[Reader-list] Pluralism, Secularism, and Tolerance

[Rahul Asthana]

http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/rhetoric_and_public_affairs/v003/3.4clark.html
Introduction 
The intolerance of practitioners of various religious
groups toward practitioners of other such groups has
been well documented. Ancient antagonisms were
exacerbated by zealousness for a culture's god. The
early Hebrews routed villages devoted to competing
gods, destroying women and children alike. Romans,
with their cult of Caesar, sought to squash the early
Christian church. The institutionalization of
Christianity by the Roman Empire set an apparently
pacifistic religion on a path of violence. The
Crusades sought unsuccessfully but at great human
expense to rid the Muslim infidels from the holy land.
The atrocities and religious wars of the Reformation,
committed by all sides, caused the river Seine to run
red with blood. Native Americans have been exploited
and destroyed under the banner of God. Christopher
Columbus brought the gospel and germs to the new
world, taking back slaves and gold. In our own day we
have witnessed the excesses of religious
fundamentalists around the world who kill in the name
of god or in defense of fetuses. In light of
considerations such as these, some might be led to
conclude that intolerance has been the peculiar vice
of the religious. 

On the other hand, one might assert that we are
indebted to the Enlightenment triumph of reason over
revealed religion for laying the foundation for an age
of tolerance. One might be led to believe, therefore,
that tolerance is the peculiar virtue of the
secularist. 

We have just painted two pictures with broad strokes.
According to the one, intolerance seems to be the
peculiar vice of the religious. According to the
other, tolerance [End Page 627] appears to be the
peculiar virtue of the secularist. Both accounts, we
believe, are mistaken. That religious people have
inflicted some of the greatest atrocities in the
history of human civilization cannot be denied. But
intolerance and inflicting suffering are not limited
to the religious. In our century alone, the atrocities
inflicted by deeply committed atheists rival
(numerically) all of the atrocities of the previous
centuries combined. The Holocaust, 1 the killing
fields, the Soviet pogrom, the rape of Nanking, the
revolution in China, and the world wars betray any
secular hope that religious people are especially
inclined toward intolerance. Human beings as such, it
would seem, are not inclined toward tolerance of
competing religious, social, political, or moral
beliefs and practices. As Anthony Appiah has astutely
observed, "we [human beings] are naturally impatient
for harmony." 2 

The pressures toward intolerance are multiplied in our
increasingly diverse society. Our country is not a
melting pot where differences are extinguished, but an
alphabet soup. It is not unusual to find in one small
block--in neighborhoods all across our country--people
of African American, Filipino, Jewish, homosexual,
fundamentalist Christian, Hispanic, Irish Catholic,
Dutch, and Moslem identities. The discrete letters of
this soup bump against one another in ways unimagined
even a generation ago. And here the rub's the rub.
Different people with different beliefs and practices
make us feel uncomfortable and threaten our security
and sense of certainty. Ridding our neighborhoods,
cities, and countries of unwelcome practices and
unfamiliar beliefs would help us create a community
where all that we do and believe would be enshrined
and enforced. If we succeeded at such a task, we would
have made our community in our own image, which, while
not embracing the other, does foster an expansive
affirmation of self and clan. 

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the notion of
tolerance. We will argue, contrary to the stories with
which we opened, that tolerance makes sense only
against a backdrop of religious or moral conviction.
Judgments of tolerance and intolerance require a
conception of the good or the true. Secular
relativists who believe that all religions are false
and that detached neutrality is the preferred posture
to assume on all matters religious and moral cannot
coherently be tolerant. 3 Furthermore, tolerance
requires a thick conception of the self, a conception
of considerable religious or metaphysical substance.
Next we shall argue that there are limits to
tolerance--not just any kind of behavior or belief
ought to be tolerated--and that those limits are set
by a harm principle. Because of fundamental
disagreements about human nature and fulfillment,
however, there will be widespread disagreement about
what exactly constitutes harm. We enumerate three
approaches to arrive at consensus concerning the
limits to tolerance and recommend one of them as the
preferred approach in an environment characterized by
diverse religious, moral, and political convictions.
[End Page 628] 

Tolerance Analyzed 
The argument of this section is simple. Although
people with deep and sincere moral or religious
convictions are often intolerant, deep and sincere
moral or religious convictions are necessary
preconditions of tolerance. 4 One cannot be tolerant
if one does not have religious or moral beliefs. 

Tolerance comes from the Latin tolerare, to bear or
endure; it carries the connotation of putting up with
a weight or a burden. So what is tolerance and what
the weight it bears? Tolerance, as we understand it,
is the disposition to endure or bear peoples' beliefs
and practices that one finds either false or immoral.
5 Tolerance assumes that there are some beliefs and
practices that are not burdensome, presumably one's
own beliefs and practices. But there are clearly, for
the tolerant person, some beliefs that are burdensome
to see practiced or believed. 

In order for us to feel burdened by the beliefs and
practices of others, we must first hold our own
beliefs and practices against which others' beliefs
and practices are judged. It is precisely because this
person believes something that I believe is false or
that person does something that I judge wrong, that I
am in a position to tolerate such beliefs and
practices. 

But it is not sufficient for the creation of a burden
simply for someone to disagree with me. "You say
potato, I say potahto." You prefer Ohio State, I
prefer Michigan. I do not tolerate your preferences
because I am not overly committed to Michigan. In
order for me to tolerate your preference, I must also
care deeply about this football rivalry. Tolerance
requires, in addition to disagreement, an element of
caring or deep commitment to the belief or practice in
question. 6 I prefer blue jeans but I do not tolerate
those who prefer Bugle Boys. I do not tolerate because
I do not care much about slacks-wearing practices. 

So toleration requires both judgments about proper
beliefs and practices and an element of caring for
those beliefs and practices. And this sort of caring
must be deep, which is why tolerance is usually
discussed in connection with matters of fundamental
human concern, where depth of care is measured by our
emotional attachment to such matters. 7 

This makes it easier to see why we human beings seem
so inclined to intolerance. We invest ourselves in the
things we care about. Those who disagree with us are
claiming that what we care about is unworthy of care
and, in so doing, they denigrate our investment (and
we denigrate theirs, of course). Moral, religious, and
political disagreement is a threat precisely because
the other devalues our beliefs and practices. And we
pose a threat to others when we believe or proclaim
that they are woefully wrong or immoral. Our natural
impulse is to secure our own beliefs and practices
against the perceived threat of alien beliefs and
practices. The easiest [End Page 629] way to do this
is to dismiss those alien practices and beliefs by
rejecting or otherwise distancing the person whose
beliefs and practices they are. 

Tolerance is morally worthwhile precisely because,
although the beliefs of the other are devalued, the
tolerant person values the person who holds those
beliefs. The tolerant person wills to treat the other
as intrinsically valuable in spite of his rejection of
her fundamental human concerns. Thus, tolerance for
beliefs and practices contrary to our own is the fruit
of a cultivated disposition to subdue our natural
inclination to distance, reject, or hold at arm's
length others whose beliefs and practices differ from
our own. The tolerant person is, rather, disposed to
recognize the other as an object of inestimable worth.
The tolerant person says, in effect, our fundamental
disagreement does not diminish my estimation of your
worth as a human being and, therefore, though I
disagree with your beliefs or practices, still I will
endure them. 

Intolerance, on the other hand, encourages the
tendency to attribute base or ignoble motives to those
who differ from us. The intolerant person does not
value the other. Rather, acceding to the natural
inclination to reject the other, she does all that is
within her power to put the other down. There is a
natural human tendency to ascribe character flaws to
the other while blaming circumstances for our own
shortcomings. Suppose Stewart shows up late for a
meeting. My natural inclination is to attribute his
tardiness to a defect in his character--he is
unconcerned about other people, he is irresponsible,
he is self-absorbed, he is "a Jew." Now suppose that I
show up late for a meeting. My natural inclination is
to blame it on circumstances--one of my kids was sick,
traffic was awful, I got stopped by a train, I got
wrapped up in my grading of papers and lost track of
time, etc. We are naturally inclined to attribute to
others the worst of motives for even the most minor
offenses. Consider how you judge others who cut you
off in traffic and how you excuse yourself when you do
exactly the same thing. 

It is easy, in this Nietzschean day and age, to
attribute base motives to those with differing
religious or moral beliefs and practices. One might
denigrate those who are opposed to homosexuality,
believing that they require a scapegoat against whom
they can judge themselves to be holy, clean, or
righteous. Judgments of the other's immorality can, of
course, sustain self-righteousness. Or one might
believe that people like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart
castigate the practices of others simply because of
their own hidden desires. But, even in these cases,
tolerance resists this impulse toward suspicion. 

There is also a tendency, which tolerance often
resists, to call into question the very rationality of
those whose practices and beliefs are different from
our own. One can scarcely read student editorials on
political or social issues in campus newspapers, for
example, without noticing how quickly argument gives
way to personal attack. How could any right thinking
person possibly vote for Clinton (the chubby,
money-grubbing womanizer who is a closet liberal)? How
could any reasonable person possibly listen to Rush
Limbaugh (the tubby, money-grubbing [End Page 630]
demonizer who is an out-of-the-closet conservative)?
Can you really look into the face of someone who
differs from you on matters of fundamental human
concern and believe that they are equally sincere
truth seekers? 

It is important to point out, before moving on, that
we do not claim that valuing the other entails
respecting the beliefs and practices we tolerate,
although we might both tolerate and respect them.
Suppose, for example, that try as you might you cannot
work up respect for the beliefs and nonviolent
practices of the Nazi sympathizer, racist, or
homophobe. You judge their attitudes so odious that
you simply cannot accord them respect or admiration.
In such cases, the tolerant person, while not
respecting the beliefs and nonviolent practices of the
Nazi, racist, or homophobe, will nonetheless continue
to value such individuals as persons. The tolerant
person will not, in other words, allow the disrespect
she accords those beliefs to effect in her a
corresponding devaluing of the persons who hold them.
Were she to devalue the persons involved, tolerance
would give way to intolerance and she might be
inclined to treat the holders of opposing beliefs as
subhuman or mere animals; e.g., she might wish to
extinguish their behavior by either incarcerating them
or euthanizing them. On the other hand, the tolerant
person might not only tolerate the belief that
abortion is morally wrong, and endure some of the
non-violent practices of those in the prolife
movement, she might also respect the beliefs and
practices as the plausible outcomes of honest and
sincere truth seeking. 

We said earlier that the virtue of tolerance only
makes sense against a backdrop of religious or moral
conviction. This is so for two reasons. First,
tolerance and intolerance require a conception of the
true or the good. 8 It is only out of such a
conception that our own beliefs and practices emerge
and take form, and without these beliefs and practices
we are incapable of judging the beliefs and practices
of others. In other words, without disagreement there
is no burden to bear, nothing to tolerate. It is the
weight of disagreement that makes tolerance possible.
The more the beliefs/practices touch fundamental human
concerns, the more one is tempted towards dogmatism,
arrogance, and intolerance. It is only when one is
faced with belief/practice competitors that the virtue
of tolerance can be exercised and developed. 

Second, it is the cultivated disposition to value
others who disagree with us that lies at the root of
principled tolerance. I tolerate the beliefs and
practices of others because I recognize them as
beliefs and practices of persons of intrinsic and
inestimable worth. But it is only a thick conception
of persons that can coherently ground that worth. It
is a conception of persons as icons of God, divine
image bearers, objects of divine love, or some other
suitably thick conception of persons, that can account
for the intrinsic and inestimable worth of human
beings. Moreover, a religious conception of persons
seems to lend itself to a recognition of the
creatureliness of persons, the belief that we humans
are finite, frail, and fallible. Thus I can endure or
bear the beliefs and practices of others because they
have been produced by frail and fallible image-bearers
of the divine. [End Page 631] 

Theism adds a rich conception of freedom to this mix.
Theists believe that God created humans with morally
significant freedom and that God values the free
development of character, as well as free contribution
to society. The result of this freedom is both
remarkable creativity and virtue--and unspeakable
horror and vice. God, apparently, was willing to risk
vice and horror in order to allow for freedom and
creativity. It should not go unnoticed that the holy
writ of the three great monotheistic
religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--disavows
the notion that God is intolerant (at least
ante-mortem) of the multifarious uses of human
freedom. God willingly permits wickedness without
immediate punishment and virtue without immediate
reward. A thick conception of persons as finite
creatures, endowed with intrinsic value, and free to
carve out their own character, combines to provide a
rich foundation for the valuing of persons. If
tolerance is to be a virtue whose cultivation can be
plausibly defended, persons must be endowed with
recognizable worth. 

The secularist, for whom everything is OK except
intolerance and religion, cannot be exercising
tolerance when she embraces (say) homosexuals. She can
affirm them, shake their hands, endorse their
lifestyle, and labor to ensure their rights but she
cannot tolerate their behavior. Only the person who
believes homosex 9 to be immoral and cares deeply
about sexual ethics can be tolerant of the practice.
The secularist might (and no doubt should) will to
cultivate tolerance with respect to those who disagree
with her, those toward whom she is so often
intolerant--religious believers and traditional
moralists. The problem for the secularist, however, is
that such people hold substantive beliefs, and
secularists are often loath to tolerate such beliefs.
Likewise a relativist about religion or morality
cannot coherently exercise tolerance toward the moral
or religious absolutist because she lacks a commitment
to a conception of the good or the true in contrast to
which moral or religious absolutist beliefs would be
judged by her to be false or immoral. 

Moreover, if the secularist claims to recognize the
intrinsic dignity and worth of her fellow human beings
and, on this basis, endures or bears the beliefs and
declarations of the moral or religious absolutist,
then her tolerance will lack any substantive
justification. She will be, with respect to tolerance,
as the political liberal often is with respect to
justice. Rawlsian justice as fairness, for example,
rests on a conception of persons as free and equal.
Yet Rawls refuses to ground this conception of persons
in metaphysics and ontology; rather it is for him
simply a matter of political expediency. 10 But absent
metaphysical or ontological grounding, the Rawlsian
seems to have no rational justification to offer on
behalf of her theory of justice to those whose
conception of persons differs radically from her own.
Suppose, for example, I believe people are radically
unequal and that any person with membership in a race
other than the Aryan is not worthy to receive justice.
What rational justification can the Rawlsian offer me
on behalf of her theory of justice? It would seem,
none. So it is with the secularist. The relevant
questions for her are these: Why believe people are
possessors of inestimable worth and value? [End Page
632] Instead, why not conceive of persons whose
beliefs and practices differ from one's own as
subhuman and, therefore, their beliefs and practices
as unworthy candidates for tolerance? 11 What rational
justification does the secularist have to offer for
her tolerance? What story can she tell about why we
should resist the tendency to denigrate the other?
Without a thick conception of persons, it seems she
has none. 

Tolerance, then, bears up the person who holds
differing beliefs and practices of fundamental human
concern and urges us to say, "I will resist the
temptation to think of myself as better than you due
to our differing beliefs and practices. I value you as
a person, a divine image bearer." 

Of course, tolerance does not mean that we will not
try to persuade the other of the error of his or her
ways (after all, we believe them to be mistaken on
matters of fundamental human concern). So we might
add, "But, I disagree with you, and here is why."
Intellectual and moral humility, born of a profound
awareness of one's own finitude and creatureliness,
may also add, "And I recognize that I might be
mistaken, that I might be the one with blind spots;
you tell me why you think I'm wrong." Tolerance is the
precondition of genuine dialogue. 

Tolerance is morally worthwhile precisely because it
disposes us to repair the human fabric torn by moral
and religious disagreement. It affirms our common
humanity, dignity, frailty, and situatedness. And
genuinely valuing the other is the precondition of a
flourishing pluralistic society. 12 

The Limits of Tolerance 
There are and must be limits to tolerance. This in no
way contradicts what has already been said. Something
is tolerable within limits. Beyond these limits lies
the intolerable and the impermissible. Although we can
value (say) a Hitler as an object of inestimable
worth, a fellow image-bearer of the divine, we cannot
tolerate his practice of human extermination and world
domination. Although we can, perhaps with effort,
acknowledge that the Jeffrey Dahmers of the world are
icons of God, we cannot permit them to cannibalize.
Although slave owners are themselves created in the
image of God, we cannot tolerate their mistreatment of
slaves. How do we set the limits to tolerance? 

The answer, or so it seems, is that harm to others is
the natural limit to tolerance. 13 We cannott tolerate
Hitler's, Dahmer's, or the slave owner's intolerable
behavior, because it harms other people. The beliefs
and practices of the homosexual, however, who chooses
his partners and does not harm children, might
legitimately be tolerated by those whose beliefs
commit them to the immorality of homosex. The beliefs
and practices of racists, however, especially those
that issue in physical harm to others, clearly fall
outside the pale of the tolerable and permissible. You
can believe whatever you like about "niggers," "wops,"
"dagos," "fags," "honkies," "kikes," or "spiks" but we
will not let you lay a hand on the persons alluded to
by those derogatory terms. [End Page 633] Dahmer's
tastes can run toward human flesh, but we will not
tolerate cannibalism. The religious fundamentalist can
heap private scorn and derision on whomever he likes,
but he cannot kill or torture infidels. When beliefs
spill over into harmful actions toward others,
tolerance has reached its limits. 

We might think, therefore, that harm to others is the
natural limit to tolerance, but that simply will not
do. There are clear cases when practices that bring
about harm to another ought to be tolerated. Many of
the practices of doctors and dentists harm their
patients. Soldiers in wartime harm their enemies. Good
economic policies in times of financial crisis can
harm some classes of people. Police harm criminals.
And so on. Surely it is right and proper to tolerate
some practices that harm others. What mitigates
against these sorts of harms is the good they produce.
The doctor and dentist work for the health of their
patient; the soldier and police for justice, the
economist, for long-term financial stability. As long
as the good produced is greater than the harm
inflicted, these sorts of behaviors are, though
harm-producing, within the limits of tolerance. 14 

But there is a deeper problem lurking for limits to
tolerance. We have already argued that tolerance is
only sensible when practiced against a background of
commitments about matters of fundamental human
concern. These commitments specify and prescribe the
importantly true and the significantly good. But the
importantly true and the significantly good will
likewise prescribe the limits of harm. We forbid the
recreational use of heroin because it deprives its
subjects of free will and disintegrates the human
person. There are laws against animal sex and torture,
not only because of the effect on the animal--the
human being who participates in such practices is on a
slide toward overvaluing the sensual and undervaluing
all of life (there is an impressive correlation
between young killers of their peers and their
childhood torture and killing of animals--Jeffrey
Dahmer, for instance). 

These are areas where we might all agree that people
ought not be able to harm themselves. But, in this
neighborhood, there are problematic cases. One might
believe that the homosexual degrades herself, that the
racist cultivates subhuman character traits, that the
religious fundamentalist and all his ilk engage in
self-injurious behavior. One might believe, therefore,
that for their own sake, we ought to prevent their
beliefs and practices. The Inquisitor believes that
non-Roman Catholic beliefs will lead one to hell.
Thus, it will seem to the Inquisitor that inflicting
harm, to encourage repentance, is most legitimate.
Torture may be specified precisely because it prevents
a greater harm. Adherents of natural law (or of the
Torah) can make a plausible case that the practice of
homosex is harmful even if all of the participants are
freely willing adults. And racist attitudes harm those
who have them. Why shouldn't we, for the good of
racists, be intolerant not only of their practices but
also of the beliefs that produce the practices?
Perhaps we should imprison all white supremacists,
connect electrodes to the racist centers of their
brains, force them to watch "Amistad" repeatedly, and
poke them with a cattle prod every time their racist
neurons are stimulated. [End Page 634] Surely we would
be helping them to become better persons in the
process (and would be making our own, small
contribution to the new world order). 

Where do we draw the line, in a pluralist society with
competing conceptions of human good and hence of human
harm, between those sorts of harms that are
permissible and those sorts of harms that are
impermissible? 

Setting the Limits of Tolerance 
What sorts of harms should be permitted, according to
the virtue of tolerance, and what sorts of harms
should be forbidden? We took a first stab at answering
this question in the preceding section--we should not
permit harms to other people. But not just any harm to
others will do. Some harms--like those of the dentist
or surgeon--benefit others. We should be intolerant,
we shall suggest, of those harms which inhibit human
flourishing. 

Here we are likely to offend nearly everyone. Indeed,
we are likely to come off as American liberals dressed
in quasi-religious clothing. But, what the heck. We
will not make any progress without first taking a step
and, besides, our founding parents seemed right about
some of these matters. How, in a pluralistic society,
can we agree on what stimulates and what restrains
human flourishing? 

Some lessons gleaned from past and present human
affairs suggest that humans flourish best when they
are 


Secure against violent assault and free to 
believe what they like, 
exercise their moral, religious, and political
beliefs, 
associate with like-minded people, 
contribute to the common good as they see fit, 
and control their own destiny. 15 

We ought, therefore, to tolerate differing beliefs,
religious practices, civic groups, and social
practices. Any actions which prevent human beings from
flourishing ought not to be tolerated. 

Note that this list of necessary conditions specifies
that we should be tolerant of different beliefs--be
they religious, moral, social, or political. We should
be tolerant of different religious practices--even if
they include (say) the use of peyote. We should
tolerate the free association of like-minded
people--including (say) men's groups, Nazi
organizations--or we should be tolerant of such
beliefs and practices unless and until they harm
others. 

But there are hard cases. We should tolerate the use
of peyote but what about animal or human sacrifice
(assuming that all of the participants to the latter
are willing and believe their actions contribute to
their flourishing)? Should we tolerate [End Page 635]
female genital mutilation or the oppression of women?
Should we tolerate abortions or the bombing of
abortion clinics (when the latter does harm people)?
Should we tolerate clubs with only white, male,
non-Jewish members (suppose all of this club's members
agree not to benefit financially from this club)? 

We have said nothing to suggest that the conditions
for human flourishing set out on our list fix the
limits of harm for all persons in all places and
times. Surely some people will object that Nazism
harms people in some manner or other--the children of
Nazis, Jews, and blacks, or even the Nazis themselves.
Many will find abhorrent what the Nazi sees as
essential to human flourishing. What to do under such
circumstances? 

Here we seem to have reached the limits of argument.
Where there is fundamental disagreement about human
nature and fulfillment there will also be divergent
views about what constitutes harm. Under these
circumstances one might simply hold up for veneration
the kind of person most likely to endorse our
minimalist list of necessary conditions for human
flourishing. That is, one might believe that all that
we permit and encourage as a society ought to
contribute to the creation of people who are willing
to permit diverse beliefs and practices. This person,
herself, however, might not hold many beliefs of
religious or moral significance. She might have few
allegiances and willingly abstain from moral
judgments. This kind of human, she might believe, is
the kind of human that flourishes. So, seeking to
create society in her own image, she will disparage
religious and moral commitments and encourage
detachment. She might, in the meantime, put up with
religious and absolutist beliefs but only grudgingly
and under a thin veneer of tolerance. But underneath
the veneer lies intolerance--she simply cannot bear
the beliefs and practices of people with strong and
deep religious and moral convictions. She will work
for the elimination of such beliefs and practices from
the public, and eventually, private arena. This, so it
seems to us, is the not-so-covert intention of some
secular liberals. 

Consider Richard Rorty, for example. His thin view of
persons fails him precisely at this point. He
self-consciously defends his thin view of persons
against a thick, theistic or metaphysical view.
Historicists "have denied that there is such a thing
as 'human nature' or the 'deepest level of the self.'
Their strategy has been to insist that socialization,
and thus historical circumstance, goes all the way
down--that there is nothing 'beneath' socialization or
prior to history which is definatory of human beings."
We have been freed, Rorty contends, from theology and
metaphysics. But to what end? Here's the problem for
Rorty's thin conception of persons: he must accept
that there is no answer to the question "Why not be
cruel?" He can give no justification for the harm
principle; he can only assert and attempt to
non-rationally persuade. Despairing of rational
persuasion, his goal is to make everyone
thin--theistically and metaphysically bereft. Rorty's
goal is to make "irony universal," i.e., to make
everyone in his own gaunt and ghostly image. 16 

A second alternative is simply to admit that ideas of
the good are prior to, in this context, notions of the
tolerable and therefore of harm. 17 The issue of
priority arises [End Page 636] in connection with the
question, "Ought the limits to harm and of tolerance
emerge from principles whose justification is
impartial with respect to those of diverse and
competing religious, moral, philosophical, and
political convictions?" Those who believe the answer
to this question is "no" believe that conceptions of
the good are prior to considerations of permissible
harms and of tolerance. But if this question is
answered in the affirmative, the specter of
incommensurability raises its ugly head; it might seem
to us that nothing can be done to reach consensus
about the limits to permissible harms, and therefore
the limits to tolerance. We think, however, that there
are three alternative courses of action open to one
seeking consensus under pluralist conditions, given
the priority of the good. 

First, we could aim for consensus by the wholesale
persuasion and conversion of all of those whose
conception of the good differs from our own. Second,
we could bypass persuasion and aim for consensus by
force of power. People who disagree with us can be
tortured, repressed, or otherwise coerced to see the
light. Finally, at least with those whose conception
of the good is sufficiently robust, we could seek not
for wholesale conversion but rather for an
intersection of relevant beliefs. Here the task is to
engage in the hard work of delving into the richly
textured belief systems of our fellow human beings and
searching within those systems for elements that
underwrite mutually justifiable limits. But if there
is radical incommensurability between these systems,
the unfortunate consequence is that the likelihood of
our arriving at consensus by this route will be
vanishingly small. Even so, this is the alternative we
favor. 

Why? We favor the last alternative not because
conversion and persuasion are inconsistent with
tolerance. They are not. As we have already seen,
tolerance is exercised when we believe others to be in
error about matters of fundamental human concern. When
we believe someone to be in error, persuasion is one
eminently plausible response. The second view secures
consensus, but only at the costly expense of violating
the conditions for human flourishing previously
established. We favor the third alternative for two
reasons. First, it strikes us that attempts at
wholesale conversion are likely to fan the flames of
intolerance and dogmatism, effecting the exact reverse
of what our attempts at conversion are trying to
secure. We believe that on a playing field teeming
with diverse and deeply held moral, political, and
religious systems of belief and practice, looking
within competing systems for elements that can
underwrite mutually justifiable limits to harm is less
likely to inflame old wounds and incite new rivalries.
Second, we believe that significant human freedom to
carve out one's own identity ought to be recognized
and nourished and that the third alternative is less
likely than attempts at conversion to be viewed as
interfering with that freedom. That alternative is,
therefore, more likely to achieve consensus among
persons of competing religious, moral, and political
convictions. 

And when we cannot reach an overlapping consensus,
what do we do then? We keep searching and engaging in
humble dialogue. That there are and will be times when
a consensus cannot be reached is simply a reality we
must live with even if, [End Page 637] from the
perspective of conviction, we must also lament it.
Tolerance, and gentle persuasion tempered by humility,
should guide us as we seek to navigate a societal
landscape marked by a plurality of differing
identities. 

Conclusion 
That toleration is morally worthwhile seems clear.
That we can, to everyone's satisfaction, set the
limits to tolerance once and for all seems highly
unlikely, short of violating the very conditions
necessary for human flourishing. 

We have argued in this essay that tolerance is a
virtue that requires deep religious or moral
conviction. Moreover, it is rooted in a thick theistic
or metaphysical conception of the self. We have also
argued that there are limits to tolerance and that
these limits are set by a harm principle. When it
comes to delimiting the extent to which harms are
permissible, however, our task is complicated by the
diverse conceptions of the good that dot the landscape
of contemporary societal life. We believe that in a
pluralistic context such as ours the best we can do to
reach consensus, without ourselves violating the
conditions necessary for human flourishing, is to seek
within competing systems of belief and practice an
intersection of beliefs relevant to establishing
meaningful boundaries to harm. It is this alternative
that seems to us the most promising in a context
teeming with diversity. 






Kelly James Clark is associate professor of philosophy
and Kevin Corcoran is assistant professor of
philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids,
Michigan. 

Notes 
1. We do not mean to imply that there were not
religious influences on the Holocaust. 

2. K. Anthony Appiah, "The Multiculturalist
Misunderstanding," The New York Review of Books,
October 9, 1997, 36. 

3. The relativist, we shall argue, may be tolerant of,
say, religious believers and of moral absolutists,
but, as we shall see, there is an obvious lack of
logical fit between her tolerance and her relativism. 

4. A similar view of tolerance has been offered by
Peter Nicholson: "Toleration is the virtue of
refraining from exercising one's power to interfere
with others' opinion or action although that deviates
from one's own over something important, and although
one morally disapproves of it." From "Toleration as a
Moral Ideal" in Aspects of Toleration, ed. John Horton
and Susan Mendus (London: Methuen, 1985), 166. Mary
Warnock objects that restricting tolerance to moral
matters is too narrow. See "The Limits of Toleration,"
in On Toleration, ed. Susan Mendus and David Edwards
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 125f. Our own view is
more in line with Warnock's but develops more deeply
the notion of tolerance. This is also one important
respect in which our view of tolerance differs from Ed
Langerak's. Langerak's account of tolerance does not
depend conceptually on moral or religious convictions.
See his "Toleration, Cooperation and Respect," in
Hessel Bouma, et al., Christian Faith, Healthcare and
Medical Practice (Grand Rapids: Eerdman's,
forthcoming). 

5. For purposes of this paper, we will restrict
tolerance to matters of belief and practice. What we
say about tolerance of beliefs and practices, however,
also applies to disagreements of attitude, which one
may not regard as false or immoral. 

6. Even in the case of disagreement of attitudes there
will be an element of care or deep commitment present.
See, for example, the discussion of disagreement in C.
L. Stevenson's "Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms," in
Ethical Theory: Classical and Contemporary, ed. Louis
Pojman (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Co.,
1989), 370-79. 

7. Thus, "what matters" falls on a continuum and is
person-relative. For some people how one squeezes a
tube of toothpaste is a matter of fundamental concern
and may call for tolerance of those of opposing
practice! 

8. Or perhaps the beautiful too, if one wishes to
extend tolerance to matters aesthetic. 

9. We distinguish homosex--the practice of same-sex
sexual relations--from homosexuality--the fundamental
sexual orientation toward members of the same sex. For
it seems perfectly consistent for one to believe the
former to be immoral but the latter amoral. 

10. See Rawls's discussion of these issues in "Justice
as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical," in
Communitarianism and Individualism, ed. Shlomo Avineri
and Avner de-Shalit (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992). 

11. This seems to be just what underlies Daniel
Dennett's intolerance with respect to religious
believers who deny that human beings are the product
of evolution: "To watch, to have to participate in,
the contraction or evaporation of beloved features of
one's heritage is a pain only our species can
experience, and surely few pains could be more
terrible. But we have no reasonable alternative, and
those whose visions dictate that they cannot
peacefully coexist with the rest of ours we will have
to quarantine as best we can, minimizing the pain and
damage, trying always to leave open a path or two that
may come to seem acceptable." From Daniel Dennett,
Darwin's Dangerous Idea (New York: Penguin Books,
1995), 519. 

12. Here too the secular relativist runs into trouble.
The person of religious conviction has (but the
secular relativist lacks) grounds for even thinking
pluralism and diversity are "goods" to be celebrated.
When pressed, the person of religious conviction can
appeal to the fecundity of a creator God who
pronounced a blessing upon and takes great delight in
a world of immense variety, a creator-God who has
given to us human beings the task of cultivating
creation along lines that preserve and extend this
rich texture of multifarious diversity. The secular
relativist, by contrast, has no way to ground
pluralism and diversity as "goods." 

13. This seems to be the criterion offered by John
Locke in his seminal essay on tolerance, "A Letter
Concerning Toleration," when he claims practices ought
to be permitted as long as there is no injury done to
anyone, no prejudice to any person's goods.
Interestingly, Locke contends that toleration does not
extend to atheism because atheists, he believes, have
no reason to keep the promises, covenants, and oaths
which are essential to the proper functioning of
society. "The taking away of God, though but even in
thought, dissolves all." John Locke, A Letter
Concerning Toleration (1689), ed. J. H. Tulley
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985). 

14. Even here there are limits to tolerance, as in the
case of a doctor who experiments on her patients
without their consent (some of these experiments work
and some do not). In the case of economic policies,
one class of society may be made by those in power to
suffer inordinately for the long-term greater good of
society as a whole. And justice and tranquility may be
secured, either in war or peace, by harming the
innocent. We declawed a hostile aggressor in the
Middle East but with, to our minds, an intolerable
number of civilian casualties. Perhaps a greater good
resulted--the new world order--but some of the costs
were impermissible. 

15. We assume, in good Maslowian fashion, that
lower-level needs for food, shelter, clothing are
taken care of. 

16. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), xiii. 

17. This notion bears a family resemblance to Rawls's
discussion of the right and the good. See John Rawls,
"The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good,"
Philosophy and Public Affairs 17 (1988): 251-76.



		
____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page 
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs