John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture

Major intellectual and cultural history of intolerance and toleration in early modern Enlightenment Europe.

John Marshall (Author)

9780521651141, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 March 2006

776 pages
23.5 x 16.1 x 5.9 cm, 1.352 kg

Review of the hardback: ' … detailed, judicious and rewarding. Any intellectual historian concerned with the social and intellectual framework of toleration in the period, or with the early Enlightenment more broadly, is well served by this magisterial treatment … Marshall's scholarship is tremendous … Marshall's book opens new and valuable windows on the Early Enlightenment … the work is an immense contribution to Lockean and late seventeenth-century scholarship. … suberb.' History of Political Thought

This book is a major intellectual and cultural history of intolerance and toleration in early modern and early Enlightenment Europe. John Marshall offers an extensive study of late seventeenth-century practices of religious intolerance and toleration in England, Ireland, France, Piedmont and the Netherlands and the arguments that John Locke and his associates made in defence of 'universal religious toleration'. He analyses early modern and early Enlightenment discussions of toleration, debates over toleration for Jews and Muslims as well as for Christians, the limits of toleration for the intolerant, atheists, 'libertines' and 'sodomites', and the complex relationships between intolerance and resistance theories including Locke's own Treatises. This study is a significant contribution to the history of the 'republic of letters' of the 1680s and the development of early Enlightenment culture and is essential reading for scholars of early modern European history, religion, political science and philosophy.

Part I. Catholic and Protestant Intolerance in the Later Seventeenth Century: 1. Catholic intolerance, its representations in England c.1678–86, and Locke's Second Treatise
2. Catholic intolerance and the significance of its representations in England, Ireland, and the Netherlands c.1687–92
3. Protestant religious intolerance in England c.1660–c.1700
4. Religious toleration and intolerance in the Netherlands and in the Huguenot community in exile
Part II. Justifications of Intolerance and the Emergence of Arguments for Toleration: Section 1: Justifications of Intolerance to c.1660: 5. Patristic and medieval sources of early modern intolerance: anathematising heretics and schismatics as seditious, pestilential poisoners, 'libertines' and 'sodomites'
6. Heresy and schism, sedition and treason, and 'contrarities' and 'inversions' in the 'Last Days'
7. Catholic and 'Magisterial Reformation' attacks on Anabaptism, Anti-Trinitarianism, and Atheism
8. Anathematising heretics in sixteenth and early seventeenth century French religious polemic
9. Antiheretical and antischismatic literature in England from the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century
Section 2: The Emergence of Tolerationist Arguments and their Condemnation: 10. Early tolerationist arguments and their condemnation
11. Arguments for and against religious toleration in the Netherlands c.1579–c.1680
12. Toleration and intolerance, Jews and Muslims
Section 3: Catholic and Protestant Defences of Intolerance in the Later Seventeenth Century: 13. Catholic justifications of intolerance in the 1680s and 1690s
14. Huguenot justifications of intolerance and debates over resistance in the 1680s and 1690s
15. Justifying intolerance in England c.1660–c.1700
Part III. The 'Early Enlightenment' Defence of Toleration and the 'Republic of Letters' in the 1680s and 1690s: 16. Tolerationist associations in the 1680s and 1690s and virtuous service in the cause of toleration in the 'early enlightenment republic of letters'
17. Political and economic arguments for religious toleration in the 1680s and 1690s
18. Toleration, 'heretics' and 'schismatics'
19. Toleration and Jews, Muslims, and 'Pagans'
20. The historical argument for toleration and 'early Enlightenment' advocacy of 'humanity' and 'civility'
21. Epistemological, philological, theological, and ethical arguments for religious toleration
22. Toleration and the intolerant, Catholics, 'Atheists', 'Libertines' and 'sodomites'.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Social & political philosophy [HPS], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1], European history [HBJD]