Discourses of Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Enlightenment

Beschrijving van de uitgever

The idea of tolerance is one of the most enduring legacies of the Enlightenment. However, there is a surprising lack of scholarly works that attempt to analyse the influence of tolerance on the individual during this period. This collection assesses, for the first time, the positive and negative impact of discourses and theories of tolerance upon the lives of individuals in eighteenth-century Europe. Featuring an internationally renowned group of contributors, this volume looks at the concept of tolerance at the point where the individual, or group, converges or clashes with the state. Though it appears to provide grist for the mill of Enlightenment critics such as Adorno, Horkheimer, Foucault, and MacIntyre by confronting specific cases in which individual freedoms are forced to acquiesce to state control and authority in the guise of tolerance, the essays also offer a cautionary tale of critical restraint in the post-9/11 world. By reflecting on similar discrepancies in the interplay of discourses of tolerance and intolerance that inform our own lives, we recognize attempts to craft and apply theories and practices of toleration. With reference to gender preference, racial and social profiling, immigration policies, and the adjudication of borderland cultures and hybrid identities, this collection offers an in-depth examination of Enlightenment society and its parallels in the contemporary world.