Abstract
Everyone knows that tolerance lies at the heart of Enlightenment thinking. But has the extent of the pluralistic dynamic that this new demand is creating at the heart of European consciousness been fully appreciated? Starting with Pierre Bayle and his Commentaire philosophique (1686), a vigorous reaction to the persecution of Protestants in the France of Louis XIV, we examine the links between tolerance and cosmopolitanism. The Enlightenment had to face up to the challenge of otherness and consider differences in the context of a common humanity. In the 18th century, cosmopolitanism was a new, ambivalent idea, rooted in the mutation of mobility and sociability in a world on the move. We then turn to Lessing's great manifesto of cosmopolitan tolerance, Nathan the Wise (1779), and conclude with Hannah Arendt's reading of it.
