Table Of Contentthe law of god
the law of god
I J
The Philosophical History of an Idea
rémi brague
Translated byLydia G. Cochrane
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago & London
Rémi Brague is professor of philosophy at the Université Paris I–Panthéon Sorbonne and at
the University of Munich. Five of his books, including The Wisdom of the World(2003), have
been previously published by the University of Chicago Press. Lydia G. Cochrane has trans-
lated a number of books for the Press, most recently Piero Melograni’s Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart: A Biography(2006).
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2007 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2007
Printed in the United States of America
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 1 2 3 4 5
Originally published as La loi de Dieu: Histoire philosophique d’une alliance.© Éditions
Gallimard, 2005.
Published with the support of the National Center for the Book—French Ministry of
Culture.
Ouvrage publié avec le soutien du Centre national du livre—ministère français chargé de la
culture.
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-07078-0 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 0-226-07078-6 (cloth)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brague, Rémi, 1947–
[Loi de Dieu. English]
The law of God : the philosophical history of an idea / Rémi Brague ; translated by Lydia
G. Cochrane.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-07078-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-07078-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Religion and law—History. 2. Law (Theology). 3. Christianity. 4. Islam. 5. Judaism.
I. Title.
BL65.L33B6813 2007
208'.4—dc22
2006029906
oThe paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
J
Contents
Preface vii
Translator’s Note xi
Introduction 1
PART I ORIGINS 9
1 Prehistory 11
2 The Greek Idea of Divine Law 19
3 Historical Conditions of Alliance 30
PART II THE DIVINE LAW 39
4 The State and the Law: Ancient Israel 41
5 The Legislation of the Sacred Books 61
PART III SUCCESSION THROUGH TIME 83
6 Mother Religions and Daughter Religions 85
7 The Law as Enforced 101
PART IV LAW AND CITIES IN THE MIDDLE AGES 121
8 Judaism: A Law without a State 123
9 Christianity: A Conflict of Laws 127
10 Islam: Law Rules 146
v
PART V DIVINE LAW IN MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 157
11 The Aims of the Law: Islam 159
12 The Law as an End: Judaism 187
13 The End of the Law: Christianity 209
PART VI SANS FOI NI LOI: NEITHER FAITH NOR LAW? 229
14 The Modern Age: Destruction of the Idea of Divine Law 231
15 Judaism and Islam in the Modern Age 249
Conclusion 256
Notes 265
Selected Bibliography 321
Index 355
J
Preface
What I propose to do in this book is to study the idea of divine law.
That idea supposes that human actions are guided by norms re-
ceived from the divine. At certain times and in certain regions, the
law that regulated human conduct was characterized as divine. The
two ideas of law and of divinity have each been understood in very
di≠erent ways, which increased the ambiguity of the formula asso-
ciating them.
By exploring that alliance between law and divinity, I have at-
tempted to return to an approach that I had already used in an ear-
lier work, The Wisdom of the World,which was a history of Western
ideas over the long term. In the two works, I compare the three cul-
tural areas of the medieval world by resetting them on their two
common bases, the thought of antiquity (Greek antiquity in partic-
ular) and biblical revelation, while keeping in mind the great river-
system civilizations of the ancient Near East, and with the hope of
arriving at a better comprehension of our own modernity.
I have chosen as a unifying thread the notion of “divine law,” be-
cause the idea—or in any event, the expression—can be found in
the three worlds, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim, that I will need to
investigate in order to grasp the choices, basic and successive, that
each civilization made. Divine law, in fact, reveals what Judaism, Is-
lam, and Christianity think and know about themselves.
O
The Wisdom of the Worldstudied how human action had been con-
ceived of as being in phase with cosmological realities that were pre-
sumed to furnish humankind with a model, a metaphor, or at least a
guarantee, of right conduct. The present book examines how human
vii
viii Preface
practice was understood as dependent on laws and rules of a theological na-
ture. Both works show how that human practice broke away from the two
domains, cosmological and theological, with which it had been associated.
Those two domains form what might be called two sides of the same his-
tory. The first imagines the law on the basis of the physical world, a vision
for which I was obliged to coin the neologism cosmonomy.1In the second,
the relationship of the law to the divine might be rendered by the term
theonomy,a term that already has a long history but that should not be un-
derstood as foisting on it more than its etymology indicates.2 If the two
models had to be embraced within a common term to be opposed to a rival
term, I might borrow the term heteronomy—receiving one’s law from an-
other—in opposition to autonomy—giving oneself one’s law.
These opposed terms, which Kant placed at the center of moral reflec-
tion, have come to define a project: autonomy defines the ideal to be real-
ized in an ever more radical manner; heteronomy designates the enemy
that must be eliminated. In fact, the modern world, in the morality that it
claims and that is its foundation, flatters itself that it has sent packing every-
thing tainted with heteronomy, and it is pleased to understand itself as con-
structed on the idea of autonomy. By studying the two adversaries of au-
tonomy more closely, I hope to have contributed—indirectly—to making
the project underlying modernity more visible. A more exact idea of pre-
modern heteronomy contributes, in fact, to elucidating the question of
modernity, both in the objective and the subjective meanings of the term.
For one thing, that more exact idea will permit us a better understanding of
what modernity reproaches in the ages preceding it and with which it
claims to break; for another, it also throws light on what is dubious in the
modern project itself.
O
Even more than in The Wisdom of the World,I have had to focus on the pre-
modern era in my remarks here. It is at that time, it seems to me, that deci-
sions were made that our modernity has simply inherited. Hence our own
day will be treated here only as a sort of rapid epilogue.
In carrying out my investigations I have used the works of historians of
philosophical, juridical, political, and religious thought without claiming to
add much of my own that is new: I have limited myself to philosophical re-
flection on givens that others before me had often elaborated from their
own points of view.
I have used the forms of proper names that are most frequently found in
the literature, and I have transcribed foreign words in the simplest manner,
Preface ix
which is not always the most rigorous one. The bibliography is limited to
titles that I have actually used, and I cite the editions consulted.
O
The bibliography was compiled with the aid of Marie-Isabelle Wasem, who
used it as the topic for her dissertation for the École Nationale Supérieure
des Sciences Bibliothèques (Lyon). In Munich both my assistant Hans-Otto
Seitschek and Gregor Soszka brought many documents to my attention,
thus sparing me a good deal of travel.
I have presented this topic at a number of conferences and in courses,
above all, in my graduate seminars at the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne
(Paris-I) and Charles Leben’s graduate seminar in the Philosophy of the Law
(Paris-II), but also abroad: in the universities of Lausanne, where I replaced
Ada-Babette Neschke-Hentschke, and Boston, on the invitation of Charles
Griswold, where I presented an early version of the current work. Finally, a
course at the University of Munich o≠ered a synthesis of the book.
My editor, Ran Halévy, has read this book very attentively and o≠ered me
thousands of highly useful suggestions. The final version once again bene-
fited from painstaking review by Irène Fernandez and my wife. Dedicating
it to them is the least I can do.
My American translator, Lydia Cochrane, has checked all of my cita-
tions, identifying a certain number of errors in the process. I have shared
the list of corrections with other translators and will take them into account
for an eventual new edition in French. May this serve to express my grati-
tude to her.
