Thomas Hobbes. Tollerare il sovrano: decisione politica e conflitto religioso

The paper analyzes the contribution of Hobbes to the definition of the categories and the arguments of the tolerance. Hobbes is not a defender of the tolerance. His solution to the religious conflict is not based on religious tolerance, but consists in the confessional unification through the sovereign decision and in the application of the principle of cuius regio eius religio. Nevertheless also the hobbesian strategy for exceeding the religious conflict needs the tolerance. Indeed it depends on the ability of the believers to accept the sovereign decision and Hobbes, in Leviathan, connects directly the possibility of the tolerance to the production of indifference. Structure, form and conditions of the tolerance are, therefore, analyzed by Hobbes not within a theory of the limits of sovereignty, but in the context of the analysis of the conditions for the obedience to the sovereign command in religious matters. Even in Hobbes the tolerance is linked to the production of indifference: the sovereign decision in religious matters can be accepted - tolerated - only because it imposes something (a ritual, a cult, a serie of dogmas/opinions) that have become irrelevant and indifferent for the believers and for the salvation of their soul.