Difference without Disagreement

Rethinking Hobbes on “Independency” and Toleration

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6403722
AutoresTeresa M Bejan (0000-0003-3091-595X, autor correspondente)
Ano2016
Volume78
Fascículo1
Páginas1-25
Data de publicação2016-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670515000856
OpenAlexW2287221639
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas15
Referências 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