Toleration, justice, and dignity. Lecture on the occasionof the inauguration as professor of Dirk-Martin Grube, Free University of Amsterdam, September 24, 2015

Abstract

After discussing the nature of toleration, giving a brief history of the emergence of religious toleration in the West, and presenting my understanding of religion, I develop what I call ‘the dignity argument’ for religious toleration: to fail to tolerate a person’s religion is to treat that person in a way that does not befit their dignity. And to treat them in a way that does not befit their dignity is to wrong them, to treat them unjustly.

Keywords:

• Calvin
• dignity
• du Plessis Mornay
• Lactantius
• Nagel
• nature of persons
• religion
• toleration

Notes

1. Battles translation, 1488.

2. du Plessis Mornay, “Discourse sur la Permission de Liberté de Religion,” 163.

3. Unpublished translation by Robert Wilken.

4. See Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs.

5. Nagel, Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament, 5.

6. Ibid.

7. Griffin, On Human Rights, 33.

8. See, in particular, Justice: Rights and Wrongs.

9. I have attempted that in Chapter 8 of Wolterstorff, Understanding Liberal Democracy.

10. The thought comes to mind that perhaps these two capacities should be incorporated into a more comprehensive understanding of rational and normative agency. I think not. Neither one is, strictly speaking, a capacity for agency.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicholas Wolterstorff

Nicholas Wolterstorff is emeritus professor of philosophical theology, Yale University.