Il problema della religione civile nel Tractatus theologico-politicus di Spinoza

This paper aims to identify the concept of civil religion in Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise. Starting from a series of historical-theoretical considerations about the parable of the concept of religion and the modern idea of civil religion presented in The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the idea of civil religion emerges as the consequence of Spinoza’s theological-political project, which didn’t only take care to distinguish the true philosophy from imaginative and superstitious beliefs of theology, but also to find a common area, i.e., political and civil dimension proper to each one. In particular, Spinoza recognizes the double meaning of civil religion or jus civile in TTP. Namely, it develops along the interior and exterior ways of religion, common to philosophers and ordinary people. Specifically, on the one hand, an external civil religion concerns the actions. On the other hand, the interior concept of civil religion is identified with the freedom to think and express one’s own opinions. After it has provided the Civil Republic the sovereign power to legislate the acts of pietas, i.e., the exterior forms of religion, the philosopher clarifies that this power doesn’t apply to cognitions, rational or imaginative they are. In other words, in TTP, this distinction doesn’t play on the terrain of cognition and properly on the traditional difference between true religion and superstition. In conclusion, through questioning the modern meaning of civil religion, the relevance of Spinoza’s conception of civil religion stands out regarding the problem of toleration.