Religion, Reason, and Toleration

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Forst
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Pierre Bayle

This chapter compares two Enlightenment theories of religious toleration: the theories of Pierre Bayle and Immanuel Kant. Both Bayle and Kant argued for an autonomous conception of morality as the ground of reciprocal and universal toleration, but they differed in the ways in which they thought of the relation between faith and reason. The chapter discusses how in that latter regard, a Baylean perspective is superior to a Kantian one, whereas it concludes that the Kantian approach has a better way to connect morality and a politics of public justification when it comes to think about a political regime of toleration.

Religion and Toleration from the Enlightenment to the Post-Secular Era

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Forst
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Pierre Bayle ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter addresses the classical question of the relationship between enlightenment and religion. In doing so, the chapter compares Jürgen Habermas's thought to that of Pierre Bayle and Immanuel Kant. For, although Habermas undoubtedly stands in a tradition founded by Bayle and Kant, he develops a number of important orientations within this tradition and has changed his position in his recent work. The chapter studies this change to understand Habermas's position better. It also draws attention to a fundamental question raised by the modern world: what common ground can human reason establish in the practical and theoretical domain between human beings who are divided by profoundly different religious (including antireligious) views?

Religious Persecution in the French Enlightenment

1961 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Bien
Keyword(s):  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Religious Persecution ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
French Enlightenment ◽  
Pierre Bayle ◽  
Secular State

In France, religious persecution outlived Pierre Bayle and nearly outlived Voltaire. Only in the mid-1760's, when the Enlightenment had long been affecting other aspects of their thinking, did Catholics at last accept a measure of religious toleration. Six Calvinist pastors were put to death after 1745, and Jean Calas was condemned as late as 1762. The purpose of this article is to study why the persecution of religions persisted in a non-theological age. Our understanding in this instance requires that we set aside strictly religious categories, and examine what role the secular state played in the thinking of Catholics and anti-Catholics alike; for it was this state to which the last Huguenot victims were sacrificed.

Faith, Reason and Peace in Lessing's Late Works

Theoria ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (159) ◽  
pp. 117-141
Author(s):  
Cat Moir
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Late Works ◽  
Third Moment

This article argues that G. E. Lessing should be viewed as one of the German Enlightenment’s foremost thinkers of peace alongside his contemporary Immanuel Kant, whose contribution to thinking peace in the eighteenth century is already well recognised. It makes this case by examining two of Lessing’s late works: the 1779 drama Nathan the Wise and the 1780 essay The Education of the Human Race. The dialogue between faith and reason characteristic of Enlightenment discourse is at the heart of both texts, but here it is argued that peace is a crucial third moment. While in Nathan Lessing asserts the need to find peace between the forces of faith and reason in a literary register, in the Education essay he does so in a more explicitly theoretical mode.

Toleration without Limits

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chandran Kukathas
Keyword(s):  
Political Authority ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
Pierre Bayle

Pierre Bayle was a defender of toleration whose distinctive contribution was to show that the limits of religious toleration could not coherently be drawn by an appeal to religious truth. In circumstances in which the truth of the matter was at issue, any such move would lead its advocate to beg the question: an appeal to religious truth could not help adjudicate a dispute about religious truth. The wider implication of this is that the limits to toleration cannot be drawn by appeal to moral truth either—at least in circumstances in which moral truth is disputed. If toleration is limited, it will have to be on very different grounds. The result of this will be an account of the basis of politics that denies the possibility of moral foundations, and pushes us in the direction of a kind of realism, and a scepticism about the legitimacy of political authority.

Immanuel Kant

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Henry Allison ◽  
Peter Heath ◽  
Gary Hatfield ◽  
Michael Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant
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