Tolerance
Description
Frank Furedi:
"Tolerance is an important ideal that is indispensable for the working of a genuinely free and democratic society. Yet it is ideal that we take for granted and do not take very seriously. Numerous articles and books on this subject treat it as a boring rather insignificant idea that doesn’t go far enough to secure a just society. Others depict tolerance as a disinclination to judge or to have strong views about the behaviour of others. Increasingly we are in danger of forgetting what tolerance as an intimate companion of liberty and freedom means. The aim of this essay is to remind ourselves that tolerance constitutes one of the most precious contributions of the Enlightenment imagination to modern life. Without tolerance we cannot be free, we cannot live with one another in relative peace, we cannot follow and act on our conscience, we cannot exercise our moral autonomy nor pursue our own road towards seeking the truth.
It is important to recall that tolerance is in historical terms a very recent ideal. Until the 17th century the toleration of different religions, opinions and beliefs was interpreted as a form of moral cowardice if not a symptom of heresy. Indeed, medieval witch-hunters and inquisitors were no less concerned with stigmatising those who questioned their intolerant practices than they were with hunting down witches and heretics. The 15th century witch-hunters manual, Malleus Maleficarum claimed that those who denied the existence of witches were as guilty of heresy as the active practitioners of witchcraft. In the following century scepticism was frequently treated as a particularly dangerous form of anti-Christian heresy. As the French historian, Paul Hazard noted in his pioneering study, The European Mind, until the 17th century, tolerance ‘had not been a virtue at all, but, on the contrary, a sign of weakness, not to say cowardice’. He added that ‘duty and charity’ forbade people to be tolerant.
It was in the 17th century that attitudes towards tolerating competing ideas and religions began to change. In part the rise of secularism and rationality encouraged a more sceptical orientation towards religious dogmatism and intolerance. This was also a period when Europe was overwhelmed by bitter religious conflicts which frequently resulted in bloody civil wars. In such circumstances, calls for tolerance were influenced by the pragmatic calculation that without a measure of religious toleration endemic violence and bloodshed could not be avoided. This was the moment when a significant minority of Europeans recognised that tolerance was a pre-requisite for their society’s survival. The American philosopher Michael Walzer emphasised the significance of this insight when he stated that toleration ‘sustains life itself’. Time and again we need to remind ourselves that, as he put it; ‘toleration makes difference possible; difference makes toleration necessary’.
The aim of 17th century advocates of tolerance such as John Locke was to protect religious belief from state coercion. His advocacy of toleration represented a call for restraining political authorities from interfering with the workings of individual conscience. Over the centuries this affirmation of religious tolerance has expanded to allow the free expression of opinions, beliefs and behaviour associated with the exercise of the individual conscience. Tolerance is intimately connected to the affirmation of the most basic dimension of freedom – the freedom of belief and of conscience. The ideal of tolerance demands that we accept the right of people to live according to beliefs and opinions that are different, sometimes antithetical to ours. Tolerance does not invite us to accept or celebrate other people’s sentiments. It demands that we live with them and desist from interfering or forcing others to fall in line with our own views.
Tolerance pertains to the domain of the political/philosophical through its avowal of the principle of non-interference towards the way that people develop and hold beliefs and opinions. Tolerance affirms the freedom of conscience and individual autonomy. As long as an act does not violate a person’s moral autonomy and harm others, tolerance also calls for the absence of constraint on behaviour linked to the exercise of individual autonomy. From this perspective tolerance can be measured in relation to the extent to which people’s belief and behaviour is not subject to institutional and political interference and restraint. Secondly, tolerance is also a social/cultural accomplishment. A tolerant society is one where tolerance as a cultural orientation discourages and restrains social intolerance. This was a concern eloquently pursued by the philosopher J.S. Mill who warned about what he characterised as the ‘tyranny of public’ opinion and its tendency to stigmatise and silence minority and dissident beliefs. Upholding the disposition to be tolerant is always a challenge and as experience shows legal safe guards can always come unstuck when confronted by a tidal wave of intolerance."
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UyzBmv-ooM)
Discussion
What tolerance is not
Frank Furedi, on "The reorientation of tolerance from personal beliefs to group identities" :
Anyone perusing policy documents, mission statement, school text-books and speeches made by politicians and policy makers is likely to be struck by the frequency with which the term tolerance is used and praised. Outwardly at least everyone appears to celebrate tolerance and it is difficult to encounter any significant acclaim for intolerance. However, on closer inspection it becomes evident that the meaning of this term has radically altered. It has mutated into a superficial signifier of acceptance and affirmation of anyone and everyone. In official documents and school texts, tolerance is used as a desirable character trait rather than as a way of managing conflicting beliefs and behaviour. So, one can be tolerant without any reference to a set of beliefs or opinions. Moreover, tolerance as an act of not interfering or attempting to suppress beliefs that contradict one’s own sentiments has given way to the idea that it involves not judging other people and their views. So arguably instead of serving as a way of responding to differences of views tolerance has become a way of not taking them seriously. Arguably when tolerance is represented as a form of detached indifference or as a polite gesture connoting automatic acceptance it becomes an a vice rather than a virtue.
One reason why historically, tolerance was interpreted as a virtue was because it implied a willingness to tolerate disagreeable beliefs and opinions instead of attempting to suppress them. According to the classical liberal outlook, tolerance involved an act of judgment and discrimination. But judgment does not serve as a prelude to censoring another person’s wrong belief because tolerance demands respect for the right of people to hold beliefs in accordance with their conscience. Indeed, the recognition of the primacy of the virtue of freedom imposed on the truly tolerant the responsibility to refrain from attempting to coerce religious and political opponents into silence. Voltaire’s frequently repeated statement, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’, expressed the intimate connection between judgement and a commitment to freedom. In contemporary public discussion the connection between tolerance and judgment is danger of being lost due to the current cultural obsession with being non-judgemental. An analysis of the current usage of tolerant indicates that it is frequently used as a companion term with inclusive and non-judgemental. [v] As a fascinating survey of American political culture concluded, ‘Thou shalt not judge’ has become the eleventh commandment of middle class Americans. Alan Wolfe, the study’s author noted that ‘middle-class Americans are reluctant to pass judgment on how other people act and think’.[vi] While the reluctance to judge other people’s behaviour has its attractive qualities it is not necessarily a manifestation of social tolerance.
The confusion of the concept of tolerance with the idea of acceptance and valuation of other people’s beliefs and lifestyles is strikingly illustrated in UNESCO’s Declaration on the Principles of Tolerance. According to this declaration, ‘tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world’s cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human’ and it is ‘harmony in difference’.[vii] From this perspective toleration becomes an expansive and diffuse sensibility that unquestioningly appreciates other cultures. It is a sensibility that doesn’t judge but automatically accepts and offers unconditional appreciation of different views and cultures. This officially sanctioned declaratory rhetoric of tolerance is often used in schools and children interpret it as an exhortation to be nice to other people.
The reinterpretation of tolerance as a psychological attitude that conveys acceptance, empathy and respect means that in public deliberations it has lost its real meaning. Yet it is precisely the intimate connection between disapproval/disagreement and toleration that endows tolerance with enormously significance. The act of toleration demands reflection, restraint and a respect for the right of other people to find their way to their truth. Once tolerance signifies a form of automatic acceptance it becomes a performance in expected behaviour. The most troubling consequence of the rhetorical transformation of this term has been its disassociation from discrimination and judgement. When tolerance acquires the status of a default response connoting approval, people are protected from troubling themselves with the challenge of engaging with moral dilemmas.
The call to reinterpret tolerance as a sentiment conveying non-judgmentalism or indifference is often presented as a positive character trait of the open-minded person. But the gesture of affirmation and acceptance can be seen as a way of avoiding making difficult moral choices and of disengaging from the complicated challenge of explaining the values that have to be upheld. It is far easier to dispense with the idea of moral judgment than with explaining why a certain way of life is preferable to the one that can be tolerated but not embraced.
Tolerance has also been adapted by well meaning national and international agencies and institutions as an adjective that conveys the sense of harmony and peacefulness. Not infrequently it is depicted as the polar opposite to conflict. The UNESCO Declaration on Tolerance is paradigmatic in this respect. Its call for tolerance is presented as a response to its alarm;
‘by the current rise in acts of intolerance, violence, terrorism, xenophobia, aggressive nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, exclusion, marginalization and discrimination directed against national, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, refugees, migrant workers, immigrants and vulnerable groups within societies, as well as acts of violence and intimidation committed against individuals exercising their freedom of opinion and expression - all of which threaten the consolidation of peace and democracy, both nationally and internationally, and are obstacles to development’.[viii]
The representation of tolerance as an antidote to a variety of group conflicts represents an understandable but unhelpful expansion of the meaning of tolerance.
The reorientation of tolerance from personal beliefs to group identities does not simply mean its quantitative expansion but a qualitative transformation in meaning. Tolerance has a different meaning when addressed towards religious beliefs and political opinions that express ‘individual moral understanding’ than when it is directed towards ‘attributes or identities taken to be given, saturating, and immutable’.[ix] The tendency to perceive differences in group and cultural terms distracts attention from conflicts of belief and opinion. However, it is important to understand that toleration pertains to beliefs and behaviour and not to differences in cultural or national identities. Everyone who upholds liberty will adopt a liberal and open minded approach towards the right of all people to be who they are. But the recognition of this right has little to do with the classical ideal of tolerance. Tolerance is in the first instance directed towards opinion and belief and not towards groups and people. In such circumstances what’s called for is the affirmation of the democratic right to equal treatment.
The term tolerance can be used to signify an approach towards a person and a group insofar as it pertains to beliefs and opinions and forms of behaviour linked to them. So tolerating Protestants, Muslims or Jews pertains not to their DNA, or their cultural or national identity but to their beliefs and the rituals and practices associated with them. Unfortunately in contemporary society differences in views are invariably represented as cultural rather than as linked to individual conscience or moral reasoning. According to this perspective belief is not so much the outcome of reflection, conscience, revelation or discovery but an attribute of identity. One important consequence of this shift in emphasis is that belief and opinion is seen as less an attribute of individuals than the immutable character of the culture that they personify. No longer products of reflection and thought, beliefs acquire the fetishistic form of a cultural value that is fixed and not susceptible to a genuine conversation. In such circumstances toleration can only mean an acceptance of the fossilisation of difference.
Historically laws concerning religious toleration emerged before other forms of democratic freedoms were recognised. It is essential to understand that tolerance is not only chronologically but also logically prior to working of freedom and liberty. If people are not allowed to hold their own beliefs and act in accordance with them their very potential for exercising their moral autonomy becomes compromised.
Outwardly we live in an era that appears more open minded, non-judgmental and tolerant that at any time in human history. The very term ‘intolerant’ invokes moral condemnation. Time and again the public is instructed on the importance of respecting different cultures and diversity. Students are frequently reminded that there is no such thing as a right answer and that there are many truths. Those with strong beliefs are often dismissed as fundamentalists or zealots. Yet the language of open-minded liberalism exists in an uneasy relation with censorious and intolerant attitudes towards those causing moral outrage. That policy makers and politicians can so casually demand ‘Zero-Tolerance’ indicates that at the very least society is selective about how it applies the principle of tolerance.
Zero-Tolerance can be understood as a cultural metaphor that prescribes indiscriminate template response to different forms of undesirable behaviour. Initially zero-tolerance was invoked as the threat of an automatic punishment of certain forms of criminal behaviour and legal infraction. Since the 1990s the policy of zero tolerance has been expanded into the school system to refer to acts of bullying, harassment, possessing drugs or weapons. In the UK public sector it is common to come across signs that warn zero-tolerance towards aggressive behaviour towards members of staff. In recent times the term zero-tolerance has been adopted by politicians, opinion makers and business people to communicate the idea that they feel strongly that the target of their concern should be suppressed. The casual way with which zero-tolerance policies – which serve as warrants for intolerance – are affirmed expresses the shallow cultural support enjoyed by the ideal of tolerance.
Although the term zero-tolerance policy conveys the idea that its author means business. It also calls into questions the cultural and human qualities that are usually associated with the capacity to tolerate. As social commentator Bruce Schneier reminds us ‘these so-called zero-tolerance policies are actually zero-discretion policies’.[x] These are policies that meant to be applied arbitrarily and punish without regard to circumstances. It spares judges and officials from having to think about the circumstances affecting a particular event and from exercising their capacity to discriminate and judge. The abolishing of the employment of discretion reflects a general unease with the act of judgment and discrimination. Yet these are also the qualities that are essential for developing the disposition to tolerate and also to develop an understanding of what form of behaviour cannot be tolerated. The widespread usage of this metaphor indicates that non-judgmentalism is a value upheld not only by the advocates of tolerance but also by promoters of zero-tolerance. Their joint hostility towards discretion indicates that they may have more in common than they suspect."