Hi All,
As i'm sure Michael is aware ' freedom of conscience' has a peculiarly poignant relationship to English history, especially from what as been termed the 'early modern period' onwards. I won't bore both him and the rest of the list by launching into an explanation of how it was deployed by English dissenters against the Anglican establishment, and concomitantly by Parliamentarians against the Monarchy, this is all very well travelled ground. What i would like to point out- something that is far less known and appreciated- is how this notion was equally deployed by the Monarchial Anglican establishment themselves in service of their own ends. Thus i'm wondering if Michael was aware that king James [Charle's the II's successor] in April of 1687 issued his _Declaration for the Liberty of Conscience_ a general indulgence of 'dissenters' of all denominations, including Catholics! Needless to say its reception was mixed. Thus, contained within this historical event, we are witness how a particular 'ideological instrument', that of 'freedom of conscience', which had reference primarily to a rather discrete social configuration of historical individuals [Protestant dissenters], was appropriated, reinterpreted, and redeployed by another social configuration with exactly opposite interests, beliefs and ends! This brings to mind Foucault's quote in _Nietzsche, Genealogy and HIstory_ that: "if interpretation is the violent or surreptitious appropriation of a system of rules, which in itself has no essential meaning, in order to imposed a direction, to bend it to a new will, to force its participation in a different game, and to subject it to secondary rules, then the development of humanity is a series of interpretations".
Bradley
[who is very glad that uni semester has finished and he can spare time once again for pleasant intellectual procrastination]
"Of all writings I love only those which the writer writeth with his blood. Write in blood, and thou shalt learn that blood is spirit"
Nietzsche. "Thus Spake Zarathustra".