Where is the Hugo Grotius and Toleration Conference being held?

The conference is scheduled to take place in Zurich, CHE.

What is the primary focus of this conference?

The conference focuses on Hugo Grotius's contributions to the concept of toleration, exploring its historical and philosophical dimensions.

What is the format of the conference?

The event is described as a conference, suggesting a format involving presentations and discussions among scholars.

Hugo Grotius and Toleration Conference

Name: Hugo Grotius and Toleration Conference
Start: 2027-06-17T00:00:00Z
End: 2027-06-18T00:00:00Z
Location: Zurich

Jun 17–18, 2027Zurich, SwitzerlandIn-person

Registration open

The Hugo Grotius and Toleration Conference, held in Zurich, CHE, offers a focused examination of Hugo Grotius's contributions to the concept of toleration. This academic gathering brings together scholars to delve into the historical and philosophical underpinnings of Grotius's thought, particularly as it relates to religious and intellectual freedom. The conference aims to foster a deeper understanding of how his ideas influenced the development of modern concepts of tolerance and international law.

Committees & topics

Topics
Hugo Grotius and the Foundations of International Law · Religious Toleration in Early Modern Europe and Beyond · Freedom of Conscience · Rights of Religious Minorities · The Dutch Republic and the Politics of Toleration · Christianity and the Question of Toleration · Islam and the Politics of Religious Pluralism · Judaism, Diaspora, and the Long History of Toleration

Why it matters

Hugo Grotius's work remains highly relevant in contemporary discussions surrounding religious freedom, human rights, and international relations. His arguments for a universal law based on reason, independent of specific religious doctrines, laid crucial groundwork for secular governance and the protection of individual liberties. Understanding Grotius's perspective on toleration provides valuable insights into the historical evolution of these concepts and their ongoing challenges in a diverse global landscape.

In an era marked by increasing global interconnectedness and persistent conflicts rooted in ideological differences, the principles of toleration are more critical than ever. Grotius's intellectual legacy offers a framework for analyzing how societies can navigate pluralism and uphold peace. By revisiting his ideas, scholars and policymakers can draw lessons applicable to modern challenges, from interfaith dialogue to the establishment of international norms for human rights.

The conference's focus on Grotius's specific contributions to toleration allows for a nuanced exploration of how historical philosophical arguments continue to shape contemporary legal and ethical debates. It highlights the enduring power of ideas to influence societal structures and international cooperation, making it an essential event for those interested in the historical roots of modern political thought and its implications for global governance.

How to prepare

Participants preparing for this conference should immerse themselves in Grotius's major works, particularly those addressing natural law, international law, and religious toleration. A thorough understanding of his arguments concerning the separation of church and state, the rights of conscience, and the foundations of a just society will be essential. Consider how his ideas were both revolutionary for his time and how they might be critiqued or expanded upon in a modern context.

Analyzing Grotius's ideas through the lens of contemporary issues, such as freedom of expression or the rights of minorities, can yield fruitful discussion points. Engage with secondary literature that critically assesses Grotius's legacy and its impact on subsequent philosophical and legal developments. This approach will allow for a more dynamic engagement with the conference themes and facilitate contributions to the ongoing scholarly discourse.

Consider the broader historical context in which Grotius developed his theories. While not explicitly stated in the event details, familiarity with the intellectual climate of the early modern period will provide crucial context for understanding Grotius's motivations and the specific challenges he sought to address. This historical grounding will enhance the ability to engage with the nuances of his arguments and their enduring relevance.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Switzerland

As the host nation, CHE provides a neutral and academic setting conducive to scholarly debate on historical and philosophical topics.

Role in topic

CHE's tradition of neutrality and its role as a hub for international organizations and academic discourse make it an ideal location for a conference exploring foundational concepts like toleration and international law.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Hugo Grotius and the Foundations of International Law

Hugo Grotius (Huig de Groot, 1583–1645) was a Dutch jurist, theologian, and diplomat whose work laid the intellectual groundwork for modern international law and theories of religious toleration. Writing amid the confessional violence of the Eighty Years' War and the Thirty Years' War, Grotius sought rational, secular-compatible principles that could bind sovereigns of differing faiths. His major works — Mare Liberum (1609), De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625), and De Veritate Religionis Christianae (1627) — argued for freedom of the seas, just-war doctrine grounded in natural law, and a minimalist Christianity that could be defended by reason and accommodate dissenters. Grotius's career was shaped by the bitter Arminian–Gomarist dispute within the Dutch Reformed Church. As a supporter of the Remonstrants and ally of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, he was condemned at the Synod of Dort (1618–1619), imprisoned at Loevestein, and famously escaped in a book chest in 1621. He spent the rest of his life in exile, primarily in Paris and later in the service of Sweden, continuing to argue that civil peace required magistrates to tolerate doctrinal diversity within broad Christian limits. Grotius remains a contested figure: celebrated as a father of international law and a pioneer of toleration, but criticized for the limits of his tolerationism (notably toward atheists and, in some readings, non-Christians) and for his defense of Dutch commercial empire. His legacy frames contemporary debates on sovereignty, humanitarian intervention, and the secular grounding of human rights.

Key players

Religious Toleration in Early Modern Europe and Beyond

Religious toleration emerged as a practical and philosophical problem in the wake of the Reformation, when the unity of Latin Christendom shattered into competing confessions whose adherents lived under the same sovereigns. The wars of religion that followed — the French Wars of Religion, the Eighty Years' War, and the Thirty Years' War — produced both catastrophic violence and the first sustained legal experiments in coexistence, including the Peace of Augsburg (1555), the Edict of Nantes (1598), and the Peace of Westphalia (1648). Thinkers including Sebastian Castellio, Dirck Coornhert, Hugo Grotius, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, and Pierre Bayle developed arguments for toleration grounded variously in skepticism about doctrinal certainty, the limits of magisterial authority over conscience, and the civic benefits of pluralism. The Dutch Republic, while officially Reformed, became the most prominent laboratory of de facto toleration, permitting Catholics, Mennonites, Lutherans, Sephardic Jews, and dissenting Protestants to worship with varying degrees of openness. Toleration as a legal and political ideal expanded unevenly: enshrined in the U.S. First Amendment and the French Declaration, codified globally in Article 18 of the UDHR and the ICCPR, yet contested today through blasphemy laws, anti-conversion statutes, restrictions on religious dress, and rising sectarian violence. The Grotian question — on what terms communities of different ultimate convictions can share a polity — remains acutely contemporary.

Key players

Freedom of Conscience

Freedom of conscience — the right of the individual to hold and form beliefs without coercion by state or church — developed alongside but distinct from freedom of worship. Early modern dissenters, including Anabaptists, Spiritualists, and Remonstrants, insisted that belief itself cannot be compelled, an argument sharpened by Castellio against Calvin after the execution of Michael Servetus in 1553. Grotius, Spinoza, and Locke each grounded the inviolability of conscience in different ways: natural law, the impossibility of sincere coerced assent, and the proper limits of civil authority. The principle was progressively legalized through the U.S. Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and after 1945 through Article 18 of the UDHR, Article 18 of the ICCPR, and the 1981 UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. The Human Rights Committee's General Comment 22 affirms that the forum internum — the inner sphere of belief — is absolute and non-derogable, even when manifestation of belief may be limited. Contemporary disputes focus on the boundaries of conscience claims: conscientious objection to military service, healthcare workers refusing certain procedures, civil servants declining to perform same-sex marriages, vaccine mandates, and compelled speech. States diverge sharply on whether conscience protections extend to corporate entities, on the treatment of apostasy and atheism, and on accommodation of minority religious practices in education and public life.

Key players

Rights of Religious Minorities

Protection of religious minorities is among the oldest concerns of international law, predating modern human rights regimes. Capitulations in the Ottoman Empire, the millet system, and post-Westphalian guarantees for confessional minorities evolved into the League of Nations Minority Treaties (1919–1923), which obliged successor states in Central and Eastern Europe to protect religious and ethnic minorities. The failure of that regime in the interwar period informed the post-1945 turn toward universal individual rights. The current framework rests on ICCPR Article 27, the 1981 UN Declaration on Religion or Belief, the 1992 Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, and the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief. Regional instruments, including the European Convention on Human Rights Article 9 and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, supplement these protections. Despite this architecture, religious minorities face severe pressures globally: Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Christians and Yazidis in parts of the Middle East, Ahmadis in Pakistan, Bahá'ís in Iran, Hindus and Christians in conflict zones, and Jewish communities confronting resurgent antisemitism. Debates persist over the relationship between collective and individual rights, the scope of legitimate restrictions on proselytism and conversion, and the responsibility of the international community when minority protection collapses.

Key players

The Dutch Republic and the Politics of Toleration

The Dutch Republic (1581–1795) emerged from the Eighty Years' War against Habsburg Spain, formally declaring independence through the Act of Abjuration in 1581 and securing recognition at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Its decentralized constitutional structure — seven sovereign provinces under the States General — produced an unusually pluralistic polity in which the public Reformed Church was privileged but not exclusively established, and where dissenters were generally permitted private worship. This pragmatic toleration, combined with commercial dynamism and a relatively free press, made Amsterdam, Leiden, and other Dutch cities refuges for Sephardic Jews expelled from Iberia, French Huguenots after 1685, English Pilgrims, Mennonites, and freethinkers including Spinoza, Descartes, and Bayle. Yet toleration had clear limits: Catholics worshipped only in clandestine churches (schuilkerken), public office was reserved for Reformed members, and the Arminian controversy that engulfed Grotius showed how quickly internal Protestant disputes could become matters of state. The Republic's experience supplied a working model for later debates on church–state relations and minority rights. Modern scholarship debates whether Dutch toleration was a principled achievement or a contingent byproduct of fragmented sovereignty and commercial interest — a question with direct bearing on how contemporary pluralist democracies sustain coexistence.

Key players

Christianity and the Question of Toleration

Christianity's relationship to toleration has been deeply ambivalent. The early Church, itself persecuted under Rome, developed strong arguments for freedom of belief in writers such as Tertullian and Lactantius. After Constantine's conversion and the Theodosian establishment, however, Christianity became the imperial religion, and dissent — pagan, Jewish, or heretical — increasingly faced civil disability or coercion. Augustine's reluctant endorsement of compelle intrare against the Donatists provided a template later cited to justify the Inquisition and confessional warfare. The Reformation shattered Western Christian unity and produced both new persecutions and new tolerationist arguments. Anabaptists and Spiritualists insisted on believers' churches free of state coercion; Erasmus, Castellio, the Remonstrants, and later Roger Williams, William Penn, and the Quakers argued from within Christianity for liberty of conscience. Catholic and Protestant establishments alike eventually accommodated pluralism, formally with Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanae (1965), which affirmed religious freedom as rooted in human dignity. Today Christianity is the world's largest religion, demographically shifting toward the Global South, and is variously a majority establishment, a persecuted minority, and an internally pluralistic family of traditions. Debates within and about Christianity continue over the proper relation of church and state, the rights of LGBTQ+ persons, the status of Christian minorities under hostile regimes, and the role of religious actors in liberal democracies.

Key players

Islam and the Politics of Religious Pluralism

Islam emerged in seventh-century Arabia and within a century governed territories from the Iberian Peninsula to Central Asia. Classical Islamic jurisprudence developed the dhimma system, under which Jews, Christians, and other 'People of the Book' lived as protected but legally subordinate communities, paying the jizya in exchange for security and communal autonomy. While discriminatory by modern standards, this framework often afforded greater practical coexistence than contemporaneous Christian Europe, as evidenced by Andalusi convivencia and the Ottoman millet system. The modern period brought the abolition of the caliphate (1924), the rise of nation-states across the Muslim world, and intense debates over the relationship between Islamic law and constitutional governance. Movements ranging from Kemalist secularism to political Islamism, Salafi-jihadism, and contemporary reformist currents (including the 2016 Marrakesh Declaration on the rights of religious minorities in Muslim-majority lands) reflect a contested landscape. The OIC's Cairo Declaration on Human Rights (1990, revised 2020) illustrates ongoing tension between universal human rights norms and religiously framed alternatives. Muslims today number roughly 2 billion across diverse legal and cultural settings. Key contemporary issues include the status of religious minorities in Muslim-majority states, blasphemy and apostasy laws, the treatment of Muslim minorities in non-Muslim states (notably Uyghurs in China, Rohingya in Myanmar, and Muslim communities in Europe and India), and intra-Muslim sectarian violence, particularly Sunni–Shia tensions across the Middle East.

Key players

Judaism, Diaspora, and the Long History of Toleration

Judaism, the oldest of the Abrahamic traditions, has historically existed as a minority faith outside brief periods of political sovereignty in antiquity. Jewish communities developed under successive imperial frameworks — Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, Sassanid, Islamic caliphates, and medieval Christendom — that variously offered protection, autonomy, or persecution. Expulsions from England (1290), France (1394), and Spain (1492), alongside pogroms in Central and Eastern Europe, made the Jewish experience a touchstone for debates about religious toleration and minority rights. The Dutch Republic became a key refuge after 1492, with Sephardic Jews establishing flourishing communities in Amsterdam and producing figures such as Menasseh ben Israel — who lobbied Cromwell for Jewish readmission to England — and Baruch Spinoza, whose excommunication and subsequent philosophical work shaped modern arguments for toleration. Emancipation across nineteenth-century Europe extended civil equality to Jews, though antisemitism persisted and culminated in the Holocaust, an event central to the formation of the post-1945 human rights regime and to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Contemporary Judaism is concentrated principally in Israel and the United States, with significant communities in France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Argentina, and Russia. Pressing concerns include resurgent antisemitism worldwide, the security of diaspora communities, internal pluralism among Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and secular Jews, and the political and religious dimensions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict — all of which intersect with broader debates on minority rights, holy sites, and religious self-definition.

Key players