Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration by Alan Levine

Review by: Cary J. Nederman

The American Political Science Review, Vol. 94, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 177-178
Published by: American Political Science Association
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American Political Science Review Vol. 94, No. 1
mercial society. Logical or not, Searle shows that they were
never doctrinaire.
The author presents a wide range of detailed examples to
illustrate the Victorian response to the permeation of market
ideas, including the question of the moral standing of capi-
talism and of profits (frauds, joint liability, entrepreneurial-
ism, business integrity), slavery, problems of poverty and
pauperism, the effect on domesticity and women (political
economy and the "woman question," contract and marriage,
prostitution), the principles and practice of charity-giving, the
liquor question and temperance reform, gambling and bet-
ting, militarism and the just war, the ethical standing of
professions (advertising, professional competition, and so
on). God versus mammon is, as one would expect, a major
theme: the injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount versus
buying cheap and selling dear, and the duties of charity versus
the merciless imposition upon the destitute of the "lesser
eligibility" principle of the political economy-inspired Poor
Law.
Searle well brings out the ethical parameters within which
Victorians wrestled with these contending values, particularly
the moral easement afforded by the fact that the economic
principles in terms of which the claims of mammon were
defended were themselves highly moralized anyway via no-
tions central to the tradition of political economy from Adam
Smith to J.S. Mill, especially the notion of self as "character"
and the associated edifying view of the connection between
market competition and the Smilesian cardinal virtues of
individual independence and self-reliance. In these terms
even the predicament of the anguished cleric (cited by
Searle), torn between the precepts of the evangel and the
injunctions of political economy on the question of whether
bibles should be given away or sold to the heathen at full
market price, is perhaps (just) understandable. Indeed a vein
of fascinating incidental information runs through Searle's
entire account. How many readers know that Sir Robert Peel,
inventor of the English police force, secretly and illegally
sanctioned free trade in corpses (for the medical dissection
business) eighteen years before he legislated free trade in
corn?
Apart from its strictly historical value, however, this book
will, or ought to be, of particular interest to economists,
political scientists, and political theorists, among whom there
is perhaps still a tendency to theorize questions of markets
and morals in sublime neglect of time, place, and circum-
stance. The message needs to be heard with some caution,
however. Searle's political subtext is that the Victorian
attempt to set moral limits to the Carlylean "cash nexus," far
from being negative in its effect, contributed to the long-term
stability of the market in Britain, something that the author
believes needs now to be essayed again in post-Thatcherite
Britain. The problem is that Victorian experience can offer
but limited help here. Although the intellectual currency of
the Victorian markets and morals debate was largely that
minted by the great political economists themselves-Smith,
Malthus, Ricardo, and Mill-it was inevitably, given the
context, carried on in the form in which their economic ideas
actually sedimented themselves in the popular consciousness,
via national political debates over the Corn Laws and the like,
by way of popularizations of the principles of political
economy by Harriet Martineau and Mrs. Marcet, and
through novels critical of hard-nosed "Manchester" liberal-
ism by the likes of Charles Dickens and Mrs. Gaskell.
Consequently, the discourse is saturated with Victorian cul-
tural assumptions long ago discarded, and in any event the
moral values inscribed in the conceptual framework of clas-
sical political economy-character, the place of labor in
wealth creation, merit and reward in the market, and so
on-no longer carry, especially after Hayek, that kind of
authority. Moreover, after 1870, collectivists of various
stripes entered the ring to challenge the entire notion of the
legitimacy of individualistic market relations. These, too, are
now equally obsolete. But the combined result is that the
inheritance of thinking on morality and markets is currently,
at least in the British context, so profoundly problematic that
Victorian ideas appear to have lost virtually all moral pur-
chase.
Thomas Carlyle coined the phrase "The Condition of
England Question" in his prescient tract for the times,
"Chartism" (1839). The 1840s was a decade of profound
social and political difficulty for Britain: deep economic
depression, Irish famine, unsettling revolution in Europe,
and unprecedented mass agitation (Chartism) in Britain. In
what is basically a teaching text, Michael Levin has the idea
of using the responses of Carlyle, Engels, and J. S. Mill to
these events as a way into, and as a useful touchstone for,
their respective social theories. All three writers regarded the
repeal of the Corn Laws as a political climacteric, represent-
ing a decisive step in the shift of power from the aristocracy
to the middle classes. Beyond that there was little in common.
For the semisecular prophet Carlyle, English troubles were
but a symptom of a human, especially aristocratic, moral
failing, and the solution was "great men" and firm govern-
ment. For the German revolutionary Engels, only the aboli-
tion of the entire class system and the end of worker
exploitation would answer. Mill was much less apocalyptic
than either, looking instead to a gradual amelioration of
conditions arising from government carried on with proper
respect for principles of political economy.
Carlyle comes away best from Levin's "snapshot" tech-
nique as, unlike the others, his position never really devel-
oped; his voice simply became louder and more irritable. And
it works well enough for Engels, although his analysis of
England's woes in his 1844 The Condition of the Working
Class in England is basically inchoate, awaiting the benefit of
the theoretical stiffening soon to be supplied by Marx. As the
most open-minded and reflective of the three, Mill suffers
most. Levin relies upon Mill's journalism on the Irish famine,
his review of the "Claims of Labour," and the first edition
(1848) of Principles of Political Economy. The latter is surely
the major piece of evidence, but in the course of its seven
editions Mill's view of the causes of poverty, and of the role
of the working class in countering the problem, evolved from
one of passivism to significant active participation. These
reservations aside, Levin presents a well-judged mixture of
history and theory in a book that teachers of nineteenth-
century political ideas will welcome.
Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration.
Edited by Alan Levine. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books,
1999. 282p. $60.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.
Cary J. Nederman, University of Arizona
Until quite recently, the history of religious toleration in
Europe was a dreary narrative in the literature of political
theory. As the story is recounted, the monolithic character of
Latin Christianity rendered tolerance a theoretical as well as
practical impossibility. With the Reformation came an un-
precedented opportunity for the emergence of new structures
capable of supporting tolerant practices; and the rise of
liberalism in the seventeenth century can be credited with
supplying the conceptual principles on which the pragmatic
gains achieved during the Reformation could be grounded.
177
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Book Reviews: POLITICAL THEORY March 2000
The story pits a heroic few-John Locke, J.S. Mill, and some
of their sympathizers-against a vast conspiratorial network
of "authoritarians" who would suppress freedom at any cost.
This tedious comic book version of the modernizing Enlight-
enment tale remains popular among those unfamiliar with
the cutting edge of scholarship, but advances in the historical
literature call it into serious question as an interpretation of
the record.
Many of the contributors to this collection make further
substantial advances in the scholarly dissent against the
conventional narrative of toleration. In doing so, they are
guided by the dual goals espoused by the editor in the
Introduction: to advance an historically plausible account of
the unfolding of tolerant thought while also exploring the
contemporary relevance of these ideas for current theories of
toleration. At their best, the chapters meet these aspirations
very well indeed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz's masterful pre-
sentation of the "free thinkers," who, under the influence of
Bodin, wrote in the era immediately following the Edict of
Nantes, demonstrates the breadth and power of the intellec-
tual arsenal arrayed against the enemies of toleration. Al-
though many of the figures she surveys are unknown to all but
the most specialized historians of political thought, their
ideas more than stand up when compared to Eng-
lish-speaking early modern advocates of toleration. Similar
cases are made for the historical importance as well as
relevance of several other authors or traditions commonly
ignored in the literature on tolerance in sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century Europe. Deserving special mention are
Steven B. Smith on Spinoza, Alan Craig Houston on the
Levellers, Kenneth Weinstein on Bayle, and Patrick Riley on
the philosopher.
The theme that is supposed to hold together this diverse
array is the relationship between toleration and another
emerging trend in philosophy of the early modern period,
skepticism. I am less convinced than Levine, however, that
the volume fully accomplishes this aim. Levine's own essay on
Montaigne is a paradigm for how the themes may fruitfully
be joined. But too often skepticism is highlighted to the
detriment of toleration, or vice versa. It is hardly feasible to
equate "skepticism" with something like "chastened reason,"
as Joshua Mitchell does in order to make the case for a
tolerant dimension in the writings of Calvin and Luther. And
how comfortable can we be with Descartes's skepticism as a
basis for toleration when even his advocate, Michael Allen
Gillespie, admits that blasphemy, atheism, polytheism, and
any questioning of God's existence do not merit the protec-
tion of Cartesian tolerance, since they all violate one or
another tenet of manifest reason? At the other extreme,
some essays-such as those by Houston, Nathan Tarcov on
Locke, and Diana Schaub on Montesquieu-barely touch
upon skepticism at all, focusing instead upon toleration.
Part of the problem may be a failure in the volume to
define the meaning of skepticism very precisely. For some
contributors, it seems loosely to designate any position of
doubt about human epistemic capabilities; for others, it
seems to pertain to a narrow and rigorous set of doctrines. It
is certainly true that early modern skepticism embraced a
range of positions, but this does not exclude the possibility of
identifying some common standard of what renders an
argument minimally skeptical. If such a question had been
posed, of course, the volume as published might have a
somewhat altered table of contents.
Close attention to the detailed arguments of original texts
is a hallmark of all the contributions. Unfortunately, there is
less consistency in careful examination of the secondary
scholarship. No mention is made of Preston King's classic
178
1976 book (recently reprinted), Toleration, with its powerful
attempt to connect the conceptual principles of skepticism to
those of tolerance. Reference to Richard Tuck's classic essay,
"Skepticism and Toleration in the Seventeenth Century,"
which offers significant historical evidence against King's
thesis, is also noticeably absent from any of the chapters.
Those familiar with the literature on skepticism will be
surprised to find no citation of J.C. Laursen's 1992 study, The
Politics of Skepticism in the Ancients, Montaigne, Hume and
Kant.
Given the large number of scholars who have usefully
investigated the topic of Lockean toleration, Tarcov's com-
plete refusal to engage (even to recognize) these commenta-
tors detracts from one's ability to evaluate the worth of his
own contribution. And those who follow recent research on
early modern theories of tolerance may wonder why Gary
Remer's several articles and his 1996 volume, Humanism and
the Rhetoric of Toleration, merit no acknowledgment. More
generally, the contributors seem unaware of the large body of
literature on the historical development of tolerance that has
appeared during the past decade or so in continental Europe,
including work by Klaus Schreiner, Mario Turchetti, Simone
Zurbuchen, and Antonio Rotond6.
Finally, the typographical errors are excessive in a book
whose contributions are of such high quality. It is incumbent
upon publishers to demonstrate the same sort of concern for
the presentation of volumes under their imprint as authors
and editors show in the impeccability of their research.
Nonetheless, Levine and his contributors must be congratu-
lated for producing a uniformly learned and elegant set of
inquiries into the foundations of early modern toleration.
The Noblest Minds: Fame, Honor, and the American Found-
ing. Edited by Peter McNamara. Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield, 1999. 256p. $60.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.
George W. Carey, Georgetown University
In Federalist 72, Hamilton characterized "the love of fame" as
"the ruling passion of the noblest minds." Some 35 years ago,
the noted historian Douglass Adair, in an effort to show that
the motivations of the Founders extended well beyond nar-
row and selfish economic interests, built upon Hamilton's
observation. He advanced the proposition that the Founders,
or most of them at any rate, were motivated by "the love of
fame," a passion that reconciled self-interest with the pursuit
of noble goals that advanced the common good. This collec-
tion of essays is devoted to a close examination of Adair's
thesis. Each of the seven contributions that comprise the
heart of this volume (Part 2), although they differ in emphasis
and scope, deals with a major figure of the founding period
and addresses "three basic questions: what the subject of the
essay thought of fame, what role the love of fame played in
his life, and how and in what way he won fame" (p. vii). What
emerges is a picture of the Founders' motivations far too
complex to be understood simply in terms of "the love of
fame."
Paul Rahe, whose "Fame, Founders, and the Idea of
Founding in the Eighteenth Century" constitutes the whole
of Part 1, significantly undercuts Adair's contention by noting
that the Founders, unlike "the ancients," never "wholeheart-
edly embraced the ethos of honor and fame" (p. 26). James
Wilson, he remarks, in stressing the "primacy of private life"
(p. 28) in the first of his Lectures on Law, expressed "the
reigning opinions" of the founding era (p. 29). Rahe con-
cludes that "the Founding Fathers ... never gave full rein to
their longing for fame," although they did seek "a measure of
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