Two Models of Toleration

Abstract

According to John Rawls, the “obvious lesson” to draw from the Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants is the need for religious tolerance. He further assumes that religious tolerance should take the form of individual freedom of conscience. There is, however, a second model of religious tolerance that Rawls does not consider: group autonomy. In the group autonomy model, exemplified by the millet system of the Ottoman Empire, each religious group tolerates other religions while enforcing religious orthodoxy within their own group, at the expense of individual rights to dissent or defect. This chapter explores the different normative structures of these two models of tolerance. The former model is often seen as a distinctly “liberal” conception of religious toleration, in part because it better protects individual autonomy. However, recent defenses of liberalism – including Rawls’ own “political liberalism” – have attempted to downplay the importance of individual autonomy within liberal theory. And this raises the question whether political liberalism can defend the individual conscience model of religious toleration over the group autonomy model or whether liberals must instead appeal to the “comprehensive” value of individual autonomy.