The Great Conflation
In response to the religious fanaticism spawned by the attempt to marry political philosophy and political theology, Mark Lilla admonishes us to return to the "wisdom" of Thomas Hobbes. The author of the "Great Separation" laid the ground for a humane political project by keeping separate the realms of God and man. In this article, I question the viability of Lilla's enterprise on Lilla's own terms. Hobbes, after all, did not set out to refute revelation. The author of Leviathan is the great "subject changer" who reorients human thinking toward a materialistic science of politics. However, if we are to contend with the challenges of political theology as Lilla understands them, we cannot in principle rule out the capacity of reason to speak to the claims of divine ascent. I propose a return to classical political rationalism as a better way of coming to terms with the "theological-political problem."