Abstract
On a natural reading of his philosophy, Hobbes appears as a paradigmatic opponent of religious toleration. His official position is that the church is subordinate to the state, which in turn has the right and duty to determine what religious doctrines will be espoused and what forms of religious worship will be practiced by members of that state. However, the received view of Hobbes as anti-tolerationist has been increasingly challenged in recent decades. In a seminal article, Alan Ryan (1988) suggests that we might understand Hobbes as allowing more room for religious diversity than had previously been thought. Richard Tuck (1990) followed with the stronger claim that Leviathan was in fact a “defense of toleration.” Tuck argues that Hobbes, especially in his later works, supported many of the tolerationist policies advocated by John Locke and so should be read as a kind of intellectual ally to Locke, as least on this particular issue. Ed Curley (2007) accepts the idea that Hobbes’s philosophy is “favorable to toleration”, but insists on a “more nuanced verdict”, namely, that the Latin Leviathan is more so than the English Leviathan.
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Notes
- 1.
Cited in Ryan.
- 2.
Ryan points out that “Compelle intrare had long been the basis of Catholic thinking on the absurdity of tolerating heretics; neither the Puritan contemporaries of Hobbes , nor his Anglican assailants, were going to appeal to a Papal Bull for authority, but they were content with the same logic.” Note that there is a great deal more to be said about these types of arguments; however, since they are not the arguments invoked by Hobbes , I will offer only this vastly oversimplified summary.
- 3.
The Five-Mile Act was not rescinded until 1812.
- 4.
See Wootton’s Introduction to his edition of Locke ’s Political Writings for an excellent analysis of the transformation of Locke’s views.
- 5.
This point becomes even clearer if we consider how Locke might have responded to the Shafto and Aquinas position.
- 6.
It is worth noting here the connection that Locke makes between conscience and responsibility: we are responsible for our own beliefs – the buck stops with each believer.
- 7.
This is remarkably similar to the position of Brownlee (2006) on civil disobedience.
- 8.
Again, there was the rare exception. John Foxe articulated a “sweeping doctrine of tolerance, even towards Catholics,” even though he “detested [their] doctrines with every fibre of his being”. And the radical Protestant groups who sometimes advocated for toleration that included atheists also sometimes included Catholics (Dickens 1989, 379).
- 9.
Note that Locke makes the same exact two points.
- 10.
Voltaire ’s phrase was used in his disparagement of the royalty and clergy, whom he accused of breeding superstition and intolerance within the people.
- 11.
Curley is importing modern-day notions here; Hobbes did not see the protection of religious liberty as a good in itself, as we (arguably) do today. But more importantly, Curley simply concludes with this observation – literally. The remarks I quoted are at the very end of his article. He does not draw out the implication that most religions as we know them would not pass the Hobbesian test of tolerability. More importantly, if this is right, all of those churches will need to be “pulled down.” The Hobbesian state will be required to prevent the emergence of clergy, in this sense, and to “pull down” the ones already in existence.
References
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Sreedhar, S. (2017). Rethinking Hobbes and Locke on Toleration. In: Speight, C., Zank, M. (eds) Politics, Religion and Political Theology. Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1082-2_4
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