The inner and outer world of political faith: the fundamentals of tolerance in John Locke. / A exterioridade do político e a interioridade da fé: os fundamentos da tolerância em John Locke.

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2008

RESUMO

It would not be exaggeration that John Locke was the main British philosopher to elaborate a theory about the toleration in the seventeenth century. Since his first writings on the government of 1660 and 1662, Two tracts on government, the questions that involved the relation among the State and the religious matters were in the centre of his attentions. However, these first writings did not defend toleration but a central government with sufficient authority to reach all the indifferent matters of religion. From these first ideas to the further defence of toleration it is necessary to consider, in first place, the influence in Lockes life of the important Whig political leader Lord Ashley First Count of Shaftesbury and the consequent writing in 1667 of a manuscript, named An essay on Toleration, in defence of toleration. Secondly, the anonymous publication in 1689 of the Epistola de tolerantia where Locke expose his mature thought on the matter and deepen it in the following years through the answers to the theologian Jonas Proast in the Second and Third letters on toleration. Meantime, in what did Lockes thought modify in regard to his first writings? Which arguments give support to toleration? According with this research, the answer to respond to these questions must consider two aspects of maximum importance to structure Lockes thought on toleration. 1) The changing of perspective in regard to the purpose and the extension of the political power that is connected to the exclusive care of the securities of the individual proprieties theme widely developed in the Two Treatises of Government (1689) , that allows toleration among the State and the churches. 2) Toleration must prolong also among the churches and sects, to do this Lockes resource pass by an epistemological analysis of religious faith, examining its structure. As a conclusion, Locke limits religion to a few necessary points and denounce that the religious quarrels are almost all of them on indifferent and misunderstood matters and this theme is discussed thoroughly in the fourth book of his Essay concerning human understanding (1689) and a lot of the Reasonableness of Christianity (1695). Therefore, the aim of this research is to demonstrate that the theory of toleration in Locke, its limit and extension, is based in the limited understanding of the activities of the State and in the epistemological investigation about the dogmas of the religion.

ASSUNTO(S)

filosofia política locke politics tolerância religiosa religious toleration moral epistemologia epistemology moral locke

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