Civic Reason, Metaphysical Certainty, and the Cycles of Power
I. The Athenian Gift and the Metaphysical Decline
Since the founding of civilization, leading to the times of Hammurabi, a civil code was imposed to herald a body of governance. Although it was initially founded to prevent bloodshed, it was through the Athenian dēmokratia that we utilized this governing body to flourish. Through the art of Solon and Pericles, we were bestowed a gift: the Athenian citizen being in control. Although this was the foundation of modern politics, it had notable consequences.
These arose due to the fanatical obsession with religion and the sense of self-importance, shaping their perspective of politics and culminating in the terrible execution of Socrates. This marked a trend in which religion plays a major role in the obstruction of knowledge, and the beginning of the dreadful effect of its grasp on societal growth. This can be seen through the persecutions of figures like Galileo, Menocchio’s execution, and the burning of libraries, all due to the literal excavation of meaning from books written thousands of years ago. This execution was not merely a moral failure, but an early indication that when metaphysical certainty overtakes civic reason, politics begins its decline, a sad pattern that would repeat across civilizations.
II. The Roman Vacuum: Soul vs. State
Jesus happened to be at the center of the world, within the greatest empire of history, Rome. In an age of “False Prophets,” he understood that the tame society governed by Roman Law, tended to by Romulus and later Brutuses from the Greeks and Etruscans, needed no political law to grow, as that was already formulated to the greatest extent by the governing body, comprised of the Ciceros and Catos. Therefore, he tended to the cultivation of the soul, promising a spiritual awakening. This allowed the millions scattered helplessly throughout the Roman Empire to abide by the incessant demands of the Romans and govern themselves spiritually.
Here, spirituality did not seek to replace politics, but to exist alongside it, filling a personal void rather than a civic one. However, Jesus alone is not Christianity. It is the collective work of Paul, mostly, who helped spread the divine message of spirituality, an odd thing considering he never met Jesus of Nazareth. This, in turn, led to the decades of persecution of Christians, from Nero to Domitian and Diocletian.
III. The Institutionalization of Faith
The moment divine spirituality demanded institutional authority, it ceased to be personal and became political. The spawn of a centralized body of authority, meant to dictate the teachings of someone they herald as divine, played a dominant role in the downfall of the Catholic Church. It began its thirst for power, subjecting all those who did not yield. Pope Urban II called for the Holy Crusade and provided retribution for sins committed if death was to take hold of the soul. Popes like Alexander VI utilized the position as an authoritarian, initiating the fights between bankers like the Medicis and Sforzas to secure the everlasting growth of power by controlling Europe through the Church.
With doctrine now inseparable from governance, knowledge itself became a threat, destroying anything that conflicted with the governing body’s ideology. The rule of the Church had a devastating grip on Europe, resulting in the forgetting of the works of Aristotle, Plato, and more, only to have them later recovered and translated from the Arabs. Anything that allowed for the nurturing of the mind was branded as “heretic.” As politics and its heads all led back to the Church, Irene was deposed and replaced with Charlemagne by the then-useless and powerless pope, sparking the centuries of European hegemony.
IV. The Crescent and the Sword
This fusion of religion and politics was not unique to Christendom, but rather a recurring solution to political absence. Muhammad was situated in a region of barbaric tribes who barely possessed a legal code or knowledge, pagans who knew nothing but the sword. In essence, spiritual growth had not been possible, so wars were fought to defend the idea and body of Islam. However, this eternal idea failed to predict the impossibility of resolving issues such as slavery and the unwillingness to be completely subservient to a political figure. Subservience was deemed justified to be broken only if the figure was contradictory to the book, sparking an era of “religious” leaders.
What began as unity through belief inevitably fractured under the weight of power. This era of open interpretation sparked revolutions by whoever could convince the people that words written hundreds of years ago applied to their very nature, handing more power to imams. This was demonstrated by the eventual founding of Saudi Arabia by Ibn Saud, a political figure, and Ibn Wahhab, an imam, as with Charlemagne and Leo III.
The toleration provided by Islam was very lenient relative to the iron fist of the Christians, from the Rashidun to the Umayyad dynasties. However, the political separation that continues to plague Islam in the form of its sects, Sunni and Shia, was purely political. It was founded on the thirst for power by the relatives and friends of Muhammad, without religion being in the forefront. This was a side effect of a religion based on subservience to political leaders, as Napoleon Bonaparte claims:
“The Qur’an is not just religious; it is civil and political. The Bible only preaches morals.”
V. The Era of Revolution and the Rise of the Jacobins
Once religion sanctified political violence, conflict ceased to be negotiable. Due to the Mahometan religion having tasted war, it began its conquest, ending with Andalusia and being halted at the Battle of Tours. The idea of the Turk that spread helped shape the pope’s, and therefore the Christians’, subjective view of the Muslim, eventually leading to the Reconquista and the terrible Crusades. The simplistic denomination of the mind and the subservience taught by these religions, that is, Catholicism and Islam, had been in good faith. The average or weak mind should not be allowed to govern a people, let alone themselves.
However, since then, we have democratized learning. The Voltaires of the world are formed every minute, but still the average mind should not govern. The world unleashes its Alexanders and Napoleons once a millennium, but they too fall into hedonistic desires, causing revolutions which allow the weak and poor to rule. These become ever bloodier, away from the hands that had grown too comfortable with the sword, which they exchanged for a scepter. As with Caesar, Charles I, and Louis XVI, the unwillingness to be ruled by a constitutional power, as the Magna Carta did with John I, fosters a mad crowd, leading to bloody revolutions, as in France, Russia, and the United States.
Louis XVI was a tyrannical maniac who was neither fit to rule, nor capable of governing a body. His narrow scope of satisfying the aristocracy while not convening the Estates General, and simply ignoring the Third Estate, running the reserves dry, and taxing his French subjects spurred the Jacobin Club to begin the revolution. It’s these times of hardship which allow the geniuses of the ages to form and be displayed on the main stage, as Cato the Younger and Cicero of the end of the Republic, Marat, Danton, and Robespierre of the French Revolution, although all these figures would consume themselves, mad with the rapid success their work was yielding, leading to extremism that denigrated their very purpose.
VI. The Secular State and the Autocrat
Religion has no part in politics; no religious body should be imposed in government; no law yielding to anyone but the people. As Fouché tried to eradicate clerical loyalty to the pope, and as many Founding Fathers believed the ‘Turk’ (Muslim) yielded to the Sultan rather than the state, they both sought to ensure that political allegiance would not be divided.
The French Revolution helped eradicate the grip of the Pope on France, as did Henry VIII, allowing for the self-governance of the National Assembly, although this proved to be inefficient, yielding to tyrannical figures, Robespierre at first, Barras and his Directory next, then ultimately Napoleon, which is better than the peace of an immoral, lethargic, and slow king.
As in Russia, where the Tsar hosted his banquets and deemed himself to be a Xerxes, the serfs were radicalized and committed many lives to tragic revolts, like those of the Decembrists, failed only due to the weakness and cowardice of its accomplices, allowing for the terrible serfdom to continue. The subservience and promise of an eternity which is better than the cruelty of the current life helps distract those exploited to forever yield to a dream of a better future, only allowing the bravest, as the Lomonosovs and the Radishchevs, to attempt to elevate, only to find the grip of the Autocrat pressing them down.
When the grip of the Autocrat does not press down hard enough, through the cracks emerge revolutionaries. An initial glimpse of the Grand Council, drafted by Joseph Galloway, appeased to be a “Middle Way,” hoping to tie the Colonies of America with the British Crown. Many requests were made to pull away, knowing, as usual, that a man in power will never be satisfied with less, as Napoleon showed in the Hundred Days. They were pushed by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense to finally declare independence. Seized by champions such as Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Washington, and more, the suppression of an idea only elevates it; this can be said of religion of all sorts.
However, as monarchies, these kingdoms were linked to the idea of divine rule by the monarch, as if by providence he had been set by God to rule, leading the average man to be docile. The intellectuals, catalyzed by Gutenberg, who do not associate the metaphysical entity termed “God” with the choices of man, form ideas that are suppressed, spewing out more radicals who absorb, with their insatiable curiosity and bravery, what is frowned upon, radicalize others, as Marat, yielding blood and the eventual overthrow of the monarch, in which they abandon religion altogether.
VII. The Zenith of Empires and the Napoleonic Model
I have spoken to priests from the Church who believe that empires are strengthened by religion and that paganism leads to decay. I disagree, as pagan Rome reached its zenith during the pagan times, as Trajan gave way to Hadrian, and started its point of inflection shortly after Christianity was adopted. I am also not saying that Christianity was the direct cause; it was not, but the internal and external divide did not aid in the prolongation of the empire, sparking decades of feudalism between Christian Europe, leading eventually to the terrible Fourth Crusade, in which the Venetians directed the Christian soldiers to attack the Christian city of Zara, eventually leading to the sack of Christian Constantinople.
As Napoleon managed to drift through Egypt, essentially being handed the land due to his “Islamification,” they baselessly assumed that the promised man of the Qur’an, designed to further spread the religion by conquering more land, had arrived. I find these expressions of Napoleon’s notable:
“To look upon religions as the work of men, but to respect them everywhere as a powerful engine of government.”
“If Bonaparte spoke as a Mussulman, it was merely in his character of a military and political chief in a Mussulman country. To do so was essential to his success, to the safety of his army, and, consequently, to his glory.”
“His relationship with Christianity was that of a practical statesman. Religion was useful as long as it was comforting to society, but dangerous if it led to fanaticism.”
“In India he would have been for Ali, at Thibet for the Dalai-Lama, and in China for Confucius.”
VIII. Conclusion: The Icarus Principle
As religion seems to have less of a grasp in the world, we are surrounded by growing radicals who are governed by outdated political systems found in these books, championing those who wield it to their benefit. Led by the growing power of religion, which has fused and tied their sense of nationalism, founded by Sieyès and the Third Estate to tie with the motherland, with their religion. The average mind is governed politically by religion, while intellectuals govern themselves, following Plato’s Republic of the Philosopher King.
The negatives of an autocrat far outweigh the positives, while also being governed by the common man is no more appealing. The government should be comprised of the intellectuals of the age, without championing a certain figure, having a multitude of intellectuals keeping the others in check, as Metternich’s masterpiece at the Congress of Vienna. Ensuring adherence to religion must be followed, or the common man will revolt. Their taxation must be essentially fair, while also not purely attacking the wealthy, as their power is needed to continue the cycle of economic growth, as the Rothschilds with Napoleon and Great Britain, but also not allowing the bank to rule, centralizing everything around the gifted and the great of the age. Only then will a nation prosper, but this republican ideal will naturally fall into the hands of a dictator, leading to a sudden uprising, then the downfall of the nation.
“Icarus laughed as he fell, for he knew to fall means to have soared.”
This isn’t an argument for atheism, nor for authoritarianism; it’s an argument against sanctified, lethargic power that often stagnates the growth of the Patrie.
I leave you with a discussion of Napoleon Bonaparte, essentially an absolutist, and Tsar Alexander, an autocrat:
Excerpt from Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts “Napoleon at Tilsit used to call the Turks ‘barbarians’ and say that they ought to be turned out of Europe, but I never intended to do so; for it was not in the interest of France that Constantinople should be in the hands of either Austria or Russia. In one of the more surreal discussions on the best form of government, the Autocrat Alexander argued for an elective monarchy, whereas Napoleon, whose crown was at least confirmed by a plebiscite, argued for an autocracy. ‘For who is fit to be elected?’ Napoleon asked. ‘A Caesar only comes along once in an age, so that the election must be a matter of chance, and the succession surely worth more than a throw of dice.’”
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