Content uploaded by Gilbert Faccarello
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Gilbert Faccarello on Sep 24, 2023
Content may be subject to copyright.
Sæculum. Introduction to ‘Political
Economy and Religion’
Gilbert Faccarello∗
The war against religious beliefs, in the last century was carried on
principally on the ground of common sense or of logic; in the present
age, on the ground of science . . . Religions tend to be discussed . . .
less as intrinsically true or false than as products thrown up by certain
states of civilisation, and which, like the animal and vegetable produc-
tions of a geological period perish in those which succeed it from the
cessation of the conditions necessary to their continued existence. (Mill
[1874] 1969, 429–30)
The development of political economy has long been depicted as the
progressive emergence of a new science which, during the Enlightenment, and
especially with Quesnay, Turgot and Smith, broke loose from religion, morals
and politics – all fields in which its roots and first blossoms had until then
been embedded. Reaching a state of autonomy as a new discipline, the story
goes, it was able to develop quickly during the nineteenth century and acquire
an indisputable status of rigour and scientificity, increasingly supported by the
use of mathematics. A celebrated restatement of this old thesis was made some
decades ago by Louis Dumont in his Homo Æqualis (Dumont 1977), and the
idea still survives today as an obvious fact in the mind of most economists.
But is this story so simple and straightforward? There is obviously room for
doubt. From its inception, the connections that economic thought has estab-
lished with religion, morals and politics are complex, changeable, and often
contentious. Despite affirmations of the rigour and independence of its sci-
entific approach, the development of economic concepts and theories was –
∗Published in The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 24 (4), 2017.
A typo has been corrected. The few other changes are purely formal.
1
Sæculum 2
and still is – often dependent on these connections and conflicts, and some-
times in a rather surprising way. During the last few decades many studies
in the history of economic thought eloquently illustrated this point. The re-
search programme directed to “The conflict-ridden development of modernity:
theology and political economy”1sought to go further and contribute to this
reappraisal, focusing on the links between political economy and religion from
a historical perspective.
Secularisation
This field of research is related to the old and still lively debate over
“secularisation”,2which raises important questions. These questions permit
a better understanding of what is here at stake. The chief problem is to state
the characteristics presented by modern Western societies with respect to their
previous historical situation – in which religion pervaded individual, social and
political life, including the organisation of knowledge – and to explain the tran-
sition. The main features defining modernity are the following: (a) a marked
differentiation, within societies, between secular and religious spheres of action:
religion has lost its power over secular activities and is now only one limited
sphere among others; (b) with this withdrawal from its former eminent place
in the public sphere, hitherto dominant religious belief becomes a matter of
private individual choice and, no longer able to impose its rules, must face the
competition of other forms of belief and non-belief: a situation susceptible to
induce changes in religion itself; (c) within the secular sphere of society, collec-
tive action is supposed to be rational, independent of religious considerations:
1This programme is part of a wider project entitled “Constitution de la modernité: raison,
politique, religion” – The constitution of modernity: reason, politics, religion – launched a
few years ago by the LabEx COMOD (University of Lyon, France). A series of workshops
on the theme of “Political economy and religion” have been organised since 2013, of which
this special issue of EJHET is the outcome.
2The literature is vast and reaches back over two centuries, even if the term “seculari-
sation” is quite recent. It includes most of the great names in sociology – Auguste Comte,
Ferdinand Tönnies, Herbert Spencer, Ernst Troeltsch, Max Weber, to mention only a few –
and also philosophy: from G.F.W. Hegel to Carl Schmitt, Karl Löwith, Hans Blumenberg
and Charles Taylor. For an initial survey of the use of the term, see Marramao (1994), and
also Hunter (2015). For a detailed history of the sociological paradigm of secularisation, see
Tschannen (1992) and, for the philosophical debates, Monod ([2002] 2012).
Sæculum 3
a process of “scientification” occurs, in which “science”,3the new Weltanschau-
ung, replaces religion and provides new and rational ways of organising society.
There are of course many complementary ways of explaining the passage to
modernity: it can simply be noted that the process of secularisation can orig-
inate in theology itself – for example with the sharp Augustinian distinction
between the Earthly City and the City of God advanced by many authors, or
the role of the Gnosis or of Nominalism and its theology of “potentia absoluta”,
both stressed by Blumenberg.4The questions raised are obviously not specific
to the social sciences or political economy, but also of great relevance to the
history of science. Discussion over the so-called “Merton thesis”, for example,
is well known (Merton [1938] 1970; Cohen ed. 1990), as are the recent writings
of Peter Harrison, especially on the role of the Augustinian doctrine of Original
Sin in the scientific revolution (1998, 2007, 2015).5
The place of religion in modern western societies is thus redefined and
marginalised. But this does not mean that religion is doomed to a relentless
decline. More modernity does not mean less religion. The old view, reflected
by John Stuart Mill in the epigraph to this introduction, predicting that ra-
tionality and science necessarily lead to the retreat, or even the demise, of
religion is now widely recognised as over-simplistic and contradicted by the
facts – there are simply new conditions of beliefs and faith in a secular age,
and this aspect of the secularisation process lies precisely at the core of Charles
Taylor’s reflection (Taylor 2007). Moreover, some basic religious attitudes can
also be found transplanted into secular fields, into politics for instance (see for
example Voegelin ([1938] 2000) or Gentile ([2001] 2007) and their analyses of
“political religions”). Finally, and this is an important aspect of the seculari-
3Among scientists, and also in books for a wider public, and in the press, the word
“science” replaces “the sciences” during the nineteenth century. The idea became widespread
that “science” provides an answer to everything.
4“Secularisation” must not be confused with Weber’s use of “disenchantement”
(“Entzauberung”) – he very seldom uses the term “Säkularisation”. According to
Weber, the process of disenchantment started very early in Judaism, and reached a
climax with the Reformation. A better translation of the word “Entzauberung” would be
“demagification”.
5See also Harrison (2010). A striking example of religious motivation in scientific research
is that of Louis Pasteur, one of the foremost scientists in the nineteenth century. One of the
stakes of his research against the theory of the “spontaneous generation” is the fight between
materialism and spiritualism. “What a victory . . . for materialism if it could rely on the
proved fact of a self-organising matter, coming to life by itself . . . What good having
recourse to the idea of a primordial creation . . . ? Why then the idea of a Creator God?”
(Pasteur 1864, 259).
Sæculum 4
sation approach, many symbols, values or concepts that originated in religious
thought tend to play a role in the secular sphere, either with new secularised
names, or as an incentive for the production of new concepts.
Hence, a fundamental question: if religion itself played a role in the process
of secularisation, are the main concepts of modernity no more than theological
notions with new names; or are they radically different in nature, in spite of
their possible theological origin? The first option is, for example, that of Carl
Schmitt who claimed in his first Political Theology that “All significant con-
cepts of the modern theory of the state are secularised theological concepts”
– sovereign and sovereignty for example, the “omnipotent god” becoming the
omnipotent legislator – “not only because of their historical development . . .
but also because of their systematic structure” (Schmitt [1922] 1985, 36). Karl
Löwith’s approach is similar when analysing philosophies of history and the
idea of progress as secularised forms of the Christian theology of history –
Marx’s approach, in this perspective, being only Messianism in the language of
political economy: the proletariat is the new Chosen People and The Commu-
nist Manifesto is “eschatological in its framework, and prophetic in its attitude”
(Löwith 1949, 36; see also 44–5).
The second option is best exemplified in terms of Hans Blumenberg’s Die
Legitimität der Neuzeit (Blumenberg [1966] 1988). Schmitt’s extreme state-
ment – ironically called by Blumenberg “the secularisation theorem”, meaning
that “Y is nothing else than a secularised X” – is subjected to heavy criticism
because it conveys the idea that history is only the deployment of a single
“substance”, and that the modern age is “illegitimate”: if, in this age, institu-
tions and leading concepts are still substantively theological despite their new
appellation, this means that religion is still active in a concealed way and the
novelty of modernity can be questioned. Blumenberg argues that the possibly
theological origin of ideas and concepts is only part of the story – moreover,
many Christian concepts have themselves been adopted from other systems of
belief or civilisations. There is no inherent content that is necessarily trans-
mitted from one age to another: functions change with contexts, and the new
meanings of concepts and terminology are irreducible to and discontinuous
with previous meanings. We might note that Marx, in his critique of Hegel’s
philosophy and also in his mature writings, already and repeatedly warned his
readers not to make the mistake of believing in the persistence of hypothetical
“natures” of things because of the existence of superficial similarities: what is
important is not what they apparently share in common, but the “differentia
Sæculum 5
specifica” they present. “The materials and means of labour . . . play their
part in every labour process in every age . . . If, therefore, I label them
‘capital’ . . . then I have proved that the existence of capital is an eternal
law of nature of human production . . . I could prove with equal facility
that the Greeks and Romans celebrated Communion because they drank wine
and ate bread, or that the Turks sprinkle themselves daily with holy water
like Catholics because they wash themselves daily” (Marx [1863–66] 1976, 999,
italics in the original).
Political Economy and Religion
How does this perspective bear upon the history of political economy, and, in
particular, what do the essays included here offer? According to the above-
mentioned criteria, (liberal) political economy is certainly considered to be a
kind of flagship for modernity. Is not William Petty’s celebrated statement, in
the preface of his Political Arithmetick, that he sought to express himself solely
in terms of “number, weight and measure”,6usually seen as one of the very first
symbols of the “scientific” foundation of economic thought? Similarly, Thomas
Culpeper wrote in his Tract against the high rate of usury that the problem of
the legitimacy of lending at interest was something to be left to theologians,
and that the only question he wanted to address was the magnitude of the rate
of interest and its principal consequences for the economy.7
Thus, having no apparent or relevant reference to religion, political economy
subsequently developed its own doctrines on the basis of the rational behaviour
of agents in a competitive environment. Its role is twofold, positive and nor-
mative: it claims to explain the condition of societies, their levels of wealth
and prosperity, the origin of dysfunctionality and crises; but it also imposes
on agents a strict model of behaviour, a new personal and public form of “life
conduct” (to borrow Weber’s concept of “Lebensführung”). In this context,
the anonymous working of economic forces in markets supposedly leads to an
equilibrium and realises a kind of secular justice. It is in itself a new political
philosophy (Faccarello and Steiner 2008a), and it can sometimes also generate
6Petty’s phrase comes from the Bible (Wisdom of Solomon (Apocrypha) XI, 20), but at
that time it was used by scientists to characterise the new scientific ethos.
7This does not prevent Culpeper writing that a high rate of interest, which harms the
economy, is a sin.
Sæculum 6
a religious attitude: worshippers of a free market ideology exist everywhere –
it can be a variety of “political religions”, just like its opposite, the blind faith
in the communist idea.8However, setting to one side these aspects, more in-
teresting observations can be made if we turn to the core of economic theories.
Let us take some examples.
A first observation is that, as in other fields of knowledge, some religious be-
liefs played a decisive part in the development of basic economic doctrines. The
very emergence of liberal political economy with Pierre de Boisguilbert stemmed
directly from the Jansenist controversies of seventeenth-century France, involv-
ing questions of religious, moral, and political philosophy (Faccarello [1986]
1999). On the one hand, the strong Augustinian theological hypothesis of the
Fall of Man, of Original Sin, was supposed to explain the systematically selfish
and maximising behaviour of agents in every aspect of life. But, on the other
hand, despite the war of all against all that was likely to result, Providence
was supposed to provide for general equilibrium in markets – and Boisguilbert
gave a name to this Providence: it was free competition, the coercive force that
constrains people to be reasonable and generates a system of relative prices
that could satisfy each agent. A further step was later taken by Turgot when,
to explain the selfish and maximising attitude of agents, he no longer referred
to Original Sin but instead to sensationist philosophy. The process of secular-
isation was completed at this point. The theological foundation was removed
and replaced with a more neutral explanation. But the edifice remained intact,
and could be developed on this new basis.
Other examples of the creations of new concepts, on similar bases, can be
given. In nineteenth century, for example, Hermann Heinrich Gossen proposed
what are now known as Gossen’s laws in consumer theory, with the conviction
that in this way people realise the plan that God designed for the benefit of all
(Steiner 2011). “Mankind, once you have recognised completely and entirely
the beauty of this plan of the Creation, steep yourself in adoration of the Being,
which in its incomprehensible wisdom . . . has been able, by means apparently
8Keynes analysed Leninism in terms of a new religion. “Leninism is a combination of
two things which Europeans have kept for some centuries in different compartments of the
soul – religion and business. We are shocked because the religion is new, and contemptuous
because the business, being subordinated to the religion instead the other way round, is
highly inefficient” (Keynes 1925, 256). “But to say that Leninism is the faith of a persecuting
and propagating minority of fanatics led by hypocrites is, after all, to say no more no less
than that it is a religion and not merely a party, and Lenin a Mahomet, not a Bismarck”
(1925, 257, italics in the original).
Sæculum 7
so insignificant, to bring about on your behalf something so enormously and
incalculably beneficial” (Gossen [1854] 1995, 299). In the same way, it was
also an explicit theological motivation and reference to Pope Leo XIII’s 1891
encyclical Rerum Novarum that in the early twentieth century drove the Jesuit
and mathematician Maurice Potron to develop a linear system of production
and to identify, inter alia, long before later controversies, the conditions of
existence of an equilibrium system of production prices (Bidard, Erreygers
and Parys 2009). Finally, a recently-published youthful work by John Rawls,
A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith (Rawls 2009), shows how his
former religious convictions were later translated into his mature developments,
especially concerning the theory of justice (Cohen and Nagel 2009) – we have
here another clear example of the secularisation of ideas and concepts.
But prior to the emergence of political economy proper, religious thought
also paved the way, directly or indirectly, for the specification of some central
economic concepts or ways or reasoning. Recent research by historians brought
to light the discursive affinities between Medieval moral theology and the lan-
guage of merchants, between the ethics of charity and the logic of commercial
exchanges, or the role of a religious order like the Franciscans in the justifica-
tion and development of economic activities and the idea of a virtuous circle
of wealth (Todeschini 2002, 2004). Other research, by political philosophers,
stressed that the word “interest”, for example, in its modern sense of self-
interest, while admittedly appearing in political writings in sixteenth-century
Italy and seventeenth-century France, with Francesco Guicciardini and Henri
de Rohan, also originate in sixteenth-century Spain in the writings of the Span-
ish mystics Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross (Taranto 1992, Chapter 6).
There is an immense literature on Scholastic controversy over usury, money,
and the just price. But we are rightly and repeatedly reminded to be cautious
in the interpretation of writings that were embedded in pre-secularised societies
governed by religion and its related ethics and morals. Even if the problems ad-
dressed by the schoolmen could seem familiar to modern readers, retrospective
illusory interpretations must be avoided if we are to understand properly the
meaning of the texts: here also the “differentia specifica” is fundamental. This
is not to say that, much later, some writers could not draw inspiration from
Scholastic discussion, nor that concepts and problems dealt with in these de-
bates could not reappear in economic thought in new guises and with changed
meanings: but all this must be carefully distinguished. From this perspective,
and confronted with a multitude of interpretations of the schoolmen’s opinions
Sæculum 8
on the just price, Richard Sturn, in “Agency, exchange and power in Scholastic
thought”, carefully classifies these different interpretations using two criteria:
agency, which brings into the picture the role of knowledge, information and
ethics, and indeterminacy: when several solutions exist in exchange, morals
and fairness come to the fore. Despite the modern vocabulary, this approach
allows a critical evaluation of the interpretations along more accurate historical
lines.
The same cautious perspective is of course appropriate for the problem of
the legitimacy of usury. Long debated among Christian schoolmen, it was also
addressed in Muslim thought. Ragip Ege, in his paper on “The concept of ‘law-
fulness’ in economic matters”, carefully presents Ibn Rushd’s arguments on this
topic,9and shows the structural similarities in the mode of reasoning of Chris-
tians and Muslims – the question of usury was a problem of “lawfulness” and
justice. As centuries went by, of course, the perspective changed progressively
and, in the eighteenth century, in a more secularised society where market
activities were beginning to be recognised as a basic structural element in the
social and political order, there was finally a convergence between the analyses
of members of the clergy and economists – and here we once more discover the
presence of Jansenism. Maxime Menuet and Arnaud Orain’s paper on “Lib-
eral Jansenism and interest-bearing loans in eighteenth-century France” shows
how the debate on the prohibition of usury could evolve during the French
Enlightenment, thanks in particular to the liberal strand of Jansenism,10 and
lead, against traditional Catholic thought, to the recognition of the legitimacy
of interest-bearing loans – thus opening the way to the first economic theory
of the rate of interest presented by Turgot at the end of the 1760s.
Finally, any inquiry into the relation between religion and the economy
cannot avoid the fundamental theme of the Reformation, which played an
important role in the demagification and secularisation processes, and on
which so much has been written since the celebrated publications of Ernst
Troeltsch and Max Weber – and even before: the contrast between Protestant
and Catholic nations had long been a theme in French political and social
thought. But there have been some misunderstandings, especially regarding
Jean Calvin’s views. Weber in particular emphasised that he was studying
9Ibn Rushd, that is, Averroes, a prominent figure of the so-called Medieval Enlightenment
and a major champion of the “freedom to philosophise”.
10 See also Orain (2014) for a broad description of the context.
Sæculum 9
Protestant, mainly Calvinist, sects, and not the writings of Calvin himself,
even if he sometimes alluded to them. Caroline Bauer, in her study of “The
necessity to work, according to Jean Calvin’s duty of stewardship”, questions
the commonly accepted interpretations of Calvin and shows that his concep-
tion of the economy, based on the “duty of stewardship” for all human beings,
and the subsequent necessity of work, is more positive and optimistic than
the later view of Calvinists who laid emphasis upon an earthly engagement in
economic activities as an anxious or desperate quest for a sign of salvation.
From the end of the eighteenth century onwards, when the legitimacy of
political economy became largely undisputed, religious themes appeared to
fade from economic thought. But this might be an illusion, as more recent
research has shown. There are now several works that draw attention to the
role of religion, morality and ethics in Adam Smith (see, inter alia, Gris-
wold 1999, Hill 2001, Oslington 2011, or, for a critical view, Cremaschi 2017),
Malthus (Winch 1996, Cremaschi 2014), John Stuart Mill (Lipkes 1999), or
in nineteenth-century political economy in general (Hilton 1988, Waterman
1991).11 In the present issue, the opinions of Dugald Stewart and David
Ricardo are more specifically addressed: they are two examples of the chang-
ing place of religious concerns in the works of economists at the turn of the
nineteenth century. Thomas Ruellou, in “Defending free trade after Physioc-
racy” deals with Stewart’s “architectonic of passions, reason and Providence”
and shows how his acceptance of free trade is justified by reasons different
from those advanced by Adam Smith and, in a different way, by François
Quesnay, and how the resulting “natural identity of interests” involves the ref-
erence to a theodicy. The acquisition of abstract reasoning, thanks to which
agents overcome their passions, their prejudices, and, ultimately, know their
enlightened interest, is inseparable from religious education. Such a perfectibil-
ity of the human mind enables to reach an individual and social state of hap-
piness, according to the plan of Providence. Stewart would thus be one of
the “Christian moralists” of the first half of the century. Likewise, Ricardo
is depicted by Sergio Cremaschi, in his paper on “Theological themes in Ri-
cardo’s papers and correspondence”, as a “rational Christian”. From a very
detailed scrutiny of his writing, and especially the hitherto mostly neglected
Commonplace Book, it is shown that, while Ricardo rejected any theodicy and
considered theology to be a vain pursuit because it reaches beyond human
11 For a broader coverage, see Waterman (1987, 2004) and Bateman and Banzhaf (2008).
Sæculum 10
knowledge, there is evidence that he was neither an atheist nor an agnostic.
Contrary to James Mill, whose opinions have often been (wrongly) attributed
to him, he did not dismiss faith, nor his Unitarian convictions: morality is the
essence of religion, not speculative truth – and his attitude is reflected in his
conception of political economy.
To many economists later in the nineteenth century and at the beginning of
the twentieth concerns with morals and ethics were important issues, as was
the part played by religion in connection with these topics and with science.
Unfortunately, as regards Henry Sidgwick and Alfred Marshall – that is, an
important turning point in the history of economic thought – commentary has
been somewhat superficial and often mistaken, neglecting the religious, insti-
tutional and philosophical debates of the time. In the case of Sidgwick, this
is particularly striking, with the often quoted sentence, taken from a letter –
in which Donald Moggridge sees the influence of Lytton Strachey – of John
Maynard Keynes to Bernard Winthrop Swithinbank: “He [Sidgwick] never did
anything but wonder whether Christianity was true and prove it wasn’t and
hope that it was” (Keynes, 27 March 1906, in Moggridge 1992, 102). In “Henry
Sidgwick, moral order and utilitarianism”, Keith Tribe points out the misun-
derstandings of Sidgwick’s works and shows that his case was not a struggle
between faith and science, that a critique of Anglicanism is not a critique of
religion as such but of just one form of it, and that Sidgwick’s religious and
ethical convictions, and not only his critical relation to utilitarianism, inform
his writings, The Principles of Economics as well as The Methods of Ethics –
with a more or less silent influence until the 1930s.
In this context, the two other papers dealing with this period are particu-
larly welcome. Daniela Donnini Macciò, in “Pigou on philosophy and religion”,
studies Pigou’s youthful writings on philosophy, morals, and religion published
prior to the First World War, which are, she states, as much inspired by G.E.
Moore as by Sidgwick.12 She shows that Pigou was in search of a moral phi-
losophy, which, discarding religion as logically and philosophically untenable,
would nevertheless keep its ethical plea and commitment to good, and that
there is a correspondence between his developments in ethics and the main
concepts of his welfare economics. For its part, “Keynes and Christian so-
cialism. Religion and the economic problem”, by David Andrews, states that,
12 For a useful complement to the ethical and social concerns of the members of the
Cambridge Apostles, see Donnini Macciò (2015, 2016).
Sæculum 11
while Keynes rejected established confessions like Anglicanism, he was not
hostile to some other forms of religious attitude. Andrews examines the two
broad definitions of religion that Keynes outlined in short essays like “A short
view of Russia”, “The economic possibilities for our grandchildren” or “My
early beliefs”, and shows how and why Keynes, drawing on the ideas of the
early generation of the Apostles13 – Frederick Denison Maurice in particular –
successively adopted these two views, with obvious consequences for his fight
against Benthamism and in favour of social change and progress.
So far we have referred, broadly speaking, to what is usually but loosely
termed liberal political economy. But there are also other conceptions of
modernity and rationality in economics than the market-based model. Some
other modern approaches have emerged, contesting and entering into debates
with the dominant view. In this perspective, religious elements have in many
cases been one of the driving forces behind a social critique, either progres-
sive or conservative; they have also enriched reflection on social and economic
progress. More generally, religion has been one of the weapons that can be
used to maintain economics as a moral and political science and not simply as
a technology in the hands of experts – it has supplied arms to opponents of
the positivist and naturalist tendencies of the discipline.
First of all, liberal economic theory, in part born, ironically, out of religious
controversies, found itself challenged from the beginning of the nineteenth cen-
tury by religion itself. This opposition involved the rejection of sensationism
and utilitarianism as the be-all and end-all for explaining human behaviour,
and was also motivated by the damage wrought by the industrial revolution,
by economic crises, and their consequence: pauperism. Various denomina-
tions and confessions criticised liberal political economy and often proposed
alternative theories, developing different models of social organisation. The
irruption of religion into debates over political economy and economic policy
has been well documented, in the case of Great Britain for example (see, e.g.,
Hilton 1988, Waterman 1991). In France, the Protestant critique was for-
mulated very early in the century, in the writings of Germaine de Staël and
Benjamin Constant, and then taken up by Catholic writers such as Jean-Paul
Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont, leading however to two alternative models
of society: Social Catholicism and Social Christianity (Faccarello and Steiner
2008b, Faccarello 2014). In this issue, Gilbert Faccarello, in “A dance teacher
13 On this point, see also Andrews (2010).
Sæculum 12
for paralysed people? Charles de Coux and the dream of a Christian political
economy”, shows how, in this case, at the beginning of the nineteenth century,
Catholic reaction against the negative social and economic consequences of
liberal political economy was both relevant in its critique of the functioning of
a free market economy, but theoretically ambiguous and unable to propose an
alternative theoretical framework for political economy.14
A last, important point is worth noting. In the face of the dominant model,
established religions can also be deemed inadequate or outmoded – as, again,
John Stuart Mill reports in the epigraph to this introduction. A modern soci-
ety could in this case be based on new religions, corresponding to the needs of
a modernity that would not be that of the free market. The “New Christianity”
of Saint-Simon, the “Saint-Simonian religion” that followed, Auguste Comte’s
“Religion of Humanity”, or even the communist society that constitutes the
utopia of Constantin Pecqueur are all illustrations of this perspective with its
multiple ramifications. In “Religion and political economy in Saint-Simon”,
Pierre Musso, on the basis of the new outstanding (and finally complete) edi-
tion of the works of Claude Henri de Saint-Simon15 (of which he is one of the
editors), presents us with a detailed restatement of how the new industrial so-
ciety should be organised, why it needs a New Christianity and what precisely
the “Industrial religion” is.16 Finally, the links between religion and (the cri-
tique of) political economy are also a central aspect of the movement which led
to the emergence of sociology. Criticism of the dominant model of rationality
and modernity, a plea for another modernity, approaches in which economics,
religion, and politics are very present, are also important themes in Auguste
Comte – a former secretary of Saint-Simon – and Émile Durkheim, not to speak
of the Durkheim school (Steiner [2005] 2010). In this issue, Philippe Steiner,
in “Religion and the sociological critique of political economy: altruism and
14 Note that this critical use of religion or religious concepts also concerned criticism of
liberal political economy by associationist, socialist, or communist authors who recycled old
religious arguments to underpin their new points of view, and proposed alternative views of
modernity and of the rational organisation of societies. One illustrative example concerns
the controversy over usury: at a time when the Catholic Church was de facto relaxing its
position, some traditional arguments against usury were borrowed and transformed in a
socialist direction by Constantin Pecqueur. Another example is provided by the writings of
Marx in which, independently of his critique of religion, the author makes religious references
while discussing value, money and capital – references that are far from accidental and which
allow him to consider the logic of capitalism.
15 Or Henri Saint-Simon, as he called himself at the end of his life.
16 See also Musso (2006, 2010).
Sæculum 13
gift”, shows how political economy, with its stress on the selfish behaviour of
agents, was considered by Comte as a danger for the coherence of an industrial
society, and how Comte’s critique led, by contrast, to the concept of altruism
and his Religion of Humanity. Reacting to Herbert Spencer’s interpretation,
Durkheim and his nephew, Marcel Mauss, subsequently developed Comte’s ap-
proach, its religious dimension included, which culminated in Mauss’s theory
of gift-giving – also used to criticise political economy in the 1920s.
As can be seen from the papers presented in this issue, from a historical
perspective the relationships between political economy and religion are mul-
tifaceted and show how the process of secularisation, in which the emergence
and development of economic thought is a prominent aspect, is much more
complex than often thought. Of course, religion lost its dominant role in so-
ciety, but this does not mean that it disappeared or became strictly confined
to the private sphere of individuals. In many respects, whether redefined or
not, it played a role in the shaping of key economic concepts or approaches,
either directly as in the case of Boisguilbert, or indirectly through the close
relationship it maintained with morals and ethics – thus contributing to the
development of political economy, or alternatively to its critique.
References
Andrews, David R. (2010). Keynes and the British humanist tradition. The
moral purpose of the market. Abington: Routledge.
Bateman, Bradley, and H. Spencer Banzhaf (eds) (2008). Keeping faith, losing
faith: religious belief and political economy. Annual supplement to volume
40 of History of Political Economy.
Bidard, Christian, Guido Erreygers and Wilfried Parys (2009). “ ‘Our daily
bread’. Maurice Potron, from Catholicism to mathematical economics”.
The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 16 (1), 123–54.
Blumenberg, Hans ([1966] 1988). Die Legitimität der Neuzeit. Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp.
Cohen, I. Bernard (ed) (1990). Puritanism and the rise of modern science. The
Merton thesis. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press.
Cohen, Joshua, and Thomas Nagel (2009). “Introduction”. In John Rawls,
A brief inquiry into the meaning of sin and faith, Harvard: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, pp. 1–23.
Cremaschi, Sergio (2014). Utilitarianism and Malthus’s virtue ethics. Abing-
don and New York: Routledge.
Sæculum 14
——— (2017). “Invisible Beings. Adam Smith’s lectures on natural religion”.
The Adam Smith Review, vol. 10, 230–53.
Donnini Macciò, Daniela (2015). “G.E. Moore’s philosophy and Cambridge
economics: Ralph Hawtrey on ethics and methodology”. The European
Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 22 (2), 163–97.
——— (2016). “The Apostles’ justice: Cambridge reflections on economic
inequality from Moore’s Principia Ethica to Keynes’s General Theory
(1903–36)”. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 40 (3), 701–26.
Dumont, Louis (1977). Homo Æqualis. Genèse et épanouissement de l’idéologie
économique. Paris: Gallimard.
Faccarello, Gilbert ([1986] 1999). Aux origines de l’économie politique libérale:
Pierre de Boisguilbert. Paris: Anthropos. Revised edition: The founda-
tions of Laissez-faire. The economics of Pierre de Boisguilbert, London:
Routledge.
——— (2014). “From the foundation of liberal political economy to its critique:
theology and economics in France in the 18th and 19th centuries”. In
Paul Oslington (ed.), The Oxford handbook of Christianity and economics,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 73–93
Faccarello, Gilbert, and Philippe Steiner (2008a). “Interest, sensationism and
the science of the legislator. French ‘philosophie économique’, 1695–1830”.
The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 15 (1), 1–23.
——— (2008b). “Political economy and religion in early nineteenth century
France”. In Bradley W. Bateman and H. Spencer Banzhaf, Keeping faith,
losing fait: religious belief and political economy. Annual supplement of
History of Political Economy, vol. 40, 26–61.
Gentile, Emilio ([2001] 2007). Le religioni della politica. Fra democrazie e
totalitarismi. Roma: Laterza.
Gossen, Hermann Heinrich ([1854] 1983). Entwickelung der Gesetze des men-
schlichen Verkehrs und der daraus fliessenden Regeln für menschliches
Handeln. Brunswick: F. Vieweg. English translation, The laws of human
relations and the rules of human action derived therefrom, Cambridge:
MIT Press.
Griswold, Charles L. (1999). Adam Smith and the virtues of the Enlightenment.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harrison, Peter (1998). The Bible, Protestantism and the rise of natural sci-
ence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
——— (2007). The Fall of Man and the foundations of science. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
——— (2015). The territories of science and religion. Chicago: The Univer-
sity of Chicago Press.
Sæculum 15
——— (ed.) (2010). The Cambridge companion to science and religion.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hill, Lisa (2001). “The hidden theology of Adam Smith”. The European Jour-
nal of the History of Economic Thought, 8 (1), 1–29.
Hilton, Boyd (1988). The age of atonement. The influence of Evangelicalism
on social and economic thought, 1785–1865. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hunter, Ian (2015). “Secularization: the birth of a modern combat concept”.
Modern Intellectual History, 12 (1), 1–32.
Keynes, John Maynard (1925). A short view of Russia. Nation and Athenaeum,
10, 17 and 25 October. As in J.M. Keynes, Essays in persuasion, new edi-
tion, vol. IX of The collected writings of John Maynard Keynes, London
and Cambridge: Macmillan and Cambridge University Press, 1972, pp.
253–71.
Lipkes, Jeff (1999). Politics, religion and classical political economy in Britain:
John Stuart Mill and his followers. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Löwith, Karl (1949). Meaning in history. The theological implications of
the philosophy of history. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
(the original text, Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen. Die theologischen
Voraussetzungen der Geschichtsphilosophie, was published later, in 1953).
Marramao, Giacomo (1994). Cielo e terra. Genealogia della secolarizzazione.
Rome: Laterza.
Marx, K. ([1863–66] 1976). “Das Kapital. Erstes Buch. Der Produktion-
sprozeß des Kapitals. Sechstes Kapitel. Resultate des unmittelbaren
Produktionsprozesses”. Arkhiv Marksa i Engelsa, 2 (7), Moscow, 1933,
pp. 4–266. English translation 1976 by B. Fowkes in K. Marx, Capital,
London: Penguin Books and New Left Review, vol. 1, pp. 948–1084.
Merton, Robert K. ([1938] 1970). Science, technology and society in
seventeenth century England. New York: Howard Fertig.
Mill, John Stuart ([1874] 1969). Three essays on religion. London: Longmans,
Green, Reader, and Dyer. As in Collected works of John Stuart Mill, vol.
X: Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, Toronto: The University of
Toronto Press, pp. 369–489.
Moggridge, Donald Edward (1992). Maynard Keynes. An economist’s biogra-
phy, London: Routledge.
Monod, Jean-Claude ([2002] 2012). La querelle de la sécularisation, de Hegel
à Blumenberg. Paris: Vrin.
Musso, Pierre (2006). La religion du monde industriel. Analyse de la pensée
de Saint-Simon. La Tour d’Aigues: Éditions de l’Aube.
——— (2010). Saint-Simon, l’industrialisme contre l’État. La Tour d’Aigues:
Éditions de l’Aube.
Sæculum 16
Orain, Arnaud (2014). “The second Jansenism and the rise of French eighteenth-
century political economy”. History of Political Economy, 46 (3), 463–90.
Oslington, Paul (ed.) (2011). Adam Smith as theologian. New York and
Abingdon: Routledge.
Pasteur, Louis (1864). “Des générations spontanées”. Revue des cours scien-
tifiques de la France et de l’étranger, vol. 1, 23 avril, 257–65.
Rawls, John (2009). A brief inquiry into the meaning of sin and faith. Harvard:
Harvard University Press.
Schmitt, Carl ([1922] 1985). Politische Theologie. Vier Kapital zur Lehre von
der Souveränität. English translation, Political theology. Four chapters on
the concept of sovereignty, Cambridge: MIT Press.
Steiner, Philippe ([2005] 2010). L’École durkheimienne et l’économie: sociolo-
gie, religion et connaissance. Geneva: Droz. Revised edition: Durkheim
and the birth of economic sociology, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
——— (2011). “The Creator, human conduct and the maximisation of utility
in Gossen’s economic theory”. The European Journal of the History of
Economic Thought, 18 (3), 353–79.
Taranto, Domenico (1992). Studi sulla protostoria del concetto di interesse.
Da Commynes a Nicole (1524–1675). Naples: Liguori.
Taylor, Charles (2007). A secular age. Cambridge (Mass.) and London: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Todeschini, Giacomo (2002). I mercanti e il tempio. La società cristiana e il
circolo virtuoso della ricchezza fra Medioevo ed Età Moderna. Bologna: Il
Mulino.
——— (2004). Ricchezza francescana. Dalla povertà volontaria alla società di
mercato. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Tschannen, Olivier (1992). Les théories de la sécularisation. Geneva and Paris:
Droz.
Voegelin, Eric ([1938] 2000). Die politischen Religionen. English transla-
tion, Political religions, in Elliz Sandoz (ed), The collected works of Eric
Voegelin, vol. 5: Modernity without restraint, Columbia and London: The
University of Missouri Press, pp. 19–73.
Waterman, Anthony (1987). “Economists on the relation between political
economy and Christian theology: a preliminary survey”. International
Journal of Social Economics, 14 (6), 46–68.
——— (1991). Revolution, economics and religion. Christian political econ-
omy, 1798–1833. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
——— (2004). Political economy and Christian theology since the Enlighten-
ment. Essays in intellectual history. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Winch, Donald (1996). Riches and poverty. An intellectual history of political
economy in Britain, 1750–1834. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
