Download or read book Difference and Dissent written by Cary J. Nederman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1996 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative collection points to the need for a reevaluation of the origins of toleration theory. Philosophers, intellectual historians, and political theorists have assumed that the development of the theory of toleration has been a product of the modern world, and John Locke is usually regarded as the first theorist of toleration. The contributors to Difference and Dissent, however, discuss a range of conceptual positions that were employed by medieval and early modern thinkers to support a theory of toleration, and question the claim that Locke's theory of toleration was as original or philosophically adequate as his adherents have asserted.