Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration
Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration

Author: Alan Levine

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9780739100240

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This collection of original essays by the nation's leading political theorists examines the origins of modernity, and considers the question of tolerance as a product of early modern religious skepticism. Rather than approaching the problem with a purely historical lens, the authors actively demonstrate the significance of these issues to contemporary debates in political philosophy and public policy. The contributors to Early Modern Skepticism raise and address questions of the utmost significance: Is religious faith necessary for ethical behavior? Is skepticism a fruitful ground from which to argue for toleration? This book will be of interest to historians, philosophers, religious scholars, and political theorists -- anyone concerned about the tensions between private beliefs and public behavior.

How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West
How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West

Author: Perez Zagorin

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2005-10-09

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 0691121427

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Religious intolerance, so terrible and deadly in its recent manifestations, is nothing new. In fact, until after the eighteenth century, Christianity was perhaps the most intolerant of all the great world religions. How Christian Europe and the West went from this extreme to their present universal belief in religious toleration is the momentous story fully told for the first time in this timely and important book by a leading historian of early modern Europe. Perez Zagorin takes readers to a time when both the Catholic Church and the main new Protestant denominations embraced a policy of endorsing religious persecution, coercing unity, and, with the state's help, mercilessly crushing dissent and heresy. This position had its roots in certain intellectual and religious traditions, which Zagorin traces before showing how out of the same traditions came the beginnings of pluralism in the West. Here we see how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century thinkers--writing from religious, theological, and philosophical perspectives--contributed far more than did political expediency or the growth of religious skepticism to advance the cause of toleration. Reading these thinkers--from Erasmus and Sir Thomas More to John Milton and John Locke, among others--Zagorin brings to light a common, if unexpected, thread: concern for the spiritual welfare of religion itself weighed more in the defense of toleration than did any secular or pragmatic arguments. His book--which ranges from England through the Netherlands, the post-1685 Huguenot Diaspora, and the American Colonies--also exposes a close connection between toleration and religious freedom. A far-reaching and incisive discussion of the major writers, thinkers, and controversies responsible for the emergence of religious tolerance in Western society--from the Enlightenment through the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights--this original and richly nuanced work constitutes an essential chapter in the intellectual history of the modern world.

Divided by Faith
Divided by Faith

Author: Benjamin J. Kaplan

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010-03-30

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 0674264940

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As religious violence flares around the world, we are confronted with an acute dilemma: Can people coexist in peace when their basic beliefs are irreconcilable? Benjamin Kaplan responds by taking us back to early modern Europe, when the issue of religious toleration was no less pressing than it is today. Divided by Faith begins in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, when the unity of western Christendom was shattered, and takes us on a panoramic tour of Europe's religious landscape--and its deep fault lines--over the next three centuries. Kaplan's grand canvas reveals the patterns of conflict and toleration among Christians, Jews, and Muslims across the continent, from the British Isles to Poland. It lays bare the complex realities of day-to-day interactions and calls into question the received wisdom that toleration underwent an evolutionary rise as Europe grew more "enlightened." We are given vivid examples of the improvised arrangements that made peaceful coexistence possible, and shown how common folk contributed to toleration as significantly as did intellectuals and rulers. Bloodshed was prevented not by the high ideals of tolerance and individual rights upheld today, but by the pragmatism, charity, and social ties that continued to bind people divided by faith. Divided by Faith is both history from the bottom up and a much-needed challenge to our belief in the triumph of reason over faith. This compelling story reveals that toleration has taken many guises in the past and suggests that it may well do the same in the future.

Beyond the Persecuting Society
Beyond the Persecuting Society

Author: John Christian Laursen

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-07-18

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0812205863

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There is a myth—easily shattered—that Western societies since the Enlightenment have been dedicated to the ideal of protecting the differences between individuals and groups, and another—too readily accepted—that before the rise of secularism in the modern period, intolerance and persecution held sway throughout Europe. In Beyond the Persecuting Society John Christian Laursen, Cary J. Nederman, and nine other scholars dismantle this second generalization. If intolerance and religious persecution have been at the root of some of the greatest suffering in human history, it is nevertheless the case that toleration was practiced and theorized in medieval and early modern Europe on a scale few have realized: Christians and Jews, the English, French, Germans, Dutch, Swiss, Italians, and Spanish had their proponents of and experiments with tolerance well before John Locke penned his famous Letter Concerning Toleration. Moving from Abelard to Aphra Behn, from the apology for the gentiles of the fourteenth-century Talmudic scholar, Menahem ben Solomon Ha-MeIiri, to the rejection of intolerance in the "New Israel" of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Beyond the Persecuting Society offers a detailed and decisive correction to a vision of the past as any less complex in its embrace and abhorrence of diversity than the present.

Sensual Philosophy
Sensual Philosophy

Author: Alan Levine

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780739102473

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Almost since their publication, the writings of Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) have provided rich fodder for the work of scholars in myriad disciplines. Philosophers have considered Montaigne's views on skepticism; historians have examined his views on the Indians; deconstructionists and literary scholars have examined Montaigne's view of the self; and, political scientists have touched on his arguments for toleration. However, because each of these projects has been done largely in isolation, most scholars have failed to see the relationships between the various aspects of Montaigne's thought. Alan Levine, in Sensual Philosophy, unites Montaigne's thought for the first time, ably and convincingly demonstrating the significant role Montaigne played in establishing the liberal ethos in the West. In exploring Montaigne's grounding for liberalism, Levine considers Montaigne's conceptualization of skepticism and its relationship to toleration. He argues that Montaigne's theories of self ground his idea of toleration without leaving it open to the corrosive charges of relativism and nihilism. Levine also articulates the importance of Montaigne's thought for contemporary conceptions of personal freedom, individuality, subjectivity, and self-creation by bringing him into dialogue with modern and postmodern political theorists such as Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Richard Rorty. This lively book persuades those who might be tempted by postmodernism that they should turn to Montaigne instead.

Difference and Dissent
Difference and Dissent

Author: Cary J. Nederman

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780847683765

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This innovative collection points to the need for a reevaluation of the origins of toleration theory. Philosophers, intellectual historians, and political theorists have assumed that the development of the theory of toleration has been a product of the modern world, and John Locke is usually regarded as the first theorist of toleration. The contributors to Difference and Dissent, however, discuss a range of conceptual positions that were employed by medieval and early modern thinkers to support a theory of toleration, and question the claim that Locke's theory of toleration was as original or philosophically adequate as his adherents have asserted.

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe

Author: Desmond M. Clarke

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2011-01-27

Total Pages: 610

ISBN-13: 019955613X

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A team of leading scholars survey the development of philosophy in the period of extraordinary intellectual change from the mid-16th century to the early 18th century. They cover metaphysics and natural philosophy; the mind, the passions, and aesthetics; epistemology, logic, mathematics, and language; ethics and political philosophy; and religion.

The Rule of Moderation
The Rule of Moderation

Author: Ethan H. Shagan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-09-29

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 1139499777

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Why was it that whenever the Tudor-Stuart regime most loudly trumpeted its moderation, that regime was at its most vicious? This groundbreaking book argues that the ideal of moderation, so central to English history and identity, functioned as a tool of social, religious and political power. Thus The Rule of Moderation rewrites the history of early modern England, showing that many of its key developments – the via media of Anglicanism, political liberty, the development of empire and even religious toleration – were defined and defended as instances of coercive moderation, producing the 'middle way' through the forcible restraint of apparently dangerous excesses in Church, state and society. By showing that the quintessentially English quality of moderation was at heart an ideology of control, Ethan Shagan illuminates the subtle violence of English history and explains how, paradoxically, England came to represent reason, civility and moderation to a world it slowly conquered.

Toleration and Identity
Toleration and Identity

Author: Ingrid Creppell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-13

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 113606138X

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Recently, there has been a notable rise in interest in the idea of "toleration", a rise that Ingrid Creppell argues comes more from distressing political developments than positive ones, and almost all of them are related to issues of identity: rampant genocide in the 20th Century, the resurgence of religious fundamentalism around the world; and ethnic-religious wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In Toleration and Identity, Creppell argues that a contemporary ethic of toleration must include recognition of identity issues, and that the traditional liberal ideal of toleration is not sufficiently understood if we define it strictly as one of individual rights and freedom beliefs. Moving back and forth between contemporary debates and the foundational writings of Bodin, Montaigne, Lock, and Defoe, Toleration and Identity provides a fresh perspective on two key ideas deeply connected to current philosophical debates and political issues.