The most substantial text for viewing Sieyès’s unique combination of Enlightenment rationalism and vestigial religious sentiment, a formal set of reflections on God, is Sur Dieu ultramètre et sur la fibre religieuse de l’homme (On God beyond Measure and on Man’s Religious Fiber), written, in would appear, around 1780.20 In this work, Sieyès continues to decry “the revelation of useless supernatural dogmas” promoting “natural morality” as the “revelation of moral precepts or the ways leading to happiness.” Only this latter kind of religion is useful because here “man is guided by his own self-interest; in an ordered society, public interest results from individual interests, for which there is no need of religious sanction.” That Sieyès considered ethics to be religion at all is intriguing. He does hold out for calling some good behavior and attitudes “religion.”21 Condemning the standard philosophical and theological presentations of God, he searches for the only type of useful religion, the only God-reality. Although he refuses to promote full-fledged atheism, he sees clericalism as a major obstacle to the functioning of an otherwise healthy society: “Do not tolerate the existence of a clergy, by which I mean a corporation, for every corporation other than the open establishment of a large national alliance [association] is an evil in the social machine.”22
Disarmingly, Sieyès says that he is attacking the opinions of no one. He is only searching, and can make mistakes himself. This being a personal search, he is not trying to become the teacher of all. To the basic question, “Can I come to the knowledge of God without the aid of reason?” he offers sentiment as the alternative to reason and use of cognitive faculties: “Because I cannot understand God, nor come up with any ideas of him, I search to see if one can get there by sentiment.” God is unknowable and no amount of verbal dexterity can make it otherwise: “It is certain and acknowledged that no human idea, supposing even the most exalted, can attain God. You would add if you could infinity to all human faculties and imagining, and you would not have any better idea of God. We have here two different natures. It involves the existence not only of the unknown but of the unknowable.”23
The reality of God is found in the reality of the human being, for the simple reason that there is no reality outside of the world of human beings. Under these conditions, it makes no sense to Sieyès to negate the reality of God: God may be incomprehensible, but he is real.24 Of course, Sieyès would need to push further than this, because a reality in the mind does not necessarily mean a reality outside the mind, although philosophers from Anselm through Descartes to Kant have managed to get to the reality of God from this same starting point. But here Sieyès cleverly sketches a dialogue on the strengths and weaknesses of words to express reality. We note that the Q[uestioner] and the R[esponder] do not always play their roles; it is a mixed-up conversation, cited here at length:
Q. Are you an atheist?
R. What do you mean by that?
Q. In other words, do you believe in an intelligent, infinite, eternal, and immense being who is not nature, but from whom nature derives its temporal existence?
R. What a pile-up of words that do not bring any distinct idea to mind. All my reflections bring me back to the clear idea that I am only a human being and that any idea of the superhuman means nothing to me; that it is not even an idea. I can thus answer you that I do not understand you. But now let me ask you what patîma or other nonsense syllables might mean.
Q. Let us see where you want to lead me. All right, patîma is only a word.
R. This is the reproach I made to you when I asked what is God. It is only a word unless you explain it to yourself.
Q. But your word signifies nothing, whereas the name God doubtlessly signifies something because I deny his existence.
R. It will mean as much or as little as you wish. Can a word contain anything other than the ideas that you can put there? And can you put there anything other than human ideas? I can also mark with the label patîma a completely different range of ideas, or what I will name, following your example, ideas that are unknown; that is, I cover over as you did, an empty space...physical syllables that strike my ear without imprinting anything on, or recalling anything to, my brain.
Q then says that intellection counts more than desire here, without adding to the observation, but R continues on the drawbacks of any God discussion:
R. If what you understand is a reality, then why do you deny it? If it is nothing, then you have made a great discovery. You declare to me that by the word God, you do not mean anything real; I believe that. It is as if you said to me, “Nothing is nothing.”
Q. Well, we will soon not even be able to discuss this together. From your side of things, tell me what your thought is on God.
R. I would like to, even without hope of giving you satisfaction. I have, like many others and for a long time, talked nonsense about these matters and beaten about in empty space. The research was in vain. So I have come back to man as the central goal of philosophy, as the source from which every human activity proceeds.25
So, there is no concept of God that works. “God” is a nonsense syllable, and the search for ultimate meaning in human reality must start elsewhere.
The essence of the human being is found, however, in his or her needs, which are at the center of all human faculties. Sieyès concludes the section on “the needs of man” with this admonition: “Everything is there. Every search, every movement that does not go toward this goal is a false step, a loss of human strength. The need for subsistence, the need for protection against changes in the atmosphere, the need for social exchange, the needs arising from curiosity, the imagination, and hope. Man is, therefore, a being with needs. Around him nature has placed an infinity of concentric circles that are so many depositories open to his needs, open to the progressive development of his faculties and whatever is useful for life.”26 Here, then, hope expressed as God is the ultimate need of humans. If you stay with science and the material reality, thinking that you can go from the known to the unknown, you will never come to God as reality/idea.27 You cannot simply study the evidence: you have to pose questions and then arrive at some kind of state where curiosity rests; that is, you have to traverse those concentric circles of reality. The need to live, the need to ask, the need to know, is a drive that takes a person beyond any concept of truth: “It is not in the order of truths, but in the order of needs that I have placed myself....The order of truths must remain outside of every idea of God, it is true, but its necessity is visible to the human being in the order of his needs.”28
Our needs are useful, in that they lead us to the “beyond”: “Can we get something out of it for our own needs? Certainly if I am only speaking of the closest beyonds and not of the farthest, the response is indubitable.”29 Sieyès uses strange terminology whereby he assures us that the discussion does not shoot for the ineffable infinite. The “beyond” is outside human measure, but it can serve as some kind of goal: “Let us not dream of discovering the beyond, or discovering if there is a question of a true beyond, that which I can call God or what is better designated by the name of ultramètre, beyond human measure....Can the ultramètre be useful to our needs? I would like to respond with clarifications that will give you all my thoughts on the topic”30 Does an attempt to look beyond this world serve any useful religious purpose? “No,” answers Sieyès, “if religion kills the energy that has its own animation; yes, if it has added to and continues to add to this [energy].” Priests regularly kill the energy when they say such things as “your sufferings are the will of God.”31
God is attained through intuition and feeling, not through reasoning: “Everything
