John William Tate
Biographic Data
| ID | 446188 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John William Tate |
| GIVEN NAMES | John William |
| FAMILY NAME | Tate |
| SIGNATURE | TATE J W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Newcastle Australia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8792-5131 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 21 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
“Hard Borders”? Locke, Liberalism, and Eurocentrism
Several recent theorists have sought to demonstrate the limits of the liberal tradition, seeking to ascribe to it a narrowed validity due to its origins within a specific European history and Protestant religion. Outside this context, they insist, liberalism confronts the limits of this validity. In this respect, these theorists seek to impose a “hard border” between liberalism and any culture that does not share its antecedents. This article see…
The U.S. Supreme Court and the Religiously Devout: Separation, Privatization, and Toleration
What can conceivably be the basis of religious toleration?For many there was none, for it meant the acquiescence in heresy about first things and the calamity of religious disunity. 1As John Rawls' epigraph makes clear, toleration confronts the religiously devout with a 'moral challenge'.After all, on what grounds, consistent with their devotion to God, could the religiously devout possibly tolerate that which, in their minds, God perceives as an…
“ No‐Platforming ”: Freedom of Speech and the Australian Public Sphere
“No‐Platforming” has increased in prominence within Australia in recent years. Furthermore, it has moved from university campuses to more mainstream sectors of the Australian public sphere. The “no‐platforming” of an audience member on an ABC current affairs programme in March 2022 is evidence of this. By focussing on the arguments for and against no‐platforming, as well as this incident, this article seeks to show their wider significance for no…
Anzac Day, Same-Sex Marriage and “Eternal Damnation”: Free Speech in the Australian Public Sphere
Recent free speech controversies in Australia have given rise to deep-seated disagreement between protagonists. These protagonists seek to advance rival and conflicting imperatives in such controversies that are centred, respectively, on the defence of “free speech” and the need to limit such speech for the sake of competing ideals. This article seeks to investigate these competing imperatives and their relative priority by focusing on four recen…
The State of Denmark: Blasphemy, Freedom of Speech, and Rival Claims to Respect
This article investigates the phenomenon of blasphemy and its relationship to freedom of speech. It does so by focusing on “the state of Denmark”—in particular two significant events that have arisen in Denmark in the last eighteen years. These are the Jyllands-Posten publication of the Muhammad cartoons in 2005 and the division that emerged between Danish state authorities and the Danish Parliament arising from a Quran burning in Denmark in 2017…
Burkinis, Burqas, and Marilyn Manson: Religious Expression in the French and American Public Spheres
The United States and France each possess a liberal and a republican tradition stretching back to their origins as revolutionary regimes. However, as the epigraph from Justice Scalia suggests, it is widely believed that each polity gives rise to very different outcomes concerning the presence or absence of religion in the public sphere. This article cautions against perceiving too great a contrast between the United States and France in this resp…
Locke, toleration and natural law: A reassessment
There is an increasingly prevalent view among some contemporary Locke scholars that Locke's political philosophy is thoroughly subordinate to theological imperatives, centered on natural law. This article challenges this point of view by critically evaluating this interpretation of Locke as advanced by some of its leading proponents. This interpretation perceives natural law as the governing principle of Locke's political philosophy, and the prim…
Liberty, Toleration and Equality: John Locke, Jonas Proast and the Letters Concerning Toleration
The seventeenth century English philosopher, John Locke, is widely recognized as one of the seminal sources of the modern liberal tradition. Liberty, Toleration and Equality examines the development of Locke’s ideal of toleration, from its beginnings, to the culmination of this development in Locke’s fifteen year debate with his great antagonist, the Anglican clergyman, Jonas Proast. Locke, like Proast, was a sincere Christian, but unlike Proast,…
Free speech, toleration and equal respect: The Bolt affair in context
It is a rare moment when free speech becomes a potent political issue within the Australian polity. But the Andrew Bolt affair, the Abbott government's subsequent move to repeal §18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), and its ultimate abandonment of this reform, is one of those moments. This article seeks to place these political events in a broader political and philosophical context, investigating how the conflicts and tensions to whi…
Toleration, Skepticism, and Blasphemy: John Locke, Jonas Proast, andCharlie Hebdo
As the recent Charlie Hebdo, Copenhagen café, and Garland, Texas, shootings show, religion has recently reemerged as a source of violence within liberal democracies, particularly in those instances where cases of alleged blasphemy are involved. Although toleration arose, within the liberal tradition, as a means of dealing with such conflict, some individuals, possessed of devout religious belief, when confronted with beliefs or practices profound…
The introduction of Australian digital television: Politics, policy and power
This article discusses the introduction of digital television to Australia, and the competing interests, and conflicts of power, surrounding this. It seeks to explain the primary outcomes of the digital settlement in terms of these interests and these processes of power. It points out how this settlement was very much at odds with the pro-market, deregulatory and competition-oriented reform advanced by the Howard government (and prior to it, the …
Paul Keating and leadership: Was the ‘personal’ political
This article proposes three possible reasons why political leaders abide by policy decisions in the face of vigorous opposition – because they perceive the policy to be ‘right’, because abiding by a decision is necessary to appear ‘strong’, or because of personal motives arising from the leader themselves. The article applies this framework to Paul Keating's apparent refusal, as Treasurer in 1989, to consider mortgage relief in the midst of prohi…
Dividing Locke from God: The limits of theology in Locke’s political philosophy
A “recent consensus” has emerged in Locke studies that has sought to place theology at the center of Locke's political philosophy, insisting that the validity and cogency of Locke's political conclusions cannot be substantiated independently of the theology that resides at their foundation. This paper argues for the need to distance Locke from God, claiming that not only can we “bracket” the normative conclusions of Locke's political philosophy f…
We Cannot Give One Millimetre’? Liberalism, Enlightenment and Diversity
This article challenges a prominent interpretation of the liberal tradition which seeks to divide that tradition, from its origins, into two competing strands, one committed to reason (however defined) as a normative ideal, and the other, involving no such ideal, centred on a commitment either to negative liberty or the political management of diversity. This dichotomous account seeks to enlist the inaugural figures of John Locke, Immanuel Kant a…
Locke, God, and Civil Society: Response to Stanton
Timothy Stanton is the latest in a line of Locke scholars who, in focusing on Locke’s theological commitments, have sought to place these at the center of his political philosophy. Stanton insists that those who interpret Locke’s political philosophy in more material terms, centered on individual liberty, government authority, and the need to reconcile both via consent, apply to it a misleading “picture” and fail to perceive its essentials. By sh…
A sententious divide: Erasing the two faces of liberalism
The political philosopher John Gray is a foremost critic of the liberal tradition. But while many have engaged with Gray concerning aspects of this tradition, few have challenged Gray’s conception of the tradition as a whole. Yet it is precisely this broader, background element in Gray’s account that is most problematic and that requires excavation if we are to reveal the deeper shortcomings of his critique as a whole. This article challenges Gra…
John Howard's “Nation”: Multiculturalism, Citizenship, and Identity
This article identifies the specific concept of “nation” that informed John Howard's politics from his time as Liberal Party leader in the second half of the 1980s to the final years of his 1996–2007 prime ministership. It compares and contrasts the constitutive, procedural and multicultural models of nation to show Howard's continuing commitment to a constitutive understanding of the Australian nation. He endeavoured to give this understanding e…
Locke and toleration: Defending Locke’s liberal credentials
This article challenges the claim that John Locke’s arguments for toleration are fundamentally at odds with any we might now associate with the liberal tradition. By showing how this perspective fundamentally misreads Locke on toleration, it seeks to defend Locke’s own status as one of the founding fathers of the liberal tradition
Locke, Rationality and Persecution
This article discusses John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). It challenges what has been described as ‘the most influential critique of the argument of the Letter written by a contemporary philosopher’ – that of Jeremy Waldron. It also engages with a recent response to Waldron's critique within the pages of Political Studies by Paul Bou-Habib. It argues that both Waldron and Bou-Habib are in error in their accounts of Locke's theory o…
Free speech or equal respect: Liberalism's competing values
This article looks at liberalism as a political tradition encompassing competing and, at times, incommensurable values. It looks in particular at the potential conflict between the values of free speech and equal respect. Both of these are foundational values for liberalism, in the sense that they arise as normative ideals from the very inception of the liberal tradition itself. Yet from the perspective of this tradition, it is by no means clear …
The Hermeneutic Circle vs. the Enlightenment
Although it encompassed a variety of positions, the Enlightenment was unified by the common belief that reason could transcend contingency to establish universal “truths” and thus guarantee progress. Yet for much of the Enlightenment, reason was still dependent on prior sources for its authoritative claims, e.g., nature or natural law, human desires, or interests. Kant broke with this by insisting that reason had to be “autonomous” if it was to c…
Dead or alive: Reflective versus unreflective traditions
The Enlightenment heritage has meant that we have tended to conceive of tradition as inevitably opposed to reason, and that the exten sion of one as a major constitutive element in social affairs, implies the retraction of the other. However, this paper attempts to conceive the relationship between tradition and reason in a more articulated context, suggesting that this dichotomy between reason and tradition may itself be what Hans-Georg Gadamer …
Locke, toleration and natural law: A reassessment
There is an increasingly prevalent view among some contemporary Locke scholars that Locke's political philosophy is thoroughly subordinate to theological imperatives, centered on natural law. This article challenges this point of view by critically evaluating this interpretation of Locke as advanced by some of its leading proponents. This interpretation perceives natural law as the governing principle of Locke's political philosophy, and the prim…
Toleration, Skepticism, and Blasphemy: John Locke, Jonas Proast, andCharlie Hebdo
As the recent Charlie Hebdo, Copenhagen café, and Garland, Texas, shootings show, religion has recently reemerged as a source of violence within liberal democracies, particularly in those instances where cases of alleged blasphemy are involved. Although toleration arose, within the liberal tradition, as a means of dealing with such conflict, some individuals, possessed of devout religious belief, when confronted with beliefs or practices profound…
Locke, God, and Civil Society: Response to Stanton
Timothy Stanton is the latest in a line of Locke scholars who, in focusing on Locke’s theological commitments, have sought to place these at the center of his political philosophy. Stanton insists that those who interpret Locke’s political philosophy in more material terms, centered on individual liberty, government authority, and the need to reconcile both via consent, apply to it a misleading “picture” and fail to perceive its essentials. By sh…
Free speech, toleration and equal respect: The Bolt affair in context
It is a rare moment when free speech becomes a potent political issue within the Australian polity. But the Andrew Bolt affair, the Abbott government's subsequent move to repeal §18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), and its ultimate abandonment of this reform, is one of those moments. This article seeks to place these political events in a broader political and philosophical context, investigating how the conflicts and tensions to whi…
The introduction of Australian digital television: Politics, policy and power
This article discusses the introduction of digital television to Australia, and the competing interests, and conflicts of power, surrounding this. It seeks to explain the primary outcomes of the digital settlement in terms of these interests and these processes of power. It points out how this settlement was very much at odds with the pro-market, deregulatory and competition-oriented reform advanced by the Howard government (and prior to it, the …
Dividing Locke from God: The limits of theology in Locke’s political philosophy
A “recent consensus” has emerged in Locke studies that has sought to place theology at the center of Locke's political philosophy, insisting that the validity and cogency of Locke's political conclusions cannot be substantiated independently of the theology that resides at their foundation. This paper argues for the need to distance Locke from God, claiming that not only can we “bracket” the normative conclusions of Locke's political philosophy f…
The Hermeneutic Circle vs. the Enlightenment
Although it encompassed a variety of positions, the Enlightenment was unified by the common belief that reason could transcend contingency to establish universal “truths” and thus guarantee progress. Yet for much of the Enlightenment, reason was still dependent on prior sources for its authoritative claims, e.g., nature or natural law, human desires, or interests. Kant broke with this by insisting that reason had to be “autonomous” if it was to c…
Paul Keating and leadership: Was the ‘personal’ political
This article proposes three possible reasons why political leaders abide by policy decisions in the face of vigorous opposition – because they perceive the policy to be ‘right’, because abiding by a decision is necessary to appear ‘strong’, or because of personal motives arising from the leader themselves. The article applies this framework to Paul Keating's apparent refusal, as Treasurer in 1989, to consider mortgage relief in the midst of prohi…
We Cannot Give One Millimetre’? Liberalism, Enlightenment and Diversity
This article challenges a prominent interpretation of the liberal tradition which seeks to divide that tradition, from its origins, into two competing strands, one committed to reason (however defined) as a normative ideal, and the other, involving no such ideal, centred on a commitment either to negative liberty or the political management of diversity. This dichotomous account seeks to enlist the inaugural figures of John Locke, Immanuel Kant a…
A sententious divide: Erasing the two faces of liberalism
The political philosopher John Gray is a foremost critic of the liberal tradition. But while many have engaged with Gray concerning aspects of this tradition, few have challenged Gray’s conception of the tradition as a whole. Yet it is precisely this broader, background element in Gray’s account that is most problematic and that requires excavation if we are to reveal the deeper shortcomings of his critique as a whole. This article challenges Gra…
Free speech or equal respect: Liberalism's competing values
This article looks at liberalism as a political tradition encompassing competing and, at times, incommensurable values. It looks in particular at the potential conflict between the values of free speech and equal respect. Both of these are foundational values for liberalism, in the sense that they arise as normative ideals from the very inception of the liberal tradition itself. Yet from the perspective of this tradition, it is by no means clear …
Dead or alive: Reflective versus unreflective traditions
The Enlightenment heritage has meant that we have tended to conceive of tradition as inevitably opposed to reason, and that the exten sion of one as a major constitutive element in social affairs, implies the retraction of the other. However, this paper attempts to conceive the relationship between tradition and reason in a more articulated context, suggesting that this dichotomy between reason and tradition may itself be what Hans-Georg Gadamer …
The Hermeneutic Circle vs. the Enlightenment
Although it encompassed a variety of positions, the Enlightenment was unified by the common belief that reason could transcend contingency to establish universal “truths” and thus guarantee progress. Yet for much of the Enlightenment, reason was still dependent on prior sources for its authoritative claims, e.g., nature or natural law, human desires, or interests. Kant broke with this by insisting that reason had to be “autonomous” if it was to c…
Free speech or equal respect: Liberalism's competing values
This article looks at liberalism as a political tradition encompassing competing and, at times, incommensurable values. It looks in particular at the potential conflict between the values of free speech and equal respect. Both of these are foundational values for liberalism, in the sense that they arise as normative ideals from the very inception of the liberal tradition itself. Yet from the perspective of this tradition, it is by no means clear …
John Howard's “Nation”: Multiculturalism, Citizenship, and Identity
This article identifies the specific concept of “nation” that informed John Howard's politics from his time as Liberal Party leader in the second half of the 1980s to the final years of his 1996–2007 prime ministership. It compares and contrasts the constitutive, procedural and multicultural models of nation to show Howard's continuing commitment to a constitutive understanding of the Australian nation. He endeavoured to give this understanding e…
Locke and toleration: Defending Locke’s liberal credentials
This article challenges the claim that John Locke’s arguments for toleration are fundamentally at odds with any we might now associate with the liberal tradition. By showing how this perspective fundamentally misreads Locke on toleration, it seeks to defend Locke’s own status as one of the founding fathers of the liberal tradition
Locke, Rationality and Persecution
This article discusses John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). It challenges what has been described as ‘the most influential critique of the argument of the Letter written by a contemporary philosopher’ – that of Jeremy Waldron. It also engages with a recent response to Waldron's critique within the pages of Political Studies by Paul Bou-Habib. It argues that both Waldron and Bou-Habib are in error in their accounts of Locke's theory o…
A sententious divide: Erasing the two faces of liberalism
The political philosopher John Gray is a foremost critic of the liberal tradition. But while many have engaged with Gray concerning aspects of this tradition, few have challenged Gray’s conception of the tradition as a whole. Yet it is precisely this broader, background element in Gray’s account that is most problematic and that requires excavation if we are to reveal the deeper shortcomings of his critique as a whole. This article challenges Gra…
Locke, God, and Civil Society: Response to Stanton
Timothy Stanton is the latest in a line of Locke scholars who, in focusing on Locke’s theological commitments, have sought to place these at the center of his political philosophy. Stanton insists that those who interpret Locke’s political philosophy in more material terms, centered on individual liberty, government authority, and the need to reconcile both via consent, apply to it a misleading “picture” and fail to perceive its essentials. By sh…
Dividing Locke from God: The limits of theology in Locke’s political philosophy
A “recent consensus” has emerged in Locke studies that has sought to place theology at the center of Locke's political philosophy, insisting that the validity and cogency of Locke's political conclusions cannot be substantiated independently of the theology that resides at their foundation. This paper argues for the need to distance Locke from God, claiming that not only can we “bracket” the normative conclusions of Locke's political philosophy f…
We Cannot Give One Millimetre’? Liberalism, Enlightenment and Diversity
This article challenges a prominent interpretation of the liberal tradition which seeks to divide that tradition, from its origins, into two competing strands, one committed to reason (however defined) as a normative ideal, and the other, involving no such ideal, centred on a commitment either to negative liberty or the political management of diversity. This dichotomous account seeks to enlist the inaugural figures of John Locke, Immanuel Kant a…
Paul Keating and leadership: Was the ‘personal’ political
This article proposes three possible reasons why political leaders abide by policy decisions in the face of vigorous opposition – because they perceive the policy to be ‘right’, because abiding by a decision is necessary to appear ‘strong’, or because of personal motives arising from the leader themselves. The article applies this framework to Paul Keating's apparent refusal, as Treasurer in 1989, to consider mortgage relief in the midst of prohi…
The introduction of Australian digital television: Politics, policy and power
This article discusses the introduction of digital television to Australia, and the competing interests, and conflicts of power, surrounding this. It seeks to explain the primary outcomes of the digital settlement in terms of these interests and these processes of power. It points out how this settlement was very much at odds with the pro-market, deregulatory and competition-oriented reform advanced by the Howard government (and prior to it, the …
Liberty, Toleration and Equality: John Locke, Jonas Proast and the Letters Concerning Toleration
The seventeenth century English philosopher, John Locke, is widely recognized as one of the seminal sources of the modern liberal tradition. Liberty, Toleration and Equality examines the development of Locke’s ideal of toleration, from its beginnings, to the culmination of this development in Locke’s fifteen year debate with his great antagonist, the Anglican clergyman, Jonas Proast. Locke, like Proast, was a sincere Christian, but unlike Proast,…
Free speech, toleration and equal respect: The Bolt affair in context
It is a rare moment when free speech becomes a potent political issue within the Australian polity. But the Andrew Bolt affair, the Abbott government's subsequent move to repeal §18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), and its ultimate abandonment of this reform, is one of those moments. This article seeks to place these political events in a broader political and philosophical context, investigating how the conflicts and tensions to whi…
Toleration, Skepticism, and Blasphemy: John Locke, Jonas Proast, andCharlie Hebdo
As the recent Charlie Hebdo, Copenhagen café, and Garland, Texas, shootings show, religion has recently reemerged as a source of violence within liberal democracies, particularly in those instances where cases of alleged blasphemy are involved. Although toleration arose, within the liberal tradition, as a means of dealing with such conflict, some individuals, possessed of devout religious belief, when confronted with beliefs or practices profound…
Locke, toleration and natural law: A reassessment
There is an increasingly prevalent view among some contemporary Locke scholars that Locke's political philosophy is thoroughly subordinate to theological imperatives, centered on natural law. This article challenges this point of view by critically evaluating this interpretation of Locke as advanced by some of its leading proponents. This interpretation perceives natural law as the governing principle of Locke's political philosophy, and the prim…
Anzac Day, Same-Sex Marriage and “Eternal Damnation”: Free Speech in the Australian Public Sphere
Recent free speech controversies in Australia have given rise to deep-seated disagreement between protagonists. These protagonists seek to advance rival and conflicting imperatives in such controversies that are centred, respectively, on the defence of “free speech” and the need to limit such speech for the sake of competing ideals. This article seeks to investigate these competing imperatives and their relative priority by focusing on four recen…
The State of Denmark: Blasphemy, Freedom of Speech, and Rival Claims to Respect
This article investigates the phenomenon of blasphemy and its relationship to freedom of speech. It does so by focusing on “the state of Denmark”—in particular two significant events that have arisen in Denmark in the last eighteen years. These are the Jyllands-Posten publication of the Muhammad cartoons in 2005 and the division that emerged between Danish state authorities and the Danish Parliament arising from a Quran burning in Denmark in 2017…
Burkinis, Burqas, and Marilyn Manson: Religious Expression in the French and American Public Spheres
The United States and France each possess a liberal and a republican tradition stretching back to their origins as revolutionary regimes. However, as the epigraph from Justice Scalia suggests, it is widely believed that each polity gives rise to very different outcomes concerning the presence or absence of religion in the public sphere. This article cautions against perceiving too great a contrast between the United States and France in this resp…
“ No‐Platforming ”: Freedom of Speech and the Australian Public Sphere
“No‐Platforming” has increased in prominence within Australia in recent years. Furthermore, it has moved from university campuses to more mainstream sectors of the Australian public sphere. The “no‐platforming” of an audience member on an ABC current affairs programme in March 2022 is evidence of this. By focussing on the arguments for and against no‐platforming, as well as this incident, this article seeks to show their wider significance for no…
“Hard Borders”? Locke, Liberalism, and Eurocentrism
Several recent theorists have sought to demonstrate the limits of the liberal tradition, seeking to ascribe to it a narrowed validity due to its origins within a specific European history and Protestant religion. Outside this context, they insist, liberalism confronts the limits of this validity. In this respect, these theorists seek to impose a “hard border” between liberalism and any culture that does not share its antecedents. This article see…
The U.S. Supreme Court and the Religiously Devout: Separation, Privatization, and Toleration
What can conceivably be the basis of religious toleration?For many there was none, for it meant the acquiescence in heresy about first things and the calamity of religious disunity. 1As John Rawls' epigraph makes clear, toleration confronts the religiously devout with a 'moral challenge'.After all, on what grounds, consistent with their devotion to God, could the religiously devout possibly tolerate that which, in their minds, God perceives as an…
Law (21 works) · Political science (21 works) · Politics (17 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (10 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (9 works)