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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Key Concepts
- Sprache: Englisch
In this engaging and comprehensive introduction to the topic of toleration, Andrew Jason Cohen seeks to answer fundamental questions, such as: What is toleration? What should be tolerated? Why is toleration important?
Beginning with some key insights into what we mean by toleration, Cohen goes on to investigate what should be tolerated and why. We should not be free to do everythingÑmurder, rape, and theft, for clear examples, should not be tolerated. But should we be free to take drugs, hire a prostitute, or kill ourselves? Should our governments outlaw such activities or tolerate them? Should they tolerate “outsourcing” of jobs or importing of goods or put embargos on other countries? Cohen examines these difficult questions, among others, and argues that we should look to principles of toleration to guide our answers. These principles tell us when limiting freedom is acceptableÑthat is, they indicate the proper limits of toleration. Cohen deftly explains the main principles on offer and indicates why one of these stands out from the rest.
This wide-ranging new book on an important topic will be essential reading for students taking courses in philosophy, political science and religious studies.
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Seitenzahl: 329
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
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Table of Contents
Key Concepts
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
A Expectations and warnings
B What lies ahead
1: The Topic and Its Historical Relevance
A Reignland and some history
B The concept
2: Two Approaches to the Normative Issues
A Comprehensive doctrines
B Rawls's strictly political philosophy
C Comprehensive doctrine liberalism vs. strictly political liberalism
3: The Harm Principle
A The question
B Introducing the harm principle
C Harm (and objectivity)
D More on the harm principle (considering harm to self, etc.)
E Rational persuasion, permitted but not required interference, types of interference, and justice
F “Indirect harms”
4: Other Principles
A The offense principle (and psychological harm)
B The benefit to others principle
C The principle of legal paternalism
D The principle of legal moralism
E More hard cases
5: Extending the Harm Principle
A The environment and animals
B Domestic cultural groups and the international community
C The business world
6: Children and the Paradoxes of Toleration and Liberalism
A The paradox of toleration
B Children
C The paradox of liberalism (and no autonomism)
7: General Defenses of Toleration
A The arguments from conscience and autonomy
B The argument for moral muscles
C The Augustinian argument, again
D The argument for knowledge and truth-acquisition
E The arguments from relativism and skepticism (rejected)
F The argument for project pursuit
G The argument for societal progress
H The arguments for pluralism and diversity
8: Conclusion
A Recognizing we want to be tolerated
B Toleration as the political value
References
Index
Key Concepts
Copyright © Andrew Jason Cohen 2014
The right of Andrew Jason Cohen to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2014 by Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5556-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5557-4(pb)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8104-7 (epub)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8103-0 (mobi)
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For Timmy, with hopes that the worldwill become a better place inyour lifetime and that you willcontinue to make it better.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Emma Hutchinson of Polity for asking me to write this and for excellent advice during the process, including about how to improve the text. Thanks to Donna Cohen for encouraging me to accept Emma's offer and, more generally, for putting up with me. Thanks to all those with whom I have discussed these issues, including students, colleagues, friends, and family. Jim Taggart deserves special notice, as he's long been my most regular interlocutor. Dave Schmidtz and Chandran Kukathas also deserve special appreciation, Dave for an early career boost and Chandran for unwittingly setting me on the path of inquiry from which this book is a result. Three anonymous referees, Donna Cohen, Gerald Cohen, Cleo Grimaldi, Martin Lowenstein, and, especially, Sandy Dwyer and Heather Russel read drafts of at least parts of the book and gave useful – sometimes very useful – feedback, for which I am grateful.
Two other people are worth noting. First, Joel Feinberg, whose work on harm and the harm principle set the standard high for all future work on the topic. He would not endorse the view I offer here, but I hope he'd approve of the work nonetheless. Second, Jethro Lieberman, whose Liberalism Undressed (2012) came out while I was writing this book. I did not begin reading it until this text was complete, but I am very happy to have found another thinker who takes the harm principle to be the basic principle of liberalism (taking it to be much more useful than even Feinberg thought). Lieberman and I disagree about many points, but I am learning much from his book.
Introduction
In this book, I aim to provide a clear and lively introduction to the issues surrounding toleration. Debates about toleration have revolved around three issues. What is toleration? Should we tolerate and, if so, why? What should be tolerated? These questions are of central importance to moral and political thought. The last two are especially prominent in debates about how people should behave and how institutions should be arranged. They are the questions that motivate classical liberals like John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. They thus also affect the work of all their intellectual descendants, ranging from contemporary welfare liberals like John Rawls to contemporary libertarian thinkers like Robert Nozick. Even the works of contemporary socialist thinkers like G. A. Cohen speak, though less directly, to these questions.
It is no exaggeration to say that the history of liberalism is the modern history of toleration. It was the first classical liberals – perhaps most notably John Locke – who argued for significant limits to the power of the state to interfere with its citizens. This was part of a shift in thinking about people living under a regime as citizens rather than as subjects. As subjects to a power, individuals could be interfered with at the will of the ruler. As citizens, they could not. As citizens, their lives were up to them and their choices – within some limits – had to be tolerated. I will not offer historical analysis or attempt to fully explain the most important thinkers in this tradition. Instead, I will concentrate on explicating the best answers to the central questions of toleration. While this will involve looking to historical thinkers along the way, the focus is on offering the best view.
A Expectations and warnings
This book is not likely what you are expecting. To use a phrase, this isn't your Mom's introduction to toleration. Toleration is an often-misunderstood word – or, perhaps putting the same point differently, it is used in many ways without its users recognizing this. To begin, as I use the term, toleration is a behavior. If I want to refer to the related attitude (or virtue), I will talk of tolerance. But here's an interesting point: as we use the terms today, an extremely tolerant person can't tolerate very much. This is not to say that they seek to interfere in lots of other people's activities. It's to say that their lack of interference is not toleration. To tolerate, as we will see below, requires that one oppose that with which one does not interfere. This may be initially confusing.
This book may be different from what you would expect for a second, more important reason: as the author, I will not refrain from making judgments. As the reader, you will decide for yourself if my being judgmental is a problem. That is not my concern. I am concerned to help you understand and appreciate the idea and practice of toleration. And importantly, advocating toleration does not mean advocating some wishy-washy namby-pamby way of being that requires you to refrain from judging others. Why this is the case should be clear from what I said above: if you oppose nothing, you cannot tolerate anything. Those of us who oppose things – those of us who are judgmental, i.e., willing to judge – can tolerate things. Toleration, as we shall soon see, is the intentional and principled refraining from interfering with another whom one opposes. It is my hope that you believe or will come to believe that we should frequently tolerate others – not because we love, approve of, or even like them, but because we recognize that in a world where people oppose each other, toleration is a good thing. At least it's a better world than one in which we oppose others and don't tolerate.
So, a word of warning. We often want to express our openness to, or respect for, other cultures. That is, we want to be – and to be perceived as – tolerant. So, we might say things like “Well, it's not for me (or us) to judge,” or “If they're OK with it, my view doesn't matter.” However, a real commitment to toleration excludes any such relativist stance (see chapter 3C and, especially, chapter 7E). To be committed to toleration requires believing that toleration is a good thing and that that claim is not itself relative. We don't, I assume, want to say “Well since I think (or my community or culture thinks) toleration is a value, I won't judge anyone else – but, of course, that's relative to us, and if people in another culture don't accept it, they needn't tolerate us.” Toleration is a value (see chapter 7); we should tolerate others and they should tolerate us (both with limits, as we will see in chapters 3 through 6). Moreover, there is an important difference between respecting a person (or culture) and respecting their beliefs.
Respecting someone does not require respecting his or her views. Showing respect for the person may even require that we challenge them (politely) when they hold views that are or seem unsupportable. While it's likely true that “they have a right to believe whatever they want,” that does not mean that whatever they believe is right. Having a right to an opinion does not mean the opinion is right any more than having a right to property makes one rich – and we should not pretend otherwise. We should assume the people we meet are intelligent and worthy of our respect, but we should not be surprised to find that sometimes they hold views we cannot respect (we should still respect the person). There are good reasons why people – including very smart people – sometimes hold false views. (I hold several views that many people, some smarter than I, think are wrong. You may end up thinking I am wrong about a number of issues as you read what follows.) We can respect others, not respect their views, and tolerate their holding of false views. In fact, it would be decidedly lacking respect not to challenge at least some mistaken beliefs – it would be like saying, “Well, that person is worthless anyway, so I don't care what falsehoods they believe.” Rationally dialoguing with another shows respect – and is fully consistent with toleration. By the end of this book, I hope, you will be able to rationally defend your own view about what should be tolerated and why. (I also hope you will think my view basically right and so think we should tolerate very much more than we currently do – but that is a lot to expect.)
A final introductory note to those who think being judgmental is necessarily bad: the very idea that we should not judge others seems to me very odd. Persons are rationally autonomous beings. As rational beings, we tend to evaluate things as we are exposed to them – at least the things that stand out to us (for whatever reason). That is what rational beings do. Rational beings do not, for example, merely sense the fallen tree in the road they are traveling on. They sense the tree and then evaluate the situation to determine what to do next. If they sense a man with a chainsaw standing next to the tree stump, they are naturally prone to evaluating that situation – perhaps judging that he must have either stupidly or maliciously caused the tree to fall onto the road. Persons, in fact, can't fail to judge – at least if they want to live well. Consider the man with the chainsaw. If he were wearing a white mask (à la Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th movies), it would be foolhardy to think, “Well, I shouldn't judge him – he may be very nice,” and then to approach him in a friendly manner. This is not conducive to living well. One should judge that the masked man may be dangerous.
Though we sometimes fail to see it, we want people to judge others in all sorts of cases. We want criminals judged (and, perhaps, sentenced) just as we judge the man with the chainsaw. This is true in many areas of our lives. I don't want to read philosophy journals full of nonsense; I rely on the editors to judge the submissions they receive so as to publish only quality work. I most definitely want someone to judge the ability of people claiming to be medical professionals. And legal professionals. And chefs. And … the list goes on. We don't read things like Consumer Reports, Zagat's, or Angie's List without reason. We want someone to have done the work of judging. (“Who?” is an open question.) In many cases, we do the judging for ourselves. Often – I hope – we judge others positively or neutrally. Sometimes we judge them negatively. When we judge another negatively, we might seek to interfere with them. Other times, though we judge them negatively, we tolerate them and think everyone, especially the government, should do so as well.
B What lies ahead
Undeniably, there are different ways to divide the issues we shall be discussing. That said, the content and order of the following chapters seem to be apt. The first chapter introduces, motivates, and refines our topic. “Toleration” is a common word, but its use is often confused and confusing. It sometimes seems to be used as an excuse not to debate about important issues, for example, encouraging some to think “live and let live” no matter what and encouraging others to think there can be no facts about what it is OK to do. Both ways of thinking, however, fail to take into account what we all know – that there are limits to what we can and should let be. It is thus of the utmost importance that we clarify our topic and why it is our topic.
Chapter 2 explains a recent move in political philosophy to “strictly political” theorizing that is meant to avoid any metaphysical commitments (whether religious, moral, or other) and also to limit the domain within which the theory applies. This move has created a divide amongst political philosophers between those who accept it and those who do not. As I will explain, I think there is a middle ground that admits of some metaphysical commitments – though perhaps unlike those of other theorists – while endorsing the more limited domain of the political.
Chapter 3 introduces and explores the implications of John Stuart Mill's harm principle, which I take to be the most important normative principle of toleration (indicating the moral limits of toleration). That principle is widely known in political philosophy and normative jurisprudence, but is often overlooked as a source of justification for ending toleration. More to the point, it is often assumed that there are reasons external to the harm principle that also justify ending toleration. I shall not endeavor to give definitive arguments against such a view, but I shall endeavor to persuade you, Dear Reader, to take seriously the possibility that it is only harm that justifies interference. To do so, we must consider competing principles. Hence, chapter 4 provides discussion of other influential principles of toleration and what would be tolerated if those principles were endorsed. The four discussed – the offense principle, the benefit to others principle, the principle of legal paternalism, and the principle of legal moralism – have all been politically influential. Indeed, all remain politically influential to this day. The first three are defended by intellectual greats in the liberal tradition of which this book is part. I nonetheless would reject all of them, the fourth as decisively as possible.
Rejecting those principles leaves us with the harm principle, which may seem to have an overly narrow focus. As I think that is a mistake, chapter 5 extends discussion of the harm principle to consider toleration's role in environmental issues, animal liberation issues, cultural and international issues, and the business world. It is here (and in the discussion of the benefit to others principle in chapter 4) that this book may be most novel. Many toleration scholars, in fact, are likely to think the work misguided – especially when I push to talk of tolerating poverty and the sorts of activities that take place in the private marketplace. Perhaps perceived as even odder will be the recommendation that while the harm principle requires toleration of trades of sex and currently illicit drugs, as well as of the outsourcing of labor and importation of goods, it also disallows much activity by US and European corporations in other parts of the world – and, indeed, may disallow corporations themselves. The further recommendation that it is we who must interfere with – not tolerate – such activities may also be met with incredulity at first. Nonetheless, I urge you, Dear Reader, to take the arguments seriously and see where they lead. You may end up disagreeing, but I hope you will find the arguments worth considering. As I said, this is not like your mother's book on toleration.
Speaking of mothers (and fathers), chapter 6 discusses children – in the context of the so-called paradoxes of toleration and liberalism. These paradoxes are intellectual puzzles. They are puzzles that encourage us to think of children. Children, indeed, are often the cause of much consternation in political philosophy. It is one thing to develop a fully worked out political theory about the relationship between an adult and the state, another thing entirely to work out the relationship between a child and the state. Importantly, for us, it is not clear that the harm principle can sufficiently indicate when toleration of activities affecting children should end. I shall argue, though, that it can. This is also an unusual claim.
The penultimate chapter of the book – chapter 7 – focuses on general defenses of toleration. This is, somewhat unfortunately, one of the longest chapters of the book. I consider this somewhat unfortunate as I am inclined to think defending toleration as a general value is not nearly as important as defending the right view of what should be tolerated. This will be clear by the time one reaches chapter 7 and I do not think it is that unusual a view now. Historically, though, it may well be an aberration. But only time will tell; my hope is that the focus for the study of toleration in the future is on the normative question – as it is in chapters 3 through 6. Despite my hope for the future, the arguments discussed in chapter 7 are important for us – some for historical reasons, some because they are cogent and convincing, and some because they are widely considered right (though those turn out not to be right!).
The book ends with a discussion in chapter 8 of why toleration is the first value of political society. Chapter 8 is nicely short – as I think concluding chapters should be. I'll say nothing more of it here.
Let us begin!
1
The Topic and Its Historical Relevance
A Reignland and some history
Imagine you live in the seventeenth century in a small but powerful country, Reignland. Reignland, like all other countries you know of, has a king. King Juris is fair and allows his subjects much freedom. Alas, though, Reignland was not always as pleasant. Less than 100 years earlier, Reignland was ruled by King Feris, an iron-fisted dictator. King Feris was fair, in a manner; he treated all his subjects equally (except his closest family, friends, and advisors – all of whom had much better lives than his other subjects). Treating his subjects equally did not mean treating them well. It wasn't exactly that he was cruel to them; it was more that he was extremely strict, in much the same way an overly strict parent is with a child. His subjects owned nothing, but held everything they possessed as a sort of lease from the King – and Feris could revoke that lease at will. For the privilege of holding such leases, subjects had to pay tributes – determined by the King's Court – to the King's Bursary. It was these revenues, of course, that made it possible for Feris to build castles, moats, roads, boats, etc. These did make life better for everyone. The revenues also made it possible for Feris (and his closest family, friends, and advisors) to enjoy the best wines, beers, chocolates, meats, spices, etc., that the world had to offer. Foreign merchants were frequently seen coming and going from Feris's castle. Most subjects, though, had no idea how good such luxurious foods were.
Most of Feris's subjects, indeed, had few ideas about the world more than a day's walk from where they were born. Feris did not allow his subjects to relocate without permission of the King's Court. When the people paid their tributes to the King's Bursary, it checked where they were living. Rarely were permissions given for relocation. Relocation, after all, would involve a great deal of labor from the King's Court. The Court would have to decide, after all, who could next live in the abandoned domicile, who would farm the abandoned land, whether the tribute needed to be adjusted while the newcomer settled, etc. Of course, the Court also had to decide where the requesting subject could be allowed to move, find them an existing abandoned domicile, or order a new one built, etc.
Life under King Feris was not terrible, but it was not good.
Things are different in your day. King Juris is the final arbiter and final power in the land, but his tribute rates are low and determined in advance in a way that is meant to be (and is – or at least is accepted by all as) both stable and equitable. As importantly, subjects own their own land and homes and can relocate simply by finding a buyer for their current home and buying another. There are even businesses that lend them money and places they can stay before finding a new home. All of this is remarkably different from life under Feris.
While life under Feris's reign was not terrible, it was limited. You had to do what people had always done; you could not experiment with different ways of living, different ways of making money to pay for your food and such, different ways to school your children, different ways of praying, different ways of dressing. In short, little was tolerated. By contrast, under Juris, you can experiment with different ways of doing things. Indeed, you can do anything you like, if you have the means, so long as you do not harm anyone else. Only when you harm someone else do the officials of King Juris's government get involved – that is the principle of Juris, and Juris is effective in having it enforced. In short, much is tolerated. Murder, rape, assault, theft, and the like are not. You and other residents are generally grateful for this.
Though Reignland under Feris's rule was not terrible, most of us would prefer to live under Juris's rule. Most of us prefer to be free to do what we wish even if we recognize that there are limits to what we should be free to do. Most of us prefer that our choices and actions be tolerated. Though we often have a hard time considering ourselves the subject to be tolerated – we tend to think we are good, should be liked, and that no question of tolerating us arises – this clearly can't be true for all of us. Many of us have been or are in situations wherein others do not want to tolerate us.
History is full of cases wherein some sought, or had, the power to interfere with those whom they believed were acting badly, even where the actions of those others had no bearing on anyone other than the actors themselves. Perhaps most famously, religious leaders have often sought the power to force individuals to accept their faiths, whether those individuals already had faiths of their own or not. Indeed, two of my own intellectual heroes (Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle) faced religious persecution – lack of toleration. Others – including the government in one case – did not refrain from interfering with them but actively interfered with how they led their lives. They lived in countries that were, in important ways, like Reignland under King Feris.
For much of the early history of toleration, the primary concern was religious toleration. The question was simply “What religions should be tolerated?” If a country was Roman Catholic, for an important historical example, the question was whether to tolerate the practice of non-Roman Catholic religions (or non-Christian religions, or atheism). Non-Catholic nations faced the same question: should other religions be tolerated? In both cases (and others), if toleration was desired, the states also had to consider what toleration required, which is to say, what should be allowed and within what constraints it should be allowed. Some argued, for example, that toleration is consistent with forbidding public displays of particular religious practices as well as differential taxation, so long as no one was physically harmed or forced to give up their religion. Others argued for more extensive permissions. Significantly, toleration in such contexts is one-sided; the question is whether the powerful should tolerate the powerless (or less powerful).
The two heroes just alluded to lived in these circumstances. Consider the case of Pierre Bayle, an early defender of religious toleration. Bayle was born a Protestant in seventeenth-century France, a Catholic country. In itself, this was not that bad – though Protestants were the minority and suffered some disadvantages, they were not in terrible positions. But Bayle actually converted to Catholicism as a young man – for a short time. When he reverted back to Protestantism, he was a relapsed “heretic,” and in a far worse position politically than if he had never adopted Catholicism. He thus left France (returning once before leaving for good). His writings drew scorn from both the French (Catholic) authorities and important Protestant theologians. The former imprisoned Bayle's brother, who then died in jail. There is little doubt his arrest was directly related to Bayle's “heretical” writings. The French were willing to tolerate Protestants, but not one who rejected (what they considered) the true religion after accepting it, no matter how briefly.
Consider now Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza was born a Jew in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, an extremely tolerant country by seventeenth-century standards (perhaps even by today's standards). The fact that Amsterdam tolerated religious minorities is important. The minorities were largely left to take care of their own internal issues – subject, of course, to certain limits. Spinoza was tolerated by his country. He was not tolerated, though, by the Jewish community into which he was born – he was excommunicated. The reasons for his excommunication (a rarity in Judaism: there is some debate if that is what the action amounted to) are unclear, but we know two things. One, he lost his inheritance because of it (the religious court had to realize that this would be a result since the act required that members of the group have no dealings with him). Two, Spinoza's later writings about metaphysics and God are decidedly out of line with mainstream Judaism (then and now). It may well be that he was already giving voice to the views he later articulated in writing.1
I do not want to give the impression that what happened to Bayle or Spinoza was insignificant, but the fact is, both were mere drops in the bucket of religious intolerance. There is no reason to go into detail about the history of the topic. I assume everyone is familiar with the Christian Crusades, the sixteenth-century religious wars in France, the Spanish Inquisition, and the witch hunts in both Europe and the Americas. In each case, one religious group sought to interfere with – even eradicate – the religious actions and beliefs of another. (Sometimes without evidence that there were such actions or beliefs!) We might think these issues have no bearing on us today, but this would be shortsighted, as will become clear.
Perhaps no one reading this will think that Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., should even elicit the question “Should it be tolerated?” It's clear enough, though, that some do ask the question, though perhaps in more narrow ways. Should a Muslim Mosque be allowed near Ground Zero in New York City? Should we tolerate abortion when the true religion (whichever one the speaker favors) claims it is murder? These questions appear frequently. Moreover, one might ask why there has never been a non-Christian president in the US. (Perhaps non-Christians are tolerated, but not accepted – a view I will briefly return to in the next section.) Of course, toleration is not just about religion. Should we tolerate rap music? Sugary pop music from manufactured boy bands or glamour girls? More seriously: cigarette smoking? gay marriage? cross-dressing? home-schooling? religious refusals of health care for children? eating – or sacrificing – animals? euthanasia? assisted suicide? The list goes on, and I have not even begun to consider international issues.
All the issues just mentioned have something in common: there have been suggestions that each should not be tolerated. Perhaps some should not. But why they should or should not is a big question. The bulk of this book will address it. But we also might wonder why we think it is such a big question. We might wonder, that is, why toleration matters. In one way, the answer should be obvious if we are talking about politics: non-toleration will mean the state using its considerable power against individuals, imposing its will on them. Indeed, at one point in time, this was the norm. It was only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, after all, that toleration began to be seen as a value in its own right. This was a time when people were beginning to question their government's right to rule – and to dictate what individuals could do. This is the beginning of liberalism, classically understood (think John Locke and Adam Smith). These thinkers claimed that individuals were what mattered and had rights and could do as they chose, subject only to specific justified limitations. They could believe what they wanted about religion, for example. Bayle and Spinoza, mentioned above, defended that view. So did John Locke and others. It is now standard, but it wasn't then. Still, the origins of the belief are older.
One of the earliest Catholic theologians, St Augustine, put forward one of the most historically influential arguments for religious toleration some 1600 years ago. The basic idea of Augustine's argument is that because genuine religious faith cannot be forced, individuals must be tolerated so that they might attain salvation. A key premise of this argument is that genuine religious belief is only possible if it is freely (and, on some versions, rationally) adopted. Given the additional premises that genuine religious belief is necessary for salvation and that salvation is a good thing, the conclusion is that we must not force people to believe and so must tolerate. On an alternative formulation of the argument (spelled out by Jeremy Waldron (1988) who attributes it to John Locke), the means available to the state are necessarily coercive, so given that genuine religious belief cannot be coerced, it is irrational to seek to use the means of the state to encourage belief. Hence, toleration is required by reason. The problem with the Augustinian argument (in either version) is that there is clear empirical evidence that force can be used to put people in situations wherein they come to freely accept claims they previously rejected. For this reason, Augustine himself recanted his prior acceptance of toleration of heretics. He saw former heretics (the Donatists) accept orthodoxy when persecuted and believed that defeated the argument. Fortunately for us, later thinkers – early liberals like Spinoza, Bayle, and Locke – sought to offer further arguments in defense of toleration. We will consider some of these in chapter 7. (Augustine's argument is considered further in 7C.)
B The concept
Thus far, I have been primarily working with a simplistic understanding of toleration as noninterference. This is the intuitive notion that most of us share when we only briefly consider the idea. Noninterference seems to be the point of toleration; that is, an act is only an act of toleration if noninterference is its intent. With further consideration, however, it is clear that “intentional noninterference” is not satisfactory as a definition of toleration. It's important that we get a bit clearer about our topic. Asking what should be tolerated without being clear about what it is to tolerate seems to put the cart before the horse. Clarity is clearly a virtue when discussing issues like this. If we are to say we should (or should not) tolerate a certain behavior, we need to know what we are prescribing. For our purposes, we will make do recognizing three conditions of genuine toleration. The first of these is intentional noninterference, as just discussed. But not all intentional noninterference is toleration.
Imagine your best friend is listening to your favorite music. You sit down and listen. It occurs to you that you might turn the music off, perhaps as a joke, perhaps because you think your friend should do something else. That would interfere with his playing the music. You decide not to. That is, you intentionally refrain from interfering and continue listening. We would not, I think, say that you are tolerating the music. Intuitively, you are not tolerating, but enjoying. Enjoying something makes it conceptually impossible to tolerate it. This suggests that some element of opposition must be present for noninterference to count as toleration. Most academic philosophers, in fact, think this is a necessary condition of toleration. Some believe that mere opposition is not enough and that it is moral opposition that is necessary – that is, they think we can only tolerate what we morally disapprove of. According to such thinkers, I might be able to tolerate students who refuse to work at school since I morally disapprove of that behavior, but I would not be able to tolerate students listening to bubble-gum pop music since my disapproval of that behavior is non-moral (the disapproval is aesthetic only). This is admittedly a question of ordinary usage: would we say that I tolerate listening to bad music or would we say something else? I am frankly not sure what else we would say. I would say I tolerate it. Given that intuition, I will assume the broader understanding of toleration in the rest of this book: what is needed is some form of opposition, not necessarily moral opposition. Even simple aesthetic distaste will suffice to make toleration conceptually possible.
There are a few who claim that opposition is not necessary for toleration. They claim a society that truly tolerates the cultural differences of its citizenry cherishes those differences. These thinkers, though, would admit that they are pushing for a “broader language of toleration” (Creppell 2002: xii) than we get with the “literal sense” of the term in contemporary thought (Galeotti 2002: 11).2 What these authors seek, though, can easily be given voice in plainer language: multiculturalism. They seek to encourage societies to accept or embrace the differences that contribute to the fabric of social interactions. This seems to me an admirable goal (perhaps too admirable, but I'll say more about that in chapter 7H), but not toleration. Moreover, there is something odd about insisting that one must cherish what one tolerates. After all, I cherish my 3-year-old son and if you asked me if I tolerate him, I would think it very odd. I love him, I don't even consider tolerating him (though I may tolerate certain of his actions). I do not even refrain from interfering with him. On the contrary, I actively intervene to help him become a good person (which sometimes requires letting him choose badly). Similarly, multiculturalists presumably seek to help multiple cultures thrive – intervening if necessary to do so. If we want to say cherishing others is part of toleration, we might also need to say interfering with others is part of toleration. This takes us pretty far afield of ordinary usage. In the rest of this book, then, I will assume – what most agree to – that toleration is only possible where there is some opposition. As indicated, I will not assume the opposition must be moral in nature.
Thus far, I have said that toleration is intentional noninterference with something opposed. This should raise a simple question: if what is tolerated is opposed, why is it tolerated? Put differently, what is the reason to refrain from interfering with something that one opposes? Will any reason do? If we dislike or disapprove of the activity we tolerate, there must be a reason we tolerate it. Hence the third necessary element of toleration: there must be a principled reason for the noninterference. Not just any reason will do. Noninterference that is the result of laziness, fear, or a hope that something worse will befall the other when they are left alone, is no more toleration than noninterference that occurs without intention.
So what counts as a principled reason for our purposes? Perhaps the most common suggestions are the following three, related, possibilities: rights, individual autonomy, and respect. The idea for each of these is fairly simple. If we oppose someone's action, but (a) they have a right to do the action, (b) they must be allowed to act on their autonomy, or (c) they are worthy of our respect, then we cannot interfere even though we oppose
