Toleration without limits: A construction and defence of Pierre Bayle's philosophical commentary

• Main Author: KUKATHAS, Chandran
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: Toleration; Pierre Bayle; Moral truth; Scepticism; Religious truth; Ethics and Political Philosophy; Religion
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2981
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Pierre Bayle was a defender of toleration whose distinctive contribution was to show that the limits of religious toleration could not coherently be drawn by an appeal to religious truth. In circumstances in which the truth of the matter was at issue, any such move would lead its advocate to beg the question: an appeal to religious truth could not help adjudicate a dispute about religious truth. The wider implication of this is that the limits to toleration cannot be drawn by appeal to moral truth either—at least in circumstances in which moral truth is disputed. If toleration is limited, it will have to be on very different grounds. The result of this will be an account of the basis of politics that denies the possibility of moral foundations, and pushes us in the direction of a kind of realism, and a scepticism about the legitimacy of political authority.