Toleration, power and the right to justification

Rainer Forst in dialogue

Rainer Forst

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781526105981
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Rainer Forst's Toleration in Conflict (published in English 2013) is the most important historical and philosophical analysis of toleration of the past several decades. Reconstructing the entire history of the concept, it provides a forceful account of the tensions and dilemmas that pervade the discourse of toleration. In his lead essay for this volume, Forst revisits his work on toleration and situates it in relation to both the concept of political liberty and his wider project of a critical theory of justification. Interlocutors Teresa M. Bejan, John Horton, Chandran Kukathas, Daniel Weinstock, Melissa S. Williams, Patchen Markell and David Owen then critically examine Forst's reconstruction of toleration, his account of political liberty and the form of critical theory that he articulates in his work on such political concepts. The volume concludes with Forst's reply to his critics.

Part I

Lead essay

1

Toleration, progress and power

Rainer Forst
(Translated by Ciaran Cronin)

I The promise and dialectics of toleration

We are not the first generation to live in societies marked by profound differences in forms of life and morals. For a long time, Christians in particular struggled with how to live together without seeing the actions of others as primarily the devil’s handiwork. Today, we can still gain an inkling of how extreme such conflicts could be when questions of abortion are discussed. But also controversies over same-sex marriage or the right to adopt for same-sex couples, circumcision on religious grounds, Islamic dress codes, the vilification of religious leaders or whether fascist parties should be outlawed point to conflicts that catapult us back as if on a time journey into the historical epochs in which the concept of toleration was coined.¹ This concept remains so attractive because it promises to make it possible to live with such differences without being able to or having to resolve them.

Even this brief review of the ongoing history of conflicts over toleration shows how much sense it makes to examine the two concepts of toleration and progress together. For we think, or at least hope, that our societies have become more tolerant since the times of the Wars of Religion and the bloody persecution of minorities. By adding the third term ‘power’ to ‘toleration’ and ‘progress’ in my title, however, I want to suggest that we are dealing with a complex history in which one should not be too quick to invoke the concept of progress, because conflicts over toleration are always situated in the context of relations of social power in which forms of domination are reproduced and undergo change. Here ‘domination’ refers not only to forms of intolerance, because sometimes domination also operates by granting toleration.² This is why the correct theory of toleration must be critical: it must subject the various forms and justifications of toleration to critical examination and bring a genealogical perspective to bear on the constant amalgamation of norms and relationships of domination. A history of toleration therefore has to be a dialectical one. It tells a story of the rationalisation of arguments for toleration (each of which has its limits and can become inverted into intolerance), but also of the advancing rationality of power, which is sometimes opposed to toleration, but is often also bound up with it.³ We are still part of this dialectic.

II The concept of toleration

I will first discuss the concept of toleration. It is important to recognise that this concept is itself the subject of social conflicts and is not a neutral party that stands above the fray.⁴ Some cases in point: while some people think that right-wing political activities should be banned because they violate the limits of democratic toleration, others regard this as intolerant; while some people tolerate circumcision, others consider it to be intolerable, even when boys are involved; some people are in favour of tolerance⁵ towards same-sex partnerships, but not of equal rights, whereas others regard this as intolerant and repressive.

So not only is it a matter of controversy how far toleration should extend, but some of the examples cited also raise the question of whether toleration is even a good thing, on the grounds that, at the one extreme, it can go too far or, at the other, legitimise the denial of equal rights. Isn’t toleration even the hallmark of an asymmetrical policy or a cunning form of rule through the disciplining of minorities, following Kant’s dictum that the name of toleration is ‘arrogant’,⁶ or Goethe’s saying: ‘Toleration should be a temporary attitude only; it must lead to recognition. To tolerate means to insult’?⁷ What we need here is a historically informed, critical philosophy whose task it is to examine our store of concepts and which asks: What exactly does the concept of toleration mean in the first place?

Tolerance denotes an attitude that, analytically speaking, involves three components – with which we can already clear up a series of misconceptions, for example, the mistaken notion that toleration has something to do with judgement-free arbitrariness or indifference, as in Nietzsche, for whom toleration was the ‘inability of saying yes or no’.⁸ When we say that we ‘tolerate’ something – for example, a friend’s opinion, the smell of a particular food, or the action of a group – we do so only when something bothers us about the opinion, the smell or the action in question. And indeed, the first component of toleration is that of objection.⁹ We object to the beliefs or practices that we tolerate because we believe that they are wrong or bad. Otherwise, our attitude would be one of indifference or affirmation, not one of tolerance.

However, toleration also necessarily involves a second component, that of acceptance. It specifies reasons why what is wrong or bad should nevertheless be tolerated. Tolerance involves striking a balance between negative and positive considerations, because the reasons for acceptance do not cancel the reasons for objecting but are prima facie on the same level and, in the case of toleration, tip the balance. The objection, however, remains valid. The (apparent) paradox of how one can accept something to which one actually objects should not be overemphasised, because there is nothing out of the ordinary in looking at things from two sides and seeing reasons for accepting something that one finds problematic. This is not to deny, of course, that there is an important problem here, since with this constellation the social conflict is imported, as it were, into the attitude of tolerance itself. It requires one in a certain sense to transcend or bracket one’s own negative opinion.

Finally, a third component must be kept in mind, that of rejection – thus once again one involving negative reasons. These negative reasons mark the limits of toleration, so that they must, of course, be more serious and stronger than the first-mentioned reasons for objecting, since they cannot be trumped by acceptance considerations. In an ambitious, democratic conception of toleration (which I will discuss in greater detail below), these reasons must be ones that can also be offered to those affected by the rejection (i.e. those whose beliefs or practices are not tolerated). They justify why limits have to be drawn from an impartial vantage point, for if the limits of toleration were completely arbitrary, tolerance would not be a virtue and would succumb to the (much-discussed) paradox of toleration that it always also represents the vice of intolerance. Therefore, it can be a virtue only if its components are based on good reasons. Limitless tolerance, on the other hand, would be absurd because it would also have to tolerate all forms of intolerance, including its own negation, and thus place itself in question.¹⁰

The task of toleration is to bring these three components into the correct normative order. The reasons for objecting to, accepting or rejecting a belief or practice can have different origins. All three can have religious sources, such as when one objects to a different religion as false but tolerates it in the spirit of religious peace and harmony until it leads to blasphemy. The reasons can also be of different kinds, however, such as when a religious objection is confronted with reasons of acceptance and rejection that appeal to human rights – for example, reasons to accept based on the right to freedom of religion and reasons to reject grounded in the right to bodily integrity. It is important to notice that these reasons themselves are not part of the concept of toleration, which is dependent on other normative resources.¹¹

This analysis already makes it clear that toleration is not always the correct recipe against intolerance. Racism, for example, is a widespread cause of intolerance. But when we call for ‘tolerance’ as a response to racist attacks, what are we doing? Do we want ‘tolerant racists’, that is, people who remain racists, only do not act according to their beliefs? No, we should instead work towards overcoming racism; and that means that in this case the reasons for objecting are already the problem. There was a time when the model of overcoming reasons for objecting led Enlightenment thinkers to argue that the appropriate response to religious strife was to work towards a religion of reason; but this proved to be unfeasible, because they expected something from reason that it is not able to deliver – namely, to provide ultimate answers to speculative questions. Religiously based reasons for objecting cannot be overcome in this way.

Nonetheless, the problem of the tolerant racist alerts us to an important insight into social progress: an increase in toleration is often a sign of progress, since those who are foreign or different are accepted with less narrow-mindedness; but sometimes less toleration is a mark of progress. Thus, racism itself should not be an object of social toleration, since it has a tendency to become entrenched in everyday life and to give rise to violence. This does not mean that every expression of racism should be prosecuted, but that such expressions should be socially ostracised. It is an important matter whether the limits of toleration are drawn socially or legally.

But ultimately progress can also mean that the reasons to be tolerant at all should cease to apply: there should not be any racist reasons for objecting, or any considerations that degrade people. This also applies to attitudes towards homosexuality. To tolerate homosexuality is one thing; but no longer to regard it as grounds for toleration is quite another. Both would constitute progress compared to social intolerance; however, the latter would constitute the greater progress: no more toleration, but no more rejection either, but instead indifference – just togetherness in diversity, without tolerance or intolerance.

III Conceptions of toleration

To continue the analysis, we must distinguish different conceptions of toleration that have evolved over the course of history. Here I will confine myself to two.¹² The first I call the permission conception. We encounter it in the classical toleration laws, such as in the Edict of Nantes (1598), which states: ‘[N]‌ot to leave any occasion of trouble and difference among our subjects, we have permitted and do permit to those of the Reformed Religion, to live and dwell in all the Cities and places of this our kingdom and country under our obedience, without being inquired after, vexed, molested, or compelled to do any thing in religion, contrary to their conscience.’¹³ Toleration on this conception is an authoritarian attitude and practice which grants minorities the permission to live according to their faith, albeit within a framework determined unilaterally by the permission-giving side. All three components – objection, acceptance and rejection – are in the hands of the authorities, and those who are tolerated are marked and indulged as second-class citizens, and depend on the protection of the monarch. This is the notion of toleration that Goethe and Kant have in mind in their criticism, because here being tolerated also means being stigmatised and dominated. This form of toleration represents a complex combination of freedom and discipline, of recognition and disrespect, which calls for a Foucauldian analysis of the ‘governmentality’ at work in this context of power.¹⁴

Here we touch on another important point about toleration and progress, namely the ambivalent character of progress. On the one hand, an edict like the Edict of Nantes (the same applies to other toleration laws such as the English ‘Toleration Act’ of 1689 or Joseph II’s ‘Patents of Toleration’ of 1781) represents an important step towards ensuring the security and social betterment of a minority (even if this was also precarious and often of short duration); on the other hand, it manifests the inequality of this group and its extreme dependence on the good will of the monarch (and on existing constellations of power). Thus, such an edict represented clear progress – and just as clearly a policy of domination and unequal treatment (and sometimes also of blackmail, if we think, for example, of the conditions under which Jews were ‘tolerated’ in Christian countries).

However, to the truth of a dialectical histo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Series editor’s foreword
• Preface
• Abbreviations of the works of Rainer Forst
• Part I Lead essay
• Part II Responses
• Part III Reply
• Index