In the liberal political tradition, arguments for toleration and the extension of political rights to new groups often take two general forms. Liberals generally rely upon abstraction to test whether our views are directed toward our own self-interest or toward the common good. In a hypothetical exercise, Rawls places individuals behind the veil of ignorance and imagines that we will agree to tolerate because we might be the victims of an intolerant regime. Deliberative democrats object that these “thin” approaches to toleration are both impractical and theoretically unsound. Because our identities are the source of intolerance, deliberative democrats insist that we address toleration in face-to-face encounters. We must make the decision to tolerate in the context of an “actual experience” with those who seek toleration: those oppressed by the majority.
In order to better understand the stakes and contours of this important debate, I explore an earlier liberal version of the original position that surprisingly combines elements of the liberal and the deliberative democratic approaches. In A Letter Concerning Toleration, John Locke asks the reader to imagine a scenario in which he—or his group—might be an interested party. Locke leads his reader to commit to a principle but then relocates the reader by switching or modifying power valences. Through reason, imagination, and emotion, Locke persuades his reader to remain faithful to the original principle.
By analyzing Locke's methodology—what I call Lockean switching—this article establishes three crucial insights into Locke's understanding of toleration that may prove valuable for negotiating liberal and deliberative democratic forms of toleration. First, Locke simultaneously appeals to imagination, emotion, and reason. Rather than remove people from their group identity, Locke allows for such identification. Although liberals generally assume that group identification stimulates passions beyond our ability to reason, a careful analysis of Locke's method reveals that the emotive qualities of group interest and identification can help reinforce individual's and groups' abstract commitment to liberal principles. Contrasting the limited and particular Lockean switch with the ambitious and abstract Rawlsian veil of ignorance reveals that Locke's carefully crafted scenarios push his audience to take into account more radical possibilities than their own imagination might have considered. Unlike Rawls, Locke cannot derive principles from his switch but he provokes readers to react emotionally—based on group identification—in order to encourage the use of reason and assent to principles of toleration.
Second, Locke asks Anglican Christians to consider “lesser” groups in order to gain assent for radical toleration of minority religions. Locke's invocation of remote “outsiders” may humanize feared minorities or, possibly, inflame and institutionalize prejudices. Even as Locke's scenarios affirm toleration, he risks reifying the majority group, a tension criticized by deliberative democrats.
Last, Locke's use of switching reminds us that liberals must be alert to the dangers of pushing readers to accept principles that are reasonable but impossible to implement.
By exploring Lockean switching and embedding it in a rich tradition of liberal switching, I argue that liberals can use imagination and group identification to help reinforce individual's and groups' abstract commitment to liberal principles. Understanding Lockean switching helps us more fully understand the framework of A Letter Concerning Toleration and foundations on which Rawls builds contractarian liberalism.
Christians in the Wilderness: Neutrality through Remoteness
Locke certainly did not invent the idea of imagining yourself in the place of another. Clearly, the Golden Rule and countless other formulations in literature, religion, and philosophy indicate an intuition that people who are self-regarding can be encouraged to treat others better by asking how they would feel if actions were done to them. Though Locke is part of this long tradition, he offers a uniquely nuanced version of how to use hypothetical situations combined with the assumption of self-interest to develop rules that transcend narrow constructions of self-interest.
Locke's argument in the Letter is familiar but worth briefly recounting. Unless religious groups threaten the peace and unity of the citizens of the state, the magistrate must tolerate both the beliefs and practices of these religious groups. By defining religion as a freely chosen path to the salvation of the soul, Locke denies that force—the means of the state—can be relevant to religion. If force cannot change belief, persecution by magistrates is both irrational and risky. Repression of any group (religious, racial, or arbitrary) causes sedition that subsequently threatens the state. Not only is persecution politically unwise, it is inconsistent with Christian doctrine.Footnote 1
Though Locke's argument in favor of toleration is familiar, his technique for demonstrating his claims has not been adequately explored. In order to gain agreement to the principles of toleration, Locke uses hypothetical situations in which he asks people to switch places. Lockean switching has several key features: retention of identity, strategic ordering, and the use of remote examples.
Since theorists have not generally attended to Locke's method of switching, it is helpful to consider one of his fullest examples:
Thus it is: an inconsiderable and weak number of Christians, destitute of every thing, arrive in a Pagan Country; These Foreigners beseech the Inhabitants, by the bowels of Humanity, that they would succour them with the necessaries of life; Those necessaries are given them, Habitations are granted, and they all joyn together and grow up into one Body of People. The Christian Religion by this means takes root in that Countrey, and spreads it self; but does not suddenly grow the strongest. While things are in this condition, Peace, Friendship, Faith, and equal Justice, are preserved amongst them. At length the Magistrate becomes a Christian, and by that means their Party becomes the most powerful. Then immediately all Compacts are to be broken, all Civil Rights to be violated, that Idolatry may be extirpated: And unless these innocent Pagans, strict Observers of the Rules of Equity and the Law of Nature, and no ways offending against the Laws of the Society, I say unless they will forsake their ancient Religion, and embrace a new and strange one, they are to be turned out of the Lands and Possessions of their Forefathers, and perhaps deprived of Life it self. Then at last it appears what Zeal for the Church, joyned with the desire of Dominion, is capable to produce; and how easily the pretence of Religion, and of the care of Souls, serves for a Cloak to Covetousness, Rapine, and Ambition.
Now whosoever maintains that Idolatry is to be rooted out of any place by Laws, Punishments, Fire, and Sword, may apply this Story to himself.Footnote 2
Unlike Rawls' veil of ignorance, Lockean switching does not depend upon stripping readers of characteristics that constitute their identities. Christians remain Christian (they even retain their desire for domination) but they must imagine themselves in Locke's hypothetical situation. Locke begins the Letter by invoking mutual toleration of Christians and, clearly, the main seventeenth-century audience he addresses is the Anglicans who are privileged as the observers of the official religion of the state.Footnote 3
Though Locke does not strip his readers of their Christian identity, he does carefully control their image of themselves. In Locke's meticulously constructed example, the Christian minority enjoys toleration under an unnamed pagan majority before a Christian magistrate comes to power and makes Christianity the religion of the state. By ordering his example such that Christians are first tolerated by pagans, Locke directs Christians' self-interest toward a principle of toleration for pagans. Locke could begin with a pagan minority in an unnamed Christian land. He would then be asking readers to be generous. Although Locke understands people to be capable of generosity and generally interested in the preservation of humankind, Locke insists that self-interested people do not always act in the common good. Lockean switching, therefore, blends self-regard and the capacity to reason abstractly. Once Locke has established the scenario, he expects “us” (his Christian readers who enjoy a majority in real life) to derive a rule we would be willing to apply to ourselves if we were in the minority.
Locke expects that the reader will identify with his or her own group, yet he has crafted a scenario in which the reader is distanced from current controversies and power relations. Though you know that you are in the majority in England and that your religion is the official state religion, Locke asks you to imagine yourself outside of your own circumstances. He combines realism (we are self-interested) and abstractness (we are capable of creatively imagining such that we could propose a neutral principle). In developing a principle for the correct treatment of the minority Christian religion amidst the pagan majority, Locke believes that this imagining will reduce prejudice, create neutrality, and increase reason.
Once Locke is confident that the reader will agree to a principle of toleration for Christians in a pagan land, he reintroduces the current actors:
Now whosoever maintains that Idolatry is to be rooted out of any place by Laws, Punishments, Fire, and Sword, may apply this Story to himself. For the reason of the thing is equal, both in America and Europe. And neither Pagans there, nor any Dissenting Christians here, can with any right be deprived of their worldly Goods, by the predominating Faction of a Court-Church; nor are any Civil Rights to be either changed or violated upon account of Religion in one place more than another.Footnote 4
Remoteness has allowed Anglicans to abstract from their current majority position and develop a rule that they would be willing to have applied to themselves. Given the attachment people have to their religious beliefs and practices, principles of toleration are best agreed upon by harnessing individual and group self-interest. Not only has remoteness funneled self-regard, it has also removed the reader from current controversies that might prejudice the answer. Rather than immediately introducing minority religions who suffer at the hands of the current Anglican majority (i.e., Quakers, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Anabaptists), Locke deftly asks us to imagine Christians traveling to an unnamed pagan country whereupon they are treated with great kindness. Furthermore, because Locke does not specify what kind of Christians find themselves in the pagan land, he allows his contemporary audience to read themselves into the word Christians.
In order to appreciate Locke's example, we should consider how it would have struck his late–seventeenth-century readers, particularly what type of emotional response it would have evoked. First, “Christians as travelers” in foreign lands would have had a great deal of resonance given English Christians' movement as colonists, traders, and missionaries abroad. By 1689, a small minority of Christians had already settled in the Americas as colonists and others had become involved in trade with foreign lands through work in the East India Company and other financial institutions.Footnote 5 Religious missionaries, some of the earliest travelers, provided accounts of their travels that fascinated Locke and many of his contemporaries. In sum, Locke's story of Christians in a pagan land may not have been the experience of his readers but it would have resonated with their understanding of their time as one of ambiguity in the project of Christian travel, particularly the uncertainty and challenge presented by the confrontation of other civilizations.
Although Locke seeks to create an emotional connection, he also wants to distance his readers from several major political questions regarding “America and Europe.” In America, questions remain regarding the legal status of native Americans and their properties. American pagans had tolerated (in the sense of endured) the small groups of English dissenters and even assisted them in the “necessaries” of life. Yet the English now sought to make property claims against lands that were uncultivated and, according to many English, therefore unowned.Footnote 6 In Europe, two Christian groups—dissenting Protestants and Roman Catholics—made controversial claims for political and religious rights. Debates over immigration and naturalization were infused with religious controversy. After France revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, thousands of Huguenot refugees sought naturalization in England bringing with them silk-weaving skills.Footnote 7 Locke seeks to introduce the toleration of minorities and newcomers without triggering well-rehearsed debates and current prejudice.
Through the use of a remote situation, Locke encourages the reader to consider the logic of the argument apart from well-known American or European controversies. He self-consciously argues that changing places produces reasonable principles of toleration in a religiously pluralistic society because distance encourages neutrality. Only then does Locke bring the reader back to the controversy at hand:
[H]owever clearly we may think this or the other Doctrine to be deduced from Scripture, we ought not therefore to impose it upon others, as a necessary Article of Faith, because we believe it to be agreeable to the Rule of Faith; unless we would be content also that other Doctrines should be imposed upon us in the same manner; and that we should be compell'd to receive and profess all the different and contradictory Opinions of Lutherans, Calvinists, Remonstrants, Anabaptists, and other Sects which the Contrivers of Symbols, Systems, and Confessions, are accustomed to deliver unto their Followers as genuine and necessary Deductions from the Holy Scripture.Footnote 8
There is much to admire in Locke's formulation. Locke crafts a hypothetical situation that is simultaneously realistic and remote. Locke then depends upon the self-interest and reason of the imagining party to develop a fair principle of toleration for themselves. Here, Locke depends upon a reader's identity with a particular group such that self-interest is stimulated when the reader learns that his group is now in the minority. Locke then turns the tables by simultaneously endorsing the principle and reminding the reader that this principle must be applied to the controversial minorities of the current political scene. Locke accomplishes all this by assuming group identity, giving us remote situations to consider that remove us from current controversy and prejudice, and by carefully ordering the introduction of examples. He cleverly avoids stimulating passion through group identification but he nevertheless creates an emotional connection. Thus, Locke links emotion and rationality to create principles of toleration grounded in reason.
Switching in Context: Locke, Montesquieu, and Rawls
We can best see what is unique about Lockean switching by considering it in the context of other liberal attempts to use self-interest and hypothetical reasoning to produce principles of justice: Montesquieu's slavery proviso and Rawls' veil of ignorance.Footnote 9
In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu appeals to the idea of switching places to establish the injustice of slavery. In order to judge the principle of slavery, Montesquieu asks whether we would agree to be the enslaved party:
Every day one hears it said that it would be good if there were slaves among us.
But, to judge this, one must not examine whether they would be useful to the small, rich, and voluptuous part of each nation; doubtless they would be useful to it; but, taking another point of view, I do not believe that any one of those who make it up would want to draw lots to know who was to form the part of the nation that would be free and the one that would be enslaved. Those who most speak in favor of slavery would hold it the most in horror, and the poorest of men would likewise find it horrible. Therefore, the cry for slavery is the cry of luxury and voluptuousness, and not that of the love of public felicity. Who can doubt that each man, individually, would not be quite content to be the master of the goods, the honor, and the life of others and that all his passions would not be awakened at once at this idea? Do you want to know whether the desires of each are legitimate in these things? Examine the desires of all.Footnote 10
Montesquieu challenges the background conditions of his political society. A powerful minority—“the small, rich, and voluptuous part of each nation” —will support slavery because it would not only favor them (they would be the slave-holders), it would not endanger them (they certainly won't become slaves). Yet Montesquieu rejects the desires of an economically powerful minority as determinative of a “legitimate” political principle.
In order to generate a principle that reflects what is socially just, Montesquieu encourages us to “take the other point of view.” Yet he does not assume that the advantaged minority can—or will—generously imagine themselves in the role of the slave and, therefore, reject the principle. Instead, the threat of the lot—a hypothetical institutional response—forces the individual to confront whether he would personally accept the role of the slave. Rather than the individual rationally calculating his chances of being a slave under the current arrangement of power, he must normatively evaluate the institution of slavery.Footnote 11 If we don't know who we are and must consider that we might be the least advantaged, our self-interest becomes the interest of all. Montesquieu, like Locke, asks us to switch places to judge whether slavery is the product of the self-interest of potential masters or a “legitimate” institution for “public felicity.” It is beside the point whether the lot is politically unrealistic. The example helps Montesquieu's readers clarify the injustice of slavery.
A full analysis or explanation of John Rawls' extensive and well-known use of a hypothetical veil of ignorance is beyond the scope of this article. Yet a brief comparison of Locke and Rawls yields a richer understanding of both versions of the original position in the modern liberal tradition.
Locke and Rawls use hypothetical situations for different ends and they operate in radically different historical contexts. Locke uses the switch as a device of consent—a way to increase impartiality—in a particular religious conflict. Like Locke, Rawls offers the veil of ignorance as a means of persuasion: a means to gain assent to the principles of justice. But Rawls's veil is also a device of construction because he intends the original position to produce the principles of justice. Like Rawls, Locke uses switching to help people better understand the logic of a principle but Locke never offers switching as a technique for deriving principles of toleration. Rawls' goals are far more ambitious—and his veil does not represent a specific historical conflict. The Lockean switch has no constructive power but the comparison with Rawls assists us in understanding the careful balancing of abstraction and identification.
Rawls maintains that self-interested and risk-averse individuals can imagine themselves under a veil of ignorance that deprives them of knowledge of their social position, race, ethnic group, sex, gender, and native endowments.Footnote 12 Although Rawls does not ask the parties to radically detach themselves from their group identities, he believes they can temporarily put aside their particular interests as they reflect on what all parties will need to flourish as citizens and moral beings with a conception of the good. The veil of ignorance helps the parties develop and defend principles that are in the interest of the whole rather than their particular group.Footnote 13
Like Montesquieu and Locke, Rawls insists that the existing background conditions of the society cannot justly determine political principles. The imbalance of power across social groups combined with individual self-interest results in principles of justice that may be biased to the interests of the dominant social group. For Montesquieu, class privilege will determine rules of labor. For Locke, the privileged religious group will sanction laws that oppress or limit the worship of other religions. All three theorists challenge the justice of allowing the existing background conditions to determine principles. All hope to increase impartiality by using hypothetical devices and uncertainty to reduce the bargaining advantages of the dominant groups and create a more impartial system of rights. Rawls ambitiously uses impartiality to construct his principles—not merely to gain assent.
Despite common themes in the liberal tradition, Rawls and Locke increase impartiality in very different ways. Rawls requires us to temporarily remove ourselves from our group and consider the needs of others while Locke insists that we keep our group identities and our conceptions of the good.Footnote 14 Rather than ask the parties to temporarily imagine themselves as the other, Locke asks the parties to imagine themselves in positions of peril that resemble the condition of minorities in their own society. Whereas Rawls' veil hypothetically deprives parties of knowledge of their particular conceptions of the good, Locke depends upon such knowledge. Because we care about being particular kinds of Christians and we might be deprived of our conception of the good, we are willing to assent to a principle of toleration. Whereas Rawls asks us to think about the needs of members of other classes, races, and genders, Locke merely asks us to think about being ill-treated. Thus, Rawls appears to challenge the background conditions far more radically than Locke.
Yet Locke can encourage impartiality without asking us to reflect on the interests of others because the political and religious power dynamics of the seventeenth century were in a state of flux. Locke's audience was keenly aware that the tables do often turn and, in fact, they had turned repeatedly in the 1640s and 1650s. Religious groups had moved from positions of privilege to persecution during this period of pan-European topsy turvy. Because the religious background conditions of Locke's time were not fixed, Locke can leave the identities of his parties intact and still get them to assent to principles of toleration.
In contrast, Rawls faces inflexible political, religious, and economic hierarchies often based on ascriptive characteristics. Because Rawls' audience cannot remember a time when women or African-Americans held power and because power relations are unlikely to change, Rawls must defend against his parties using probabilities by asking them to temporarily put aside group self-interest. Whereas less abstraction helps support Locke's principles of toleration, Rawls can never get the impartiality necessary to help the least advantaged without limiting group interests.
In order to decrease group self-interest and encourage fairness, Rawls demands an expansive and abstract form of imagination whereas Locke requires limited but more emotional imagination.
Rawls requires a lot from his parties. They must imagine the plights of other individuals who are pursing diverse conceptions of the good. Rawls eases the requirements of imagination here by using the primary goods. The parties do not have to figure out how every individual with a different conception of the good will succeed; they must only imagine how various distributions of primary goods will affect a person's ability to execute her life plan.Footnote 15 Yet the success of the veil depends upon our ability to imagine ourselves in the shoes of others and create principles that we would accept if we were the “least advantaged” in society. The continuing disagreement over Rawls' two principles of justice demonstrates that, at the very least, it is difficult to achieve the impartiality that Rawls seeks.Footnote 16
Locke does not ask his parties to abstractly imagine the needs of others. Instead, he crafts provocative imaginary examples that lead readers through a planned set of rational thoughts and emotional responses. While he keeps us attached to our group, Locke encourages an emotional reaction by provoking contemporary fears, attachments, and hatreds. Locke hopes that our emotional response—we don't want our group oppressed—will help us assent to a rational principle of toleration that covers the minority religions of other subjects.
Rawls prefers a more abstract imagination that leaves much of the work of creating examples to his readers. Rawls does give examples but he aims to mute rather than provoke an emotional response. For example, Rawls briefly discusses abortion but he does not ask us to imagine ourselves as mother or fetus in a way that would incite our emotions.Footnote 17 Whereas Rawls asks us to imagine expansively, Locke asks us to imagine in a more limited—but emotionally charged—manner.
Rawls needs a more extensive form of imagination and changing places because he intends his original position to help us derive our principles and persuade us that principles we already hold are just. Lockean switching does not create principles of toleration. Switching helps bolster an argument that has already been made. It provides a powerful means of clarification and persuasion rather than a device for the derivation of norms.
Our evaluation of these approaches hinges on the parties' abilities to put aside—even temporarily or hypothetically—their ideological, religious, political, or cultural frameworks. If Locke correctly assumes that we cannot completely shed our group identities, Rawls' veil of ignorance requires too much abstraction.
Rawls asks too much of imagination and this stretch is often a source of resistance to meaningful dialogue between warring parties. Ideally, we need to expand both frameworks until they meet. Expansion requires enormous energy from each party as well as people who can help translate the ideas of each group into a language that is understandable and compelling to the opposing party. Locke can help us think about some of these concerns. Rather than asking people to forego their belief systems, he pushes groups with palpable differences to clarify their positions through imagination by putting them in carefully crafted hypothetical positions. Though this is far from what deliberative democracy theorists crave, it is more than Rawls gives liberals.
Locke pushes his readers to accept principles in a way that productively supports liberal outcomes because he does not exceed the abilities of his readers. Nevertheless, he pushes them to more progressive approaches than they might have imagined themselves. As I will argue below, liberals need to get the parties to agree to principles that they will support in practice.
Outsider Switching: Jews, Pagans, and Distancing from the “Other”
Lockean switching is not merely about creating neutrality through personal group connection and reversal of fortune. Locke has a second form of switching in which he ironically plays on the prejudices of his reader to create principles of toleration for despised religious minorities. Careful analysis of “outsider switching” uncovers a ranking of religious groups that leads us to reexamine Locke's basic assumptions concerning skepticism, relativism, and judging.
In creating these outsider scenarios, Locke depends upon four general groups: first, Anglicans who enjoy religious and political rights; second, despised and maligned non-Christians who can be tolerated: Jews and pagans; third, despised and maligned Christian minorities who also can be tolerated—Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, Arminians, Socinians, Quakers, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Remonstrants;Footnote 18 and last, “intolerable” faiths that exceed the limits of toleration by appealing to a religious authority outside the state: Roman Catholics and Roman Catholics disguised as Muslims.Footnote 19
In outsider switching, Locke typically begins with religious people who are alien and remote to his readers: Jews and pagans. Locke carefully orders his examples such that he asks the reader, in principle, to tolerate the actions of the outsider religion. Locke then switches actors and applies the principle to feared, alien Christians who are suspected of sedition and violence:
Or let us apply the last Case [the magistrate forces an individual to baptize their child] to the Child of a Jew, and the thing speaks itself. For what hinders but a Christian Magistrate may have Subjects that are Jews? Now if we acknowledge that such an Inquiry may not be done unto a Jew, as to compel him, against his own Opinion, to practice in his Religion a thing that is in its nature indifferent, how can we maintain that any thing of this kind may be done to a Christian?Footnote 20
Shall we suffer a Pagan to deal and trade with us, and shall we not suffer him to pray unto and worship God? If we allow the Jews to have private Houses and Dwellings amongst us, why should we not allow them to have Synagogues? Is their Doctrine more false, their Worship more abominable, or is the Civil Peace more endangered, by their meeting in publick, than in their private Houses? But if these things may be granted to Jews and Pagans, surely the condition of any Christians ought not to be worse than theirs, in a Christian commonwealth.Footnote 21
Departing from the conventional beliefs of his times, Locke radically proposes civil and religious rights for Jews and pagans. Locke hopes that any rights granted to far-flung Pagans, Jews (or “even Americans”) would also be granted to despised Christian minorities who are far from remote.Footnote 22
In contrast to the switching described in my opening passages (which I will now refer to as classic switching), outsider switching does not require the reader to imagine herself or her group in a new situation. Rather than begin with “us Christians,” Locke directs the reader to an “other” who is known but significantly removed from the current controversy. Locke does not require personal or group identification that will be challenged by turning the tables. Rather, Locke asks readers to consider his carefully crafted example, moves to gain assent to a principle applied to a remote but despised group, and, finally, challenges readers to include groups that are immediate, despised, and feared. Locke still relies on remoteness to reduce select prejudices and encourage reason but he removes the personal requirement of imagination.
Yet Locke does not completely remove emotional connection. He purposefully picks controversial and despised groups likely to summon up great emotional response in his readers. Lockean toleration often means to endure the beliefs and practices that we believe to be “mistaken, heretical, or depraved” rather than tolerate those of respected dissenters.Footnote 23 This insight brings us back to Locke's reliance on self-interest. Locke is not—and does not mean to be—neutral in his description of his parties. Jews and pagans serve as examples of remote outsiders who Locke thinks should be tolerated but he nonetheless signals disapproval and acknowledges the prejudices of his audience (and himself). “If you are willing to tolerate a Jew, you must tolerate a Christian” indicates an obvious ordering.
Given our current standards, we may miss the radical quality of outsider switching. First, Locke assumes his audience will accept (“as visible to everyone at first example”) that Jews should not be forced to baptize their children. He also assumes that the magistrate “may have subjects that are Jews.”Footnote 24 In the late seventeenth century, both claims were hotly contested in England. Although Edward I attempted to expel all Jewish subjects in 1290, many Jews may have remained in England and approximately 27 families of Sephardic Jews immigrated and lived secretly in London by 1649.Footnote 25 Targets of the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, these Marrano Jews publicly worshipped as Catholics. Between 1649 and 1656, the English publicly debated the status of England's Jews with the Protector, Oliver Cromwell, forcefully arguing for the formal readmission of the Jews to England. An intense pamphlet war publicized many sides of the issue.Footnote 26 In December of 1655, the Whitehall Conference, convened to debate the Jews' status, decided not to admit Jews formally as subjects. At Whitehall, supporters of Jewish readmission argued that Jewish conversion was necessary for the coming of the messiah and Jewish exposure to Protestantism would hasten conversion. In addition, Jews would bring wealth and commercial skills to build the English economy (as they had done in Holland). Some clergy and most merchants opposed readmission on the grounds that it would be dangerous to expose English Christians to Judaism and English-owned businesses would be displaced by immigrating Jews. Though Cromwell had depended upon individual Jews for intelligence against the Dutch, many Englishmen viewed Sephardic Jews with suspicion. Because of their Sephardic ancestry and their trade and communal connections with the Sephardic Jews of Holland (an English rival), the loyalty of the Jews was frequently called into question. The Conference rejected readmission yet Cromwell continued to de facto protect the existing Jews. By 1689, as Locke's Letter was published, the remaining English Jews were neither aliens nor accepted subjects of England.Footnote 27
Given this public debate only forty years before the Letter, Locke asks quite a lot of his readers to accept that a state might have subjects who are Jews and that Jews should be allowed exceptions to English law regarding baptism. It is curious, given the intense public scrutiny of Jewish loyalty in mid-century, that he chooses a religious group that is suspected of following a power outside of England (not unlike Roman Catholics) and regarded as deeply strange.Footnote 28 Although it is clear that Jews and pagans are more remote and less threatening to state peace than Presbyterians, Quakers, Calvinists, and Roman Catholics, Locke has chosen examples that will provoke his readers.
Although we might celebrate Locke's radical egalitarian inclusion of Jews in civil society, Locke may undermine his own use of realism and imagination by pushing his readers too far. One may celebrate the principle, but in practice the principle may remain ineffective or insufficiently actualized if based upon assumptions that are not shared by the community. Lockean switching aims to negotiate reason and prejudice by recognizing the powers of group identification. Of course, contemporary liberals must squarely face this tension and carefully assess the benefits and costs of unrealized principles.Footnote 29
Locke's use of Jews and pagans is both insulting and inclusive. On the one hand, these mentions often take the form of “if we give this to Jews and pagans” we would surely give it to any Christian. Jews and pagans are, here, “lesser” than Christians. Yet the inferiority of Jews' and pagans' religions does not lead Locke to cast them aside. Rather, Locke insists we must include them. Though he often tells the reader that these people are “clearly” wrong and he occasionally uses an example, like birth into a religion which defines some of these worshippers as “incomplete,” they remain explicit players.Footnote 30 Locke begins the Letter addressing his readers as “Christian brethren” but by the third sentence, he has already raised the subject of good-will towards those who are not Christians.Footnote 31 We should not overlook the complexity of Locke's thinking here. Clearly, Locke aims the argument for toleration at the majority religion that currently enjoys political support (and has the power to grant toleration to others) but he simultaneously humanizes hated minority groups by explicitly including them in his discussions of politics and the social world.
Although outsider switching rhetorically includes Jews and pagans, it simultaneously enhances the idea of a “we.” Locke unites Christians—encouraging Anglicans to tolerate Anabaptists—by convincing them that even stranger and remote religions should be tolerated. The outsider switch leaves us with a puzzle. Does Locke humanize Jews and pagans by including them in the discussion and insisting that they can be tolerated or does he reify the Anglican majority by coding some groups as remote and inferior in order to convince readers that it is acceptable to tolerate dissenting Protestants? A third type of highly specialized switching helps explore these issues.
The Unimaginables: Muslims and Covert Catholics
In dealing with one of the most divisive issues of his time, Locke switches the identities of controversial players but unlike classic or outsider switching, Locke never explicitly reveals the switch to his reader. Locke lays out a set of conditions under which a religion cannot be tolerated by considering Islam—but he is really addressing Roman Catholicism:
Again: That Church can have no right to be tolerated by the Magistrate, which is constituted upon such a bottom, that all those who enter into it, do thereby ipso facto deliver themselves up to the Protection and Service of another Prince. For by this means the Magistrate would give way to the settling of a forreign Jurisdiction in his own Country, and suffer his own People to be listed, as it were, for Souldiers against his own Government … It is ridiculous for any one to profess himself to be a Mahometan [Muslim] only in Religion, but in every thing else a faithful Subject to a Christian Magistrate, whilst at the same time he acknowledges himself bound to yield blind obedience to the Mufti of Constantinople; who himself is intirely obedient to the Ottoman Emperor, and frames the feigned Oracles of that Religion according to his pleasure. But this Mahometan living among Christians, would yet more apparently renounce their Government, if he acknowledged the same Person to be head of his Church, who is the Supreme Magistrate in the State.Footnote 32
Locke replaces Roman Catholics with Muslims for three reasons. First, Locke removes an extremely volatile issue from the Letter's discussion of toleration. Locke's exile in Amsterdam was the direct result of Whig opposition to the reign of a Roman Catholic king. The hostility toward Catholicism in Locke's time cannot be overstated. Thus, Locke uses Muslims to remove a controversial subject that he believes will stir his contemporary reader's passion beyond their ability to reason. Locke's desire for reason, self-interest, and limited emotion potentially restricts his discussion of a significant political concern: can England tolerate Roman Catholic belief and practice?
Second, Locke aims to be outside traditional prejudice. The discussion of Muslims allows Locke to appear to be principled about Catholic exclusion rather than simply a prejudiced member of the Protestant majority.
Last, his hard-line on Muslims allows Locke—at least formally—to be more open-ended than he might be (given the prejudices of the times) on the subject of Catholics. Locke gives a principle for excluding Catholics, yet he sometimes lists controversial Catholic practices alongside religious practices he insists must be tolerated.Footnote 33 For example, he declares that if it is legal to speak Latin in the marketplace, “Let those who have a mind to do it, be permitted to do it also in the Church.” Locke has insisted on including public worship that does not endanger the public peace but his comments on Muslims establish evidence for exclusion of Catholics.Footnote 34
Since Locke offers us tidbits of Catholic inclusion and he does not explicitly exclude Catholics, why doesn't Locke have readers change places with Catholics in a classic switch (“imagine you are a Huguenot in France….”) or create an outsider switch (“if we tolerate Jews and Muslims who have connections outside of England, then surely we can tolerate fellow subjects who are Catholic … ”)? Because Locke's audience cannot imagine themselves as Catholics no matter how remote or carefully ordered the example, Locke codes Catholics as “unimagineables.” Even as “outsiders,” Locke cannot create examples that will neutralize intense Catholic prejudice in seventeenth century England. Less generously, Locke himself cannot imagine Catholics and his own prejudices are reflected in his chosen examples.Footnote 35
Locke's choice of Muslims demands some explanation. While Locke's example of Jewish citizens was controversial, his choice of Muslim subjects was explosive and likely to provoke passionate response from his readers.
Unlike the mid-century controversy over the status of individual Jewish subjects, British anxieties concerning Muslims focused on a confrontation with the civilization of Islam.Footnote 36 Although British historiography has generally ignored the “extensive interaction among Turks, Moors, and Englishmen on English soil” in the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline periods, thousands of Muslims—both Turks and North African Muslims (Moors)—visited English ports, hundreds were tried by English courts, and numerous ambassadors visited with elites.Footnote 37 Muslim residents in England were limited to sailors recruited by the East India Company, a very small number of captured Muslims who converted to Anglicanism, and a small number of English converts to Islam. Because the interaction between Britons and Muslims focused on merchants, ambassadors, captives, and pirates, it was almost exclusively male interaction.Footnote 38 Unlike “Jews, continental Protestants, Catholics and Eastern Christians,” Muslims were not “refugees,” “defeated subjects,” or “quaint minorities” but representatives of a global power that “sunk ships, captured and enslaved British Mariners” and threatened the economic welfare of Britain from the mid-sixteenth century to the time of Locke's Letter.Footnote 39 Unlike Judaism (or paganism), Islam and the Ottoman Empire threatened England and English values on a more global scale.
Deep anxiety about the power of Islam to affect English power and identity can be seen in public controversy over captive narratives—written by escaped pirates and privateers from 1577 to 1704Footnote 40—and the symbolic power of coffee (the “Mahometan berry”) as an anti-Christian, secret weapon of Islamic conversion. Between the 1650s and 1680s, the English debated the religious, cultural, moral, and economic effects of coffee through pamphlets, plays, and petitions.Footnote 41 Though celebrated by some, coffee and coffee houses were thought to depress demand for ale and beer (thus, damaging the English economy which depended on the demand for grain).Footnote 42 Those who drank coffee were often portrayed as “renouncing not only their Christianity but their Englishness too.”Footnote 43 Critics charged that coffee was “too swarthy” and made a Christian “blacker.”Footnote 44 Many seventeenth-century Englishmen feared the “islamicizing” of British culture, commerce, and religion. Once again, Locke has chosen a provocative and controversial group likely to elevate passions.
If we compare Locke's uses of unimaginables with his outsider switching, we observe that Locke can theoretically extend toleration to Jews and pagans—humanizing them as he includes them in the discussion—but he cannot, under the circumstances of his times, extend such a status to Catholics. Catholics cannot be spoken about extensively and Locke does not ask readers to imagine their plight or even think about them because the emotions of prejudice will overwhelm reason.
Consideration of outsider switching and the unimagineables leads to two somewhat contradictory conclusions. First, Locke invokes a Christian “us” and orders religious groups even as he implores us to tolerate the beliefs and practices of hated and suspected religious minorities. Thus, Lockean switching convinces readers to tolerate at the expense of reifying the majority into a privileged group. If this reification is necessary, Locke helps to create the permanent need in Lockean toleration for a “them.”
Deliberative democrats often charge that liberals hide behind neutrality, granting “rights” that disproportionately advantage the already advantaged group. If outsider switching relies on the reader's disgust at Jews or pagans having privileges denied to non-Anglican Christians, Locke might reinforce the prejudicial ordering of his readers. Tolerance—rather than respect—is granted and the question remains whether Locke can have civil equality when the method for assent requires a hierarchical ranking of people.
But Locke might be simply writing strategically. Astutely political, Locke begins with Christians and presents examples in which they are asked to assent to general principles that will apply to minority religions because Anglicans are the majority who must assent to Locke's new configuration of politics and religion. In this sense, Locke temporarily uses the Christian majority for strategic purposes rather than permanently creating a privileged community that grants toleration to inferior groups.Footnote 45
Skepticism, Randomness, and Religious Pluralism
Because the integrity of Locke's method and his principles of toleration are at stake, it is essential to determine the extent to which Locke's ranking of religion is strictly strategic or implicitly reifying. What strikes us about Locke's ranking of religious groups is that the ordering appears to conflict with his more general understanding of religion. For Locke, religion signals an informed choice of church practice. Locke defines a church as “a voluntary Society of Men, joining themselves together of their own accord, in order to the publick worshipping of God, in such a manner as they judge acceptable to him, and effectual to the Salvation of their Souls.” Emphasizing choice and reason, Locke emphatically rejects the idea that any person can be born a member of a church.Footnote 46
Despite Locke's insistence that religious belief implies a thoughtful personal decision about salvation, Locke argues that the practices of religious groups are often rooted in superstition and prejudice rather than true religious principles:
Why am I beaten and ill-used by others, because perhaps I wear not Buskins; because my Hair is not of the right Cut; because, perhaps, I have not been dip't in the right Fashion; because I eat Flesh upon the Road, or some other Food which agrees with my Stomach … because I follow a Guide that either is, or is not, cloathed in White, and crowned with a Miter? Certainly, if we consider right, we shall find that for the most part they are such frivolous things as these, that (without any prejudice to Religion to the Salvation of Souls, if not accompanied with Superstition or Hypocrisie) might either be observed or omitted; I say, they are such like things as these, which breed implacable Enmities among Christian brethren, who are all agreed in the Substantial and truly Fundamental part of Religion.Footnote 47
For Locke, the differences engendered by these practices become “hypocritical” when churches seek to claim that these practices define a religion as the only true one.
In an effort to convince the reader that many practices are seen to be “sacred” because of traditional practice and history, Locke uses an animal form of Lockean switching:
If any Human Authority or Civil Power could have done this, why might it not also injoyn the eating of Fish, and drinking of Ale, in the holy Banquet, as a part of Divine Worship? Why not the sprinkling of the Blood of Beasts in Churches, and Expiations by Water or Fire, and abundance more of this kind? But these things, how indifferent soever they be in common uses, when they come to be annexed unto Divine Worship, without Divine Authority, they are as abominable to God, as the Sacrifice of a Dog. And why a Dog so abominable? What difference is there between a Dog and a Goat, in respect of the Divine Nature, equally and infinitely distant from all Affinity with Matter; unless it be that God required the use of the one in his Worship, and not of the other? We see therefore that indifferent things, how much soever they be under the Power of the Civil Magistrate, yet cannot upon that pretence be introduced into Religion, and imposed upon Religious Assemblies; because in the Worship of God they wholly cease to be indifferent.Footnote 48
Locke radically suggests that the distinctions we make in religion—particularly in religious practice—are very much like inconsequential physical differences that we would not dream of legislating upon.Footnote 49 Here, Locke seems to suggest a radical randomness and, therefore, a radical skepticism about religious practice. If practices neither offend God nor threaten the peace of the state, the way is clear to include the feared and hated dissenting Christian sects.
Yet Locke suggests that we cannot know what offends God. Personally, Locke seems to have been comfortable declaring in favor of Christianity—though not with the specificity regarding belief and practice that his religious contemporaries insisted upon.Footnote 50 However, Locke argues that humans are fallible and no person on earth can definitely determine which Church is right. Magistrates not only lack special access to religious truth; their political interests lead them to use religion as a pretense for eliminating political rivals.Footnote 51 State-imposed religion forces people to abandon their own reasonable choices in favor of a magistrate's choice “which either Ignorance, Ambition, or Superstition had chanced to establish in the Countries where they were born.”Footnote 52 Locke rejects state control of religion on the grounds that magistrates cannot judge sacred matters and often impose arbitrary practices on subjects that will not save their souls but may encourage them to rebel.Footnote 53
Locke goes further. Even if subjects could know which religion is “true,” they should still reject state-sponsored religion because they might end up in a place where a non-orthodox religion rules the state and the “true” religion might then be extirpated.Footnote 54 We must tolerate others because we cannot, without doubt, establish the true religion and we might find ourselves in the minority.
Locke's general beliefs regarding religious orthodoxy help us reflect on whether outsider switching humanizes minorities or creates unacceptable permanent hierarchies. First, Locke treats religion as a personal choice rather than a birth designation or a state-assignment. Although we have chosen a religion that we think is true, humans are fallible and we cannot prove which faith is “true” with sufficient certainty to compel others to follow our worship. Because only God can judge the true faith, we must be skeptical about political leaders who claim such power. Here, Locke's central claim potentially includes many religious people because the state can never exclude a belief based on its lack of truth—only on its danger to public security.Footnote 55
Though Locke suggests that religion should be a considered choice, he believes that much of religion—particularly religious practice—reflects geographic location, culture, and mores rather than reason and revelation. Thus, practices should not be coded as grounded in faith because our practices are so varied and—as the dog-for-goat switch attests to—somewhat arbitrary. When Locke radically compares hair and eye color to dissenting religious practices, he suggests that our religious affiliations are subjective yet they lead to destructive persecutions that result in sedition.Footnote 56 Locke's separation of belief and practice certainly encourages Christians—with divergent practices but similar beliefs—to tolerate each other but it isolates Catholics who insist on the link between belief and ritual practice. Locke's separation of belief and practice opens the door for more unity among Protestant sects but it is still unclear whether Locke needs an outsider to create this Protestant unity.
Once we recall Locke's ranking of religions in the outsider switch, we are left with a puzzle. Such a religious hierarchy stands in tension with Locke's commitment to personal choice of beliefs, his suspicion that much of religious practice is random and traditional, and his insistence that there is no judge of the “true” religion on earth. Thus, Locke ranks groups or, at the very least, thinks some groups have made bad choices but simultaneously attacks the basis for group hierarchy. We might make sense of this tension by reconsidering whether the outsider switch reflects Locke's own choice of Christianity or whether he uses the outsider switch strategically to gain support for the toleration of controversial dissenting Protestants.
Locke insists that if a religion does not threaten the political and civil peace, it should be tolerated by the state. The emphasis on peace also has the potential for inclusiveness—although prejudice may affect our views about which religious beliefs or practices constitute a threat and we see that in current controversies over Islam. One of the limits of Lockean toleration is that it does not offer equal respect for each faith. Rather it insists that we should tolerate even baseless faiths because oppression breeds sedition and violence. The problem with the outsider switch is that Lockean toleration is not supposed to say which is “better” on the basis of “good choice” and the outsider switch seems to do this.
Although Locke may intend to use outsider religions strategically to stimulate reasoned debate over principles rather than inflame prejudice, the outsider switch nevertheless subtly encourages readers' prejudices because it uses prevailing negative feelings about Jews and pagans to convince readers to tolerate dissenting Protestants. It allows Christians to see toleration as a reasonable position when faced with examples drawn from “less acceptable” faiths.
Conclusion
John Locke used switching as a technique to help readers understand the logic of toleration in a contentious historical moment. Careful attention to Lockean switching allows us to better understand Locke's assumptions and motivations in A Letter Concerning Toleration, critically reflect on Rawls' use of imagination and emotion, and consider how mixing reason and emotion might help deepen support for and understanding of liberal principles.
Although liberals generally assume that group identification stimulates passions beyond our ability to reason, Locke demonstrates that the emotive qualities of group interest and identification can be directed to encourage principles built on reason rather than self-interest. Whereas Rawls believes that the reader can temporarily put aside her identity under the veil of ignorance, Locke keeps the reader firmly tethered to her group identity. For Locke, humans are capable of abstraction but he never asks them to imagine themselves as the other. Rather, he forces readers into circumstances that resemble what the “other” faces in seventeenth-century society. By linking individuals to groups, Locke suggests that the culture of group community matters because it influences the individual's interests, attitudes, and prejudices.Footnote 57 Locke simultaneously appeals to imagination, emotion, and reason as he insists that imagination and emotional response can encourage reason and increase impartiality.
Because Locke insists that we begin “as we are” and supplies specific examples, he appears to reduce the requirements of imagination. Yet Locke's carefully crafted situations force readers to consider hard questions. Locke picks many of the most threatening groups of his age for readers to visit and live under the rule of. He singles out pagans when the English are worried about their colonies in the Americas. He suggests granting religious rights to Jews even as the English refuse them legal citizenship. He invokes groups like Turks and Muslims that the English are just beginning to worry about as they expand their empire.
Rawls leaves much of this work to us. He suggests a framework and assumes that our risk aversion will force us to consider the plight of the least advantaged or the religiously oppressed. The open-ended veil of ignorance allows us to go beyond the examples posed by one theorist. Yet Locke pushes readers to consider scenarios they might not imagine themselves. Locke denies the subject the comfort of complete abstraction as he reminds her of the controversial debates—in her time—that the principles will serve to adjudicate. Not many people in Locke's time agreed that it was safe to let Catholics recite Latin masses, Jews have synagogues, and Socinians publicly spread their message. Locke's principles of toleration seem rather standard to modern liberal democrats but contemporary Englishmen would have gasped at his examples. Paradoxically, Locke's more limited form of imagination may push readers more aggressively than Rawls' abstract veil of ignorance.
Yet staying in our skins may present problems. Certain groups, Americans for example, may be unable to imagine themselves in the position of a victim because Americans tend to imagine themselves “upwards.” Montesquieu clearly understood this tendency in privileged groups. Additionally, Locke designed all his examples for a particular and unique moment in English history. Because the holders of both political and religious power changed over the lifetimes of Locke's readers, the technique of switching was particularly persuasive. Although we do not live in such a time, we might take Locke's insights concerning emotion and identity and use switching to persuade parties or help them better understand the logic of toleration.
Consider one modern example. In Equality Practice, William Eskridge explores the difference between asking citizens to extend rights to African-Americans and gay Americans. If you are white, your seventeen-year-old son will never turn to you and announce that he has realized that he is, actually, black, and wishes to live as an African-American. But it is increasingly common for a son to announce to his parent that he now intends to live as a gay man. Eskridge insists that the possibility of having a child who is gay increases the likelihood of a citizens endorsing formal and informal toleration of gays and lesbians in the United States.Footnote 58 A Lockean switch designed to promote toleration rights for GLBT persons might play with aspects of this fluidity. We might ask readers to consider a story in which their daughter or son wants to have a child but the only option is to adopt. The story might encourage the reader to advocate open adoption policies to increase the options for the reader's daughter or son (and the reader's ability to have a grandchild). The “switch” might then push the reader to consider what rights should be in place if the son or daughter was GLBT. Even if we don't live in a community in which the religious or political power structures are likely to flip, we can still consider the power behind asking people to identify with their group and imagine changes in their own group's status as a technique for encouraging toleration.
This particular example recalls concerns about creating permanent “others” to increase toleration. As Americans debate extending marriage rights to gays and lesbians, supporters of same-sex marriage often invoke Loving v. Virginia as a parallel case. Just as Americans came to repudiate state laws banning interracial marriage, the Supreme Court should overturn state bans on same-sex marriage. Yet supporters of gay marriage often remind the opposition that same-sex marriage would not open the door to the legalization of bigamy. Invoking Mormon polygamy makes gays look less threatening but playing upon the prejudices of people to encourage acceptance of a principle of toleration risks inflaming hatred towards despised minorities. Locke paints pictures that direct our emotions to do political work but there is always a risk of abuse: the creation of scenarios that manipulate facts and emotions.
Lockean switching presents another serious problem: the creation of principles too radical for the current majority to successfully implement. Locke assumes his readers will accept Jews as equal citizens as a precondition for his principle of toleration of all Christian sects. Because this prior assumption is so radical, the principle of toleration may be accepted formally or theoretically but not realized in public practice. Locke's chosen example demonstrates this danger; Jews were not granted rights. In American politics, the lingering tension between theory and practice after Brown v. Board of Education provides another example. In the case of same-sex unions, Hawaii's principled decision to extend marriage to all couples triggered a backlash (the National Defense of Marriage Act) precisely because the people on the ground did not support the principle of equality. Modern liberalism must grapple with the tension between theoretical purity and practical implementation. It is not enough to create rules that cannot be enforced.
We are left to ponder whether Locke's remoteness is the answer or whether it is better that groups confront each other. Is it the actual experience of being with people that leads us to change our minds about the rules we agree to live under or can we learn from a hypothetical encounter? Whereas Rawls fears that group identification harmfully stirs passion and self-interest, Locke acknowledges that identity can stir passion but joining self-interest, emotion, and rationality can also encourage acceptance of toleration. Locke's virtual confrontation between disagreeing parties may provide liberalism with a strategic tool for gaining assent to principles that majorities do not fully understand or support.
