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Locke's views on toleration and natural law have recently received a 'reassessment' at the hands of John William Tate. This article demonstrates some of the many and various ways in which Tate has mangled Locke's positions and misconstrued the views of interpreters of Locke (myself included) whose interpretations he finds uncongenial. It finds that there are no textual grounds for Tate's claims and invites readers to reassess whether and how far they ought to be taken seriously.

1 WOULD DEFINE TOLERANCE AS THE DEGREE TO WHICH WE ACCEPT things of which we disapprove. Such a definition is only to define roughly, for the moment, what we are talking about, it does not settle any argument and it will require elaboration before it can be shown, as I hope to, that it is an important subject for historical and social research, hitherto neglected or often treated most superficially, that is either shallowly or purely on the level of ideas. 'Tolerance' I will use as a specific term-we are tolerant of this and that. 'Toleration' I will use for explicit theories or doctrines which state that we should be tolerant (or as tolerant as possible) of wide classes of actions or types of belief and behaviour. All societies accept to some degree, however small, some things of which government, public opinion or tradition disapprove. Many of these latter are trivial, both in contemporary and subsequent perspectives; but there are plainly many cases of significant and important degrees of tolerance existing in societies long before theories or doctrines of toleration emerge – which fundamentally are no older than the 16th century and do not become commonplace until the I 8th. Indeed, in many ways, as I will argue later, degrees of tolerance in autocracies are more interesting to study (and have been less studied) than intolerance in politicaldemocracies, or whatever term one chooses to use for modern polity.

Originally published in 1985, these essays relate philosophical questions about the meaning and justification of toleration to debates about such issues as religious freedom, racial discrimination, pornography and censorship. Many take their point of departure from classic works, especially J S Mill's On Liberty and many consider recent developments in moral and political philosophy

Toleration has a rich tradition in Western political philosophy. It is, after all, one of the defining topics of political philosophy-historically pivotal in the development of modern liberalism, prominent in the writings of such canonical figures as John Locke and John Stuart Mill, and central to our understanding of the idea of a society in which individuals have the right to live their own lives by their own values, left alone by the state so long as they respect the similar interests of others. Toleration and Its Limits, the latest addition to the NOMOS series, explores the philosophical nuances of the concept of toleration and its scope in contemporary liberal democratic societies. Editors Melissa S. Williams and Jeremy Waldron carefully compiled essays that address the tradition's key historical figures; its role in the development and evolution of Western political theory; its relation to morality, liberalism, and identity; and its limits and dangers. Contributors: Lawrence A. Alexander, Kathryn Abrams, Wendy Brown, Ingrid Creppell, Noah Feldman, Rainer Forst, David Heyd, Glyn Morgan, Glen Newey, Michael A. Rosenthal, Andrew Sabl, Steven D. Smith, and Alex Tuckness

A Letter Concerning Toleration and Other Writings brings together the principal writings on religious toleration and freedom of expression by one of the greatest philosophers in the Anglophone tradition: John Locke. The son of Puritans, Locke (632-1704): became an Oxford academic, a physician, and; through the patronage of the Earl of Shaftesbury; secretary to the Council of Trade arid. Plantations and to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina. A colleague of Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton and a member of the English Royal Society, Locke lived and wrote at the dawn of the Enlightenment, a period during Which traditional mores, values, and customs were being questioned.

The article examines two different types of "tolerant" dialogues, represented by Desiderius Erasmus and Jean Bodin. Erasmus offers a traditional conception of dialogue, in which the speakers are engaged in a common search for truth. This search for truth justifies toleration. To discover truth, the speakers must be free to question the other speakers' views, as well as their own. And they must respect each other because civility promotes the discovery of truth. Bodin, by contrast, presents an alternative version of the tolerant dialogue in hisColloquium heptaplomeres, a dialogue between representatives of seven different religions. While the Erasmian dialogue presupposes that (1) there is a single truth and that (2) the greater the consensus, the more successful the dialogue, in Bodin'sColloquium, the speakers do not pursue a common truth. Rather, they offer up their own particular versions of truth, unwilling to change their positions. The speakers do not agree on the truth because truth—especially religious truth—is complex, and each speaker represents a different facet of that multifaceted truth. And though the speakers remain firm in their initial convictions, they gain from the dialogue a clearer perception of their own opinions. By comparing their views with one another, the speakers come to better understand their separate truths, the sum of which constitutes the whole truth.

Recently, there has been a notable rise in interest in the idea of ""toleration"", a rise that Ingrid Creppell argues comes more from distressing political developments than positive ones, and almost all of them are related to issues of identity: rampant genocide in the 20th Century, the resurgence of religious fundamentalism around the world; and ethnic-religious wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In Toleration and Identity, Creppell argues that a contemporary ethic of toleration must include recognition of identity issues, and that the traditional liberal ideal of toleratio