John Locke: “A Letter Concerning Toleration” 1686
"Toleration" defined: prohibiting legal discrimination against those of another, usually minority and religious, belief. Requiring equal treatment under the law of religious dissenters. Prohibiting the use of force against religious dissenters to either curtail their civil liberties or to change their beliefs.
Written As A Response To:
2) Government (Parliamentary) imposition Anglican Uniformity in Restoration England:
-- Baptists, Independents, Presbyterians, and Quakers refuse to worship Trinity;
-- These "dissenters" denied full civic rights, legal protection etc.
-- Their property confiscated, jailed, beaten etc.
3) Religious/Civic Persecution and The Inquisition throughout Europe
4) First hand experience: Locke writes as a political exile living in Amsterdam.
Locke’s Premises:
1) When combined, religion and politics are essentially a means of waging “war”: a battle for domination/control/power thru ideology; religious leaders use belief to ferment war.
2) The priesthood had perverted Christianity with two false beliefs:
1) Variation of worship is a sin
2) Christians have a duty to correct deviation and impose uniformity through force.
Locke believed true Christians should “suffer one another to go to heaven every one in his own way”. Christians could only use love and persuasion to change another’s beliefs. (contrast with above contexts)
3) Further, force cannot induce religious change; it simply cannot be accomplished because belief is, by nature, individual and subjective in nature:
-- Martyrs everywhere and for all time would die before changing their beliefs
-- Attempts at forced change only creates hypocrites or violence (which are essentially sinful)
-- Spiritual epistemology cannot be empirically proven; there is no objective criteria for determining which set of beliefs is “better” or more valid
(NOTE: Relationship to tabula rasa “Essay Concerning Human Understanding”)
-- A National Church of any creed is the worst form of these truths; it creates the most violence, discord and hypocrisy
Conclusions: Therefore, Locke's solutions:
1) Toleration:
-- Removes the cause of hostility
-- Breeds trust among dissenting believers
-- Causes religious proliferation (many churches rather than one) which decentralizes power and makes it impossible for a single religious to control the state
* Most Catholics excluded because they vow allegiance to the Pope, not their own state.
2) Codified separation of and state and church powers:
-- The state’s responsibility is entirely and only secular: to protect the public good (peace and security)
“the Magistrate has no Power to impose by his Laws, the use of any Rites and Ceremonies in any Church, so neither he has any Power to forbid the use of such Rites....” (41)
-- The church’s responsibility is entirely and only spiritual: to protect its members’ salvation
-- Thus, the state can only involve itself in those religious matters threatening the public good
Implications Locke Addresses Beyond Religion:
Locke's conclusions and solutions become the basic building blocks of the American Revolution, outlined in the Declaration of Independence, and in turn central to all secular democracies:
-- Man’s religious experience is individual and beyond the realm of state control (this was in direct contrast to all European nations); this implies the sovereign individual has certain abilities, rights and liberties previously only held by the state: individual liberty trumps state control (in many ways, but not completely).
-- Recent History showed that dissenters would violently resist through force of arms laws which conflict with their deepest beliefs, and they would do so “justly and rightly”. Subjects only attack governments when those governments fail to protect the public good.
-- Thus, the threat of civil war acts to keep governments in check. Governments should fear the will of the people. rather than vice versa, a radical idea in its time.
-- Thus, individuals can and should actively voice their criticism of the state.
-- Much of the above also implies that sovereign individuals are equal; one may not impose his or her beliefs upon another through force. Note how this again returns to the tabula rasa theory of knowledge in conjunction with Protestantism (vs. a traditional view of true knowledge being the domain of an elect, authoritarian few).
Locke and Natural Law:
From Second Treatise on Government: "The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it which obliges every one; and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health , liberty , or possessions" (in many ways, this statement sums up "The Age of Enlightenment" values0.
Influence on Voltaire:
Voltaire lives in England 1726-1729 as political exile; quickly learns to read, write, speak English.
Taken in by the British Empirical Philosophy of Locke, Hume and Newton, which he couples to French Analytical-Rationalist Philosophy of Descartes.
Witnesses the relatively peaceful coexistence of diverse religions under a secular, democratic (Parliamentary) state: the legacy of Locke-an Toleration
Returns to France/Europe: essentially translates this confluence of influences into the common European Enlightenment thinking: man is free to choose his own personal destiny; only secular governments can guarantee this right. This is the argument we find in Candide.