![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
athenaltenaReading a bit on Montesquieu for my Enlightenment class, and one passage jumped out to me:
It is generally a mistake to base civil laws on religious principles. Religion aims at the perfection of the individual, civil laws at the welfare of society... The civil laws are not an appropriate tool for enforcing religious norms of conduct: God has his own laws, and He is quite capable of enforcing them without our assistance. When we attempt to enforce God's laws for Him, or to cast ourselves as his protectors, we make our religion an instrument of fanaticism and oppression, this is a service to neither God nor country.
The sociologist in me raised an eyebrow at the word "norm" in there, since that wonderful word has the benefit of not imposing a value judgment, it's just descriptive. It is a bit troubling to realize that people got this in the 18th century and we're still arguing about it.
Interestingly, another one of my classes looks at how the Church influenced common law, and despite what some very loud people keep saying about our country being founded on Christian principles, it's true, they were influenced by religion, but even back then they were separate from Church (or Canon) law, and it was recognized even back then that civil law was an entirely different beast, and much of the work back then was about reconciling scripture with science and what had to be done in civil law.
That's actually what I'm writing a paper on later, how despite stuff like silencing Galileo and book burning the Church was actually responsible for creating the systems of scientific inquiry through universities and the like. So as usual it's not nearly as clear cut as people like to assume it is, the Church is not the de facto enemy of science, it's actually the mother of science as we know it. She just occasionally dislikes the ideas her child comes up with and tries to wash his mouth out with soap while sending him to timeout.
It is generally a mistake to base civil laws on religious principles. Religion aims at the perfection of the individual, civil laws at the welfare of society... The civil laws are not an appropriate tool for enforcing religious norms of conduct: God has his own laws, and He is quite capable of enforcing them without our assistance. When we attempt to enforce God's laws for Him, or to cast ourselves as his protectors, we make our religion an instrument of fanaticism and oppression, this is a service to neither God nor country.
The sociologist in me raised an eyebrow at the word "norm" in there, since that wonderful word has the benefit of not imposing a value judgment, it's just descriptive. It is a bit troubling to realize that people got this in the 18th century and we're still arguing about it.
Interestingly, another one of my classes looks at how the Church influenced common law, and despite what some very loud people keep saying about our country being founded on Christian principles, it's true, they were influenced by religion, but even back then they were separate from Church (or Canon) law, and it was recognized even back then that civil law was an entirely different beast, and much of the work back then was about reconciling scripture with science and what had to be done in civil law.
That's actually what I'm writing a paper on later, how despite stuff like silencing Galileo and book burning the Church was actually responsible for creating the systems of scientific inquiry through universities and the like. So as usual it's not nearly as clear cut as people like to assume it is, the Church is not the de facto enemy of science, it's actually the mother of science as we know it. She just occasionally dislikes the ideas her child comes up with and tries to wash his mouth out with soap while sending him to timeout.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-02-20 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-20 05:26 pm (UTC)