# From Toleration to Laïcité

Gerhardt Stenger

► To cite this version:

Gerhardt Stenger. From Toleration to Laïcité. Dialogue and Universalism, 2021, 31 (2), pp.145-161.
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DIALOGUE
AND
UNIVERSALISM

JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR UNIVERSAL DIALOGUE

Vol. XXXI

No. 2/2021

DO WE NEED A NEW ENLIGHTENMENT
FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY?

Guest Editor: *Robert Elliott Allinson*

1. ON THE IDEA OF TOLERANCE AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

*Emilia A. Tajsin* — Understanding Is Not Enough

*Adriana Neacșu* — John Locke—Theorist of Limiting and Supervising Political Power by Citizens

*Diego Lucci* — Separating Politics from Institutional Religion: The Significance of John
Locke's Theory of Toleration

*Shmuel Feiner* — Mendelssohn's *Jerusalem* (1783) and The Jewish Vision of Tolerance

*Columbus N. Ogbujah* — Benedict de Spinoza's Virtue: Springboard for Modern Valorization of Ethical Relativism

*Gabriela Tănăsescu* — Philosophy and Theological Rationalism: Spinoza and Hobbes

*Gerhardt Stenger* — From Toleration to Laïcité: Bayle, Voltaire and the *Declaration of the Rights of Man*

*Evgeniy Bubnov* — The Idea of Miracle in the Enlightenment and Enlightenment in the Idea of
Miracle: The Dialectics of Theological Narrative and Philosophical Discourse

2. THINKING FOR ONESELF, REASON AND MYSTICISM

*Halina Walentowicz* — Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the Context of the Enlightenment and the
Contemporary Era

*Ana Bazac* — Understanding the Virtues of Enlightenment Epistemology

*German Melikhov* — Productive Misunderstanding: Independent Thinking as the Horizon of the Enlightenment

3. THE FRUITS OF THE EUROPEAN ENLIGHTENMENT
AND THE BEGINNING OF ITS CRITIQUE

*Elena Tashlinskaya* — Education Project: Utopia or New Reality?

*Ashok Kumar Malhotra* — Appraisal of Steven Pinker's Position on Enlightenment

*Omer Moussaly* — A Historicist Critique of Steven Pinker's Interpretation of Progress

*Luke O'Sullivan* — On the Very Idea of Civilisation

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Robert Elliott Allinson (Soka University, USA)

Charles Brown (Emporia State University, USA)

Stanisław Czerniak (Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland)

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Emily Tajsin (Kazan State University of Power Engineering, Russia)

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DO WE NEED A NEW ENLIGHTENMENT
FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY?

Guest Editor: Robert Elliott Allinson

<table><tr><td>Editorial</td><td>5</td></tr></table>

1. ON THE IDEA OF TOLERANCE AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

*Emilia A. Tajsin* — Understanding Is Not Enough .................................................. 27

*Adriana Neacșu* — John Locke—Theorist of Limiting and Supervising Political Power by Citizens .................................................................................................... 49

*Diego Lucci* — Separating Politics from Institutional Religion: The Significance of John Locke's Theory of Toleration ................................................................................................ 67

*Shmuel Feiner* — Mendelssohn's *Jerusalem* (1783) and The Jewish Vision of Tolerance .................................................................................................................. 89

*Columbus N. Ogbujah* — Benedict de Spinoza's Virtue: Springboard for Modern Valorization of Ethical Relativism ................................................................................ 107

*Gabriela Tănăsescu* — Philosophy and Theological Rationalism: Spinoza and Hobbes ................................................................................................................ 123

*Gerhardt Stenger* — From Toleration to Laïcité: Bayle, Voltaire and the Declaration of the Rights of Man ................................................................................ 145

*Evgeniy Bubnov* — The Idea of Miracle in the Enlightenment and Enlightenment in the Idea of Miracle: The Dialectics of Theological Narrative and Philosophical Discourse ................................................................................................................ 163

2. THINKING FOR ONESELF, REASON AND MYSTICISM

*Halina Walentowicz* — Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the Context of the Enlightenment and the Contemporary Era ................................................................................ 185

*Ana Bazac* — Understanding the Virtues of Enlightenment Epistemology ...... 211

*German Melikhov* — Productive Misunderstanding: Independent Thinking as the Horizon of the Enlightenment (On the Example of Polemics between Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi) .................................................. 231
### 3. THE FRUITS OF THE EUROPEAN ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE BEGINNING OF ITS CRITIQUE

*Elena Tashlinskaya* — Education Project: Utopia or New Reality? (Intellectuals of Russia of the 18th Century) .................................................. 247

*Ashok Kumar Malhotra* — Appraisal of Steven Pinker's Position on Enlightenment .................................................................................................................. 263

*Omer Moussaly* — A Historicist Critique of Steven Pinker's Interpretation of Progress .................................................................................................................. 285

*Luke O'Sullivan* — On the Very Idea of Civilisation .................................................. 307
Gerhardt Stenger

# FROM TOLERATION TO LAÏCITÉ: BAYLE, VOLTAIRE AND THE DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN

## ABSTRACT

This paper traces the history of the philosophical and political justification of religious tolerance from the late 17th century to modern times. In the Anglo-Saxon world, John Locke's *Letter Concerning Toleration* (1689) gave birth to the doctrine of the separation of Church and State and to what is now called secularization. In France, Pierre Bayle refuted, in his *Philosophical Commentary* (1685), the justification of intolerance taken from Saint Augustine. Following him, Voltaire campaigned for tolerance following the Calas affair (1763), and the *Declaration of the Rights of Man* (1789) imposed religious freedom which, a century later, resulted in the uniquely French notion of *laïcité*, which denies religion any supremacy, and any right to organize life in its name. Equality before the law takes precedence over freedom: the fact of being a believer does not give rise to the right to special statutes or to exceptions to the law.

**Keywords:** toleration, *laïcité*, secularism, Enlightenment, Pierre Bayle, John Locke, Voltaire, *Declaration of the Rights of Man*.

## PART ONE: THE AGE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

### John Locke's *Letter Concerning Toleration*

The history of secularism may have started in Britain, which on the eve of the 18th century was becoming the most modern nation in Europe. In 1667, John Locke's *Essay on Toleration* distinguishes sharply between Church and State: earthly rulers do not derive their authority from God but from contracts made by men.<fnref n="1" /> Twenty years later, his *Epistola de tolerantia* (1689), translated into English the same year under the title *A Letter Concerning*

<footnote n="1">¹ Cf. Locke, J. 2003. *An Essay Concerning Toleration*. In: idem. *Political Writings*. Wootton, D. (Ed.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 187.</footnote>
Pierre Bayle’s *Philosophical Commentary*

Unable to demand the separation of Church and State in the wholly Catholic France, the French Protestant Pierre Bayle published, in parallel with Locke, the first great book against religious intolerance: *Commentaire philosophique sur ces paroles de Jésus-Christ, Contrains-les d'entrer; où l'on prouve, par plusieurs raisons démonstratives, qu'il n'y a rien de plus abominable que de faire des Conversions par la Contrainte: et où l'on réfute tous les Sophismes des Convertisseurs à contrainte, et l'Apologie que saint Augustin a faite des Persécutions* (1686).<fnref n="6" /> This long title presents the problem and the stakes of religious tolerance since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. To justify the persecutions against the Protestants, the Catholic partisans of religious intolerance invoked from Saint Augustine on the evangelical parable of the Wedding Feast (Luke 14.15–24): a householder gives a large meal but he is neglected by his guests who all have an excuse not to come. He then orders his servant: “Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be fill’d.” The interpretation given by the Catholic Church to this parable formed the theoretical foundation of religious intolerance from the 5th to the 18th century.

It was Saint Augustine who, facing multiple heresies, was the first to invoke this parable, of which he interpreted the injunction “Compel them to come in” literally, meaning to bring back the heretics by force. Coercion, he says, does not automatically lead to conversion, but it counterbalances the stubbornness of a mind that refuses to hear the truth.<fnref n="7" /> Understood in this way, constraint is not the negation of freedom but must on the contrary make it effective by removing psychological obstacles (it breaks a lock, in a way):

> “You now see therefore, I suppose, that the thing to be considered when any one is coerced, is not the mere fact of the coercion, but the nature of that to which he is coerced, whether it be good or bad: not that anyone can be good in spite of his own will, but that, through fear of suffering what he does not desire, he either renounces his hostile prejudices, or is compelled to examine truth of which he had been contentedly ignorant; and under the influence of this fear repudiates the error which he was wont to defend, or seeks the truth of which he formerly knew nothing, and now willingly holds what he formerly rejected.”<fnref n="8" />

<footnote n="6">⁶ The English translation was published with a slightly different title: Bayle, P. 1708. *A Philosophical Commentary on These Words of the Gospel*, Luke XIV, 23: Compel them to come in, that my House may be full. *Containing Remarks on those Letters of St. Austin which are usually alledg'd for the compelling of Hereticks, and particularly to justify the late Persecution in France. With A Supplement, proving, That Hereticks have as much Right to persecute the Orthodox, as the Orthodox them.* London: J. Darby.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ The word “stubbornness” comes up often in the controversy of this period: an obstinate person is one who, having been conquered by the truth, perseveres in his guilty thoughts.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ Augustine, A. 1872. *Works*. Rev. Dods, M. (Ed.). Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, VI, 409; Letter 93 to Vincentius, V, 16.</footnote>
For Saint Augustine, it goes without saying that the Catholic Church is in the truth, no doubt is allowed on this. The persecution she inflicts on heretics is therefore legitimate, while the persecution she suffered in the early centuries by the Romans was not:

> "If, therefore, we wish either to declare or to recognize the truth, there is a persecution of unrighteousness, which the impious inflict upon the Church of Christ; and there is a righteous persecution, which the Church of Christ inflicts upon the impious. She therefore is blessed in suffering persecution for righteousness' sake; but they are miserable, suffering persecution for unrighteousness. Moreover, she persecutes in the spirit of love, they in the spirit of wrath; she that she may correct, they that they may overthrow: she that she may recall from error, they that they may drive headlong into error. Finally, she persecutes her enemies and arrests them, until they become weary in their vain opinions, so that they should make advance in the truth; but they, returning evil for good, because we take measures for their good, to secure their eternal salvation, endeavor even to strip us of our temporal safety ..."<fnref n="9" />

Bayle's *Philosophical Commentary* was born out of a heated reaction against the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and Catholic propaganda literature which sought to justify the repression of Protestantism by coercion.<fnref n="10" /> To give an idea of the way in which tolerance was understood by the majority at this time, it suffices to quote the definition given by the *Dictionary of the French Academy*: "condescension, indulgence for what one cannot prevent."<fnref n="11" /> Tolerance is a weakness, you have to tolerate what you don't approve of, what you disappoint of, what appears to be evil. A tolerant believer is basically a resigned man. Because he cannot afford to impose his point of view, he condescends or painfully tolerates heretics despite their being wrong. He does not give them the chance to be right. Until the mid-18th century, religious intolerance was triply founded in reason: first, because to tolerate another faith means to declare one-self an accomplice to falsehood and error. Second, because it is a question of salvation: as the heretic is destined to eternal damnation, he must be protected against himself, and the whole community must be protected from the risk of contagion that heresy represents. The duty of a good Catholic, love of neighbor of course, therefore consists in rescuing him from damnation, if necessary, in spite of himself; if persuasion does not work, violence becomes legitimate. Fi-nally, there is the glory of God: heresy is an offense, a blasphemy vis-à-vis God,

<footnote n="9">⁹ Augustine, A. 1872, op. cit., III, 488; Letter 185 to Boniface, II, 11.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ What is meant by constraint? Two things. Either torture or all the treatments intended to break the resistance of the obstinate heretic, or the choice offered to him: abjuration or "abandonment to the secular arm," that is to say death, most often by fire.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ In 1708, the *Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum: or, a general English Dictionary* by John Kersey defines "to tolerate:" "to suffer, to bear with."</footnote>
a crime of lese-divinity which deserves to be punished. In short, duty and chari-
ty forbid being tolerant; the tolerant are only free thinkers who profess the indif-
ference of religions.

Bayle is one of the first philosophers to undermine the classical view that
tolerance is a sign of weakness. Showing tolerance is admitting that someone
does not change their mind if they are convinced of the truth of what they be-
lieve:

> "... all imaginable care shou'd be taken in endeavoring to convert those who are suppose'd to be in error, by Instructions, by charitable and calm Reasonings, by clearing up their Doubts, by Prayers to God in their behalf, and by all the Demonstrations of a Zeal truly Christian: but if all this will not work upon 'em, far from pressing 'em to change their religion, we ought to let 'em know that they wou'd do very ill to change it, as long as their Minds are not enlighten'd."<fnref n="12" />

What Bayle brings into the debate is an approach to tolerance conceived as a positive value. There is no greater evil, says Bayle, than denying one's conscience. For the ultimate criterion of truth for man is not the authority of a Church, it is his conscience. Anything he does against what the voice of conscience commands him to do is sin. Bayle denies that God requires absolute knowledge of the truth from man. For salvation, he proclaims, "reputed truth" suffices, that is, the conviction, *true or false*, of being in the truth. In the field of belief, only the sincerity of the conviction—which can be the same in a Catholic or a Protestant—makes it possible to evaluate and validate the faith. Faced with French Catholics, Bayle claims the “rights of an erroneous conscience”, because he considers that the man who makes mistakes in good faith should benefit from the same rights as the one who is—or at least believes himself to be—in immediate possession of the truth: God “requires no more of us, than to examine and search after it diligently; and that when we have examin'd it to the best of our Power, he will accept of our Assent to the Objects which to us appear true, and of our Love for 'em as for a Present from Heaven.”<fnref n="13" /> Bayle keeps insisting “we are oblig'd to have the same deference for a reputed as for a real Truth.”<fnref n="14" />

Yet Catholics have vigorously contested the doctrine that religious opinions belong only to conscience. When truth is experienced as unique and intangible, there is no room for opinion, for particular feeling. For the French bishop and theologian Bossuet, opinion is synonymous with error:

> "The heretic is someone who has an opinion; and that is what the word it-
> self means. What does it mean, to have an opinion? It means following one's

<footnote n="12">¹² Bayle, P. 1708, op. cit., I, 205 (II, 4).</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ Ibid., I, 331 (II,10).</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ Ibid., I, 340 (II,10).</footnote>
own thought and one's particular sentiment. But the catholic is catholic; that is to say, he is universal, and without having any particular feeling he follows unhesitatingly that of the Church."<fnref n="15" />

Truth cannot be the object of opinions; to have an opinion concerning the truth is to be a “heretic.” The weakness of man in general and the insufficiency of his reason in particular do not plead for the tolerance of error but on the contrary for the unconditional submission to the truth that God has revealed to us and of which the Catholic Church is the depositary. From this perspective, the question of whether we can or should tolerate those who do not profess the same religion does not make sense.

Unfortunately for him, Bayle was too far ahead of his time. The idea of tolerance won him the hostility of his former protector Pierre Jurieu, professor of Protestant theology and exiled like him in Rotterdam. As religiously intolerant as his Catholic opponents, Jurieu by no means accepted Bayle's ideas of tolerance. As he himself admitted: "this hatred for this unworthy tolerance of heresies is in me an old evil, which has grown stronger over time."<fnref n="16" /> To the *Philosophical Commentary* he opposed the tract *The Rights of the Two Sovereigns in the Matter of Religion, the Conscience and the Prince* (1687), "to destroy the dogma of the indifference of religions, and of universal tolerance." Between Jurieu and Bayle, it is a battle of libels and insults during which Jurieu ends up obtaining in 1693 the dismissal of his old friend accused of impiety and even of atheism. Deprived of his income, living in poverty, Bayle spent the last years of his life defending himself against the attacks against him. A feeling of helplessness and despair therefore pervades his final works, which seem to establish a radical failure of any doctrine of tolerance. Bayle's last texts engage in a strange and implacable, a cruel shattering of the argumentation of the *Philosophical Commentary*, at least from the moment it is read through the theologian's glasses.

Take for example the central question of the rights of the erroneous conscience. In the fourth part of *Answers to the Questions of a Provincial* (1703–1706), Bayle wearily observes that his argument, though philosophically flawless, is impossible to apply from the perspective of theologians. The moral criterion which founds, in the *Philosophical Commentary*, the rights of freedom of conscience is valid only for those who recognize the primacy of natural light over faith. But this is precisely what the Churches cannot admit, precisely because they are Churches. External adherence to the ecclesiastical apparatus will always prevail, for a Church, over any other consideration. While the Bayle of the *Commentary* could not imagine that an armed missionary could totally stifle

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ Instruction pastorale sur les promesses de l'Église. In: Bossuet, J.-B. 1862-1866. Œuvres complètes. Lachat, F. (Ed.). Paris: Louis Vivès, XVII, 112.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ Jurieu, P. 1691. Apologie adressée aux pasteurs et conducteurs des Églises wallonnes des Pays-Bas. La Haye: A. Troyel, 3.</footnote>
within himself the consciousness of his crime and the feeling of the contradic-
tion of his action with the moral principles of the Gospel, the Bayle of the Re-
sponse recognizes, with a heavy heart, that the persecutor, once dogma has
turned into religious zeal in him, can sincerely believe that he is doing his dirty
work in the name of his conscience. It is sincerity which results in crime beyond
measure:

"But a man who convinces himself that by exterminating heresies he advances the reign of God, and that he will gain a higher degree of glory in paradise [...]; such a man, I say, will trample all the rules of morality under foot, and far from being restrained by remorse, he will feel impelled by his conscience to use all kinds of means to prevent people from continue to blaspheme the holy name of God, and to establish orthodoxy on the ruins of heresy, or idolatry."<fnref n="17" />

And Bayle immediately adds: “What havoc does this not cause in a society!”
Religious fanaticism is responsible for this devastation. Bayle is now convinced
that no rational and moral argument for tolerance will ever be able to overcome
intolerance.<fnref n="18" />

The tone of Bayle's last writings echoes this aporia: it is acerbic and of rare
violence. Bayle's feeling for any positive (established) religion is marked by
one word that keeps coming back: disgust. Describing the symptoms of reli-
gious madness, he will engage in one of the most radical attacks that has ever
been launched against religion, against all religions or more accurately, against
religion as a social disease. Half a century before Voltaire, Bayle observes that
intolerance is the historical product of the Christian religion. This is evidenced
by the pagan religions which did not give rise to wars of religion: "Paganism
was divided into an infinite number of sects, which paid the Gods several dif-
ferent kinds of worship [...]; yet I don't remember I have ever read of a reli-
gious war among the pagans."<fnref n="19" /> The reason is that the pagan religions did not
have a universalist ambition unlike Christians, "being obligated by their Mas-
ter's commands to instruct all nations."<fnref n="20" /> In other words, and therein lies its
historical drama, the Christian religion pretends to universality (this is what the
word "Catholic" means). Universality can have one meaning at the level of
science, it has another at that of morality, but by definition, a belief cannot
claim such ambition. This is the reason why any universally claimed belief is

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ Bayle, P. 1727. *Œuvres diverses*. La Haye: La Compagnie des libraires, III, 955.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ The genius of Voltaire will say the same thing in one sentence in the article *Fanaticism* of the *Philosophical Dictionary*: “What can be said in answer to a man, who says he will rather obey God than men, and who consequently feels certain of meriting heaven by cutting your throat?” (Voltaire 1824. *A Philosophical Dictionary*, London: John and Henry L. Hunt, III, 172). A Question to which we still have not found an answer ...</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ Bayle, P. 1708, op. cit., I, 32 (A Preliminary Discourse).</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ Ibid., I, 215 (II, 4).</footnote>
tempted to impose by force what it cannot justify by argument. One need only
read the religious literature advocating intolerance towards heretics to convince
oneself that tolerance in matters of religion is anything but a natural attitude.
“When you uphold the truth,” writes Dom Chaudon, “it is impossible not to
defend it zealously. It is one, it is holy, it is jealous. We cannot unite with those
who attack it.”<fnref n="21" /> Jean-Jacques Rousseau understood this inability of Catholics to
endure heterodoxy, their inability not to be intolerant: “It is impossible to live in
peace with people one believes to be damned; to love them would be to hate
God who punishes them; one must absolutely bring them back [to the fold] or
torment them.”<fnref n="22" /> These lines were published in April 1762, a month after the
torture of Jean Calas, which will be the starting point of Voltaire’s fight in favor
of religious tolerance. With Voltaire, we come to a historic moment when the
question of tolerance shifts from a simply negative virtue to a positive one.

Voltaire's struggle for tolerance

Voltaire, before the Calas affair, spoke out for tolerance, forcefully, but
without campaigning. In 1734, in his *Philosophical Letters* or *Letters concerning the English Nation*, he offered France the English example. An Englishman,
writes Voltaire, “as one to whom liberty is natural, may go to heaven his own
way.”<fnref n="23" /> In England, as in France, there is a State Church, the Anglican Church.
But unlike France, next to it, the various religious sects enjoy wide tolerance.
Across the Channel, the peaceful coexistence between the Anglican Church and
the countless sects has ended up putting a damper on religious controversy; in
France, the repressive French policy towards the Protestants permeated the society
of the *Ancien Régime* until the threshold of the Revolution. But it’s not
just Protestants: since the mid-1750s, the government and the Church have been
targeting the *philosophes*, in other words, intellectuals in the *Encyclopedia*
movement. A royal declaration provided for the death penalty against authors,
publishers and peddlers of seditious writings. This relentless persecution finally
led Voltaire to fight the Church. In the 1760s, he launched the operation
“Éclatif,” that is to say *Écrasez l’infâme*, “Crush the Infamous:” by “the Infallible”
he meant the Catholic Church and its two characteristic features in the
18th century, intolerance and fanaticism. On March 22, 1762, Voltaire learnt
that, by order of the Parliament of Toulouse, a Protestant merchant named Calas
has been broken on the wheel, then strangled and burned for having killed his
son who wanted to convert to Catholicism. In less than a fortnight, he realized

<footnote n="21">²¹ Chaudon, L.-M. 1767. *Dictionnaire antiphilosophique*, Avignon: Vᵉ Girard et F. Seguin, 351.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²² Rousseau, J.-J. 1997. *The Social Contract and Other Late Political Writings*. Gourevitch, V. (Ed., Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 151 (IV, 8).</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ Voltaire 1994. *Letters Concerning the English Nation*. Cronk, N. (Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 26.</footnote>
that this was a monstrous miscarriage of justice. After a thousand attempts without result, he addressed the public and unleashed the equivalent of what is today called a press campaign. In 1763, his *Treatise on Religious Toleration Occasioned by the Execution of the Unfortunated Jean Calas* denounced the cruelties and absurdities of intolerance and religious fanaticism and postulated that it must be

> "permitted everyone to follow the dictates of his reason, and to believe only what that reason, right or wrong, may dictate [...] provided he doth not trou- ble the order of society; for it does not depend on men to believe or disbe- lieve what they choose: though it depends on them to pay a due deference to the laws and customs of their country."<fnref n="24" />

Voltaire calls for the Church to be more tolerant of Protestants and suggests that all peoples worship the same God, implying that Christianity is not the only true religion. All religions are equal, he suggests between the lines, there is not one that necessarily prevails over another. This is how Voltaire demolishes any claim of any Church to justified intolerance.

A year after the *Treatise on Religious Toleration*, Voltaire proposed, in his *Philosophical Dictionary* (1764–1769), a philosophical justification of toler- ance. In the article *Toleration*, he drew from man's weakness and his reason the decisive argument in favor of tolerance: "What is toleration? It is the appurte- nance of humanity. We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually par- don each other our follies—it is the first law of nature."<fnref n="25" /> Voltaire considers tolerance as the necessary consequence of the constitutive fallibility of human nature. Only men can be tolerant, beasts cannot wander or falter. Since error is everywhere, we must not impose a hypothetical truth. In the realm of philoso- phy and religion, there is no truth, there are only opinions. However, our limits and our weaknesses force us not only to tolerate those of others, but even more, to *relativize our own beliefs*: "if you are a Mahometan, as there are many men who are not Mahometans, you may possibly be in error."<fnref n="26" /> A true tolerance would be one which, out of prudence, thinks that after all, one is not sure of anything and that the truth of the other may be the real truth. Since there are men who disagree with me in any area, I could be the one who is wrong.

Voltaire then approaches tolerance from another angle: he wonders why in- tolerance still persists today, because nowadays everyone accepts the validity of tolerance: "There is nobody who does not assent to this truth." If intolerance persists, it is because the powerful and the clergy, whose power is based on the dominant religion, are imposing it for their benefit:

<footnote n="24">²⁴ Voltaire. 1820, op. cit., 106.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵ Voltaire. 1824, op. cit., VI, 272.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶ Ibid., VI, 69 (article *Sect*).</footnote>
"I possess dignity and power, which ignorance and credulity have founded. I trample on the heads of men prostrated at my feet; if they should rise and look me in the face, I am lost; they must therefore be kept bound down to the earth with chains of iron.

Thus have men reasoned, whom ages of fanaticism have rendered powerful. They have other persons in power under them, and these latter again have underlings, who all enrich themselves with the spoils of the poor man, fatten themselves with his blood, and laugh at his imbecility. They detest all toleration, as contractors enriched at the expense of the public are afraid to render their accounts, and as tyrants dread the name of liberty. To crown all, in short, they encourage fanatics who cry aloud—Respect the absurdities of my master; tremble, pay, and be silent.”<fnref n="27" />

The Enlightenment's fight for tolerance bore fruit. Nine years after Voltaire's death, King Louis XVI finally promulgated the edict on the civil status of non-Catholics, putting an end to the unbearable discrimination against French Protestants. From now on, their presence is *tolerated* on French soil. On the eve of the Revolution, religious freedom, writes a famous chronicler, is “to the highest degree possible in Paris; you will never be asked for any account of your belief.” No more arguing over religion: “This is an old case that has been decided; and it was high time, after so many centuries of instruction. [...] The Enlightenment brought this desirable calm, and fanaticism is reduced to devouring itself.”<fnref n="28" />

## PART TWO: MODERN TIMES

### *The Declaration of the Rights of Man*

We still think today that there is no concept nobler than toleration. In fact, we forget its deeply humiliating character which manifests itself in the imbalance between the one who grants it—and who can withdraw it if necessary— and the one who is the (momentary) beneficiary. Tolerance is something that can be granted or denied, depending on the goodwill of the prince. Under the *Ancien Régime*, where Catholicism was the state religion, Voltaire had to content himself with demanding religious toleration for his fellow Protestants, the right not to be of the official religion of the kingdom and to freely practice their worship. Everything changed in 1789. During the debates on the *Declaration of the Rights of Man*, the pastor and deputy Jean-Paul Rabaut de Saint-Étienne exposed the inadequacies of the so-called “tolerance edict” promulgated by Louis XVI in 1787 and called for the recognition of full freedom for all:

<footnote n="27">²⁷ Ibid., VI, 276 (article *Toleration*).</footnote>

<footnote n="28">²⁸ Mercier, L.-S. 1994. *Tableau de Paris*. Bonnet, J.-C. (Ed.). Paris: Mercure de France, I, 581–582.</footnote>
"But Gentlemen, it is not even tolerance which I demand: it is liberty. Tolerance! Support! Pardon! Mercy! All ideas which are overwhelmingly unjust to all dissenters for as long as it is true that difference in religion or opinion is not a crime. Tolerance! I demand that the very word be banished; and it will be, this unfair word, which presents us only as citizens deserving of pity, as criminals to be pardoned [...]. Error, gentlemen, is not a crime: the person who has fallen into it takes it as the truth; it is the truth for him; he is obliged to believe in it, and no man or society has any right to prevent him."<fnref n="29" />

At the start of the French Revolution, all opinions, whether religious, philosophical or political, gained citizenship in the new France which was in the process of being built. In the *Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen*, article 10 states that "No one may be disquieted for his opinions, even religious ones, provided that their manifestation does not trouble the public order established by the law." By a singular ruse of history, this article, which marks the advent of the principle of freedom of religion, was perceived by many at the time as the threat of a reconstitution of the alliance of the throne and the altar under the veil of public order, consecrating a facade of tolerance.<fnref n="30" /> In fact, and with hindsight, this article founded religious freedom by proclaiming first that religion is only an opinion, having no special status, and secondly that any religion can be admitted from the moment when it does not affect public safety. As soon as a religion risks being a factor of disturbance with regard to public order or compromising the common good of the social group, it is for the State to enforce the law. Pope Pius VI was not mistaken and strongly rejected in his brief *Quod aliquantum* (1791) "this absolute freedom [...] which not only guarantees the right not to be disturbed because of one's religious opinions, but, beyond that, grants the freedom to think, say, write and even print as one wills everything and anything that may pass through the most unruly of imaginations."<fnref n="31" /> For Pius VI, such religious liberty was a "monstrous right," a form of madness.

Article 10 of the *Declaration of the Rights of Man* lays the foundation for the edifice of secularism in that it subordinates the practice of religion to the laws of the nation. A year later, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which obliges men of the Church to swear "to be faithful to the Nation, to the Law, to the King,"

<footnote n="29">²⁹ Session of August 23, 1789. Quoted in Warman, C. (Ed.). 2016. *Tolerance. The Beacon of the Enlightenment*. Warman, C. et al. (Trans.). Open Book Publishers, 70–71.</footnote>

<footnote n="30">³⁰ For an enlightening re-reading of the main debates around article 10, see Hermon-Belot, R. 2015. *Aux sources de l'idée laïque. Révolution et pluralité religieuse*. Paris: Odile Jacob, Chap. 1.</footnote>

<footnote n="31">³¹ Quoted in Zamagni, G. 2011. "Re(dis)covering Humanity: The Catholic Church and Human Rights." In: *The Quest for a Common Humanity. Human Dignity and Otherness in the Religious Traditions of the Mediterranean*, Berthelot, K., M. Morgenstern (Eds.). Leiden–Boston, MA: Brill, 352.</footnote>
submits the Church of France to the State. Philosophers dreamed of it, the Revolution accomplished it. This is the first legacy of the French Enlightenment: religious beliefs are only “opinions,” the truth of which is uncertain; far from granting unlimited freedom to all faiths in the kingdom, the men of 1789 restrained the power of the churches, at least when they claim to interfere in public affairs. Thirty years after the Calas affair, Father Grégoire can declare that the Republic must “proscribe a persecuting religion, a religion which does not admit national sovereignty, equality, liberty, fraternity in all their extent.”<fnref n="32" />

## The separation of Churches and State

France was now divided in two. Faced with the liberalism resulting from the Revolution, the Catholic Church persisted, until the turn of the 1880s, in demending freedom of thought and religious pluralism. Nostalgic for its dominant position before 1789, the clerical party contracted, in the 19th century, the political alliances which allowed it to modify the balance in its favor—which it managed to do during the Restoration and at the beginning of the Second Empire. Abolished by the Revolution, the offense of blasphemy was reintroduced in 1825, which threatened with the death penalty any person having committed a sacrilege. According to Bonald, the Decalogue was given as a civil rule to all; therefore sins can be punished as violations of civil laws.<fnref n="33" /> Driven by intransigent tendencies in papal politics for most of the century, the Church turned her back on intellectual liberalism, relentlessly attacking the modern world, liberalism, democracy and the Republic. Historically, secularism was built in a movement of emancipation from clericalism, in the confrontation with the hold of the Catholic Church over the whole of society. The beginnings of the Third Republic were marked by the clash between a clericalism which goes hand in hand with a strongly rooted Catholicism, an aggressive secularism and an anticlericalism which was sometimes virulent but circumscribed; it resulted in a series of secular measures which complete the work of the Revolution of 1789. The law on the separation of Churches and State of December 9, 1905 was the culmination of the struggle against the Catholic Church, declared enemy of the Republic.<fnref n="34" /> It first proclaimed freedom of conscience, guaranteed the free exercise of worship and non-discrimination between religions. Second, it laid down the principle of the separation of Churches and State: “The Republic does not recognize, pay or subsidize any religion.” From then on, religion,

<footnote n="32">³² Grégoire, H. 1794. *De la liberté des cultes*, discours du 1er nivôse an III. Quoted in [Lallement, G.] 1818-1823. *Choix de rapports, opinions et discours prononcés à la Tribune Nationale depuis 1789 jusqu’à ce jour*. Paris: A. Eymery, XV, 208.</footnote>

<footnote n="33">³³ Cf. Rocques de Montgaillard, G. H. 1829. *Histoire de France pendant les années 1825, 1826, 1827 et commencement de 1828*. Paris: chez l’éditeur, I, 62.</footnote>

<footnote n="34">³⁴ It is written “of the Churches,” because all the Churches are obviously concerned, but in reality, only the Catholic Church is concerned, for the historical reasons which we have just mentioned.</footnote>
which each citizen remained free to choose and practice as he pleased, is considered to come under the sole private domain; thus, the law prohibited “the erection or affixing of any religious sign or emblem on public monuments or in any public place,” except in cemeteries and museums. With the law of 1905, a new balance was established between the State, society and religions. Secularism, which was not explicitly referred to in the law, became a principle of constitutional value with the Constitutions of October 27, 1946 and October 4, 1958.

According to Lockean theory of the separation between Church and State, civil society and religion have nothing in common with each other. Toleration, more or less synonymous with religious freedom, consists in letting different beliefs coexist within the framework of common law. This model of religious tolerance institutes an accommodation between believing communities but excludes the unbeliever, the atheist, and the Catholic—at least in the 18th century. Religious tolerance has since ended up being extended to those who profess no religion, although even today atheism is hardly recognized in the United States: in 1988, President George H.W. Bush publicly questioned whether an atheist could be a good American.<fnref n="35" /> Unlike John Locke, Pierre Bayle admitted disbelief, for the simple reason that religion, according to him, does not necessarily lead to the practice of virtue. From a social point of view, atheists are not necessarily corrupt, they can behave as well as pagans and even, as Christians. From his first writing, *Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet* (1683), Bayle maintained that a society that dispenses with religious references, an atheistic society in short, would be just as moral, and in any case no less immoral, than a society of Christians. What maintains society is not the threat of the Doomsday, it is the laws, the police, education, social sentiments.

The first country to achieve the separation between church and state was the United States, in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. But the famous “wall of separation” the effect of ensuring religious communities an influence which would be unimaginable in France: “a nation under God,” which prints on the greenback “In God we trust” is the most religious nation in the Western world. The word “laïcité” and its derivatives are unknown in the Anglo-Saxon or Germanic world, where one more readily speaks of “secularization” to designate the gradual decline of the hold of religion on society. Within the European Union, the old state religions have never ceased to embody the supreme values of society; many states still accord particular denominations or privileges to certain denominations. Britain still maintains the principle of an established religion, a true state religion, which is Anglicanism. In almost all European countries, the school system is more or less strongly marked by the presence of

<footnote n="35">³⁵ To question asked on August 27, 1987 at Chicago airport by reporter R.I. Sherman “Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?”, he answered: “No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”</footnote>
religion. The preamble to the German Basic Law names God; the German people consider themselves ultimately responsible to God. The concept of secularism is eminently French; to renounce secularism is to open a breach in national cohesion.

## Laïcité “à la française”

What is *laïcité* “à la française”?<fnref n="36" /> It is not a current of thought among others, a competing ideology of religions or philosophies, it is constitutive of the republican project. *Laïcité* is above Anglo-Saxon toleration, which allows different religious communities to live together, but where unbelief is a problem. In the context of *laïcité*, it is not a question of building legislation for a society where beliefs coexist peacefully; it is a matter of producing a space which makes freedom of opinions possible *a priori*, a space which is “below real social functioning, a condition for the possibility of the coexistence of freedoms.”<fnref n="37" /> *Laïcité* shapes a society that immediately includes the unbeliever as well as believers, a society where the religious fact is not taken for granted. Like modern science which totally excludes the use of any deity, of a supernatural cause in the explanation of natural phenomena (which does not prevent the majority of scientists from having a religion), the *République laïque* does not belong to any religion: it respects religions, but denies them any supremacy, and any right to organize life in their name. This is the other legacy of the French Enlightenment, because under the *Ancien Régime*, French philosophers fought less for the right to practice another religion than to practice no religion at all, less for the peaceful coexistence of the Churches than for the submission of the Churches to the State. In 1789, the Catholic religion lost its status as a state religion and in the same movement, religion ceased to serve as a benchmark for citizens. Some, like Pope Francis, regret that French *laïcité* “sometimes results too much from the philosophy of the Enlightenment.” Francis will be forgiven for not being sensitive to the Enlightenment, this heritage that, he believes, “France has not yet managed to overcome.”<fnref n="38" /> One thing is certain: the values of the new society which was being born were not religious but secular, they were summed up in these three words: “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.”<fnref n="39" /> *Laïcité* “à la française” therefore cannot be reduced to the separation of the Churches and the State,

<footnote n="36">³⁶ “Laïcité à la française” inspired several Constitutions, notably those of Mexico (1917) fighting against the Catholic Church, of Turkey by Mustapha Kemal (1924) rejecting the hold of Islam on society, and of India (1950) outlawing (at least officially) the caste regime.</footnote>

<footnote n="37">³⁷ Kintzler, C. 1998. *Tolérance et laïcité*. Nantes: Cécile Défault, 39–40.</footnote>

<footnote n="38">³⁸ Interview with left-wing Catholics reported in the weekly *La Vie* du 2 mars 2016.</footnote>

<footnote n="39">³⁹ These three words, denoting values considered universal, did not become a motto until another revolution, that of 1848; the First Republic never had an official motto. Cf. Desné, R. 1992. “Histoire de la devise ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité’.” In: *La Révolution française et la littérature. Actes du Colloque international du Bicentenaire, 13–14 octobre 1989, à Kyoto*. Nakagawa, H. (Ed.). Kyoto: Presses universitaires de Kyoto, 63–78.</footnote>
which presupposes it; nor to religious toleration, because that would imply that the Republic should practice an official religion. The State has no religious foundation, it has no religious principles. The French *République laïque* is distinguished from most other more or less “secularized” States in that its republican values—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; and not Charity, Faith, Hope—have no religious but only a universalist foundation. Secular morality now takes precedence over religious morality, science and critical thinking over tradition and faith. *Laïcité* “à la française” puts religious faith at the same level as musical tastes, sports practices and the latest fashion trends: everyone is perfectly free to cultivate their inclinations as long as they do not come into conflict with the public order, the embodiment of republican values.<fnref n="40" /> The French *République laïque* is free from any religious influence, while elsewhere the Churches are more or less free from any State influence. Under Anglo-Saxon tolerance, religious freedom takes precedence over the rights and duties of citizens, who can invoke a belief to derogate from the common law, to demand what is called in Canada “reasonable accommodation.”<fnref n="41" /> What citizen’s gain in freedom, they lose in equality. In secularism, religion is strictly subordinated to the laws of the Republic. Equality before the law takes precedence over freedom: the fact of being a believer does not give rise to the right to special statutes or to exceptions to the law.

Nowadays, almost all French Catholics accept *laïcité* “à la française,” as do most French Muslims, except for an active minority which defends a political Islamism for which the Sharia is above the laws of the Republic. To advocate tolerance as fundamentalists of all kinds do, means to tolerate what cannot be tolerated, what a modern and enlightened society considers intolerable: all attacks on freedom and equality. The first victims of this “tolerance” being of course the women: married in spite of themselves, veiled in the public space, prevented from aborting, the religious—generally men—still want and always prohibit women from disposing of their body.<fnref n="42" /> Tolerance is a positive value when it signifies the simple recognition of the other and his difference, but it can be considered a negative value if it means that the State must accept or even promote all kinds of religious or other practices. Secularism does not mean the exclusion of religion from society, but it does not grant any particular status to any denomination whatsoever: Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, all these religious communities cannot claim “tolerance” in the Lockean sense of the

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰ The law banning the full-face veil in the street was not made in the name of *laïcité* but in the name of public order. If it had been done in the name of *laïcité*, it would have been clearly in the service of an affirmation of identity and the domination of one religion over another.</footnote>

<footnote n="41">⁴¹ The Canadian state mentions in the preamble to its Constitution the supremacy of God and makes the obligation to “accommodate” a constitutional principle.</footnote>

<footnote n="42">⁴² Wearing the veil is not an individual freedom; the veil is a power that is arrogated by parents, brothers, etc. on their underage daughters, it is a pressure which is exerted and which, like any pressure, ends up being accepted, even claimed, by the victims. This scandalous inequality must be denounced in school, not legitimized.</footnote>
term, given that the secular regime only knows individuals who are innocent of
any affiliation. Under Anglo-Saxon tolerance, society is made up of a mosaic of
communities enjoying special rights. *Laïcité* “à la française” formally rejects
communitarianism, identity or community claims that risk generating with-
drawal into oneself, selfishness and—the tragic events engendered by the car-
toons of Muhammad show it enough—intolerance. The secular space is not
built by adding together the different collectives present within a society, but by
“enhancing a reference plane that transcends them.”<fnref n="43" /> Secularism is the ideal of
a common space for all people beyond their differences; it alone can set the
rules of good intelligence to live together in a harmonious, respectful and peace-
ful manner.

Translation Léa Stenger

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<footnote n="43">⁴³ Pena-Ruiz, H. 2003. *Qu'est-ce que la laïcité?* Paris: Gallimard, 23.</footnote>
———. 1820. *A Treatise on Religious Toleration, Occasioned by the Execution of the Unfortunate John Calas*. London: B. Johnson.

———. 1994. *Letters Concerning the English Nation*. Cronk, Nicholas (Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR — Emeritus Professor of French literature, retired from University of Nantes. He works on history of ideas of the early modernity, especially Diderot, Voltaire and materialism and prepared many critical editions of the works of Diderot, Voltaire and Helvétius. His publications include the books: *Diderot, le combattant de la liberté*, Perrin, *Nature et liberté chez Diderot après l'Encyclopédie*, Universitas; the critical editions of Helvétius, *Œuvres complètes*, Champion, 3 vol., Voltaire, *Les Singularités de la nature*, Voltaire Foundation, Voltaire, *Dictionnaire philosophique*, Garnier-Flammarion, Voltaire, *Lettres philosophiques*, *suivies de Derniers écrits sur Dieu*, Garnier-Flammarion, Diderot, *Notes écrites de la main d'un souverain à la marge de Tacite*, SFEDHS, Diderot, *Réfutation d'Helvétius* and *Observations sur Hemsterhuis*, Hermann, *L'Affaire des Cacouacs*. Trois pamphlets contre les *Philosophes des Lumières*, Publications de l'Université de Saint-Étienne.

E-mail: gerhardt.stenger@univ-nantes.fr
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