Toleranting

1. Some General Housekeeping

The notion of toleration has a certain air of ambiguity to it. Not to mention that the term
itself is parasitic on some kind of subject matter. That is to say, “I am tolerant,” is utterly
meaningless unless ascribed to an article that I would have to be tolerant of. Hence, “I am
tolerant of Alice‟s beliefs,” would be a cogent thought while, “I am tolerant,” is not. Surely
though we can address toleration in a general sense. So for the sake of ease, from this point on
when I refer to „being tolerant,‟ unless otherwise stated, you may assume I had said, „being
tolerant of x.” In this case x is any given action, belief or opinion that may be in question.
Likewise the notion of intolerance has the same parasitic qualities as the notion of tolerance,
hence, you may assume the same truncation that I have applied to the notion of tolerance; „being
intolerant‟ refers to „being intolerant of x.‟
2. Attaining and Maintaining Liberties

Those who are concerned with maximizing our liberties would find it necessary to
maximize the scope of actions, beliefs or opinions that we, both individually and as a
community, are tolerant of, in so far as that by tolerating those articles it would not threaten
anyone‟s wellbeing. Those who adopt this view may call themselves “tolerant,” however this
should not be confused with the notion of „being tolerant‟ that was previously described. The
necessity of a community being tolerable of certain actions pertains to social liberties as well as
individual liberties being permitted while in a public setting. For the lack of a better example,
supposing you lived in Berlin during the early 1940‟s, going about the streets speaking Yiddish
would not be a wise action to take. While you may think there is nothing inherently wrong with
speaking in Yiddish and you would tolerate it, the public and police force are at odds with you

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and would more than likely respond violently to your Jewish interpolation. So it is abundantly
apparent that your independent and individual toleration of a given act is not necessarily enough
to grant you liberty to perform that act. This is especially clear in the case of language which
actively needs two participants, one to speak a message and another to receive the message, save
case for therapeutic means where someone may be compelled to speak to themself for comfort or
to extrapolate ideas, etc. In this case of allowing a particular language, the receiver must be
tolerant of the language being spoken. In the case of multiple receivers, all of the receivers must
be at least tolerant enough of the language such that they will not actively try to stop the speaker
from speaking that language. This kind of need for wide acceptance and toleration of ideas or
acts is often the motivation behind disavowing intolerance.

This, of course, seems to be a contradiction in the ideology of being tolerant. A person
who actively supports being tolerant seems to be intolerant of those who are being intolerant.
However, when considering the motivation to be tolerant, it is logical to contend the views of the
intolerant. If a tolerant person were to tolerate the actions of the intolerant, it would undermine
the liberties that the tolerant person is trying to promote or preserve. For example, a person may
be tolerant of the abortion of a fetus and wishes for women to have the liberty of being able to go
to a clinic to have that operation performed. However, if a person who is intolerant of fetal
abortions decides to go bomb an abortion clinic, then the tolerant person cannot actively tolerate
this act of bombing without undermining their desire for the liberty of women to undergo an
abortion.

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3. The Nature of Tolerance

This leaves the question of how the tolerant person is going to assess and react to the
behavior of the intolerant person. When answering this question one of the many points that
need to be addressed is whether or not any person is in any immediate danger of being harmed.
In the example of the abortion clinic bombing, in most cases it would be claimed that the bomber
is acting in an extreme manner. In that particular scenario it may be necessary to coercively
detain the bomber before they cause any harm to any other individual. However, that is not to
say that all intolerant acts need to be addressed with stringent coercion. If it is the case that both
the intolerant and tolerant can engage in civil discourse where no individual is immediately
threatened, then coercion should not be necessary and saved only for „extreme‟ acts. What is
denoted as an „extreme‟ act pertains to what the general population, consisting of both tolerant
and intolerant people, have deemed to be intolerant. How the general population comes to the
conclusion of what is universally intolerant is yet another dilemma, which shall be addressed in a
subsequent section of this essay.

Before addressing either the nature of civil discourse, or how both the tolerant and
intolerant can unequivocally decide that some actions are intolerant, some of the ambiguity of
the relationship between toleration and intolerance needs to be lifted. It seems that the
distinction between tolerance and intolerance has both contiguous and dichotomous traits. For
instance, in regards to the issue of homosexual marriage, polls from organizations such as
Angus-Reid or EKOS might ask the question “Do you favour or oppose allowing gays and
lesbians to marry legally?” To which the respondents can answer “yes,” “no,” or “I don‟t
know.” The issue being that the poll question itself seems to imply there is a dichotomous
relationship, while the argument for an individual‟s response to the question implies that the

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relationship is actually contiguous. To elaborate, suppose in a purely hypothetical situation I had
selected “yes” on the survey. However, in this scenario, I happen to have some minor religious
complications with selecting yes, but they happen to be so dubious that I can reconcile any
religious problems I might have. So in this sense, while I selected “yes” on the survey I was not
completely comfortable with doing so. In another situation, supposing I was a fundamentalist, I
would more than likely select “no” on this survey as I would not be able to overcome the
religious dilemma. However, even under that scenario I might have many homosexual friends
whom I would wish no harm upon and want the best for them. It would simply be my fear of
eternal torture in the afterlife that would prohibit me from selecting “yes.” So once again, I
would not be completely comfortable in making a selection on that survey. What this discomfort
shows is that in our reasoning there are underlying counter arguments to our choices regarding
what acts or ideas we are tolerant or intolerant of. Depending on the strength of these arguments
we may be inclined to be more or less tolerant of those particular acts or ideas, which implies
that the relationship between intolerance and tolerance is contiguous. However, there are
scenarios which ultimately require a decision to either prohibit an act or allow it, and the results
of such a decision imply that this act is dichotomously tolerated or not tolerated.

As with the debate between homosexual marriage and religious practices, similar types of
arguments arise when there are liberties that conflict with each other. From this conflict of
trying to preserve either liberty, intolerance will arise to the conflicting liberty. From this, it
seems that two seemingly tolerant individuals could become intolerant towards each other
depending on if their preferred liberties conflict with one another‟s. A recent example of this
would be the healthcare reforms being put in place by the Democratic Party in the United States.
One of the many purposes behind imposing these reforms is to ensure that the indigent are not

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denied access to medical services, thus ensuring that they have the liberty of good health.
However, some people, in particular in the Republican Party, say that these reforms infringe on
their liberty to perform free market practices in medical services. To stop the reforms to appease
the demands of the Republicans would undoubtedly take the liberty of good health away from
the impoverished, thus there is no way to satisfy both parties. Observing this debate from an
externalist position, to determine what is going to have to be rejected, either free market medical
care or the health of the impoverished, what needs to be established is which liberty is preferred,
either guaranteed health or the ability to perform free market practices in medical services.
Likewise, in parallel to the debate regarding homosexual marriage, whichever liberty that is
being argued to be more valuable will have a counter argument that says it is actually less
valuable. This conflict once again will put toleration and intolerance on a contiguous spectrum.
However, inevitably the reforms will either be rejected or enacted, thus giving the notion that
tolerance and intolerance are dichotomous entities.
4. Civil Discourse and Intolerable Acts

This notion of competing liberties is integral in establishing how to carry out civil
discourse between the tolerant and intolerant. It is under this notion that we can interpret that the
tolerant and the intolerant both wish to promote and preserve liberty, what is actually in conflict
is that each individual holds conflicting liberties at different values than the other. This permits
both the tolerant and intolerant to engage a mutual venture of establishing the most suitable
liberties, which provides mutual motivation for them to enter a civil discourse.

It seems that most debates regarding which acts or ideas we are to be tolerant of can be
reduced to either disagreements on the value of certain liberties, or disagreements on underlying

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facts that call into question whether or not we are performing intolerable acts. An example of the
latter disagreement would once again be the bombing of an abortion clinic. The bomber assumes
that a fetus is a person, thus giving rise to the notion that this clinic is responsible for the murder
of thousands of individuals. Thus, while the action of bombing the clinic is an extremist action,
within the confines of the bomber‟s mind, the act of killing a dozen staff members of the clinic to
save the lives of thousands is a worthy act. With this example in consideration, it should be noted
that if an individual is intolerable of murder but is tolerable of abortions, and they could be
persuaded to believe that a fetus is a person, they should rationally change their position to be
intolerable of abortions.

Relaying back to the notion that both the tolerant and intolerant are both seeking to enact
the best liberties possible, it seems that by default some actions are almost unequivocally
accepted as intolerable. The primary intolerable act that comes to mind is murder. While there
are a few exceptions, (once again, the bomber of the abortion clinic) it seems that regardless of
your race, religion, political affiliations, etc., murder infringes on liberty to such an extent that
the cost is far too much to bear. This is especially true in the case of war, as learned by John
Locke whom wrote A Letter Concerning Toleration after exiting the Thirty Years War, which
argued for religious tolerance. It may be argued that hate speech is also included as a universally
intolerable act, however what is designated as hate speech is a subjective matter that could be an
essay to itself, hence we shall leave the topic at that point.

Finally, if we wish for civil discourse to remain civil, the notion of respect should be
introduced. That is not to say that the tolerant and intolerant cannot be critical of each other‟s
opinions, but they should not delve into expressing great animosity for one another. It is through
this kind of discussion that great social strides have been made. On December 1, 1955 Rosa

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Parks, an African American, was told to move from her bus seat to make room for a white
person. On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama, an African American, officially assumed office of
the president of the United States of America. This kind of social tolerance can be achieved
peacefully through civil discourse. It is through social discourse that communities can slowly
manifest a more unified understanding of social differences and establish more accepting norms.
This is why there is a need to be critical. If we cannot ask why we have to move out of our bus
seats, then how are we supposed to progress? Some might answer that we can use war or
genocide to solve social problems, but once again the costs outweigh the benefits.
5. Conclusion

It seems that when discussing the notion of toleration no one utterly casts themselves to
be entirely tolerant or entirely intolerant. For the most part we subscribe to a heterogeneous
mixture of tolerant and intolerant opinions as some arguments appear to be more appealing to us
than others. However, we should not feel animosity towards each other when we discover we do
not all agree on which arguments are necessarily the best arguments. We should posit why we
subscribe to the arguments that we accept and compare one another‟s extrapolations. Through
this we can understand each other‟s sentiments to a greater degree and build new opinions that
are less conflicting. As far as I am concerned, this is „progress.‟

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Works Referenced
Mondak, Jeffery, and Mitchell S. Sanders. “Tolerance and Intolerance, 1976 – 1998.” American

Journal of Political Science 47 (2003): 492-502.

Žižek, Slavoj. “Tolerance as an Ideological Category.” Critical Inquiry 34 (2008): 660-682.

Angus Reid Global Monitor. Polls & Research: American Split on Same Sex Marriage. Angus

Reid Public Opinion.

http://www.angusreid.com/polls/view/americans_split_on_same_sex_marriage/




I may not have directly cited any of these, but it felt necessary to include them on a bibliography
as I referred to each of them to see what kind of issues I needed to address.

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Toleranting.














Derek Schimanski
001129106


March 25, 2010
Professor Gertrude Govier
Philosophy 2000: Reason, Faith & Tolerance

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