Locke: Letter Concerning Toleration

J. R. and Philip Milton present the first critical edition of John Locke's Essay concerning Toleration, based on all extant manuscripts, and a number of other writings on law and politics composed between 1667 and 1683. Although Locke never published any of these works himself they are of very great interest for students of his intellectual development because they are markedly different from the early works he wrote while at Oxford and show him working out ideas that were to appear (...) in his mature political writings, the Two Treatises of Government and the Epistola de Tolerantia. With authoritative contextual guidance from the editors, this will be an invaluable resource for all historians of early modern philosophy, of legal, political, and religious thought, and of 17th century Britain. (shrink)

John Locke's subtle and influential defense of religious toleration as argued in his seminal _Letter Concerning Toleration_ appears in this edition as introduced by one of our most distinguished political theorists and historians of political thought.

This article turns to early modern and Enlightenment advocates of tolerance in order to discover and lay bare the line of argument that informed their commitment to free speech. This line of argument will subsequently be used to assess the shift from free speech to the contemporary ideal of free self-expression. In order to take this assessment one step further, this article will finally turn to Immanuel Kant’s famous defense of the public use of reason. In the wake of Katerina (...) Deligiorgi’s readings of Kant, it will show that the idea of free speech requires a specific disposition on behalf of speakers and writers that is in danger of being neglected in the contemporary prevailing conception of free speech as freedom of self-expression. (shrink)

Though several editions of Locke's Letter of Toleration art available, the unique value of this volume lies in the fact that it conbines both the text of the Letter and interpretative, critical essays. Several essays are reprints of the most important articles on the Letter , but there is also new material , specially commissioned for the volume and published here for the first time. Given the importance of Locke's Letter on Toleration , this volume will be welcomed by both (...) students and teachers of political philosophy, the history of political thought, as well as philosophy and politics generally. (shrink)

Locke composed the Epistola de Tolerantia, in all probability, during the late Autumn of 1685 when he was a prudent exile in Holland, suspected of complicity in Shaftesbury’s plots against Charles II. Before going to Holland, at the age of 51, he had published nothing except some occasional verse; but he had made many notes and drafts on a variety of subjects like political sovereignty, religion, morality, natural law, epistemology—subjects on which he was later to become one of the foremost (...) spokesmen for English philosophy. Toleration was such a subject and a particularly sensitive one, in the circumstances of Locke’s exile and because of the heated controversies it engendered in the Europe of the seventeenth century. His stay in Holland provided the necessary leisure and the conversation of his friends, notably Philip van Limborch, the necessary stimulus. The Epistola de Tolerantia, addressed to Limborch, was published at Gouda in 1689—anonymously, as might be expected, for Locke was an excessively discreet man in such regards. The authorship, however, was soon an open secret; there is a letter of testy remonstrance in which Locke asks Limborch whether he had revealed the secret and Limborch’s reply to the effect that the authorship was widely-known in England and that, when asked point-blank, he could not but tell the truth and confirm it. This exchange took place after Locke had returned to England. (shrink)

J. R. and Philip Milton present the first critical edition of John Locke's Essay concerning Toleration, based on all extant manuscripts, and other writings on law and politics composed between 1667 and 1683. It is an invaluable resource for historians of early modern philosophy, legal, political, and religious thought, and 17th century Britain.