The Limits of Tolerance

Enlightenment Values and Religious Fanaticism

Denis Lacorne, C. Jon Delogu

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780231547048
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Filosofia politica

The modern notion of tolerance—the welcoming of diversity as a force for the common good—emerged in the Age of Enlightenment in the wake of centuries of religious wars. First elaborated by philosophers such as John Locke and Voltaire, religious tolerance gradually gained ground in Europe and North America. But with the resurgence of fanaticism and terrorism, religious tolerance is increasingly being challenged by frightened publics.

In this book, Denis Lacorne traces the emergence of the modern notion of religious tolerance in order to rethink how we should respond to its contemporary tensions. In a wide-ranging argument that spans the Ottoman Empire, the Venetian republic, and recent controversies such as France's burqa ban and the white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, The Limits of Tolerance probes crucial questions: Should we impose limits on freedom of expression in the name of human dignity or decency? Should we accept religious symbols in the public square? Can we tolerate the intolerant? While acknowledging that tolerance can never be entirely without limits, Lacorne defends the Enlightenment concept against recent attempts to circumscribe it, arguing that without it a pluralistic society cannot survive. The winner of the prestigious Prix Montyon de l'Académie Française, The Limits of Tolerance is a powerful reflection on twenty-first-century democracy's most fundamental challenges.

1

TOLERANCE ACCORDING TO JOHN LOCKE

John Locke is probably the most systematic—if not the first—thinker of modern tolerance and for that reason deserves a special place in this book. Locke was fully aware of the many theological, philosophical, and political debates on tolerance that proliferated in the second half of the sixteenth century in the Dutch Republic, Switzerland, France, the German states, and England. His most notable precursors strongly believed that tolerance was integral to the pacification of societies torn apart by the wars of religion. For these thinkers, tolerance was inseparable from a larger set of principles and practices that the sovereign was encouraged to embrace, including civil peace, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, and the separation of spiritual and temporal powers.

THE PRECURSORS

Pierre Du Chastel (1504–1552), the leading chaplain and counselor to King Francis I, denounced the execution of the “heretic” Étienne Dolet while extolling a certain measured skepticism that prefigured the right to freedom of thought. He argued that no mortal should be condemned for heresy, since God alone can know the absolute truth.1 A few years later, Michel de L’Hospital (1507–1573), the chancellor and counselor to Queen Catherine de Medici, used a medical metaphor to illustrate the progress of tolerance and the need to respect the freedom of thought of the king’s subjects. Since the violent remedies of “fire and iron” had not stopped the advance of Protestantism, a different medicine should be tried, one using “softer remedies” that would replace force with persuasion. The proposed solution was “pure politics”; in other words, it did not involve the religious beliefs of the sovereign.2 In a famous speech, Michel de L’Hospital insisted on the necessity of bringing the two sides together in the interest of peace. “Let us abolish those devilish words: partisan, faction, sedition, Lutheran, Huguenot, Papist. Let us not change the name of Christian.”3 This conception of tolerance favored the political over the religious. It advocated the “disestablishment of the church” and the abandonment of the old absolutist principle of “one faith, one law, one king.”4

Étienne Pasquier (1529–1615), a famous jurist and historian of the French monarchy, echoed these principles in his “Exhortation to Princes” and insisted on the importance of encouraging and protecting freedom of conscience. In an unsigned text that circulated widely in Europe, he harangued his readership in strong terms: “For God’s sake, Sirs, do not force our thoughts at sword point. We are all (both Romans and Protestants) Christians, united as one by the holy sacrament of baptism. We worship and revere the same God, if not in the same way at least with the same zealous devotion.… Let us voluntarily obey all the human edicts of our prince.”5 Respect for the conscience of individuals and freedom of religion contribute to the national interest and the peace of the kingdom. The only limit to the form of civil tolerance advocated by Pasquier was the politicization of religion by ministers or overzealous preachers, who might trouble the public order if their sermons veered into calls for sedition. Such excesses deserved to be severely punished.6

Among the Protestants, one finds the best defense of modern tolerance in the works of the humanist teacher and theologian Sebastian Castellio (1515–1563). Residing in Basel after a short stay in Geneva, Castellio provoked an uproar by denouncing Calvin’s intolerance in his Traité des hérétiques (1554). He held Calvin responsible for the trial and execution for heresy and blasphemy of the Spanish physician and theologian Michel Servet, who was burned alive at the stake before the gates of Geneva on October 27, 1553. In particular, Castellio accused Calvin of acting cruelly, in a manner consistent with the Old Testament but contrary to the teachings of the Gospels, and of confusing the temporal and the spiritual. The prince or magistrate had a duty to punish proven crimes such as theft, murder, or adultery. But he should never place himself in the position of God by ordering the execution of those whose religious opinions he considered erroneous. “Killing a man is not defending a doctrine, it is killing a man.” And what is a doctrine? It is a dogma upheld by the doctors of the church, who have every right to punish nonconformist thinkers by excommunicating them or condemning them to exile. The use of the sword, however, should be reserved for civil authorities to punish common-law crimes committed against citizens: “If Servet had wanted to kill Calvin, the magistrate would have been right to defend Calvin [by executing Servet]. But since Servet fought with his writings and reasons, it was with reasons and writings that he should have been refuted.”7

By systematically deconstructing the notion of heresy, Castellio highlighted the absurdity of persecuting men over dogmatic subtleties whose meaning varies from one denomination to another, from city to city, and from country to country. The only important thing was to live a Christian life and ignore useless controversies arising from the “enigmas and obscure questions” that come up so often in Holy Scripture. The truth, Castellio concluded, is a matter of individual conscience and sincerity. It consists in affirming “what one believes, even when one may be mistaken.”8 With these declarations, Castellio laid out the promise of a future utopia: a pluralist society, tolerant, open to all religious faiths, where all men would live “amicably, without any debates or strife, in loving harmony with one another.”9

These authors and many others were all known to John Locke, who had amassed an impressive collection of works devoted to the major religious controversies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.10 An extended stay in France (1675–1679) had also exposed him directly to the effects of the Edict of Nantes and to the multiple challenges it faced during the reign of Louis XIV. Another stay, in the Republic of the United Netherlands (1683–1688), allowed Locke to become familiar with the important theological debates that divided the country’s Protestants and to observe that religious controversies were not incompatible with civil peace and the prosperity of a tolerant population.11 It was in Holland, at the end of 1685 or the beginning of 1686, that Locke wrote, in Latin, his famous Letter Concerning Toleration, during a time of troubles and uncertainty.

In France, Louis XIV had just signed the Edict of Fontainebleau (October 18, 1685), which revoked the Edict of Nantes and accelerated the persecution of Huguenots, who were forced to flee into exile or convert. The same year, in England, a Catholic, the Duke of York, became King James II at the very moment when thousands of Huguenots were going into exile in Germany, England, and the Dutch Republic. In the years before this, Protestant elites and the Anglican leadership had tried to block the Duke of York’s possible accession to the throne. Their failure pushed certain leaders within the Whig party, including Locke, to go into exile in Holland to escape the repressive measures of the duke’s brother, King Charles II, who was already suspected of wanting to create an absolutist Catholic monarchy. Threatened with extradition on charges of subversion, Locke was obliged to change addresses frequently in Holland and to use pseudonyms to hide his real identity.

A LETTER CONCERNING TOLERATION

Locke dedicated his Letter to a personal friend, the Dutch Remonstrant theologian Philipp van Limborch, and he wrote it at a time when he was cultivating relationships with Quakers, Arminians, and Latitudinarians, who all favored new forms of religious tolerance. The Epistola de tolerantia was published anonymously in 1689, simultaneously with William Popple’s English translation. That year marked Locke’s return to his native country directly following the Glorious Revolution and the forced abdication of the Catholic James II.12 The military invasion of William of Orange and the accession to the throne of William and Mary (the son-in-law and daughter of James II) put an end to the Jacobite dream of restoring a Catholic dynasty. William justified his military intervention by claiming the need to restore religious freedom to England and, by extension, reestablish the supremacy of the Anglican religion.

The Letter Concerning Toleration is not a simple political commentary on the recent events that Locke had witnessed but rather an attempt to go beyond those events to offer a comprehensive reflection on the principle of tolerance.13 The Letter begins with a spirited protest against “fiery zealots” who persecute “upon pretence of religion.” Locke does not name them, but he suggests that they are powerful men who aim to impose either an orthodoxy founded on the “antiquity of places and names” and “the pomp of their outward worship” or an ascetic discipline invented by the founders of the Reformation. The reader is therefore encouraged to contemplate both the excesses of the Catholic Inquisition and the rigors of the Republic of Geneva.14 The persecutors, whoever they may be, are enemies of humankind because they demean true Christian virtues, which, says Locke, are founded on “Charity, Meekness, and Good-will.”15 The persecution of schismatics and heretics was extremely violent; no means were too extreme, including “Confiscation of Estate, Imprisonment, Torments.” In the event of failure, the inquisitors’ “burning zeal for God” led to burning the infidel “literally with Fire and Faggot.”16 The persecutor appears all the more detestable because he often acts hypocritically: “cruel and implacable towards those that differ from him in opinion, he be indulgent to such iniquities and immoralities as are unbecoming the name of a Christian.” The immoralities he names, “Adultery, Fornication, Uncleanness, Lasciviousness, Idolatry, and such like things,” form a long list of sins that jeopardize the salvation of those who wish to impose their own idea of salvation.17

Locke’s argument therefore advances the notion of a true faith and true Christianity perverted by zealots pretending to act in the name of a self-proclaimed orthodoxy. Locke ridicules this orthodoxy, underscoring its absurdity by imagining himself in the place of an impartial observer, a Turk, witnessing the discord between Christians in the Ottoman Empire:

Let us suppose two Churches, the one of Arminians, the other of Calvinists, residing in the City of Constantinople. Will any one say that either of these Churches has Right to deprive the Members of the other of their Estates and Liberty (as we see practised elsewhere) because of their differing from it in some Doctrines or Ceremonies, whilst the Turks, in the mean while, silently stand by and laugh to see with what inhumane Cruelty Christians thus rage against Christians? But if one of these Churches hath this Power of treating the other ill, I ask which of them it is to whom that Power belongs, and by what Right? It will be answered, undoubtedly, that it is the Orthodox Church which has the Right of authority over the Erroneous or heretical. This is, in great and specious words, to say just nothing at all. For every Church is Orthodox to itself; to others, Erroneous or Heretical. Whatsoever any Church believes, it believes to be true; and the contrary thereunto it pronounces to be Error.18

Locke’s example is an apt illustration of his quest for the true religious pluralism underpinning his conception of tolerance. Since an impartial observer in Constantinople would be incapable of identifying which is the true religion in the endless disputes between churches, no religious institution has a legitimate right to impose its truth on another or use its powers of coercion.

Contrary to appearances, Locke is not defending a relativist point of view. Certainly, there is not, nor can there be, a preestablished religious orthodoxy. But there exists some transcendental truth that can be grasped by the individual while in solitary communion with his creator. The sole arbiter of ultimate truths is not of this world but is rather “the Supreme judge of all men, to whom also alone belongs the judgment of the erroneous.”19

Locke’s thinking leads to political considerations: the power to control individuals and their possessions or to use “fire and faggot” against recalcitrant subjects does not rightfully belong to ecclesiastical authorities, whose orthodoxy and legitimacy are by definition uncertain. At most, a church, which is no more than “a society of men” united to serve God, may excommunicate wayward members for their lack of faith or for the seriousness of their sins. However, this act of exclusion is symbolic and may not be accompanied by physical violence or the confiscation of the possessions of the excommunicated person. The use of force, reserved for the political authority, prince, or civil magistrate, has the sole objective of protecting the worldly belongings of the state’s subjects, among them “life, liberty, health, and indolency of body [freedom from pain]; and the possession of outward things, such as money, lands, houses, furniture, and the like.”20 There is nothing arbitrary about the use of force; it must obey major political principles and in particular justice, the only guarantor of an impartial execution of the laws.21

The notion of a strict sepa...