Can We Learn from History? A Letter to Mr. John Locke, Philosopher

Abstract

This chapter outlines the history of freedom and toleration. It pays particular attention to the Dutch Golden Age that exemplified tolerance, a trendsetting pragmatic response to the problems of modern plural society. It addresses John Locke, who composed his A Letter Concerning Toleration during his stay as a political refugee in Amsterdam in the 1680s. Inspired by his Dutch intellectual friends, Locke expounded the basic ideas of a liberal constitution, albeit not as yet in a perfect way. Spinoza and other representatives of the ‘Radical Enlightenment’ were more coherent in their elaborations of the liberal principles of liberty and equality. In the subsequent centuries philosophers, such as Mill and Rawls, have completed the model of the neutral democratic constitutional state that guarantees individual liberties and social rights. In interaction with this intellectual progress, in a process of trial and error liberal theory was transformed into political practice throughout the Western world via a series of real and metaphorical revolutions.