Christopher Nadon on Locke
Thu, February 10, 2022 5:00 PM at Lemon Tree Room, Graduate Hotel
"Paradoxes of the Separation of Church and State: Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration"
Locke founds his doctrine of the separation of church and state in his Letter Concerning Toleration on a novel understanding of man’s “ecclesiastical liberty” or religious freedom that parallels his account of man’s natural freedom and equality and the political institutions it gives rise to in the Second Treatise. This approach allows Locke to subject religion to political control while at the same time using religion to act as a check to political absolutism in a way that promotes peace. But it introduces a revolution in the individual’s relation to his chosen church, the effects of which we live with even today, for better and worse.
Christopher Nadon teaches at Claremont McKenna College, having previously been at the University of Chicago, the University of Kiev-Mohyla Academy, and Trinity College, Hartford, CT. He is the author of Xenophon’s Prince (Berkeley, 2001) and editor of Secularism and Enlightenment: Essays on the Mobilization of Reason (Lexington Books, 2013). He has published articles on religion and politics in Sarpi, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Tocqueville, and on the politico-religious problem in the thought of Leo Strauss.