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HOBBES AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
This paper seeks to examine Hobbes’s credentials as a defender of religious freedom along three dimensions. The first section analyzes what might be called Hobbes’s core position on freedom of conscience and worship; it is shown how, by means of a characteristically reductionist strategy, he seeks to persuade the reader that the absolute state allows room for freedom of conscience and worship in all ways that they have reason to care about. The second section turns to Hobbes’s praise of Independency and addresses the issue whether it is consistent with his core position; it is argued that though it supplements this position it does not represent a fundamental departure from it. The final section takes up the perennially fascinating issue of the relationship between Locke’s mature defence of religious toleration and the teachings of his great precursor in the social contract tradition. Without seeking to minimize the differences I argue that Locke is able to adapt Hobbesian themes to his own distinctive purposes.
Journal Article
The Light of the Soul
The Light of the Soul examines the debate between Leibniz, Malebranche, and Descartes on the nature of ideas, which was crucial to the development of early modern thinking about the mind and knowledge. Nicholas Jolley guides the reader through the debate and considers its implications for a broad range of issues, such as innate ideas, self-know.
eBook
Gottf Ried Wilhelm Leibniz
Leibniz is generally classified as a successor of Descartes in the Rationalist tradition, but in one way this classification is misleading: it tends to suggest a greater similarity between them in epistemology than really exists. It is true of course that both philosophers urge that genuine knowledge is to be achieved by turning away from the senses, and they emphasize the superiority of the pure intellect over the imagination. But in general Leibniz's approach to epistemology is very different from Descartes'. Unlike Descartes Leibniz was never greatly exercised by the problem of radical skepticism, and he was critical of Descartes' method of doubt as a starting-point in philosophy. Indeed, Leibniz's conception of the role of epistemology in philosophy aligns him more with the third major Rationalist, Spinoza, than with Descartes. In his most important expository works, such as the Discourse on Metaphysics, Leibniz, like Spinoza in the Ethics , generally seeks to deduce a theory of knowledge from metaphysical premises. Whether or not he was directly influenced by him, Leibniz shares Spinoza's conviction that the proper method in philosophy is to begin with a theory of substance and to derive epistemological consequences from that theory.
Book Chapter
Reason's dim candle: Locke's critique of enthusiasm
Like a number of other philosophers, such as Hobbes, Locke shows a decided preference for fighting wars on two fronts. This preference is perhaps most clearly visible in Locke's philosophy of the physical world. Against the Scholastics he defends the explanatory virtues of the new corpuscularian hypothesis; against the Cartesians he defends a tentative commitment to atomism while strenuously opposing their dogmatism about the essence of matter. Locke's philosophy of religion conforms to much the same pattern: he upholds the supremacy of reason in this area against two distinct sets of enemies. The Roman Catholics are attacked for their uncritical submission to papal authority and for their commitment to the absurd dogma of transubstantiation. The enthusiasts are attacked for elevating the supposed inner light of private revelation above the God-given faculty of reason. In an unusually eloquent and famous sentence Locke proclaims that 'Reason must be our last Judge and Guide in every Thing' (Essay IV. xix. 14, p. 704).
Book Chapter
