On the Rise of Toleration in Europe: Lessing and the German Contribution

Unlike the pragmatic approach to toleration in Britain and the secularist approach in France, the roots of toleration in Germany lie in a distinctive tradition of pluralism and perspectivism which stretches from Nicholas of Cusa via Leibniz and Lessing to the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Basic to this tradition is the conviction that all or most religions (and subsequently cultures) embody a partial, but never exclusive, degree of truth or value. This attitude, encouraged by the plurality of states in Germany until the nineteenth century and the plurality of confessions since the