John Locke. La mediocrity come fondamento della dottrina sulla tolleranza

The paper investigates the relevance the concept of mediocrity, intended as the essential characteristic of human faculties and life, has in John Locke’s writings on tolerance. The definition the latter gives in the Essay concerning Human Understanding and in some previous unpublished writings of this concept, which identifies the human condition with a state of natural imperfection and incompleteness, suggests it should be interpreted as the basis of his moral and religious thought, the mediocrity of human faculties being introduced as an essential part of God’s provident design of universal salvation. The importance Locke assigns to this concept may be fruitfully detected in his writings on tolerance and in particular in the Third Letter, where it emerges that the epistemological skepticism theorized in the Essay, which had its premise in the mediocrity of human faculties, is the fundamental argument on which Locke builds his attack against intolerance.