Theocracy

In a provocative 2006 article in the Intercollegiate Studies Review , Remi Brague asks whether non-theocratic polities are possible.  If “theocracy” means “rule by clerics,” the answer is obviously Yes.  But Brague doesn’t think that’s the most helpful way to think about theocracy.  Western political systems were “theocratic” in the wider sense of being grounded on theological claims: “Although we modern Westerners commonly look down on ‘theocracies,’ our systems of legislation are, or were, in some sense theocratic too. They are, or were, founded in the last instance on assumptions that are theological in origin. And certainly, the idea of a divine law is not absent from our own Western tradition. On the contrary, it is emphatically present in both its sources—in Athens no less than Jerusalem, in Sophocles, Plato, Cicero, and many others, no less than in the Old Testament.”

Even democracies have theocratic foundations:

Sometimes democracy is grounded in the authority of conscience, sometimes on the authority of law, but in either case “our democratic ideals both of a rule of law and of a moral awareness that is expected to serve as a final authority in the mind andsoul of every human being are theologically grounded.”  Classically, democracy is a “side issue,” one among several possible organizations of power.  It is not a supreme value in itself, nor a source of supreme values.

But that is how it has come to be understood, and this fairly recent development is the source of the anti-theocratic politics of the past few centuries: “Since the advent of modern political thought, the ultimate source of political legitimacy has been the unspoken contractbetween citizens. Now, some contemporary thinkers take, implicitly or explicitly, a further step: the contract is understood to be the ultimate source of all norms, including moral rules. Such a moral contract must remain within the boundaries of mankind. The idea of the contract is even meant to put out of court whatever might claim anextra-human origin.”

Is that possible?  Brague has his doubts.  Suppose we take up Hobbes view that political order emerges when, as it were, players sit down and decide on the rules of the game.  They decide that each will pursue his self-interest, limited by the interest of others.  No God need be invoked.  We just decide on the rules.  But there’s a problem, Brague thinks, since it cannot provide any convincing response to nihilism: Hobbes’ table “presupposes a prior agreement: nobody should call into question theright of the players who are already there totake part in the game. The players are the image of what we call a ‘society.’ Now, humankind constitutes itself as a society because it is first of all a species into which we are born. But even if we admit that the begotten child has a right to be born, nobodyhas a right to be begotten. Once we view the human community as a ‘society’ only, we forget that it has constantly to decide to go on living. This brings us to the limit of the contract: such a contract, precisely because it has no external point of reference, cannot possibly decide whether the very existence on this earth of the species homo sapiens is a good thing, or not.”

If Brague’s argument is true, then we cannot avoid the decision: What are the true underpinnings of political order?  What theological foundations will hold?