Question to François Legault:

Could Quebec’s face-mask wearing recommendation be habit forming?

Rousseau’s “forced to be free” argument and Quebec’s religious minorities: Bill 21

In fact, each individual, as a man, may have a particular will contrary or dissimilar to the general will which he has as a citizen.  His particular interest may speak to him quite differently from the common interest: his absolute and, naturally independent existence may make him look upon what he owes to the common cause as a gratuitous contribution, the loss of which will do less harm to others than the payment of it is burdensome to himself; and, regarding the corporate person which constitutes the State as a persona ficta, because not a man, he may wish to enjoy the rights of citizenship without being ready to fulfil the duties of a subject.  The continuance of such an injustice could not but prove the undoing of the body politic.

In order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body.  This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free; for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures him against all personal dependence.  In this lies the key to the working political machine; this alone legitimizes civil undertakings, which, without it, would be absurd, tyrannical and liable to the most frightful abuses.

Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)[1]

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[1] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, tr. G.D.H. Cole, revised J.H. Brumfitt and John G. Hall (New York: Dutton/Everyman’s Library, 1978), p. 177  (Book I, Chapter 7). 

Locke to Quebec on “toleration” (ii)

And if the example of old Rome (where so many different opinions, gods and ways of worship were promiscuously tolerated) be of any weight, we have reason to imagine that no religion can be suspected to the state of ill intention to it, till the government first by partial usage of them, different from that of the rest of the subjects, declare its ill intentions to its professors, and so make a state business of it.  And if any rational man can imagine that force and compulsion can at any time be the right way to get an opinion or religion out of the world, or to break a party of men that unite in the profession of it, this I dare affirm: that it is the worst, the last to be used, and with the greatest caution, for these reasons:

(1)    Because it brings that upon a man which, that he might be freed from is the only reason why he is member of the commonwealth, viz., violence.  For, were there no fear of violence, there would be no government in the world, nor any need of it.

(2)    Because the magistrate, in using force, does in part cross what he pretends to do, which is the safety of all.  For, the preservation, as much as possible, of the property, quiet, and life of every individual being his duty, he is obliged not to disturb or destroy some for the quiet and safety of the rest, till it hath been tried whether there be not ways to save all.  For, so far as he undoes or destroys the safety of any of his subjects for the security of the rest, so far as he opposes his own design, which is professed, and ought to be only for preservation, to which even the meanest have a title. ‘Twould be but an uncharitable as well as unskillful way of a cure, and such as nobody would use or consent to, to cut off so much as an ulcered toe, though tending to a gangrene, till other gentler remedies have proved unsuccessful, though it be a part as low as the earth and far distant from the head. …[1]

Locke, “An Essay on Toleration” (1667)  

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[1] John Locke, Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 149,150.

Locke to Quebec on “toleration” (i)

The other thing that hath just claim to an unlimited toleration is the place, time, and manner of worshipping my God.  Because this is wholly between God and me, and of an eternal concernment, above the reach and extent of polities and government, which are for my well-being in this world.  For the magistrate is but umpire between man and man; he can right me against my neighbor, but cannot defend me against my God; whatever evil I suffer by obeying him in other things, he can make me amends in this world, but if he force me to a wrong religion, he can make me no reparation in the other world.[1]

Locke, “An Essay on Toleration” (1667)

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[1] John Locke, Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 137.

Montaigne on Quebec’s Secularism Bill 21

A chaque pied son soulier.[1]

-          Montaigne, Essais (1588 edition), Book III, Ch. 13.

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[1] This has been translated as “For every foot its own shoe” by Charles Cotton in 1685.  More recently Donald Frame’s translation is “For every foot its own shoe.” And M.A. Screech has it as “For every foot its proper shoe.”  I am indebted to Peter Burke’s concise work on Montaigne in the Oxford “Past Masters” series which brought my attention to the metaphor, and he translates it as: “Let every foot have its own shoe”. 

See: Les Essais (eds. P. Villeny and V-L. Saulnier), online edition by P. Desan, University of Chicago, p. 1066; Essays of Michel de Montaigne, tr. Charles Cotton, ed. William Hazlitt, Project Gutenberg;   The Complete Works, tr. Donald Frame (Toronto: Everyman’s Library, 2003), p. 994; The Complete Essays, tr. M.A. Screech (Toronto: Penguin, 2003), p. 1209; Peter Burke, Montaigne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 33.

Montesquieu on Quebec’s Secularism Bill 21

Here is an excerpt from Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721) – a satirical narrative of two Persians who travelled to Europe and what they learned there.  Letter 85 explains Montesquieu’s position on religious intolerance and is a thinly-veiled criticism of Louis XIV’s ‘zealous’ act in his Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which forced Protestant Huguenots to flee France in large numbers, who became the modern world’s first ‘refugees’.  Perhaps Quebec’s CAQ government needs to consult with the wisdom of Montesquieu before implementing its Secularism Bill 21, as backed by the so-called ‘constitutional’ use of the Notwithstanding Clause.

Letter 85
Usbeck to Mirza, at Ispahan

Once, as you know, Mirza, some of Shah Suleiman’s made a plan to force all the Armenians in Persia either to leave the kingdom or to become Muslims, in the belief that our empire would be contaminated as long as infidels remained within it.

  It would have put an end to the greatness of Persia if blind religious piety had had its way on this occasion.

     Nobody knows why the plan came to nothing. Neither those who made the proposal, nor those who rejected it, foresaw the consequences; it was chance that took over the functions of reason and good government, and saved the empire rom a danger greater than if it had been defeated in battle and suffered the loss of two towns.

     To have proscribed the Armenians would have meant wiping out in a single day all the businessmen and almost all the skilled workers in the kingdom.  I am sure that the great Shah Abbas would sooner have had his two arms cut off than to have signed such a decree, and that in sending his most highly-skilled subjects away to the Mogul and other Indian kings he would have felt as if  he were presenting them with half his territory.

     The persecution that our Muslim zealots have inflicted on the Gabars have forced large numbers of them to emigrate to India, causing Persia to lose a nation which was dedicated to agriculture: they were the only people capable of doing the work necessary to overcome the sterility of our soil.

     All that the zealots needed to do was to strike a second blow and wreck our industry, thus ensuring that the empire fell of its own accord, and with it, by inevitable consequence, that same religion whose growth it was intended to encourage so vigorously.

     Assuming that we should reason without prejudice, Mizra, I think it just as well for there to be several religions in a state.

     It is noticeable that the adherents of a tolerated minority religion normally make themselves more useful to their country than the adherents of the dominant religion, because they are disqualified from high office and can distinguish themselves only by having money and possessions; they are therefore likely to work to work in order to acquire these things, and will undertake the most ungrateful social functions.

     Furthermore, since in every religion there are precepts which are useful to society, it is well that they should be obeyed with enthusiasm, and what is more likely to encourage this enthusiasm than a multiplicity of religions?

     They are rivals which forgive each other nothing.  This emulation influences even private individuals: everyone is on his guard, afraid of doing something which would dishonor his side, and expose it to the pitiless contempt and criticism of the other side.

     That is why it has always been observed that the introduction of a new sect into a society was the surest method of remedying all the defects of the old one.

     It is no use to say that it is not in the king’s interest to allow more than one religion in the state.  Even if every religion in the world gathered together there it would not do him any harm, since every single one of them commands obedience and preaches respect for authority.

     I admit that the history books are full of religious wars; but it should be carefully noted that these wars are not produced by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance, urging on the one which believed itself to be dominant.

     It is this proselytizing spirit that the Jews acquired from the Egyptians and which from them passed like a nation-wide epidemic to the Muslims and the Christians.

     It is in sum a spirit of dizzy madness, the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.

     For after all, even if there were no inhumanity in doing violence to other people’s consciences, even if it produced none of the bad effects which flow from it in thousands, one would have to be out of one’s mind to think of the idea.  Someone who tries to make me change my religion does so only, I presume, because he would not change his own, even if attempts were made to compel him; so that he finds it strange  that I will not do something he would not do himself, perhaps not eve to be ruler of the world.[1]

Montesquieu, Persian Letters (1721)

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[1] Montesquieu, Persian Letters, tr. C.J. Betts (Toronto: Penguin, 1973), pp. 164-166.