A History of Ideas: John Locke on Toleration

BBC

A History of Ideas: John Locke on Toleration

Cognitive and TED collaboration

Aidan Turner on John Locke and Toleration

Ray Laurence

Could you change your belief if threatened with torture? Or would you merely be saying that you’d changed, when deep down you still held your original belief? In an age of religious violence and torture, the philosopher John Locke called for toleration. His argument was that since people can’t simply choose what they want to believe, using violence to try to make them change is pointless. Of course, tolerating people with different beliefs is one thing, trusting them is quite another...

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Here’s the whole episode from A History of Ideas –  Historian Justin Champion on Toleration.

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A History of Ideas: John Locke on Toleration
A History of Ideas: John Locke on Toleration

Could you change your belief if threatened with torture? Or would you merely be saying that you’d changed, when deep down you still held your original belief?

Andrew Park

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