What exactly does secular ritual or ritualistic ceremony fully disconnected from religious contexts mean? The issue of secular rituals and ceremonies in general is rarely raised and is, in any case, perceived as of peripheral significance.

Is it, therefore, a replacement of religious rituals with secular and political ceremonies, or are they sui generis secular rituals, autonomous in relation to the rites they resemble without being of the same order? In other words, is it a change of paradigm or a change of roles and names while maintaining the same functions?

The main objective of this essay is to connect rituals, secular and political ceremonies, and to underline the ritual nature of the codifications of politeness in two important philosophers of the European Enlightenment: David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The ambition of this essay is to go beyond the conventional condemnation, which Hume and Rousseau share at many points, of the fetishism of religious and non-religious rituals, which are entirely reduced to the mechanical adherence to inert, empty forms.

On the contrary, it highlights in the later Hume the common thread that connects the positivity of rituals with secular ceremonies as elements of the refinement of primarily commercial morals during the progress of civilization. On the other hand, Rousseau's emphasis on political ceremonies within the framework of political religion is stressed, which he considers an integral part of democratic morals.