Come in cielo così in terra. Religione civile e fondamento della morale nel pensiero di Jean-Jacques Rousseau

On Earth as it is in Heaven. Civil Religion and the Foundation of Ethics in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Thought · Civil religion – presented in the concluding chapter of The Social Contract (1762) – is one of the most complex and debated themes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s thought, since it calls into question the relationship between politics and religion. Rousseau’s desire to expunge religion from the foundation of the State is ill matched by the observation that the two dimensions coexist. This article aims to highlight how – from a perspective of philosophi- cal anthropology – the tensions and aporias that the theme of civil religion conveys reflect the more general problem of the foundation of ethics, the true ‘trait d’union’ between religion and politics.