French Literature Reviews - 2026
B. Binoche, Private Religion, Public Opinion
Philosophy, Anthropology and Ideas
Bertrand Binoche, Religion privée, opinion publique, Paris, Vrin, coll. « Moments philosophiques », 2012, 232 p., 12.50 €
PUBLICATION DATE: 03/01/12 PUBLISHER: Vrin SERIES: Moments philosophiques ISBN: 978-2-7116-2413-3 EAN: 9782711624133.
This book aims to correlate the emergence of "public opinion" with the relegation of religious belief to the private sphere. As Bayle immediately observed, this raised the question of how to define the foundation that allows people to live together in relative peace. Is it still an orthodoxy, albeit a secular one—something akin to natural morality or a citizen's catechism? Or could it be an institutionalization of disagreement, such that discord, rather than representing an obstacle to peace, becomes the very engine of collective destiny? Public opinion was the contested name for this grandiose yet perhaps futile project of an effectively atheist society.
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The website laviedesidees.fr published an article dedicated to this work:
What Forms Opinion, by Marion Chottin, dated 11/28/2012
When, and in what historical and conceptual context, did the notion of public opinion appear? What theoretical role did it assume? Can it be considered a concept, or is it rather one of those words—if not hollow, at least ambivalent and volatile—that it is philosophy's task to expose?
The thesis of Religion privée, opinion publique consists in causally linking the two terms that make up its title. According to Bertrand Binoche, the idea of public opinion is the effect of the idea of private religion: it emerges in the second half of the 18th century, not merely sequentially and accidentally, but essentially as its consequence. While not strictly necessary, this consequence is nonetheless logical: once religion becomes a private matter and ceases to provide the consensus long believed necessary to forge the civil bond—and once any substitute consensus (natural religion, natural morality) simultaneously proves futile—the only remaining theoretical, albeit highly paradoxical, solution is to found society on the idea of regulated disagreement among perpetually evolving opinions. The author thus sets out to trace the emergence of the concept of public opinion, its transformation into a "buzzword" (p. 126), and its eventual dissolution, from the Wars of Religion to the second half of the 19th century.
The transition from the early modern religious conflicts to the secularized societies of the nineteenth century represents a major shift in European political philosophy. For centuries, social cohesion was believed to depend on a shared religious orthodoxy. When the privatization of faith disrupted this consensus, thinkers had to conceptualize new foundations for civil peace. This historical shift prompted intense debate over whether a secular moral code or a structured acceptance of diverse viewpoints could successfully sustain the social contract in the absence of a unifying theological framework.
In this study, Bertrand Binoche examines this conceptual evolution by tracing the trajectory of public opinion from the Wars of Religion through to its late nineteenth-century decline. The work analyzes how the concept shifted from a logical response to privatized belief into a widespread catchphrase, before ultimately undergoing dissolution. By exploring these shifting definitions of collective agreement and regulated disagreement, the text maps the philosophical challenges of imagining an atheist society. Readers interested in the history of political thought and secularization may find this historical analysis relevant.