Dismembered

Citizen Sacrifice in Rousseau's “The Levite of Ephraïm”

Bibliographic Data

ID10433538
AuthorsA Bradley (0000-0003-1017-1076, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume81
Issue2
Pages231-253
Publication date2019-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670518001171
OpenAlexW2925439982
LanguageEN
References cited19

This essay seeks to explore the position of citizen sacrifice in Rousseau's political theology from The Social Contract to “The Levite of Ephraïm.” To summarize, I contend that Rousseau's political theology starts out by seeking to prohibit religious sacrifice as something inimical to both natural and positive law, but ends up attempting to appropriate or internalize this sacrificial economy within his theory of citizenship. If Rousseau presents his theory of civil religion as a means of neutralizing the violence of sectarian religions, for example, I contend that this civil profession of faith is itself a species of sacrificial theology which is explicitly designed to create a citizen who is capable of sacrificing their life to the state. In “The Levite of Ephraïm”—a prose poem which begins and ends with the dismemberment of a woman—Rousseau's political theology of citizen sacrifice assumes its most graphic allegorical form

Citizenship · Faith · Poetry · Political science · Political theology · Politics · Sacrifice · Social contract · Sociology · State (computer science · Theology · European Political History Analysis · Law · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence · Religious studies · Rousseau and Enlightenment Thought · Religious Studies

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