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Concept

Cult of Reason

Cult of Reason
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Overview

The Cult of Reason (French: Culte de la Raison) was France's first established state-sponsored atheistic religion, intended as a replacement for Christianity during the French Revolution. After holding sway for barely a year, in 1794 it was officially replaced by the rival deistic Cult of the Supreme Being, promoted by Robespierre. Both cults were officially banned in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte with his Law on Cults of 18 Germinal, Year X.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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  1. Wherever the clergy is a corporate body,[3] it is master and legislator in its own country. There are thus two powers, two Sovereigns, in England and in Russia, as well as elsewhere.

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The social contract & discourses

    The author is tied to Cult of Reason in the knowledge graph.

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  2. The old opinions in religion, morals, and politics, are so much discredited in the more intellectual minds as to have lost the greater part of their efficacy for good, while they have still life enough in them to be a powerful obstacle to the growing up of any better opinions on those subjects. When the philosophic minds of the world can no longer believe its religion, or can only believe it with modifications…

    John Stuart Mill, Autobiography

    Close in meaning to Cult of Reason; the term itself is not named.

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  3. Enough, the fact that after two hundred and fifty years it was a state religion shows that it was a religion answering to the circumstances of the times. In the Middle Ages it showed itself clearly. In proportion as feudalism developed it grew into a religion corresponding with it, with a hierarchy corresponding to the feudal.

    Friedrich Engels, Feuerbach

    Close in meaning to Cult of Reason; the term itself is not named.

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Philosophers who discussed Cult of Reason

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Deism.

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