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Toleration, a Political or Moral Question?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Bernard Williams
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Extract

There is something obscure about the nature of toleration, at least when it is regarded as an attitude or a personal principle. Indeed, the problem about the nature of toleration is severe enough for us to raise the question whether, in a strict sense, it is possible at all. Perhaps, rather, it contains some contradiction or paradox which means that practices of toleration, when they exist, must rest on something other than the attitude of toleration as that has been classically described by liberal theory.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 44 , Issue 176 , December 1996 , pp. 35 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

Notes

1. For an analysis of these problems see D. Heyd (ed.), Toleration: An Elusive Virtue, Princeton, 1996, and the particular contribution by B. Williams ("Toler ation : An Impossible Virtue?"); G. P. Fletcher ("The Instability of Tolerance"); T. M. Scanlon ("The Difficulty of Tolerance").

2. T. M. Scanlon, "The Difficulty of Tolerance," in: ibid., p. 226.

3. Ibid.

4. T. Nagel, Equality and Partiality, Oxford, 1991, p. 156.

5. J. Rawls, Political Liberalism, New York, 1993.

6. T. Nagel, Equality, p. 24.

7. I hope to delve into some of them in a study appearing on political liberty.

8. This is one of the reasons for which the idea of satisfying the Basic Legitima tion Demand does not coincide with this insatiable ideal of many a political theoretician: universal consentment.

9. J. Shklar, "The Liberalism of Fear," in: N. Rosenblum (ed.), Liberalism and the Moral Life, Cambridge, Mass., 1989. See also the collection of essays on Judith Shklar's work in: B. Yack (ed.), Liberalism without Illusions, Chicago, 1996.