Difference without Disagreement

Rethinking Hobbes on “Independency” and Toleration

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6403722
AutoresTeresa M Bejan (0000-0003-3091-595X, autor de correspondencia)
Año2016
Volumen78
Número1
Páginas1-25
Fecha de publicación2016-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670515000856
OpenAlexW2287221639
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas15
Referencias citadas7

In arguments for a more tolerant Hobbes, Leviathan's endorsement of “Independency” is often Exhibit A; however, the conditionals Hobbes attached have received little attention. These—and the dangers of “contention” and sectarian “affection” they identify—are essential for understanding Hobbes's views on toleration. Together, they express a vision of “difference without disagreement” in which the accommodation of diversity in religious worship and association depends on the suppression of disagreement through sovereign- and self-discipline over speech. This expressly antievangelical ideal of toleration as a civil silence about difference presents a challenge to the more tolerant Hobbes thesis, particularly in its recent “Erastian Independency” guise. It also raises deeper questions about what might be at stake in applying the labels of “intolerant” or “tolerant” to Hobbes today

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics · Political science · Silence · Sociology · Sovereignty · Theology · Toleration · Worship · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought