Discourses of Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Enlightenment

The principle of tolerance is one of the most enduring legacies of the Enlightenment. However, scholarly works on the topic to date have been primarily limited to traditional studies based on a historical, 'progressive' view or to the critiques of contemporary writers such as Adorno, Horkheimer, Foucault, and MacIntyre, who believed that the core beliefs of the Enlightenment, including tolerance, could actually be used as vehicles of repression and control rather than as agents promoting individual and group freedom.This collection of original essays by a distinguished international group of contributors looks at the subject in a new light and from a number of angles, focusing on the concept of tolerance at the point where the individual, or group, converges or clashes with the state.

The volume opens with introductory essays that provide essential background to the major shift in thinking in regard to tolerance that occurred during the eighteenth century, while considering the general problem of writing a history of tolerance. The remaining essays, organized around two central themes, trace the expansion of the discourses of tolerance and intolerance. The first group treats tolerance and intolerance in relation to the spheres of religious and political thought and practice. The second examines the extension of broad issues of tolerance and intolerance in the realms of race, gender, deviancy, and criminality. While offering an in-depth consideration of these complex issues in the context of the Enlightenment, the volume sheds light on many similar challenges facing contemporary society.

The idea of tolerance is one of the most enduring legacies of the Enlightenment. However, there is a surprising lack of scholarly works that attempt to analyse the influence of tolerance on the individual during this period. This collection assesses, for the first time, the positive and negative impact of discourses and theories of tolerance upon the lives of individuals in eighteenth-century Europe.

Featuring an internationally renowned group of contributors, this volume looks at the concept of tolerance at the point where the individual, or group, converges or clashes with the state. Though it appears to provide grist for the mill of Enlightenment critics such as Adorno, Horkheimer, Foucault, and MacIntyre by confronting specific cases in which individual freedoms are forced to acquiesce to state control and authority in the guise of tolerance, the essays also offer a cautionary tale of critical restraint in the post-9/11 world. By reflecting on similar discrepancies in the interplay of discourses of tolerance and intolerance that inform our own lives, we recognize attempts to craft and apply theories and practices of toleration.

With reference to gender preference, racial and social profiling, immigration policies, and the adjudication of borderland cultures and hybrid identities, this collection offers an in-depth examination of Enlightenment society and its parallels in the contemporary world.

Hans-Erich Bödeker is a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin.

Clorinda Donato is Professor of French and Italian in the Department of Romance,

PETER H. REILL is a professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles.