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The Rise of Freedom: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment

Plea for Religious Tolerance

A Philosophical History of Freedom

Plea for Religious Tolerance

  • Profit as a "peaceful religion"
  • Truth Requires Freedom
From the Renaissance, Europe was to be ravaged by wars of religion. Tolerance, therefore, became one of the great battles of the Enlightenment.
For some, the scientific method would unify people beyond prejudices with a common view of the world. Isn't universal attraction the same for a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, or an atheist? Thus, the Encyclopédie by Diderot and d’Alembert represents an attempt to promote universal knowledge, capable of uniting people.
Voltaire thought the same about commerce. It could establish tolerance, much better than any political institution.

Profit as a "peaceful religion"

For Voltaire, it is primarily man's fallibility that constitutes the foundation of a doctrine of tolerance and political freedom. He writes in his Philosophical Dictionary (1764):
Tolerance is the necessary consequence of our awareness of being fallible. To err is human, and we all make mistakes constantly. Let us forgive each other our follies; this is the first law of nature.
But in his Philosophical Letters (1734), Voltaire offers another viewpoint. He observes that in England, commerce fosters religious tolerance, which is an essential component of civil peace and thus happiness. He writes these letters to criticize the religious wars in France, fueled by an absolute and intrusive political power. This represents the first radical critique of the Ancien Régime.
What constitutes the happiness of an individual or a nation, for Voltaire, is a regime in which people live in peace with one another, in a certain material comfort. That's why a society is all the more free and happy as it is founded on commerce in the sense of economic exchange.
Three points are to be considered according to Voltaire:
  1. The happiness of a nation requires an easy material life that fosters the arts.
  2. Luxury and commerce are guarantees of freedoms.
  3. Finally, commerce is beneficial because it fosters civilized and thus peaceful relations among people.
The more commerce is valued, the more prejudices fade in the face of economic interests. Despite their confessional differences, men who trade all have the same object at the center of their concerns: profit. The common pursuit of profit leads to cooperation and respect for the opinions of others, especially their religious beliefs. In the Sixth Letter, "On the Presbyterians", Voltaire provides the example of the London Stock Exchange. In this pinnacle of international commerce, "the Jew, the Muslim, and the Christian" do business together, "as if they were of the same Religion". They reserve "the name of infidels only for those who go bankrupt".
The passage is worth quoting in its entirety because it is so famous:
Enter the London Stock Exchange, a place more respectable than many courts; there you see delegates from all nations gathered for the utility of mankind. There, the Jew, the Muslim, and the Christian deal with one another as if they were of the same religion, and only call those who go bankrupt infidels; there, the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist, and the Anglican accepts the promise of the Quaker. After leaving these peaceful and free assemblies, some go to the synagogue, others go to drink; one goes to be baptized in a large tub in the name of the Father by the Son in the Holy Spirit; another has his son's foreskin cut and mumbles Hebrew words over the child that he does not understand; others go to their church to await the inspiration of God, their hats on their heads, and all are content.
Commerce, therefore, unites men around a "same religion", profit. And it allows individuals to overlook religious or class differences, which are the origins of conflicts. In England, profit is thus a peaceful religion. But what about in France?
In the Tenth Letter, "On Commerce", Voltaire describes the French mindset as follows: "the merchant often hears his profession spoken of with contempt, to the point that he is foolish enough to be ashamed of it." In contrast, in England, the merchant feels a "just pride" and compares himself "not without some reason, to a Roman citizen". Voltaire pays tribute to the English middle class, their commerce, and their peaceful society.

Truth Requires Freedom

Yet France was not lacking in great minds. It is little known but Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laulne, was first and foremost a leading thinker before becoming the Controller General of Finances under Louis XVI. He was the author of a masterful treatise on political economy, Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth (1766), which predates Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776).
His early writings reflect his commitment to the Enlightenment philosophy. In 1754, he published his Letters on Civil Tolerance and in 1757, several articles written for The Encyclopédie by Diderot and d'Alembert. In his letters, Turgot presents a definition of tolerance. To tolerate means to refuse to use violence against error. In other words, tolerance is not the acceptance of error. One can fight against it, but with the weapons of conviction and reason, not with violence.
Subsequently, Turgot endeavored to have Louis XVI remove the phrase: "I swear to suppress heresy" from the oath taken on the day of coronation. In Memoir to the King on Tolerance (1775), he writes:
Will the defenders of intolerance say that the prince has the right to command when his religion is true and that one must then obey him? No, even then, one cannot and should not obey him; for if one must follow the religion he prescribes, it is not because he commands it, but because it is true; and it is not, nor can it be, because the prince prescribes it that it is true. There is no man foolish enough to believe a religion true for such a reason. Therefore, he who submits to it in good faith does not obey the prince, he obeys only his conscience; and the prince's order adds no weight to the obligation that this conscience imposes on him. Whether the prince believes or does not believe in a religion, whether he commands or does not command to follow it, it is neither more nor less what it is, true or false. The prince's opinion is therefore absolutely foreign to the truth of a religion, and consequently to the obligation to follow it: the prince, thus, as a prince, has no right to judge, no right to command in this respect; his incompetence is absolute on matters of this order, which are not within his purview, and in which the conscience of each individual can and must have only God as its sole judge.
In other words, being tolerant does not mean being hostile to religion. It means considering that religious belief does not fall under the purview of political power, but rather under the conscience of each individual. Truth requires freedom; it must never be imposed under penalty of becoming corrupted.
  • Ideas should be exchanged, just like goods
Quiz
Quiz1/5
What is Voltaire's main thesis on the link between commerce and religious tolerance?