This paper gives an overview of Pierre Bayle’s theory of toleration and derives a normative principle of toleration from it that is meant to compete with other normative principles of toleration such as the Harm principle. INDEX WORDS: Political philosophy, Social philosophy, toleration, religion, Christianity, justice, legitimacy, stability, John Locke, Pierre Bayle, Baruch Spinoza, Harm princ...

This paper rereads David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion as dramatising a distinctive, naturalistic account of toleration. I have two purposes in mind: first, to complete and ground Hume’s fragmentary explicit discussion of toleration; second, to unearth a potentially attractive alternative to more recent, Rawlsian approaches to toleration. To make my case, I connect Dialogues and ...

Value pluralism does not imply relativism or subjectivism about values. What it does is allow respect for an at least limited toleration of values with which one may profoundly disagree. Thus a doctor can respect the autonomy of a patient whose values he does not share.

Early social deprivation in highly social mammals interferes with their varying needs for security and stimulation. Toleration of social stimulation was studied in 18 adult ex-laboratory chimpanzees, who had been deprived for 16 to 27 years, during their 1st year after resocialization into 1 of 3 social groups. For this, a model of social competence was developed with 5 grades of social stimula...

It is common for religiously motivated actions to be specially protected by law. Many legal theorists have asked why: what makes religion special? What it worthy of toleration over and above other non-religious deeply held convictions? The answer I put forward that religions’ alleged afterlife consequences call a principle warrants special treatment. Under Rawlsian toleration, reasonable those ...