all who could claim the status of citizen. Moreover, political and social orders were now understood as owing their legitimacy to citizens who determined how political rule was to be constituted and exercised, beholden to neither gods nor masters. The idea that the political and social order derived neither from gods nor masters but from self-actualising and self-constituting citizens became the sine qua non of modern political rule.
- Subject
- political theory; religion; governance
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1053492
- Identifier
- uon:15601
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781443848008
- Language
- eng
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