Lexington Books
Pages: 230
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-0-7391-7216-2 • Hardback • June 2012 • $128.00 • (£98.00)
978-0-7391-7217-9 • Paperback • June 2012 • $57.99 • (£45.00)
978-0-7391-7218-6 • eBook • June 2012 • $55.00 • (£42.00)
John Christian Laursen is professor of political science at the University of California, Riverside.
María José Villaverde is professor of political science at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain.
Introduction: Paradoxes of Toleration in Early Modern Political Thought
John Christian Laursen and María José Villaverde
Chapter 1: Spinoza's Paradoxes: An Atheist who Defended the Scriptures? A Freethinking Alchemist?
María José Villaverde
Chapter 2: Spinoza on Lying for Toleration and his Intolerance of Atheists
John Christian Laursen
Chapter 3: Jansenist Fears and Huguenot Polemics: Arnauld, Jurieu, and Bayle on Obedience and Toleration
Luisa Simonutti
Chapter 4: ‘The general freedom, which all men enjoy’ in a Confessional State: The Paradoxical Language of Politics in the Dutch Republic (1700-1750)
Henri Krop
Chapter 5: A Leibnizian Way to Tolerance: Between Ethical Universalism and Linguistic Diversity
Concha Roldán
Chapter 6: Toleration in China and Siam in Late Seventeenth Century European Travel Literature
Rolando Minuti
Chapter 7: Toleration in Denis Veiras’s Theocracy
Cyrus Masroori
Chapter 8: David Hume on Religious Tolerance
Gerardo López Sastre
Chapter 9: Rousseau, A False Apostle of Tolerance
María José Villaverde
Chapter 10: Intolerance of Fanatics in Bayle, Hume, and Kant
John Christian Laursen
Chapter 11: Tolerance and Intolerance in the Writings of
the French Antiphilosophes (1750-1789)
Jonathan Israel
Chapter 12: Immanuel Kant: Tolerance Seen As Respect
Joaquín Abellán
The greatest intellectual virtue of the essays contained in the present volume is their collective commitment to exploring the diverse and sometimes paradoxical ways in which ideas of religious toleration were deployed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This approach, announced by the editors in their introduction, permits the inclusion of a variety of fresh voices into the discussion of a fraught yet singularly important issue. An eminent group of international scholars explodes many of the myths and misunderstandings that have shrouded the historical roots of religious toleration, contributing innovative insights of direct relevance to twenty-first century debates about how, when, and to whom tolerance should be extended.
— Cary J. Nederman, Texas A&M University
The twelve essays in this excellent collection are linked through their attention to the paradoxical and ironic dimensions of interpretations of toleration in the works of philosophers and writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a period in which toleration remained a nearly insoluble problem, as one contributor put it. The essays bring out a real parallel to our own contemporary wrangling over the extent and meaning of toleration. Which parties or practices deserve space for expression? Are the tolerators the most repressive of all? Writers then as now deployed charges of “fanaticism” and compared the tolerance of Asian vs. western varieties. This collection, edited by Laursen and Villaverde to show how overlapping problems played out, explores these and other conundrums and the brilliant minds who grappled with them. It should be of interest to scholars and students interested in the still essential and vital questions of toleration.
— Ingrid Creppell, George Washington University