Berlin’s Savoyard Vicar: Religious Skepticism and Toleration in Mendelssohn and Rousseau

Abstract

While both Mendelssohn and Rousseau were deeply spiritual thinkers whose writings continually reflect a profound belief in a benevolent God, they both still used religious skepticism in order to undermine the logic of religious intolerance. In doing so, these religious thinkers reflect a critical assumption they share with the far less religiously inclined David Hume, namely, that skepticism is a critical tool for the promotion of tolerance. This paper analyses the skeptical and tolerant similarities in Mendelssohn’s and Rousseau’s religious thought. It explores Mendelssohn’s reception of Rousseau, before focusing on Rousseau’s arguments for religious tolerance and showing both how they reflect a skeptical undercurrent and how Mendelssohn uses many similar skeptical arguments for the same purpose. Finally, this analysis will lead to concluding thoughts on the dialectic between skepticism, faith and tolerance in the Enlightenment, and more generally, for skeptical believers ever since.