Paradoxes of Religious Toleration in Early Modern Political Thought

John Christian Laursen is professor of political science at the University of California, Riverside. María José Villaverde is professor of political science at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain.

• Introduction: Paradoxes of Toleration in Early Modern Political ThoughtJohn Christian Laursen and María José VillaverdeChapter 1: Spinoza's Paradoxes: An Atheist who Defended the Scriptures? A Freethinking Alchemist?María José Villaverde Chapter 2: Spinoza on Lying for Toleration and his Intolerance of AtheistsJohn Christian LaursenChapter 3: Jansenist Fears and Huguenot Polemics: Arnauld, Jurieu, and Bayle on Obedience and TolerationLuisa SimonuttiChapter 4: ‘The general freedom, which all men enjoy’ in a Confessional State: The Paradoxical Language of Politics in the Dutch Republic (1700-1750)Henri KropChapter 5: A Leibnizian Way to Tolerance: Between Ethical Universalism and Linguistic DiversityConcha RoldánChapter 6: Toleration in China and Siam in Late Seventeenth Century European Travel Literature Rolando MinutiChapter 7: Toleration in Denis Veiras’s TheocracyCyrus MasrooriChapter 8: David Hume on Religious ToleranceGerardo López SastreChapter 9: Rousseau, A False Apostle of ToleranceMaría José VillaverdeChapter 10: Intolerance of Fanatics in Bayle, Hume, and KantJohn Christian LaursenChapter 11: Tolerance and Intolerance in the Writings of the French Antiphilosophes (1750-1789) Jonathan IsraelChapter 12: Immanuel Kant: Tolerance Seen As RespectJoaquín Abellán

The greatest intellectual virtue of the essays contained in the present volume is their collective commitment to exploring the diverse and sometimes paradoxical ways in which ideas of religious toleration were deployed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This approach, announced by the editors in their introduction, permits the inclusion of a variety of fresh voices into the discussion of a fraught yet singularly important issue. An eminent group of international scholars explodes many of the myths and misunderstandings that have shrouded the historical roots of religious toleration, contributing innovative insights of direct relevance to twenty-first century debates about how, when, and to whom tolerance should be extended.