Paradoxes of Religious Toleration in Early Modern Political Thought
Paradoxes of Religious Toleration in Early Modern Political Thought

Author: John Christian Laursen

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2012-06-21

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0739172182

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In today’s developed world, much of what people believe about religious toleration has evolved from crucial innovations in toleration theory developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thinkers from that period have been rightly celebrated for creating influential, liberating concepts and ideas that have enabled many of us to live in peace. However, their work was certainly not perfect. In this enlightening volume, John Christian Laursen and María José Villaverde have gathered contributors to focus on the paradoxes, blindspots, unexpected flaws, or ambiguities in early modern toleration theories and practices. Each chapter explores the complexities, complications, and inconsistencies that came up in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as people grappled with the idea of toleration. In understanding the weaknesses, contradictions, and ambivalences in other theories, they hope to provoke thought about the defects in ways of thinking about toleration in order to help in overcoming similar problems in contemporary toleration theories.

Paradoxes of Religious Toleration in Early Modern Political Thought
Paradoxes of Religious Toleration in Early Modern Political Thought

Author: John Christian Laursen

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0739172174

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In today's developed world, much of what people believe about religious toleration has evolved from crucial innovations in toleration theory developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thinkers from that period have been rightly celebrated for creating influential, liberating concepts and ideas that have enabled many of us to live in peace. However, their work was certainly not perfect. In this enlightening volume, John Christian Laursen and Mar a Jos Villaverde have gathered contributors to focus on the paradoxes, blindspots, unexpected flaws, or ambiguities in early modern toleration theories and practices. Each chapter explores the complexities, complications, and inconsistencies that came up in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as people grappled with the idea of toleration. In understanding the weaknesses, contradictions, and ambivalences in other theories, they hope to provoke thought about the defects in ways of thinking about toleration in order to help in overcoming similar problems in contemporary toleration theories.

The Paradox of Liberation
The Paradox of Liberation

Author: Michael Walzer

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2015-03-01

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 0300213913

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Many of the successful campaigns for national liberation in the years following World War II were initially based on democratic and secular ideals. Once established, however, the newly independent nations had to deal with entirely unexpected religious fierceness. Michael Walzer, one of America’s foremost political thinkers, examines this perplexing trend by studying India, Israel, and Algeria, three nations whose founding principles and institutions have been sharply attacked by three completely different groups of religious revivalists: Hindu militants, ultra-Orthodox Jews and messianic Zionists, and Islamic radicals. In his provocative, well-reasoned discussion, Walzer asks why these secular democratic movements have failed to sustain their hegemony: Why have they been unable to reproduce their political culture beyond one or two generations? In a postscript, he compares the difficulties of contemporary secularism to the successful establishment of secular politics in the early American republic—thereby making an argument for American exceptionalism but gravely noting that we may be less exceptional today.

Reading between the lines – Leo Strauss and the history of early modern philosophy
Reading between the lines – Leo Strauss and the history of early modern philosophy

Author: Winfried Schröder

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2015-11-13

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 3110424290

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Since its publication in 1952, Leo Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing has stirred considerable controversy, particularly among historians concerned with early modern philosophy. On the one hand, several scholars share his view that it would be inadequate to generally take at face value the explicit message of texts which were composed in an era in which severe sanctions were imposed on those who entertained deviating views. ‘Reading between the lines’ therefore seems to be the appropriate hermeneutical approach. On the other hand, the risks of such an interpretative maxim are more than obvious, as it might come up to an unlimited license to ascribe heterodox doctrines to early modern philosophers whose manifest teachings were in harmony with the orthodox positions of their time. The conributions to this volume both address these methodological issues and discuss paradigmatic cases of authors who might indeed be candidates for a Straussian ‘reading between the lines’: Hobbes, Spinoza, and Bayle.

Political Liberalism
Political Liberalism

Author: John Rawls

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2005-03-24

Total Pages: 588

ISBN-13: 0231527535

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This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in A Theory of Justice but changes its philosophical interpretation in a fundamental way. That previous work assumed what Rawls calls a "well-ordered society," one that is stable and relatively homogenous in its basic moral beliefs and in which there is broad agreement about what constitutes the good life. Yet in modern democratic society a plurality of incompatible and irreconcilable doctrines—religious, philosophical, and moral—coexist within the framework of democratic institutions. Recognizing this as a permanent condition of democracy, Rawls asks how a stable and just society of free and equal citizens can live in concord when divided by reasonable but incompatible doctrines? This edition includes the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," which outlines Rawls' plans to revise Political Liberalism, which were cut short by his death. "An extraordinary well-reasoned commentary on A Theory of Justice...a decisive turn towards political philosophy." —Times Literary Supplement

Toleration in Conflict
Toleration in Conflict

Author: Rainer Forst

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-01-17

Total Pages: 662

ISBN-13: 0521885779

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This book represents the most comprehensive historical and systematic study of the theory and practice of toleration ever written.

Reformations
Reformations

Author: Carlos M. N. Eire

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2016-06-28

Total Pages: 914

ISBN-13: 0300220685

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This fast-paced survey of Western civilization’s transition from the Middle Ages to modernity brings that tumultuous period vividly to life. Carlos Eire, popular professor and gifted writer, chronicles the two-hundred-year era of the Renaissance and Reformation with particular attention to issues that persist as concerns in the present day. Eire connects the Protestant and Catholic Reformations in new and profound ways, and he demonstrates convincingly that this crucial turning point in history not only affected people long gone, but continues to shape our world and define who we are today. The book focuses on the vast changes that took place in Western civilization between 1450 and 1650, from Gutenberg’s printing press and the subsequent revolution in the spread of ideas to the close of the Thirty Years’ War. Eire devotes equal attention to the various Protestant traditions and churches as well as to Catholicism, skepticism, and secularism, and he takes into account the expansion of European culture and religion into other lands, particularly the Americas and Asia. He also underscores how changes in religion transformed the Western secular world. A book created with students and nonspecialists in mind, Reformations is an inspiring, provocative volume for any reader who is curious about the role of ideas and beliefs in history.

Spinoza and the Freedom of Philosophizing
Spinoza and the Freedom of Philosophizing

Author: Mogens Lærke

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2021-02-25

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0192895419

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This study considers freedom of speech and the rules of engagement in the public sphere; good government, civic responsibility, and public education; and the foundations of religion and society, as seen through the eyes of seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher, Spinoza.

Law and the Christian Tradition in Modern Russia
Law and the Christian Tradition in Modern Russia

Author: Paul Valliere

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-09-16

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1000427943

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This book, authored by an international group of scholars, focuses on a vibrant central current within the history of Russian legal thought: how Christianity, and theistic belief generally, has inspired the aspiration to the rule of law in Russia, informed Russian philosophies of law, and shaped legal practices. Following a substantial introduction to the phenomenon of Russian legal consciousness, the volume presents twelve concise, non-technical portraits of modern Russian jurists and philosophers of law whose thought was shaped significantly by Orthodox Christian faith or theistic belief. Also included are chapters on the role the Orthodox Church has played in the legal culture of Russia and on the contribution of modern Russian scholars to the critical investigation of Orthodox canon law. The collection embraces the most creative period of Russian legal thought—the century and a half from the later Enlightenment to the Russian emigration following the Bolshevik Revolution. This book will merit the attention of anyone interested in the connections between law and religion in modern times.