John Locke and Toleration

宽容是一个持久的历史和理论兴趣和紧迫的实际重要性的问题。在理解和管理文化和宗教多样性的社会方面所涉及的困难使其成为现实。最近围绕罗文威廉姆斯博士关于伊斯兰教法的评论的愤怒只证明了这些困难的微妙性和它们所引起的思想混乱。理论的作用不在于解决这些困难，而在于消除使这些困难无法解决的误解;因为这些误解是随着时间的推移而发展起来的，所以理论必须与困难同步地得到历史的补充。历史表明，不同的现代社会所面临的困难-由宗教引发的不满、异议和不信任-与17世纪世纪欧洲分裂社会所面临的困难惊人地相似，在某些方面，其特殊性也归因于这些困难。如果我们希望理解目前的困难，我们必须重新学习如何结合想象力、广度和严肃性来思考宗教宽容和异议的问题，这是17世纪最伟大的思想家的特征。这是我所提出的研究项目“约翰·洛克与宽容”的中心思想目标。洛克目前的声誉在某些方面是奇怪的。一方面，他被公认为对后来的自由主义思想中宽容思想的发展产生了支配性的影响。因此，他被认为是宽容思想和自由主义思想史上的一个关键人物，因为他提出了一些有说服力的概念，这些概念对宽容思想的自由主义方式的出现和传播起到了核心作用，这些方式在今天仍然存在。另一方面，值得注意的是，在最近关于宽容的著作中，对他的作品本身的详细考虑并不突出。在政治哲学著作中，他的名字经常被提及，但如果仔细阅读他的著作，人们会着眼于当今的范畴来解释他的著作，并倾向于默默地编辑其中与当今的利益和假设不那么雅阁的部分。重点放在洛克的文本中的特定段落，但他的论点作为一个整体，以及支持它的假设，从视图中消失。在历史著作中，他的观点被解释和阐述，并参考了据称对他的思想产生影响的不同思想流派。无论哪种方式，洛克的论点的特殊性，他的观点的全面性和特殊性，以及他的立场的独创性都被系统地掩盖了。确定洛克关于宽容的成熟立场中的基本观点，将这一立场与洛克的前辈所阐述的立场区分开来，当代人和对手，并显示如何洛克的立场连接到更广泛的政治观点，上帝和人类的理解。这些目标的追求将产生三个主题相关的出版物，（i）一个尚未出版的洛克手稿宽容的关键版本（ii）在一个审阅的期刊上关于这份手稿的背景和组成的文章和（iii）洛克关于宽容的立场的发展委托章节。总之，这些目标包含一个单一的目的：理解洛克的宽容思想，并在这样做，以揭示新的光的可能性，思考今天的宽容。

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.