Engagement Controversy, Republicanism and Thomas Hobbes’s ‘Intolerant Tolerance’
Ionut Untea
(Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes–Sorbonne, Paris)
From 1642 to the time of the engagement controversy one reason against the king’s
supporters was the vindication of the liberty of conscience. However, those who supported
Republicanism disagreed on what ‘liberty of conscience’ meant. For example, on the one
hand John Goodwin, John Milton and Henry Robinson believed that the highest authority to
which an individual should be subject was his own conscience; on the other hand Samuel
Rutherford warned that one should not ‘make a Pope or a God’ out of his conscience. He
advised that the rule of conduct should be ‘the law of nature’ together with ‘the word of
God’. Thomas Hobbes rejected the idea that ‘whatsoever a man does against his Conscience
is Sinne’, but he agreed to Goodwin in that the people should not be persecuted for
unorthodox opinions. Hobbes combined arguments from both directions of Republicanism
with those of the royalists, the result being a complex and sometimes paradoxically doctrine
of tolerance. Glen Newey, the author of Hobbes and Leviathan, names it ‘intolerant
tolerance’ and states that the English philosopher’s royalist position was not decisively
influenced by Republicanism. Quentin Skinner in Hobbes and Republican Liberty asserts
that, under the influence of the events of 1949, Hobbes ‘adapted’ his arguments to
Republicanism in order to sustain the legitimacy of a de facto power. But what happens if this
de facto power does not allow enough liberty of conscience of his subjects? In order to
respond to this provocative problem Hobbes tries to conciliate a more authoritarian position
with the moderate one concerning the ‘liberty of conscience’. Since in the Latin Leviathan
(1668) we find a more tolerant conception than in the English version of 1651 (Edwin
Curley), it seems that Republicanism decisively influenced Hobbes’s political theory.