Civil religionThe social Contract finishes on a chapter in which Rousseau underlines the need, for a State quite made up, to comprise a religion common to the greatest number of the citizens. The example of Old attests that a “national religion” leads each individual to place the defense of the City before even the preoccupation with a its own conservation.
But these national religions are, by nature, intolerant and they offend “the true worship of the divinity” (social Contract), prescribed by the natural religion.
However “the duty to follow and like the religion of its country does not extend until the contrary dogmas with the good morals” (Profession of faith of the Savoyard vicar, OC IV, p.628). Consequently, the civil religion, which will preserve the strength of the national religions, will be supplemented by the same dogmas which defined the natural religion. It will comprise one negative dogma, against intolerance. This balanced solution proves nevertheless very fragile: the authentic Christianity, which preaches the love of all humanity, fact of the poor citizens. And of good citizens cannot, in all circumstances, to accurately observe this universal love which harms the fatherland.
Natural ReligonThe serene examination of the order which governs the whole universe and of the bases of morality leads the Savoyard Vicar to formulate three fundamental dogmas, which constitute the elements of the natural religion: the existence of a first immaterial engine at the origin of the physical movements; intelligence of this first cause, which gave laws to these movements; the survival of the heart after the death of the body, which us the irreducibility of the thought to the modifications of the matter suggests. The love of the order which sanctions the comprehension of these dogmas leads a man well laid out with morality and the faith.
The theses of Rousseau are hardly original in this field: the natural religion is registered during the course of old stoicism (De Natura deorum of Cicéron), that Juste Lipse diffuses at the traditional age. Rousseau affirms that this natural religion is only necessary to the achievement of the individual: “You see in my talk only the natural religion. It is quite strange that one needs another of them! ” (Profession of faith of the Savoyard vicar).
However, one needs another well of them: according to Rousseau, each man must remain in the religion of his fathers, even if the only Protestant confession is, in right, in conformity with the natural religion. It is that the dogmas which it contains remain too abstract to support an effective religious practice, which needs a tradition.