Toleration, multiculturalism and mistaken belief

Abstract

Doubts have been expressed about the virtue of toleration, especially in view of what some have seen as its complicity with a morality of anything goes. More rigorous arguments have been provided by Peter Gardner and Harvey Siegel against the relativism evident in certain versions of multiculturalism and in the new religious studies. This article examines their arguments. While it recognises the cogency of these arguments, it suggests that their concentration on matters of belief and mistaken belief is apt to divert attention from what is most important with regard to questions of toleration in these areas of experience. In order to illustrate this, remarks of Wittgenstein on religion and on understanding other cultures are considered. In contrast to the standard analysis of toleration, where toleration is seen as a response to an object that arouses disgust or disapproval, the value and the limitations of an easy-going tolerance are examined. This is related to bearing witness and knowledge-by-acquaintance. In the final section attention is turned to aspects of the curriculum that may have an unexpected relevance to toleration and the multicultural society.

Keywords:

• Belief
• Multiculturalism
• Religious education
• Toleration
• Wittgenstein

Notes

Notes

1. The full title is ‘The End of Tolerance: Engaging Cultural Differences’ (Daedalus, Fall 2000, 129[4]).

2. These comments were made by Stephen Bates in The Guardian, 27 September 2002.

3. I propose not to distinguish systematically between toleration and tolerance though this is not to suggest equivalence. The former term evokes the verb and perhaps relates most obviously to actions, while the latter connects more directly with the adjective and hence with a more attitudinal sense, but there is no hard and fast line between these two.

4. Strictly, validity is a property of arguments, not propositions. The fact that this incorrect usage is not uncommon amongst multiculturalists suggests that there is already some slippage in the concern for truth, which is a property of propositions. This is exposed less by ‘equally valid’ than by ‘equally true’.

5. This song was quoted in Yael Tamir's paper, ‘Living beyond our psychological means’, at the Annual Conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, Oxford 1998.

6. D. Z. Phillips, for example, would take the view that they do so misconstrue the nature of their own belief. This would not be to disparage the belief but to question the cogency of their reflection upon it.

7. Of course, there may be what Austin calls unhappy uses, as when the words are uttered in the course of a play, for example. But a promise that is insincere is nevertheless a promise; it is simply a promise that is unlikely to be honoured.

8. This is not to say that we cannot, as it were, shift our ground, at different times examining different aspects of our background beliefs.

9. Contributors to an English national identity (if such there is) might include: the stories of King Arthur and Robin Hood, of Victorian values, fair play, decency and the stiff upper lip; of empire and its decline; the films of the Ealing studios and 1960s pop culture; the marketing of Richard Branson and the rebranding of Britain as Cool Britannia.

10. Rousseau's Emile, it might be recalled, is accustomed to hard beds as a child and grows up able to sleep on beds of many kinds, many of which his more conventionally (and more comfortably) educated peers would disdain. And hard beds, it turns out, are better for us anyway.