John Locke - On Toleration

Given our recent discussion dealing with civil discourse, this Liberty Fund announcement appears appropriate.

A Letter Concerning Toleration
and Other Writings

By John Locke

Edited and with an Introduction by Mark Goldie

David Womersley, General Editor

A Letter Concerning Toleration and Other Writings brings together the principal writings on religious toleration and freedom of expression by one of the greatest philosophers in the Anglophone tradition: John Locke. The son of Puritans, Locke (1632-1704) lived and wrote at the dawn of the Enlightenment, a period during which traditional mores, values, and customs were being questioned.


This volume opens with Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) and also contains his earlier Essay Concerning Toleration (1667), extracts from the Third Letter for Toleration (1692), and a large body of his briefer essays and memoranda on this theme. Locke's contention, fleshed out in the Essay and in the Third Letter, that men should enjoy a perfect and "uncontrollable liberty" in matters of religion was shocking to many in seventeenth-century England. Still more shocking, perhaps, was its corollary that the magistrate had no standing in matters of religion. Taken together, these works forcefully present Locke's belief in the necessary interrelation between limited government and religious freedom. At a time when the world is again having to come to terms with profound tensions among diverse religions and cultures, they are a canonical statement of the case for religious and intellectual freedom.

Liberty Fund presents the first fully annotated edition of Locke's writings on toleration, offering guidance to his rich reservoir of references and allusions. The editor's extensive introduction describes the historical, theological, and philosophical contexts needed for understanding Locke's work.