John Locke and Toleration

容忍是一个具有持久的历史和理论意义并具有紧迫的现实意义的问题。理解和管理文化和宗教多元化社会所涉及的困难导致了这一点。最近围绕罗文·威廉姆斯博士发表的关于伊斯兰教法的言论引起的轩然大波只证明了这些困难的微妙和它们引起的思想混乱。理论的作用不是解决这些困难，而是消除使它们不可能解决的误解；因为这些误解是随着时间的推移而发展起来的，与困难同步，理论必须得到历史的补充。历史表明，各式各样的现代社会所面临的困难--宗教引发的不满、异议和不信任--与17世纪欧洲分裂的社会所面临的困难惊人地相似，在某些方面也有其特殊性。如果我们希望理解当前的困难，我们必须重新学习，以17世纪最伟大的思想家的想象力、广度和严肃性相结合的方式来思考宗教宽容和异议问题意味着什么。这就是我提出的研究项目《洛克与宽容》的核心学术目标。骆家辉目前的名声在某些方面是令人好奇的。一方面，人们普遍认为，他在后来的自由主义思想中对宽容思想的发展产生了主导影响。因此，他被认为是宽容思想史和自由主义历史上的关键人物，因为他把某些有说服力的观念付诸实施，这些观念对关于宽容的自由主义思维方式的出现和传播起到了核心作用，这种思维方式至今仍在继续存在。另一方面，值得注意的是，在最近关于宽容的文章中，对他作品本身的详细考虑并没有突出表现出来。在政治哲学著作中，他的名字经常被提及，但他的作品，如果读得很长，就会被解读为着眼于当今的类别，并与之相匹配的倾向，即默默地编辑其中不太符合当今利益和假设的部分。重点放在洛克文本中的特定段落上，但他的论点作为一个整体，以及支持它的假设，从人们的视线中消失了。在历史著作中，他的观点是参照据称对他的思想产生影响的不同学派来解释和阐明的。无论如何，骆家辉论证的特殊性、其视野的全面性和特殊性以及其立场的原创性都被系统地掩盖了。因此，该项目有三个解释目的：确定骆家辉关于宽容的成熟立场的基本点，区分这一立场与洛克的前辈、同时代人和反对者提出的立场，以及展示骆家辉的立场如何与更广泛的政治、上帝和人类理解的观点相联系。对这些目标的追求将产生三个主题相关的出版物，(I)一份尚未发表的洛克关于宽容的手稿的批评版(Ii)一篇关于这份手稿的背景和构成的被推荐性期刊上的文章，以及(Iii)一篇关于洛克关于宽容的立场发展的委托章节。总而言之，这些目标包含着一个单一的目的：用自己的术语理解洛克的宽容思想，并在这样做的同时，为今天思考宽容的可能性提供新的曙光。

Toleration is a matter of abiding historical and theoretical interest and of pressing practical importance. The difficulties involved in understanding and in managing culturally and religiously diverse societies make it so. The recent furore surrounding Dr. Rowan Williams' passing remarks about Sharia Law only testifies to the delicacy of these difficulties and the confusions of thought they evoke. The role of theory is not to resolve those difficulties but to clear them of misunderstandings which make their solution impossible; because these misunderstandings have developed over time, in step with the difficulties, theory must be supplemented by history. History shows that the difficulties confronting diverse modern societies - of religiously-inspired dissatisfaction, dissent and mistrust - are strikingly similar to, and in some respects owe their special character to, the difficulties that confronted the divided societies of 17th century Europe. If we wish to understand the difficulties of the present, we must re-learn what it means to think about the problems of religious toleration and dissent with the combination of imagination, breadth and seriousness that characterised the greatest minds of the 17th century. This is the central intellectual objective of my proposed research project, 'John Locke and toleration'.Locke's reputation at the present time is in some respects a curious one. On the one hand he is by common consent acknowledged to have exercised a dominant influence on the development of the idea of toleration in subsequent liberal thought. Thus he is regarded as a key figure in the history of the idea of toleration and of liberalism generally, because he put into currency certain persuasive conceptions which contributed centrally to the emergence and spread of liberal ways of thinking about toleration which continue to ramify in the present. On the other hand, it is noticeable that detailed consideration of his work in its own terms has not figured prominently in recent writing about toleration. In works of political philosophy his name is often invoked but his work, if it is read at any length, is interpreted with an eye to present-day categories and with the matching tendency to silently edit those parts of it which do not accord so well with present-day interests and assumptions. Emphasis is laid on particular passages in Locke's texts but his argument as a whole, and the assumptions that supported it, recede from view. In historical works his views are explained and explicated with reference to the different schools of thought which allegedly exerted an influence upon his thinking. Either way, the special character of Locke's arguments, the comprehensiveness and particularity of his vision, and the originality of his position is systematically obscured.The project therefore has three interpretative aims: to identify the fundamental points in Locke's mature position about toleration, to distinguish this position from the positions formulated by Locke's predecessors, contemporaries and opponents and to show how Locke's position connects to wider views of politics, God and the human understanding. The pursuit of these aims will generate three thematically connected publications, (i) a critical edition of an as yet unpublished Locke manuscript on toleration (ii) an article in a refereed journal about the context and composition of this manuscript and (iii) a commissioned chapter on the development of Locke's position about toleration. Together, these aims embrace a single purpose: to understand Locke's idea of toleration in its own terms and in doing so to shed new light on the possibilities for thinking about toleration today.