Toleration and the Challenges to Liberalism

Johannes Drerup, Gottfried Schweiger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000210101
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

This book explores the relationship between different versions of liberalism and toleration by focusing on their shared theoretical and political challenges.

Toleration is among the most pivotal and the most contested liberal values and virtues. Debates about the conceptual scope, justification, and political role of toleration are closely aligned with historical and contemporary philosophical controversies on the foundations of liberalism. The essays in this volume focus on the specific connection between toleration and liberalism. The essays in Part I reconstruct some of the major historical controversies surrounding toleration and liberalism. Part II centers on general conceptual and justificatory questions concerning toleration as a central category for the definition of liberal political theory. Part III is devoted to the theoretical analysis of applied issues and cases of conflicts of toleration in liberal states and societies.

Toleration and the Challenges to Liberalism will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in social and political philosophy, ethics, and political theory.

Part I
Toleration and Liberalism

Historical Controversies

1John Locke and the “Problem” of Toleration

John William Tate

Introduction

Given the circumstances and the times in which he wrote, John Locke’s primary focus on toleration concerned matters of religion. Religious toleration was a “problem” for John Locke in two significant respects. Firstly, it had potentially adverse implications for civil peace and state security. Secondly, it confronted him with what I call the “moral challenge” of toleration. The following seeks to show how Locke engaged with these “problems”, overcoming them sufficiently to advance, within his political philosophy, arguments in favour of religious toleration justified in terms of (a) a normative commitment to individual liberty and (b) the pragmatic capacity of toleration to achieve objectives of civil peace and state security. The discussion traces the development of Locke’s ideas on toleration from his earliest political writings to his most mature texts, and the shifts in position on toleration that occurred therein. It should be noted that whenever Locke refers, in these writings, to the “magistrate”, he is using this as a shorthand description of those who exercise authorized political and legal authority within a polity.

1. The “Moral Challenge” of Toleration

It was the sixteenth-century Reformation, and its outcomes, which confronted political rulers in central and Western Europe with the practical political problem of how to ensure civil peace and state security within their borders between rival and, at times, belligerent adherents of competing religious faiths. Was the appropriate response to use the instruments of persuasion and force, at the disposal of the state, to enforce outward conformity to the state-endorsed religion upon all those subject to the state’s jurisdiction? Or was the appropriate response to allow such adherents to outwardly express their different religious beliefs and engage in their rival ways of religious worship, so long as such liberties did not interfere with or undermine civil peace or state security? To this question – conformity or toleration – different ruling authorities gave different answers:

It was absolutely impossible in the sixteenth century that the question of how governments should, or had best, deal with religious contumacy, or with “heresy”, should not be widely debated and from many different points of view. It was a question which, however put, directly and acutely affected the lives of multitudes of men and women all over Western Europe. Every government had to make up its mind at least as to practical action; and that in face of all manner of difficulties and complications. To the question as a practical one put in general terms, every possible answer was given. It was maintained that under some circumstances it was expedient, under others inexpedient, to “persecute”, and that the ruler had a right to judge and to act at his discretion. It was also maintained that he had no choice about the matter. It was asserted that he was bound to endeavour to stamp out false religion by force, if force were necessary; it was maintained, on the contrary, that he was bound, morally, to allow people to preach and worship as they pleased, so long as they did not break the peace or incite to breach of it… . “Toleration” as a practical solution of intolerable difficulties and “toleration” as a general principle of action in relation to religious differences, both appear quite early in the sixteenth century.

(Allen, 1960, pp. 73–74)

Indeed, the question of which policy (conformity or toleration) was the most appropriate for ruling authorities to adopt in response to the reality of religious difference was also affected by the motives and ambitions ruling authorities themselves possessed in relation to such difference. Most European ruling authorities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were headed by individual monarchs. If their primary concern, in confronting religious difference within their borders, was a secular one – to ensure civil peace and state security within the areas subject to their jurisdiction – then they could choose between toleration and outward conformity on an entirely pragmatic basis, in terms of which policy was the most instrumentally effective in achieving such outcomes.

If, however, in confronting such religious difference, they were animated by religious motivations – perhaps a desire to advance what they perceived to be “true religion” – then toleration, as a policy, was likely to confront them with a “moral challenge”. After all, a truly conscientious adherent of a salvational faith such as Christianity will be concerned not only about the eternal fate of their own soul, but also the fate of others. If they believe that there is only one “true religion”, whose path alone leads to eternal salvation, then they will be extremely wary of tolerating the public presence of what they consider to be “false religions”, not least because these, being permitted to openly practice, might ensnare the souls of others.

Consequently, the motives and ambitions that political rulers possessed in confronting religious difference had a definite impact on which policy – toleration or religious conformity – they considered most appropriate in such circumstances. If their motives and ambitions were religious, rather than secular, centred on the propagation of “true religion”, toleration might appear to them as an irresponsible policy, since it allowed for the dissemination of what they perceived to be “false religions”, and so endangered the souls of others. It was in this respect that toleration confronted such individuals with a “moral challenge”, since any arguments in favour of toleration had to be balanced against these adverse consequences. As John Coffey points out, toleration was rejected as “irresponsible” by many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century divines in England precisely because of these consequences:

To grant “the publique freedome of heresies”, suggested [Thomas] Bilson, was to countenance the “murder of souls”. [Saint] Augustine, Thomas Case noted, had declared that those who called for liberty of conscience only gained “ ‘Libertatem perditionis’, liberty to destroy themselves”. Instead of shepherding their subjects along the path to heaven, towards true freedom, irresponsible magistrates allowed them the liberty to choose hell. In contrast, the godly ruler should compel the lost to come in to the banquet. “Mercy is cruel”, said [Edwin] Sandys, “and why should not the church compel her abandoned children to return, if her abandoned children compel others to perish?”

(Coffey, 2000, p. 35. My addition)

By contrast, a pragmatic choice between toleration and conformity, informed entirely by which was more effective in ensuring external (secular) objectives such as civil peace or state security, did not elicit a “moral challenge” at all. This is because such choice was not informed by the considerations of “true religion” or the eternal salvation of souls which underwrote this “moral challenge”.

2. Individual Liberty and the “Boundaries of Imposition and Obedience”

John Locke came late to European debates concerning toleration. As explained earlier, these had emerged in the sixteenth century, in response to the religious division produced by the Reformation. Locke began writing on toleration in the second half of the seventeenth century, though even at this time within Europe, the divisions, first ushered in by the Reformation, were still deep and vociferous. Indeed, Locke believed that such divisions, within his own society of England, were endemic and ineradicable. As he put it, when it comes to religion, “every man in what he believes has so far this persuasion that he is in the right” (Locke, 1993a, p. 205), with the result that, in regard to such matters, “diversity of opinions … cannot be avoided” (Locke, 1993b, p. 431).

Locke identified the key contending policy positions, prevalent in his time, available to ruling authorities seeking to respond to the reality of religious difference. These were (as before) a policy of toleration (allowing for the outward expression of religious difference) and the forcible imposition, by these same ruling authorities, of outward conformity to the state-endorsed religion. Locke identified the absence of clarity which, he believed, characterized both these positions within his own time, as follows:

In the question of liberty of conscience, which has for some years been so much bandied amongst us, one thing that hath chiefly perplexed the question, kept up the dispute, and increased the animosity hath been, I conceive, this: that both parties have with equal zeal and mistake too much enlarged their pretensions, whilst one side preach up absolute obedience, and the other claim universal liberty in matters of conscience, without assigning what those things are which have a title to liberty, or showing the boundaries of imposition and obedience.

(Locke, 1993a, p. 186. Emphasis added)

Locke continued to wrestle with this question of individual liberty and the “boundaries of imposition and obedience” throughout his intellectual career. It was precisely this question to which the issue of toleration gave rise. After all, the scope of toleration defined what matters, within an individual’s life, ought not to be interfered with, with the result that that which fell within this scope had, presumably, a “title to liberty”. Everything that fell outside this scope, however, was, in Locke’s view, potentially subject to the magistrate’s command, and therefore fell within the “boundaries of imposition and obedience”.

3. Locke’s Persistent Interest in Toleration

The topic of Locke’s first known political writings was toleration, and these appeared in the unpublished manuscript entitled Two Tracts on Government, believed to have been written by Locke between 1660 and 1662.¹ The subject matter of his final and unfinished written work was also on toleration, this being his Fourth Letter for Toleration, written in response to the Anglican clergyman, Jonas Proast, who was an enthusiastic advocate of the imposition, by the English state, of outward conformity to the Church of England.

The primary difference between these two texts, at either end of Locke’s career, was that in the Two Tracts, Locke was an ardent opponent of toleration, insisting that this was not a responsible or prudential policy for the state to adopt in response to the reality of religious difference. By the time of the Fourth Letter, on the other hand, Locke had capped almost forty years as an indefatigable (but often publicly anonymous) champion of toleration.²

In other words, somewhere in between, Locke had reversed his position on toleration. Whereas toleration had at first appeared to Locke as a “problem” – something to be avoided if ruling authorities wanted to maintain civil peace and state security within the territories subject to their jurisdiction –in some respects it came to appear to him as a “solution”, being considered a necessary means for the attainment of such ends, as well as an important means of individual liberty. On what basis, therefore, did Locke manage to shift his position on toleration, ceasing to perceive it wholly as a “problem” and instead conceiving it, in some respects, as a “solution” to the problems of society and state? It is to this question that the rest of this chapter is devoted.

4. Continuities in Locke’s Political Philosophy

As we shall see, there are certain characteristics that persist throughout John Locke’s writings on toleration, from his early anti-tolerationist writing, The Two Tracts on Government (1660–62), to later pro-tolerationist writing such as An Essay Concerning Toleration (1667) and A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). One persistent characteristic, we shall see, is a commitment to a normative ideal of individual liberty – Locke, however, differing, in these texts, concerning the extent to which this liberty ought to be outwardly expressed. Within the Two Tracts, we shall see that he limits such liberty to a purely inward liberty of conscience, insisting, where necessary in matters of religion, on an outward conformity to the magistrate’s command. In his later writings, his endorsement of a policy of toleration, involving limits on the magistrate’s command, entitles such inner liberty to be outwardly manifest in freedom of religious expression and worship. In each case, Locke endorses individual liberty as a norm, but differs concerning the limits of its outward expression – that is, the “boundary of imposition and obedience” at which toleration of such liberty should cease.

The other source of continuity in Locke’s political writings is that such limits on toleration, and therefore on th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Toleration and the Challenges to Liberalism: Introduction
• Part I Toleration and Liberalism: Historical Controversies 11
• Part II Toleration and the Challenges to Liberalism: Conceptual and Justificatory Issues 77
• Part III Toleration and Liberalism in Context: Cases and Controversies 181
• Contributors
• Index