Religious Toleration

Monarchia della verità indaga una componente ideologica fondamentale della Controriforma: l’ossessione ecclesiastica per la 'veritas', concepita nella versione dogmatica di 'doctrina' e ortodossia in opposizione alla formulazione umanistica della 'veritas' come ricerca. Da Poggio Bracciolini a Montaigne, gli umanisti esprimono un concetto di 'religio' coincidente con la ricerca stessa della verità, rinunciando a definizioni esclusive o dogmatiche e astenendosi da difese di carattere polemico o controversistico. I teologi adottano invece il concetto dogmatico di 'doctrina', identificando la 'veritas' nell’ortodossia e favorendo il formarsi di un clima di oscurantismo clericale e di generale intolleranza nei confronti dell’autonomia umanistica, dell’individualismo religioso e del libero pensiero, con Valla, Erasmo e Machiavelli in testa.
In questo libro l’autore prende in esame il primato normativo della verità nella Chiesa del Cinquecento e del primo Seicento con lo scopo di illustrare modelli culturali e pedagogici della Controriforma e rilevarne i miti: cronotassi pontificia, agiografia e culto delle reliquie, concetto eroico del documento, didattica figurativa, giurisdizione curiale, temporalismo papale. Tuttavia, la sopravvivenza della tradizione umanistica e il suo confrontarsi dialetticamente con le culture dogmatiche di Riforma e Controriforma si evidenziano in momenti significativi della storia culturale e religiosa della prima età moderna: in particolare, nel dibattito europeo 'de puniendis haereticis' originato dal tragico rogo di Michele Serveto, nel ricorso all’elemento storico in sede di polemica confessionale, nei processi di Bruno e Galilei e nelle discussioni sulla 'libertas investigandi', nel nicodemismo di artisti, scienziati e anticlericali cristiani, infine nella ripresa – specialmente in Olanda e nelle aree della diaspora sociniana – del pacifismo erasmiano e dell’utopismo di Thomas More, associati alla critica del Valla e all’irenismo di Sebastiano Castellione. Un esempio insigne è la proposta irenica di Jakob Arminius, calvinista di cultura umanistica, formulata a Leida nel 1605 con l’intento di superare i contrasti tra cristiani e realizzare la pacificazione sociale e religiosa.

Introduction and first chapter of a new book: Even though ‘the crisis of secularism’ was declared decades ago, it remains unresolved. This book argues that its roots are internal to the liberal model of secularism, which emerged from the religious dynamics of the Protestant Reformation. In Europe and India, this model has gone hand in hand with an intolerant anticlerical theology that rejects certain traditions as evil ‘political religion’. Consequently, liberal secularism often harms local forms of coexistence rather than nourishing them.

Het is niet waar dat we de vrijheid van meningsuiting bevorderen door onwelgevallige personen of groepen te beledigen, zoals sommige opiniemakers en cartoonisten, maar ook politici sinds de eeuwwisseling lijken te denken. Integendeel: waar polarisatie toeneemt, komt vroeg of laat de vrijheid van meningsuiting onder druk te staan.

Today, politicians and intellectuals warn that we face a crisis of civility and a veritable war of words polluting our public sphere. In liberal democracies committed to tolerating diversity as well as active, often heated disagreement, the loss of this conversational virtue appears critical.  But is civility really a virtue?  Or, as its critics claim, a covert demand for conformity that silences dissent?

Mere Civility sheds light on our predicament and the impasse between so-called “civilitarians” and their opponents by examining early modern debates about religious toleration.  As concerns about uncivil disagreement achieved new prominence after the Reformation, seventeenth-century figures as different as Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke could agree that some restraint on the war of words would be necessary.  And yet, they recognized that the prosecution of incivility was often difficult to distinguish from persecution.  In their efforts to reconcile diversity with disagreement, they developed competing conceptions of civility as the social bond of tolerant societies that still resonate.

Most modern appeals to civility follow either Hobbes or Locke by proposing to suppress disagreement or exclude persons and positions deemed “uncivil” for the sake of social concord.  Compared with his contemporaries’ more robust ideals, Williams’s unabashedly mere civility—a minimal, occasionally contemptuous adherence to culturally contingent rules of respectful behavior—is easily overlooked.  Yet Teresa Bejan argues that Williams offers a promising path forward in confronting our own crisis of civility, one that fundamentally challenges our assumptions about what a tolerant—and civil—society should look like.

Resumo. Desde que foi publicada em abril de 1689, a Carta sobre a Tolerância nunca deixou de despertar atenção. Já nos primeiros meses depois de vir a lume, ela obteve uma recepção considerável: (i) três projetos tradutórios para línguas vernáculas, (ii) duas resenhas em periódicos eruditos, atribuídas a Jean Le Clerc e Henri Basnage de Beauval, e (iii) duas críticas de clérigos ingleses, os anglicanos Thomas Long e Jonas Proast. O presente artigo se propõe a analisar essa recepção imediata e tem como finalidade avaliar em que medida a tese central da obra e as justificativas para sustentá-la foram identificadas e compreendidas.

Abstract. Published in April 1689, the Epistola de Tolerantia never failed to call attention. Right after its publication, the work generated a remarkable reception that covers (i) three projects of translation to vernacular languages, (ii) reviews in learned journals attributed to Jean Le Clerc and Henri Basnage de Beauval, and (iii) critiques by the Anglican clergymen Thomas Long and Jonas Proast. This article intends to analyse this immediate reception in order to assess whether the central thesis of the work and its grounds were identified and understood.

Cílem konferenčního příspěvku bylo poukázat na příbuzenské vazby evangelických pastorů, později evangelických farářů, kteří do Čech a na Moravu po vydání Tolerančního patentu přicházeli především z Uher, aby spolu se založenými sbory budovali evangelickou církev helvetského a luterského ritu. Výjimečně s panovníkovým povolením mohli na území monarchie působit pastoři z Pruska. Pastoři narození v Čechách přicházejí na scénu až v druhé generaci, kdy aktivní evangelíci vysílají na studia do Uher své syny, aby se pak vrátili a sloužili českým a moravský sborům nebo se stali kantory. Konstituováním tolerančních sborů a tím vznik po-zic pastorů, které obsazovaly vzdělané osoby, se na našem území objevuje nová společenská a intelektuální elita, která zapadá do osvícenského prostředí své doby. Evangelické rodiny, které na našem území žily již před tolerancí, a rodiny nově příchozích pastorů, uzavíraly často mezi sebou sňatky a mnohé rodiny si mezi sebou předávaly tradici povolání, pastorské a kaza-telské služby. Některé rodiny tím pádem ještě dnes zachovávají kontinuitu od doby toleranční. Na níže uvedených příkladech třech rodin, z kterých dvě byly blízce spřízněné, zatímco ta zbývající s ostatními evangelickými rody, jsme pomocí genealogické metody sestavili po-sloupnosti a příbuzenské vazby mezi jednotlivými pastory, čímž jsme se snažili dokázat, že otázka víry a služby Bohu a člověku ve vykonávání kazatelské a pastorační činnosti byla velmi silná. Součástí textu jsou i zjednodušené rodové rozrody a jednotlivá schémata rodových větví. Data byla vyhledávána především v matrikách a dalších pomůckách, které jsou uvedeny v poznámkovém aparátu. Genealogická schémata obsahují pouze osoby pastorů, popřípadě jejich manželky, které byly dcerami jiných pastorů (modrá pole), zakladatele rodů (zelená pole) či jiná osoby (šedé a oranžové pole). Data obsažená v textu a ve schématech obsahují pouze in-formace, které byly shromážděny za účelem konference a mohou sloužit jako východisko pro další bádání, která můžeme v nejbližší době očekávat.

"What is secularism? Can secularism be compatible with post-colonial democracies? In the last years, a wide literature emerged in post-colonial societies has been focused on the notion of secularism and its relation with democracy. In this respect, the case of India is particularly relevant. In this country, “Nehru-Gandhi consensus” on the secular rule was based on the recognition of the difficulty to overcome the deep religious antagonisms emerged in the aftermath of the declaration of Independence. However, critics of secularism have shown that the process of secularisation in India has presented ambivalences and disintegrative potential.
This paper is concerned with the criticisms raised by two influential Indian scholars, namely Partha Chatterjee and Neera Chandhoke. In particular, it is focused on their critiques of Rawls’ model of political tolerance. Can the model of “reasonable pluralism” be useful in divided societies like India? I will show that the arguments raised by Chandhoke and Chatterjee cannot grasp key issues involved in this model. Although these two scholars present two distinct strategies of criticism (cultural relativism versus universalism of the principle of moral equality), both are likely to disregard the asymmetry between democratic legitimacy and justification, in other words both assume that liberal models of tolerance and reasonability would be acceptable and fully justified only by liberals."

Toleration plays a central role in debates about the accommodation of religious beliefs and practices in liberal democracies. This chapter addresses one such debate, which concerns whether liberal societies ought to tolerate discriminatory practices when, or even because, they are performed by religious associations and institutions. After briefly discussing some recently canvassed arguments in support of tolerating discrimination by religious associations, it turns to the question of how political communities might establish the limits to this form of toleration, a question so far neglected by philosophers. One reason why a tolerant state might refuse to allow religious associations to discriminate is to 1

Cuando Miguel Santana, racionero de la Catedral de Caracas, publicó en 1826 el folleto La Serpiente de Moisés, renovó la discusión pública alrededor de unas de las máximas políticas centrales de la sociedad que se proyectaba: la tolerancia religiosa. Enmarcados en el secular conflicto entre la defensa de la intolerancia y la implantación del “tolerantismo”, la reacción que suscitó el texto (escrito originalmente por el padre Francisco Margallo en Bogotá), refleja la importancia de la tolerancia para el establecimiento de una república comercial, ilustrada, abierta a la inmigración y dispuesta a las mejoras que la industria y el trabajo pudiesen proveerle. El texto de Margallo y el gesto de Santana, ponían a prueba los límites teóricos planteados por los nuevos modelos de convivencia política, cuestionando no sólo sus principios, sino su posibilidad práctica en una república que, consideraban, estaba en su origen comprometida con el Catolicismo.

Palabras Clave: Venezuela / Liberalismo / Tolerancia Religiosa

The way the Ottoman administration has treated its non-Muslim subjects is often regarded as an example of toleration.  However, the elements of time and space are often forgotten in using the term toleration for the Ottoman Empire. Hence, we either examine the Ottoman toleration with the standards of the European Enlightenment, or of the modern period. Leaving aside the Eurocentric and current connotations of the term, this article aims at providing an analysis of the nature and limits of the Ottoman toleration towards its non-Muslim subjects during the early modern period.

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Convened following Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, the Congress of Vienna is remembered as much for the pageantry of the royals and elites who gathered there as for the landmark diplomatic agreements they brokered. Historians have nevertheless generally dismissed these spectacular festivities as window dressing when compared with the serious, behind-the-scenes maneuverings of sovereigns and statesmen. Brian Vick finds this conventional view shortsighted, seeing these instead as two interconnected dimensions of politics. Examining them together yields a more complete picture of how one of the most important diplomatic summits in history managed to redraw the map of Europe and the international system of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Congress of Vienna investigates the Vienna Congress within a broad framework of influence networks that included unofficial opinion-shapers of all kinds, both men and women: artists and composers, entrepreneurs and writers, hosts and attendees of fashionable salons. In addition to high-profile negotiation and diplomatic wrangling over the post-Napoleonic fates of Germany, Italy, and Poland, Vick brings into focus other understudied yet significant issues: the African slave trade, Jewish rights, and relations with Islamic powers such as the Ottoman Empire and Barbary Corsairs. Challenging the usual portrayal of a reactionary Congress obsessed with rolling back Napoleon’s liberal reforms, Vick demonstrates that the Congress’s promotion of limited constitutionalism, respect for religious and nationality rights, and humanitarian interventions was influenced as much by liberal currents as by conservative ones.

* Desidero ringraziare Carlo Borghero e gli amici del Groupe Rousseau, in particolare Bruno Bernardi, Andre Charrak, Gabriefle Radica e Celine Spector, per i commenti e le critiche a una prima versione di questo lavoro. 1 R. N. Sellali, Al di là delle fedi. Le religioni in un mondo post-tradizionale, Morcelliana, Brescia 1975 [ 197 0], in particolare iLcapitolo VII, La religione civile in America (pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1966 sulla rivista "Daedalus"),'pp. 185-209; su Rousseau cfr. p. 191 e p. 272.

A thematic study of the reception of the Pantheon considered in relation to the: (1) Spread of Religious Tolerance, (2) Birth of Modern Science and Medicine, (3) Rise of Democratic Government, (4) Public Museum, (5) Public Library, (6) Neoclassicism & the Sublime. F. L. Wright, L. Kahn, Asplund, Th. Jefferson, Cret, Schinkel, Boullée, Lequeu, Speer, Gondoin, Legeay, Godefroy, Ramée, McKim, Meade & White.

In this article, I examine the meaning of the concept of ‘civility’ for Roger Williams and the role it played in his arguments for religious toleration. I place his concern with civility in the broader context of his life and works and show how it differed from the missionary and civilizing efforts of his fellow New English among the American Indians. For Williams, civility represented a standard of inclusion in the civil community that was ‘essentially distinct’ from Christianity, which properly governed membership in the spiritual community of the church. In contrast to recent scholarship that finds in Williams a robust vision of mutual respect and recognition between co-citizens, I argue that civility constituted rather a very low bar of respectful behavior towards others entirely compatible with a lack of respect, disapproval, and even disgust for them and their beliefs. I show further that civility for Williams was consistent with—and partially secured by—a continued commitment on the part of godly citizens to the potential conversion of their neighbors. Williams endorsed this ‘mere’ civility as a necessary and sufficient condition for toleration while also delineating a potentially expansive role for the magistrate in regulating incivility. Contemporary readers of William who conflate civility with other good things, such as mutual respect, recognition, and civic friendship, slide into a position much like that he was trying to refute.

So-called New Atheists say that religion is an irrationally held proto-scientific cosmological hypothesis, a primitive theory, supplemented by an equally irrational moral code, that led to the worst evil in the history of the human kind, so that religion itself should be completely eradicated – rational arguments and scientific evidence being the apt instruments to this end. In The Meaning of Belief, Tim Crane rejects all these ideas from an atheist's point of view.

La tesis que  intentaremos sostener a lo largo de nuestro trabajo es que las producciones filosóficas de Sébastien Castellion, Jean Bodin y Michel de Montaigne, y las  diversas posiciones asumidas por cada uno en particular frente al conflicto confesional  que afecta a la Francia del siglo XVI, adquieren un mayor grado de  inteligibilidad si ellas son comprendidas como posibles "intentos de respuesta" a  los desafíos presentados por ese singular contexto histórico, político e  intelectual. En ese mismo sentido, podemos indicar que el objetivo general de  nuestro trabajo consiste en brindar una interpretación de ese debate ubicado en  la antesala de las discusiones modernas acerca de la tolerancia. Asimismo, podemos  señalar que nuestros dos objetivos específicos son los siguientes: el primero  consiste en ofrecer una interpretación de las diversas posiciones asumidas  frente al conflicto por los tres autores mencionados (en donde residirá, también, nuestra mayor originalidad); el segundo, en indicar una serie de posibles  puntos de continuidad y de ruptura entre aquellas posiciones "prehistóricas" y las desarrolladas por  diversos filósofos en el transcurso de los siglos XVII y XVIII.

This article rethinks the problem of religious (in)tolerance by analyzing the 2015 deportation of three " Hindu priests " from a Caribbean nation for the practice of obeah. Defined popularly as " witchcraft " or " African tradition, " obeah was first criminalized as the alleged inspiration for the largest slave uprising of the eighteenth century British Caribbean. I argue that the recent deportations in a nation that constitutionally enshrines freedom of conscience foregrounds some of the foundational limits of liberal secularism. I trace a genealogy of liberalism to critique the secular ideal of the " freedom from difference. " I suggest that attempts to invoke " spirituality " as a more inclusive idiom for denigrated forms of " not-religion " such as obeah extend rather than eliminate these limits of liberal secularism. I close by drawing some parallels with anti-Muslim nationalism in the U.S. and suggest some ways of thinking about a trinary formation of religion, not-religion, and secular power in modern nation-states.

From amazon.com:
""Whoever needs an act of faith to elucidate an event that can be explained by reason is a fool, and unworthy of reasonable thought." This line, spoken by the notorious 18th-century libertine Giacomo Casanova, illustrates a deeply entrenched perception of religion, as prevalent today as it was hundreds of years ago. It is the sentiment behind the narrative that Catholic beliefs were incompatible with the Enlightenment ideals. Catholics, many claim, are superstitious and traditional, opposed to democracy and gender equality, and hostile to science. It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that Casanova himself was a Catholic. In The Catholic Enlightenment, Ulrich Lehner points to such figures as representatives of a long-overlooked thread of a reform-minded Catholicism, which engaged Enlightenment ideals with as much fervor and intellectual gravity as anyone. Their story opens new pathways for understanding how faith and modernity can interact in our own time.

Lehner begins two hundred years before the Enlightenment, when the Protestant Reformation destroyed the hegemony Catholicism had enjoyed for centuries. During this time the Catholic Church instituted several reforms, such as better education for pastors, more liberal ideas about the roles of women, and an emphasis on human freedom as a critical feature of theology. These actions formed the foundation of the Enlightenment's belief in individual freedom. While giants like Spinoza, Locke, and Voltaire became some of the most influential voices of the time, Catholic Enlighteners were right alongside them. They denounced fanaticism, superstition, and prejudice as irreconcilable with the Enlightenment agenda.

In 1789, the French Revolution dealt a devastating blow to their cause, disillusioning many Catholics against the idea of modernization. Popes accumulated ever more power and the Catholic Enlightenment was snuffed out. It was not until the Second Vatican Council in 1962 that questions of Catholicism's compatibility with modernity would be broached again.

Ulrich Lehner tells, for the first time, the forgotten story of these reform-minded Catholics. As Pope Francis pushes the boundaries of Catholicism even further, and Catholics once again grapple with these questions, this book will prove to be required reading."

In this paper the author presents and philosophically analyses how, respectively, Spinoza in the TTP, Bayle in the Commentaire philosophique, and Locke in the Epistola de tolerantia and other texts, conceive of the possible metaphysical reasons for religious toleration. The comparison will show that although all three authors argue for toleration in religious matters, they do this on essentially different metaphysical bases so the apparent resemblance between their theories is limited to the 'surface.'

Resumo: O propósito do presente artigo é apresentar a defesa da tolerância realizada por John Locke na Carta sobre a Tolerância e avaliar se ela pode ser interpretada como uma reivindicação da laicidade do Estado. De modo mais específico, o que se almeja é analisar a distinção entre os fins do Estado e da Igreja tal como proposta por Locke e verificar em que medida ela corresponde ao conceito de laicidade formulado na Declaração Universal da Laicidade no Século XXI.

Abstract: This article presents John Locke’s defence of toleration in the Epistola de Tolerantia and assesses the possibility of interpreting it as a vindication of a secular State. In particular, the goal is to analyse Locke’s distinction of the ends of Church and State and to determine to which degree it answers to the concept of laïcité formulated in the Universal Declaration of Laïcité in the 21st century.

By rigorously distinguishing between crime and sin, the Enlightenment philosophers and jurists involved in the secularization of criminal law didn’t merely applied in this area the major achievements of the Locke’s concept of religious toleration. Besides the question of the criminal assessment of religious offences arises in fact that of the religious assessment of criminal offences. The penal application of the concept of toleration, which claims that not every sin is a crime, must therefore be distinguished from the subsequent emergence of a concept of penal toleration, which claims that no crime is a sin and which, consequently, leads to banish any religious presupposition from the definition and classification of criminal offences. It was Cesare Beccaria who first introduced this concept.  _____  En distinguant rigoureusement entre crime et péché, les philosophes et juristes des Lumières ayant œuvré à la laïcisation du droit pénal ne se sont pas contentés d’appliquer dans ce domaine les grands acquis du concept de tolérance religieuse tel qu’il avait été formulé par Locke. Outre la question de l’évaluation pénale des infractions religieuses se pose en effet la question de l’évaluation religieuse des infractions pénales. L’application pénale du concept de tolérance, qui affirme que certains péchés ne sont pas des crimes, doit donc être distinguée de l’émergence ultérieure d’un concept de tolérance pénale, qui affirme qu’aucun crime n’est un péché et qui, en conséquence, invite à dépouiller toute qualification pénale de ses présupposés religieux. Il est revenu à Beccaria d’exposer pour la première fois ce concept.

La libertad de comercio se convertirá, por su parte, un factor crucial para el progreso del principio de la tolerancia: la prosperidad comercial era un argumento quecomo el sosiego político-resultaba poderosamente convincente, aún más que los motivos de caridad evangélica, cuando se presentaba como un camino a la prosperidad. Baruch de Spinoza, como miembro de la población judía radicada en los Países Bajos, reaccionaba en contra de la intolerancia religiosa y abogaba por la relativa independencia de la religión 7 POCOCK, Sigue así el discurso de Quintana, cubriendo punto por punto las afirmaciones de Burke: el cristianismo no está reñido con los derechos del hombre y la sociedad; los ampara en cuanto éstos no sean abusados por los filósofos que engañan a los ciudadanos. Así hace Burke, a los ojos de Quintana, desviando la verdad y mintiendo sobre la historia 91 Quintana, en Burke, op.cit., p. 281 92 Ibíd., pp.286-288 93 Ibíd., p291 94 Ibíd., p.296 95 Ibíd., p. 298

Il comitato assicura attraverso un percorso di double blind peer review la validità scientifica dei volumi pubblicati I lettori che desiderano informarsi sui libri e le riviste da noi pubblicati possono consultare il nostro sito Internet: www.francoangeli.it e iscriversi nella home page al servizio "Informatemi" per ricevere via e-mail le segnalazioni delle novità FrancoAngeli CENTRO PER LA STORIA DELL'UNIVERSITÀ DI PADOVA VITTORIA FEOLA MOBILITÀ CONFESSIONALE, COSTITUZIONE E TOLLERANZA Lo spazio transatlantico inglese in età moderna Questo libro è stato pubblicato nell'ambito del L'opera, comprese tutte le sue parti, è tutelata dalla legge sul diritto d'autore. L'Utente nel momento in cui effettua il download dell'opera accetta tutte le condizioni della licenza d'uso dell'opera previste e comunicate sul sito www.francoangeli.it.

In Baptist histories, English preacher Matthew Caffyn (1628-1714), thanks to his unorthodox Christology, is regularly identified as a theological deviant, and one working under the influence of ‘eighteenth-century rationalism’ or other external forces. By reconsidering the progress of unorthodox Christology among the early Baptists and other Reformers, I argue that Caffyn’s Christology represents not a sudden aberration, but an unsurprising expression of the elemental Baptist instinct. This instinct includes a commitment to being scriptural, to primitivism, and to theological tolerance within the community. In this light, I argue that Caffyn’s place in the Baptist tradition must be revisited in future histories.

I argue that in the seven "dogmas of the universal faith," which are
introduced in chapter XIV of the 7heological-Political Treatise,
Spinoza reinterprets the traditional view of a minimal credo required
for salvation. The dogmas are dialectical propositions that
are true insofar as they are practically useful. Instead of obtaining
salvation for the soul, the dogmas aid in the preservation of the
body, particularly through the regulation of religion within the
state. I show that reading the dogmas in light of Spinoza's method
of interpreting Scripture is crucial to the understanding of their
function in religion. In conclusion. I claim that the dogmas do not
lead to the abolition of traditional religion, as some have claimed.
but rather support the toleration of diverse religious practices.

Abstract
Beginning from the consciousness of the difficulty of applying to the ancient times a concept born in the modern age, this article aims at laying a methodological back- ground for a research on the attitudes of pagan polytheism and Christian monotheism towards religious minorities. A first historical-religious comparison among Symmachus, Ambrose and Cassiodorus has pointed out that, in referring to a string of terms such as publicus, privatus, religio, superstitio, dissimulatio, coniventia, fides, it is necessary to specify every time their meaning and to better mirror the complexity of ever changing historical phenomena.
Résumé
À partir de la conscience de la difficulté d’appliquer un concept apparu à l’époque moderne dans un contexte ancien, l’article entend jeter les bases méthodologiques d’une recherche sur les attitudes du polythéisme païen et du monothéisme chrétien envers les minorités religieuses. Une première comparaison historico-religieuse entre Symmaque, Ambroise et Cassiodore a mis en évidence comment il faut faire référence à un ensem- ble de mots, tels que publicus, privatus, religio, superstitio, dissimulatio, coniventia, fides, pour préciser de fois en fois le sens à donner à ces termes et mieux envisager la complexité des phénomènes historiques sur la longue durée.

Two years after the publication of Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he sought advice from his Irish friend, William Molyneux, concerning improvements for the second edition. This discussion resulted in the most substantial alterations of the Essay. Among these changes, Molyneux proposed a "Jocose Problem"-a 17th Century "brain-teaser"-concerning the ability of a formerly blind person to recognize the simple difference between the appearance of a cube and a sphere. Molyneux's jocose riddle eventually awakened "the greatest philosophic interest" and became the "common center" of attention for 18th Century thinkers like Berkeley, Voltaire, and Diderot (Cassirer 1951, 108-9). The following is meant to reintroduce Molyneux's Problem by suggesting its origin in the thought of Thomas Hobbes and its bearing on the role of religion in public life. After examining Molyneux's Problem and its importance for understanding the Essay, I conclude with a brief comparison to Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration in order to stress its bearing on theoretical and practical considerations for a wide range of political scientists.

Why should we be tolerant? What does it mean to ‘live and let live’? What ought to be tolerated and what not?

Toleration: A Critical Introduction is a comprehensive and accessible philosophical introduction to toleration that focuses on the latest developments in its theory and practice.  The first part of the book clearly and coherently introduces and assesses the major theoretical accounts of toleration by examining principles and problems of toleration issuing from scepticism, value pluralism and the demands of reasonableness. Catriona McKinnon also draws on major liberal thinkers – from Locke and Mill to Rawls and Feinberg – in developing an account of harm fit to set the limits of toleration.

In the second part of the book, McKinnon applies the theories of toleration to urgent contemporary problems such as female circumcision, the French headscarves affair, artistic freedom, pornography and censorship, and holocaust denial.

Toleration: A Critical Introduction provides a solid theoretical base for the value of toleration, while considering the detail of challenges to toleration in practice. It is an ideal starting point for those coming to the topic for the first time, and for anyone interested in the challenges facing toleration today.

40 essays by Ronnie Hsia, Ulrich Leinsle, Marius Reiser, Thomas Marschler, Trent Pomplun, Jean-Louis Quantin, William O'Brien SJ, Stefania Tutino, Carl Trueman, Andreas Beck, Willem van Asselt, Eric Carlsson, Stephen Hampton, Benjamin Mayes, Robert Kolb, Risto Saarinnen, Ola Tjorholm, Sarah Mortimer, Jeff Bach, Keith Stanglin, Hartmut Lehmann, Jonathan Strom, Craig Atwood, Stephen Burnett, Emanuele Colombo, Aza Goudriaan, Carolina Armenteros, Eric Watkins, Maria Rosa Antognazza, Stephen Gaukroger, Jonathan Israel, John Henry.

Eine Sammlung von drei Aufsätzen, die thematisch eng miteinander verbunden sind und eine kritische Analyse des Begriffs "Neuzeit" bieten.

1. Die Neuzeit als Spiegelbild des antiken Christentums (S.1-50)
Spiegelbild, insofern  "Neuzeit" als geistige Bewegung (nicht als bloßer Periodenbegriff) eine Umkehrung der Synthesen, welche das antike Christentum geleistet hat und ein Auseinanderlaufen in eine Vielfalt zentrifugaler Tendenzen, deren Identität alleine in dem gemeinsamen Ausgangspunkt besteht, von dem sie sich abwenden: der christlichen Synthese.

2. Konkurrierende Konzepte von Toleranz in der frühen Neuzeit (S.51-96)
Weist den Toleranzgedanken Sebastian Castellios als einen wesentlichen Faktor für die Neuzeit als geistiger Bewegung auf: Toleranz wird darauf begründet, daß die strittigen Fragen unwesentlich oder nicht gewißheitsfähig sind. Demgegenüber wird das Toleranzkonzept Luthers vorgestellt, das an der Gewissheit wesentlicher religiöser Wahrheiten festhält, sie aber zugleich dem Zugriff gewaltsamer menschlicher Einflußnahmen entzieht.

3. Christentum und Geschichte: Troeltsch – Newman – Luther – Barth (S.97-155)

Weist die Identität des Christentums in der Geschichte auf: der Neuprotestantismus, wie in Troeltsch vorstellt, ist dabei eine Zerfallsprodukt des protestantischen Christentums, eine Zwischenetappe der Säkularisierung. Die Bewahrung des Christentums ist der Geschichte ist nicht das Ergebnis einer immanenten Kraft, sondern des Erbarmens Gottes, welches eine Kontinuität im Wandel der Geschichte bewirkt.

La via dritta della salute. Tolleranza e convivenza nell'Europa dell'età moderna di michaeLa vaLente «Quanto più in questa mia ultima persecuzione m'ha scacciato il mondo, tanto più ho io sentito che Dio m'ha abraciato», così scriveva Bernardino Ochino, definito eretico da tutte le chiese 1 . Per distruggere questa consolatoria immagine di essere nel giusto perché vittima di persecuzione, si opposero fiumi di inchiostro su montagne di carta dal momento che con l'imporsi della Riforma, in Europa gli stati e le chiese fecero fronte rendendo impossibile la convivenza tra fedi diverse, giungendo a adottare misure estreme, quali l'espulsione o la ghettizzazione 2 . Al con-1 m. FiRPo, Boni Christiani merito vocantur haeretici: Bernardino Ochino e la tolleranza, in: La formazione storica della alterità. Studi di storia della tolleranza nell'età moderna offerti a Antonio Rotondò, a cura di H.

One of the defining features of the English Revolution is 'its astonishing intellectual fertility'. 1 In contrast to other contemporary upheavals in Scotland, Ireland, France and Spain, the revolution in England generated an unprecedented volume of print and an extraordinary range of competing ideas. Pamphlet wars were fought over a multitude of issues, but few debates were so fierce, so protracted and so seminal as the controversy over toleration. After its full-scale eruption in 1644, the toleration controversy surged on throughout the revolutionary years and into the Restoration era. Nowhere else in seventeenth-century Europe, with the possible exception of the Netherlands, produced such a rich literature on religious toleration. Unsurprisingly, scholars have written a great deal about 'the great English toleration controversy'. 2 The Harvard historian, W. K. Jordan, provided the most comprehensive treatment in his four-volume work, The Development of Religious Toleration in England (1932-40). Volumes III and IV were devoted to the 1640s and 1 Jonathan Scott, England's Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Stability in European Context (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 21, 33. Scott refers more generally to the intellectual fertility of seventeenth-century England, but the revolutionary decades are at the heart of his analysis. 2 See Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of Toleration Came to the West (Princeton, 2003), ch. 6: 'The Great English Toleration Controversy, 1640-1660'.

This chapter examines some central features to liberal conceptions of toleration and liberty of conscience. The first section briefly examines conceptions of toleration and liberty of conscience in the traditions of Locke, Rawls, and Mill. The second section considers contemporary controversies surrounding toleration and liberty of conscience with a focus on neutrality and equality. The third section examines several challenges, including whether non-religious values should be afforded the same degree of accommodation as religious values, whether liberty of conscience requires a secular state, and how bias impedes understandings of toleration and liberty of conscience. The chapter concludes with brief comments on future directions for research on toleration and liberty of conscience. One is exploring toleration and liberty of conscience in non-Western contexts; another is exploring ways that varieties of religious and political identity impact conceptions of toleration and liberty of conscience. Liberty of conscience is central to liberal conceptions of toleration. One tradition that runs from John Locke (1983) through John Rawls (2005) holds that liberty of conscience is a fundamental right. A conception of the person as free and equal is a primary moral basis for toleration on this view. John Stuart Mill (1978) represents another tradition. On his view, utility is the moral basis for toleration and liberty of conscience. Both collective and individual interests are best promoted by a policy of toleration that extends to religious among other value commitments. The limits to liberty are set by the harm principle: toleration extends to beliefs and actions that do not cause or pose a significant risk of harm to others. Political philosophers in both traditions claim that liberty of conscience is a fundamental feature to a liberal conception of toleration.