Rescuing toleration

ABSTRACT

Toleration has been recently attacked both on practical and on theoretical grounds. On practical grounds, confronting religious terrorism, many commentators have asked whether toleration can remain the general policy toward cultural and religious diversity. Theoretically, toleration has been questioned as to its analytical capacity in the realm of partisan politics. This paper aims at countering such criticisms, by means of a conceptual clarification especially focused on the notion of intolerance, intolerable and response to intolerance. The controversial cases arising in contemporary democracy are usually focused on the limits of toleration, hence on the intolerable, by stretching the interpretation of the self-defense and of the harm principle. The author argues that the stretching is often excessive and the resulting interpretations too contentious to provide solid grounds for the intolerable. Alternatively, issues of toleration can be examined from the point of view of tolerance/intolerance. This viewpoint can clarify issues at the descriptive level, sorting out who was tolerant and who was intolerant and what was intolerable, while disagreement may persist at the normative level, according to the favored justification of toleration.

KEYWORDS:

• Toleration
• intolerance
• intolerable
• self-defense
• harm principle

Acknowledgments

A different version of this article was presented at the conference on Glen Newey’s work held at Centro Einaudi, Torino 8 June 2018. I thank Rainer Forst for his extensive comments and Glyn Morgan for organizing the meeting. I am also thankful to the anonymous referees who, with their criticisms, helped me to straighten my argument, and especially to the two editors, Johannes Drerup and Michael Kühler, for their useful comments and their editorial work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See for example, Houellebeqc (2015).

2. `The state is nothing if not coercive, and its prime role in the circumstances of toleration is to impose a solution when the protagonists reach a deadlock. This is not the same as acting tolerantly.´ (Newey, 2013, p. 15).

3. Balint (2017). See also Galeotti (2015).

4. For a philosophical presentation of the Danish cartoon controversy, see Lægaard (2007). On Charlie Hebdo the first reflections can be found in Iacobucci and Toope (2015).

5. I am specifically referring to Balint’s account (2017). Another scholar who insists on the distinction between descriptive and normative toleration is Sune Lægaard (2013, 2015). Yet, he does not hold that the normative doctrine of toleration is not useful, but, rather that normative conceptions of toleration do not properly allow to single out if a particular act of toleration proceeds from the respect-conception of toleration or the permission-conception.

6. Galeotti (2015).

7. Among the most recent literature on toleration, see for example: Williams and Waldron (2008); Forst (2013); Galeotti (2015). The general agreement has been recently questioned by Peter Balint (2017) on the basis of his purely descriptive and behavioral conception of toleration. I have argued that such a view loses toleration’s specificity equating it with negative liberty.

8. Among the definitions of the concept of toleration, well-known are King (1976), Cohen (2004) and Forst (2013).

9. John Horton is a well-known defender of the modus vivendi justification for toleration, see Horton (2019).

10. A proper presentation of the three conceptions is in Galeotti (2015).

11. Within the discussion on toleration, negative tolerance as forebearence and non-interference has been opposed to positive or affirmative tolerance as acceptance (See for example Apel, 1997; Zolo, 1997). I have instead argued that toleration is always non-interference, but that the varying reasons for non-interference confer a negative or positive meaning to the act, respectively (Galeotti, 2015).

12. Some contend that neutrality is not toleration, because the condition of dislike is precisely absent in the neutral attitude of the liberal state. They do not consider that neutrality of the state is the response to the conflict among social differences and to the dislike of one group toward another. Neutrality is rather the reason backing political toleration in the form of equal liberty rights. Political toleration implies precisely that a social dislike is faced by a political decision to withhold the dislike, within the boundary of the harm principle, because of the principle of neutrality. See Galeotti (2002). For a wider discussion of the implications of liberal neutrality to toleration see Michael Kühler (2019).

13. A discussion on the harm principle as the limit of toleration can be found in Cohen (2014).

14. I shall not be concerned here with the issue whether or not attitudes and beliefs can apply to institutions (Lægaard, 2015), given that here the argument is properly normative and that positive and negative attitude can easily be translated into preference and disadvantages.

15. I like to stress that toleration as recognition is an extension of liberal toleration, within the same normative framework of liberalism. In that respect, it may sound misleading to talk about the conception of liberal toleration. I use such label for that is the standard view in the liberal tradition, while toleration as recognition is not (Galeotti, 2002). I would add that the standard view, focused on the principle of neutrality, is not uncontroversially acknowledged as a conception of toleration, which is instead my position, see also note 12 on the issue of neutrality.

16. For example, the legitimization of the public presence of gays and lesbians had the consequence of revising the traditional notion of marriage and opened the way to the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. See Galeotti (2008).

17. The self-defense principle can be found in John Locke ([1685] 1991) while the Harm principle is introduced by John Stuart 1859. A detailed discussion of the harm principle is in Forst (2013, pp. 369–71) and Cohen (2014, pp. 36–54).

18. Actually, the central cases of harm (such as right violation and damages to property) and of attack to the political order (such as terrorism) are undisputed; the controversy concerns extensive interpretations of harm and attack to law and order.

19. The power condition is important to characterize toleration, otherwise we have acquiescence, as originally stressed by the seminal work of King (1976). In turn, power of interference does not necessarily imply a) coercive power which is monopolized by the State. If only coercive power could count as condition for toleration, the social virtue of tolerance would be preempted. Thus, the power of interference should also refer to the social power of marginalization, stigmatization, and exclusion. b) Neither implies that toleration cannot be reciprocal, as stressed by Forst (2003) and P. Jones (2007).

20. My definition of intolerance is derived from the concept of toleration and it is specular to it. Peter Königs (2019) instead derived toleration from intolerance. In his view, intolerance consists in especially cruel ways of interfering with others’ behavior. It then follows that `toleration is morally obligatory, that is, simply because there is something evidently inhumane about the means of interference that are characteristic of intolerance´ (2019). In line with the prevalent discussion, I prefer to consider toleration the primitive concept, and also to keep its character as a virtue rather than as a duty. Finally, intolerance is wrong because unjustified interference infringes on liberty and is disrespectful of other persons, whether or not it makes use of cruel means.

21. This position is endorsed also by Laegaard (2015).

22. Quoted by Rostbøll (2009) Rostbøll argues that both Rose, the editor of the magazine, and the Prime Minister displayed arrogance precisely in the arguments sustaining the publication. `The arrogance lies not so much in the decision to publish the cartoons as in the rejection of even discussing whether it was a good idea to do so´ (p. 631).

23. It is not the case, however that free speech is never to be regulated for justified good reasons. For an overview of legal restrictions on free speech, see Rosenfeld (2003).

24. The argument on the alleged request for preferential treatment of Islam compared to other religions has opened a special discussion on the consideration of religion and of religious offenses. The standard liberal view is that no religion can claim to be protected against critical inspection and even blasphemy. On the Muslim side, Saba Mahmood (2009) contends that the offenses brought to Muslims by the cartoons were misinterpreted and not rightly perceived by secular liberals who equate Islam to Protestantism. Her point is thus that Muslims were claiming a consideration adequate to their feelings and perceptions. Interesting responses to this argument pointed out the need to contextualize ‘religious pain’ (Jakobsen, 2015) and the need to differentiate between offenses to a religion and offenses to religious persons (March, 2012).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Elisabetta Galeotti

Anna Elisabetta Galeotti is Full Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Eastern Piedmont, Vercelli. Her research interests range from toleration, multiculturalism, equal respect, to deception and self-deception in politics. Among her English publications: Toleration as Recognition, Cambridge University Press 2002; `Relativism, Universalism, and Applied Ethics: The Case of Female Circumcision´, Constellations 2007; `Respect as Recognition´ in The Plural States of Recognition (2010), `The place of conscientious objection in liberal democracy´ in Diversity in Europe (2011), `Self-Deception: Intentional Plan or Mental Event?´ Humana Mente, 2012, `Liars or Self-Deceived. Reflection on Political Deception´ Political Studies 2014, `Autonomy and Cultural Practices: The Risk of Double Standards´ European Journal of Political Theory, 2015, `The Range of Toleration: From Toleration as Recognition back to Disrespectful Tolerance´ Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2015, Political Self-Deception, Cambridge University Press 2018.