Publicity, Privacy, and Religious Toleration in Hobbes's Leviathan

Modern Intellectual History 10 (2):261-291 (2013)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

What motivated an absolutist Erastian who rejected religious freedom, defended uniform public worship, and deemed the public expression of disagreement a catalyst for war to endorse a movement known to history as the champion of toleration, no coercion in religion, and separation of church and state? At least three factors motivated Hobbes’s 1651 endorsement of Independency: the Erastianism of Cromwellian Independency, the influence of the politique tradition, and, paradoxically, the contribution of early-modern practices of toleration to maintaining the public sphere’s religious uniformity. The third factor illustrates how a key function of the emerging private sphere in the early-modern period was to protect uniformity, rather than diversity; it also shows that what was novel was not so much the public/private distinction itself, but the separation of two previously conflated dimensions of publicity – visibility and representativeness – that enabled early-modern Europeans to envisage modes of worship out in the open, yet still private.

Similar books and articles

Locke on Judgement and Religious Toleration.Maria van der Schaar - 2012 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20 (1):41-68.
Castellio vs. Spinoza on Religious Toleration.Edwin Curley - 2000 - The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 7:89-110.
Toleration, Religion and Accommodation.Peter Jones - 2012 - European Journal of Philosophy 23 (3):542-563.
The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes.Jeffrey R. Collins - 2005 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Why Tolerate Religion?Brian Leiter - 2012 - Princeton University Press.
A Pragmatic Defense of Religious Exclusivism.Girard Brenneman - 2006 - The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 8:13-18.

Analytics

Added to PP
2011-12-31

Downloads
557 (#28,886)

6 months
94 (#38,641)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Arash Abizadeh
McGill University

Citations of this work

The return of the intolerant Hobbes.Boleslaw Z. Kabala - 2019 - History of European Ideas 45 (6):785-802.
What toleration is not.Arash Abizadeh - forthcoming - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

View all 8 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

The Foundations of Modern Political Thought.Quentin Skinner - 1978 - Religious Studies 16 (3):375-377.
Hobbes on representation.Quentin Skinner - 2005 - European Journal of Philosophy 13 (2):155–184.
The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes.Jeffrey R. Collins & James Martel - 2009 - Political Theory 37 (5):706-712.
Hobbes contra Liberty of Conscience.Johan Tralau - 2011 - Political Theory 39 (1):58-84.
Tolerantia: A Medieval Concept.Istvan Bejczy - 1997 - Journal of the History of Ideas 58 (3):365-384.

View all 8 references / Add more references