Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration.

Alan Levine, ed., Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration (Applications of Political Theory.) Lanham: Lexington Books, 1999. vii + 282 pp. $60 (cl), $22.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0-7391-0023-8 (cl), 0-7391-0024-6 (pbk).

This is a remarkable book. It is a commonplace that religious crisis in early modern Europe coincided with the rise of skepticism and the grudging acceptance of some measure of toleration. Yet, as Alan Levine points out, little has been written on the logical linkage between skeptical ideas and the belief that toleration is both a virtue and a necessity. In this volume ten essayists study such connections in particular thinkers, and one, Maryanne Cline Horowitz, provides a general account of French free thought in the early seventeenth century. In the spirit of the series of which it is a part, the book seeks to uncover the roots of toleration in modern liberal ideology, and confronts the paradoxical association of doubt in general and the right to differ in particular. Not surprisingly, each of the thinkers examined here betrayed some element of certainty; and their attempts to reconcile negative with positive result in some contradictions within the thought of the skeptics themselves and between the analys es presented by their interpreters.

Levine's introduction sets the scene and reminds the reader of the standard kinds of skepticism. Joshua Mitchell follows with a study of the limitations placed upon reason by two figures not normally associated with either skepticism or toleration, Luther and Calvin. He finds their message directed not against rationality itself but against those who regard it as an obstacle to salvation. Levine's own contribution on the most influential of all skeptics in the period, Montaigne, boldly denies that he was a fideist who questioned certain knowledge but accepted faith pro forma. Levine lists Montaigne's doubts about the central truths of Christianity and points to his one area of certainty, the quest for self-knowledge. Montaigne's awareness of his own fallibility, Levine argues, leads him to postulate sympathy and toleration for the ideas of others. Horowitz also gives a central place to Montaigne but offers a more open interpretation of his religious position. Among the subsequent libetins she discusses are M arie de Gournay, Pierre Charron, La Mothe le Vayer and Gabriel Naude. The religious ideas of Jean Bodin, who was anything but a skeptic, are treated at length, especially the posthumous influence of his manuscript of The Colloquium of the Seven.

A reader of Montaigne who followed his advice to look inward, and discovered the certainty of the existence both of himself and of God, was Descartes, who is the subject of Michael Gillespie's well reasoned chapter. While trying to avoid theological controversy, Descartes, in Gillespie's view, set our to provide a rational metaphysical base for moderate religion encompassing toleration. His Passions of the Soul touched on social relations and taught a benevolence enabling free thinking individuals to feel a communal bond with those of different beliefs. Steven Smith develops a similar argument in his analysis of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Smith regards Spinoza's treatise as rivalling the works of Hobbes and Locke and in some respects anticipating the ideas of Rousseau and Kant. Putting aside supernatual mysteries, Spinoza designed a rational universal religion that recognized a supreme being and inculcated morality, justice, charity, and toleration. Like Hobbes, he based natural right upon the instinct of self-preservation, but, unlike Hobbes, he preferred republicanism to a sovereign ruler. The state should interfere with belief only when zealotry threatened the common good.

The attitudes to toleration of the Levellers, Hobbes, and Locke are discussed, respectively, by Alan Houston, the late Shirley Letwin, and Nathan Tarcov. Houston notes that Leveller opposition to a national church was expressed in the language of earlier opposition to monopolies, in this case the monopoly of preaching. Their defense of toleration rested upon belief in an inalienable right to freedom of conscience, but it also included pragmatic arguments about the futility of persecution and the abuse of religion in the service of worldly interests. Letwin defines Hobbes as a skeptical Christian who found God incomprehensible and revelation uncertain. His was a non-doctrinal position akin to Pelagianism, and, while he detested Presbyterians, the sects, and the Roman church, his main enemy, according to Letwin, was a pantheistic belief that human nature was imprinted on the material world, Opposing religious absolutes, he subordinated belief to the absolutism of the secular sovereign. Unfortunately Letwin die d before providing source notes for these views of Hobbes, and her argument is in some respects elusive. Tarcov distinguishes a variety of arguments for toleration in the works of Locke, whose skeptism was limited to uncertainty about religious dogma. At the same time he held toleration to be the true message of Christianity. Like the Levellers, he thought persecution to be ineffective and often sponsored by avarice and ambition. Toleration was to be justified by the secular good of society and the protection of property. Tarcov shows that Locke, like Montaigne, thought that one's own intellectual freedom encouraged the individual to protect the freedom of others. It was not, however, an absolute freedom, and modern liberal ideology is mistaken in attributing such doctrines to Locke. The secular welfare of the community was the paramount consideration.

Kenneth Weinstein begins his challenging analysis of Pierre Bayle by describing his Thoughts on the Comet as perhaps the boldest work of early modern political philosophy (197). Weinstein treats the skeptical Bayle not as a Christian fideist, but as an atheist who regarded religion as harmful to society, having nothing to do with morality The best kind of government could occur only in a society of atheists, the second best was rule by a religiously indifferent elite, and the third exercised a Christian tolerance by limiting extremisn. Weinstein finds Bayle in some respects to be a Hobbesian, although he felt Hobbes went too far in controlling liberty of conscience, and he was too much the skeptic to accept Hobbess political schema. One of the difficulties in Weinsteins thesis is that Bayles Commentary on the Words of Christ Compel Them to Come In proclaimed the Christian message as one of toleration. Weinstein calls this a practical accomodation (212), and a mere pit stop on the path to a post-Chr istian society (215). Bayle, of course, was seen by the later philosopher as the fountainhead of the campaign against superstition. As Diana Schaub remarks in her study of Montesquieus view of toleration, the author of The Spirit of the Laws admired Bayle, but professed far more moderate opinions. To Montesquieu the Roman church might be itself a despotism, but faith was a check upon a secular despot. Unlike Bayle, he saw religion as a necessary provider of morality. At the same time he regarded zealots convinced of their reward in the afterlife as a danger to the state. Schaub claims that Montesquieu wanted to encourage belief in hell and to promote skepticism about immortality to counteract such extremism. Like Montaigne, he advocated making the most of ones life upon earth. To Montesquieu, Schaub argues, moderation was more important than toleration.

In the concluding essay Patrick Riley concentrates on the way in which Voltaire and Diderot took issue with Leibnizian optimism in their campaign for toleration. Neither of them believed in Leibnizs supernatural caritas sapientis (which Riley translates as wise charity). Both preferred a kind of natural humanitarianism. Voltaire might seem the more outspoken in his attack upon the judicial murder of Calas and La Barre, and the more mocking in Candide, but Diderot was the more radical philosophically, and, like Bayle, denied the link between morality and religion. Interestingly enough, Riley sees no necessary connection between skepticism and toleration, although they might coexist in a mind like Bayles. Schaub too seems to abandon the avowed purpose of the volume when she calls modern views of unlimited tolerance as openness to the point of mindlessness (243). Nevertheless, several other contributors pursue the logical relevance of early modern skepticism to modern doctrines of toleration. They have pr oduced a book that opens new doors to the subject.