Civil Society and Fanaticism: Conjoined Histories

Luther and Calvin applied the term fanatic to those who sought to destroy civil society in order to establish the Kingdom of God, the false prophets and their followers who, early on in the Reformation, began smashing images in churches and rebelling against princes. Civil Society and Fanaticism is organized around this seminal moment of religious and political iconoclasm, an outburst of hatred against mediations and representation. The author shows that civil society and fanaticism have been consistently present as conjoined notions in Western political thought since the sixteenth century, underlining the link between two principles that are constitutive of that thought: dualism between the City of God and the earthly city, between civil society and the state and the validity of representation.