John Locke on Civil Society and Religious Tolerance

Abstract

This study aims to elaborate the thoughts of John Locke on civil society and religious tolerance. This would be a useful way to think the conflict specifically the religious conflict. This study tended to use library research. It considers all Locke’s sources which was available in online and offline library. The researcher used Skinner’s contextual reading to analyse Locke’s ideas. The main finding is Locke’s civil society seems to be a continuation from family life to society life. According to Locke, family has an important role to set their children having democratic or tyrannical character. If parents nourish their children by consent, it is established children’s minds to think that people need to appreciate others’ ideas and wills. Therefore, the perfect democratic government would emergence by consent of all democratic men. The democratic condition will create a civil society and further producing the society based on religious tolerance. This article would remind that the civil society and the religious tolerance are the basic needs to pursue a peace.

Keywords: civil society, religious tolerance, John Locke, classical thinker