Justifying toleration : conceptual and historical perspectives / edited by Susan Mendus.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Susan Mendus -- Scepticism and toleration in the seventeenth century / Richard Tuck -- A more tolerant Hobbes? / Alan Ryan -- Locke : toleration and the rationality of persecution / Jeremy Waldron -- Toleration and Mill's liberty of thought and discussion / David Edwards -- Rousseau and respect for others / Nicholas Dent -- The intolerable / D.D. Raphael -- Autonomy, toleration, and the harm principle / Joseph Raz -- Friendship, truth, and politics : Hannah Arendt and toleration / Margaret Canovan -- Dissent, toleration, and civil rights in communism / G.W. Smith -- Liberalism, Marxism, and tolerance / Graeme Duncan and John Street -- Socialism and toleration / David Miller.

This book traces the growth of philosophical justifications of toleration. The contributors discuss the grounds on which we may be required to be tolerant and the proper limits of toleration. They consider the historical and conceptual relation between toleration and skepticism and ask whether toleration is justified by considerations of autonomy or of prudence. The papers cover a range of perspectives on the subject, including Marxist and Socialist as well as liberal views. The editor's introduction prepares the ground by discussing the essential features of the subject and offers a lucid survey of the theories and arguments put forward in the book. The collection arises out of the Morrell Toleration Project at the University of York and all the papers were written as contributions to that project. The discussion will be of interest to specialists in philosophy, in political and social theory and in intellectual history

English.