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.