Democracy,Equality and Toleration

In this paper I comment on a recent “letter” by Burleigh Wilkins addressed to nascent egalitarian democracies which offers advice on the achievement of religious toleration. I argue that while Wilkins’ advice is sound as far as it goes, it is nevertheless underdeveloped insofar as his letter fails to distinguish two competing conceptions of toleration – liberal-pluralist and republican-secularist – both of which are consistent with the advice he offers, but each of which yields very different policy recommendations (as can be seen by consideration of The United States v. Lee in America and, I’affaire du foulard in France). I argue that a democratic society of equals must be committed to liberal-pluralist rather than republican-secularist toleration. Some material in this paper is drawn from Catriona McKinnon, Toleration: A Critical Introduction (London: Routledge, 2006). This paper was written during a Fellowship on the Philosophy Program, School of Advanced Study, University of London. I am grateful to the University of York for a sabbatical term, and the Leverhulme Trust for a Study Abroad Fellowship, during which this paper was written. I would like to thank John Horton and Cécile Laborde for very useful written comments, and two anonymous referees for The Journal of Ethics for their reports.     

Toleration and Cultural Controversies*

Multicultural societies are far more likely than others to include minorities committed to the pursuit of practices that offend the majority, and treating the cultural commitments of all citizens fairly will require some set of guiding principles to distinguish tolerable ‘cultural controversies’ from intolerable ones. This paper does not directly address the moral question at stake here (i.e. demarcating the limits of toleration) but rather seeks to provide a politically justifiable normative argument to explain when tolerant restraint is necessary, permissible or prohibited. This argument emerges from a concern to treat the cultural commitments of all citizens fairly. In turn, the argument indicates a potential reconciliation of the ‘politics of toleration’ with the ‘politics of respect’. *I would like to thank Stephen De Wijze, Hillel Steiner, Thomas Uebel, Peter Jones and Res Publica’s anonymous referees for their very helpful comments. I would also like to thank the ESRC for providing funding.     

Legalising Toleration: a Reply to Balint

I re-present my account of how a liberal democratic society can be tolerant and do so in a way designed to meet Peter Balint??s objections. In particular, I explain how toleration can be approached from a third-party perspective, which is that of neither tolerator nor tolerated but of rule-makers providing for the toleration that the citizens of a society are to extend to one another. Constructing a regime of toleration should not be confused with engaging in toleration. Negative appraisal and power remain ??possibility conditions?? of toleration but they are not necessary features of either a regime of toleration or the sponsors of such a regime.     

洛克思想的宽容与创新--纪念洛克逝世三百周年

本文从三个方面论述了洛克思想中的宽容与创新。首先,哲学与常识的融合。洛克的任务是使哲学成为常识,以代替天赋观念这一陈腐的常识。他认为,理性之所以伟大,就在于从常识中寻找根据,始终与常识一致,所以理性本质上就是一种常识的态度。其次,理性与虔敬的调和。洛克认为天赋观念说还未能把人的理性充分发挥出来,理性的充分发挥与肯定上帝的存在是相一致的。再次,机械论与经院哲学方法的混用。洛克在关于第一性和第二性的质的观念的形成以及观念与性质相似或不相似的论述中,既有机械论的方法,又有经院哲学因果观的成分。     

A Value Pluralist Defense of Toleration

Philosophia - In situations where we ought to tolerate what we morally disapprove of we are faced with the following moral conflict: we ought to interfere with X, we ought to tolerate X, we can do...     

Toleration and the Design of Norms

One of the pressing challenges we face today—in a post-Westphalian order (emergence of the state as the modern, political information agent) and post-Bretton Woods world (emergence of non-state multiagent systems or MASs as “hyperhistorical” players in the global economy and politics)—is how to design the right kind of MAS that can take full advantage of the socio-economic and political progress made so far, while dealing successfully with the new global challenges that are undermining the best legacy of that very progress. This is the topic of the article. In it, I argue that (i) in order to design the right kind of MAS, we need to design the right kind of norms that constitute them; (ii) in order to design the right kind of constitutive norms, we need to identify and adopt the right kind of principles of normative design; (iii) toleration is one of those principles; (iv) unfortunately, its role as a foundation for the design of norms has been undermined by the “paradox of toleration”; (v) however, the paradox can be solved; (vi) so toleration can be re-instated as the right kind of foundational principle for the design of the right kind of norms that can constitute the right kind of MAS that can operate across cultures, societies and states, to help us to tackle the new global challenges facing us.     

Toleration vs. Doctrinal Evil in Our Time

Our time is characterized by what seems like an unprecedented process of intense global homogenization. This reality provides the context for exploring the nature and value of toleration. Hence, this essay is meant primarily as a contribution to international ethics rather than political philosophy. It is argued that because of the non-eliminability of differences in the world we should not even hope that there can be only one global religion or ideology. Further exploration exposes conceptual affinity between the concepts of intolerance, ideology, and doctrinal evil. The last concept is developed in contrast to pure evil and average evil, and under the assumption of the metaphysical necessity of free will. Doctrinal evil is found to represent the main source of intolerance as a result of a mechanism that tends to confuse doctrinal evil (or the competing conceptions of the good) with pure evil. This connection between doctrinal evil and pure evil provides ideologies with their forcefulness. Tolerance cannot be properly understood in terms of a simple opposition to intolerance, however. Tolerance emerges as a sort of vigilance, conscientiousness, and non-negligence based not on a supposedly correct interpretation of the good, but rather on the acceptance of the fallibility of any such attempted definition. Conversely, the principal evil in doctrinal evil is found in arrogance that accompanies the intolerance-inducing irresponsible thoughtlessness. With this conceptual topology in mind the paper also addresses questions regarding religious tolerance, the ideology of human rights and democracy, the right to self-defense, ways to face evil, the dialectics of using old names for novel evils, and related issues. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Complicity in Thought and Language: Toleration of Wrong

Complicity as “toleration of wrong” is deeply rooted in Western language and narratives. It is based on assumptions about the self, our relationship to the world and personal accountability that differ from the Common Law's and moral theology's standard doctrines. How we blame others for “tolerating wrong” depends upon the moral force of public discourse and upon the meaning of censure as exhortation. Censure as blame is usually retrospective, while censure as exhortation is forward-looking and stresses moral maturity and flourishing.