## 1. The Concept of Toleration and its Paradoxes



It is necessary to differentiate between a general *concept*
and more specific *conceptions* of toleration (see also Forst
2013). The former is marked by the following characteristics. First,
it is essential for the concept of toleration that the tolerated
beliefs or practices are considered to be objectionable and in an
important sense wrong or bad. If this *objection component*
(cf. King 1976, 44-54 on the components of toleration) is
missing, we do not speak of "toleration" but of
"indifference" or "affirmation." Second, the
objection component needs to be balanced by an *acceptance
component*, which does not remove the negative judgment but gives
certain positive reasons that trump the negative ones in the relevant
context. In light of these reasons, it would be wrong not to tolerate
what is wrong, to mention a well-known paradox of toleration
(discussed below). The said practices or beliefs are wrong, but not
intolerably wrong. Third, the limits of toleration need to be
specified. They lie at the point where there are reasons for rejection
that are stronger than the reasons for acceptance (which still leaves
open the question of the appropriate means of a possible
intervention); call this the *rejection* *component*.
All three of those reasons can be of one and the same
kind--religious, for example--yet they can also be of
diverse kinds (moral, religious, pragmatic, to mention a few
possibilities; cf. Newey 1999, 32-34 and Cohen 2014).



Furthermore, it needs to be stressed that there are *two
boundaries* involved in this interpretation of the concept of
toleration: the first one lies between (1) the normative realm of
those practices and beliefs one agrees with and (2) the realm of the
practices and beliefs that one finds wrong but can still tolerate; the
second boundary lies between this latter realm and (3) the realm of
the intolerable that is strictly rejected. There are thus three, not
just two normative realms in a context of toleration.



Finally, one can only speak of toleration where it is practiced
*voluntarily* and is not compelled, for otherwise it would be a
case of simply "suffering" or "enduring"
certain things that one rejects but against which one is powerless. It
is, however, wrong to conclude from this that the tolerant need to be
in a position to effectively prohibit or interfere with the tolerated
practices, for a minority that does not have this power may very well
be tolerant in holding the view that if it had such power, it would
not use it to suppress other parties (cf. Williams 1996).



Based on these characteristics, we can identify three paradoxes of
toleration that are much discussed in philosophical analyses of the
concept, and each one refers to one of the components mentioned above.
First, there is the *paradox of the tolerant racist*, which
concerns the objection component. Sometimes people argue that someone
who believes that there are "inferior races" the members
of which do not deserve equal respect should be "more
tolerant." Thus the racist would be called tolerant if he curbed
his desire to discriminate against the members of such groups, say,
for strategic reasons. Thus if (and only if) we considered tolerance
to be a moral virtue, the paradox arises that an immoral attitude (to
think of other "races" in such way) would be turned into
part of a virtue. What is more, the racist would be more
"tolerant" the stronger his racist impulses are if only he
did not act on them (cf. Horton 1996). Hence, seen from a moral
perspective, the demand that the racist should be tolerant has a major
flaw: it takes the racist objection against others as an ethical
objection that only needs to be restrained by adding certain reasons
for acceptance. It thus turns an unacceptable prejudice into an
ethical judgment. From this it follows that the reasons for objection
must be reasonable in a minimal sense; they cannot be generally
shareable, of course, but they must also not rest on irrational
prejudice and hatred. The racist, therefore, can neither exemplify the
virtue of tolerance nor should he be asked to be tolerant; what is
necessary is that he overcome his racist beliefs. This shows that
there are cases in which tolerance is not the solution to
intolerance.



Second, we encounter the *paradox of moral tolerance*, which
arises in connection with the acceptance component (for various
analyses of this paradox, see Ebbinghaus 1950, Raphael 1988, Mendus
1989, Horton 1994). If both the reasons for objection and the reasons
for acceptance are called "moral," the paradox arises that
it seems to be morally right or even morally required to tolerate what
is morally wrong. The solution of this paradox therefore requires a
distinction between various kinds of "moral" reasons, some
of which must be reasons of a higher order that ground and limit
toleration.



Third, there is the *paradox of drawing the limits*, which
concerns the rejection component. This paradox is inherent in the idea
that toleration is a matter of reciprocity and that therefore those
who are intolerant need not and cannot be tolerated, an idea we find
in most of the classical texts on toleration. But even a brief look at
those texts, and even more so at historical practice, shows that the
slogan "no toleration of the intolerant" is not just
vacuous but potentially dangerous, for the characterization of certain
groups as intolerant is all too often itself a result of one-sidedness
and intolerance. In a deconstructivist reading, this leads to a fatal
conclusion for the concept of toleration (cf. Fish 1997): If
toleration always implies a drawing of the limits against the
intolerant and intolerable, and if every such drawing of a limit is
itself a (more or less) intolerant, arbitrary act, toleration ends as
soon it begins--as soon as it is defined by an arbitrary boundary
between "us" and the "intolerant" and
"intolerable." This paradox can only be overcome if we
distinguish between two notions of "intolerance" that the
deconstructivist critique conflates: the intolerance of those who lie
beyond the limits of toleration because they deny toleration as a norm
in the first place, and the lack of tolerance of those who do not want
to tolerate a denial of the norm. Tolerance can only be a virtue if
this distinction can be made, and it presupposes that the limits of
toleration can be drawn in a non-arbitrary, justifiable way.



The discussion so far implies that toleration is a *normatively
dependent concept*. This means that by itself it cannot provide
the substantive reasons for objection, acceptance, and rejection. It
needs further, independent normative resources in order to have a
certain substance, content, and limits--and in order to be
regarded as something good at all. In itself, therefore, toleration is
not a virtue or value; it can only be a value if backed by the right
normative reasons.


## 2. Four Conceptions of Toleration



The following discussion of four conceptions of toleration is not to
be understood as the reconstruction of a linear historical succession.
Rather, these are different, historically developed understandings of
what toleration consists in that can all be present in society at the
same time, so that conflicts about the meaning of toleration may also
be understood as conflicts between these conceptions (cf. Forst
2013).



1. The first one I call the *permission conception*. According
to it, toleration is a relation between an authority or a majority and
a dissenting, "different" minority (or various
minorities). Toleration then means that the authority gives qualified
permission to the minority to live according to their beliefs on
condition that the minority accepts the dominant position of the
authority or majority. So long as their being different remains within
certain limits, that is, in the "private" realm, and so
long as the minority groups do not claim equal public and political
status, they can be tolerated on pragmatic or principled
grounds--on pragmatic grounds because this form of toleration is
the least costly of all possible alternatives and does not disturb
civil peace and order as the dominant party defines it (but rather
contributes to it); and on principled grounds because one may think it
is morally problematic to force people to give up certain deep-seated
beliefs or practices.



The permission conception is a classic one that we find in many
historical writings and in instances of a politics of toleration (such
as the Edict of Nantes in 1598) and that--to a considerable
extent--still informs our understanding of the term. According to
this conception, toleration means that the authority or majority,
which has the power to interfere with the practices of a minority,
nevertheless "tolerates" it, while the minority accepts
its inferior position. The situation or the "terms of
toleration" are hierarchical: one party allows another party
certain things on conditions specified by the first one. Toleration is
thus understood as *permissio negativa mali*: not interfering
with something that is actually wrong but not
"intolerably" harmful. It is this conception that Goethe
(1829, 507, transl. R.F.) had in mind when he said: "Tolerance
should be a temporary attitude only: it must lead to recognition. To
tolerate means to insult."



2. The second conception, the *coexistence conception*, is
similar to the first one in regarding toleration as the best means
toward ending or avoiding conflict and toward pursuing one's own
goals. What is different, however, is the relationship between the
subjects and the objects of toleration. For now the situation is not
one of an authority or majority in relation to a minority, but one of
groups that are roughly equal in power, and who see that for the sake
of social peace and the pursuit of their own interests mutual
toleration is the best of all possible alternatives (the Augsburg
Peace Treaty of 1555 is a historical example). They prefer peaceful
coexistence to conflict and agree to a reciprocal compromise, to a
certain *modus vivendi*. The relation of tolerance is no longer
vertical but horizontal: the subjects are at the same time the objects
of toleration. This may not lead to a stable social situation in which
trust can develop, for once the constellation of power changes, the
more powerful group may no longer see any reasons for being tolerant
(cf. Rawls 1987, 11, Fletcher 1996).



3. Different from this, the third conception of toleration--the
*respect conception*--is one in which the tolerating
parties respect one another in a more reciprocal sense (cf. Weale
1985, Scanlon 1996). Even though they differ fundamentally in their
ethical beliefs about the good and true way of life and in their
cultural practices, citizens recognize one another as moral-political
equals in the sense that their common framework of social life
should--as far as fundamental questions of rights and liberties
and the distribution of resources are concerned--be guided by
norms that all parties can equally accept and that do not favor one
specific ethical or cultural community (cf. Forst 2002, ch. 2).



There are two models of the "respect conception," that of
"formal equality," and that of "qualitative
equality." The former operates on a strict distinction between
the political and the private realm, according to which ethical (i.e.,
cultural or religious) differences among citizens of a legal state
should be confined to the private realm, so that they do not lead to
conflicts in the political sphere. This version is clearly exhibited
in the "secular republicanism" of the French authorities
who held that headscarves with a religious meaning have no place in
public schools in which children are educated to be autonomous
citizens (cf. Galeotti 1993).



The model of "qualitative equality," on the other hand,
recognizes that certain forms of formal equality favor those
ethical-cultural life-forms whose beliefs and practices make it easier
to accommodate a conventional public/private distinction. In other
words, the "formal equality" model tends to be intolerant
toward ethical-cultural forms of life that require a public presence
that is different from traditional and hitherto dominant cultural
forms. Thus, on the "qualitative equality" model, persons
respect each other as political equals with a certain distinct
ethical-cultural identity that needs to be respected and tolerated as
something that is (a) especially important for a person and (b) can
provide good reasons for certain exceptions from or general changes in
existing legal and social structures. Social and political equality
and integration are thus seen to be compatible with cultural
difference--within certain (moral) limits of reciprocity.



4. In discussions of toleration, one finds alongside the conceptions
mentioned thus far a fourth one which I call the *esteem
conception*. This implies an even fuller, more demanding notion of
mutual recognition between citizens than the respect conception does.
Here, being tolerant does not just mean respecting members of other
cultural life-forms or religions as moral and political equals, it
also means having some kind of ethical esteem for their beliefs, that
is, taking them to be ethically valuable conceptions that--even
though different from one's own--are in some way ethically
attractive and held with good reasons. For this still to be a case of
toleration, the kind of esteem characteristic of these relations is
something like "reserved esteem," that is, a kind of
positive acceptance of a belief that for some reason you still find is
not as attractive as the one you hold. As valuable as parts of the
tolerated belief may be, it also has other parts that you find
misguided, or wrong (cf. Raz 1988, Sandel 1989).



To answer the question which of these conceptions should be the
guiding one for a given society, two aspects are most important. The
first one requires an assessment of the conflicts that require and
allow for toleration, given the history and character of the groups
involved; and the second requires an adequate and convincing normative
justification of toleration in a given social context. It is important
to keep in mind that the (normatively dependent) concept of toleration
itself does not provide such a justification; this has to come from
other normative resources. And the list of such resources, speaking
both historically and systematically, is long.


## 3. The History of Toleration



In the course of the religious-political conflicts throughout Europe
that followed the Reformation, toleration became one of the central
concepts of political-philosophical discourse, yet its history reaches
much further back into antiquity (for the following, see esp. Forst
2013, part 1; cf. also Besier and Schreiner 1990, Nederman 2000,
Zagorin 2003, Creppel 2003, Kaplan 2007 and Bejan 2017). In stoic
writings, especially in Cicero, *tolerantia* is used as a term
for a virtue of endurance, of suffering bad luck, pain and injustice
of various kinds in a proper, steadfast manner. But already in early
Christian discourse, the term is applied to the challenge of coping
with religious difference and conflict. The works of Tertullian and
Cyprianus are most important in that respect.



Within the Christian framework, a number of arguments for toleration
have been developed, based on charity and love for those who err, for
example, or on the idea of the two kingdoms and of limited human
authority in matters of religious truth, i.e., in matters of the
divine kingdom. The most important and far-reaching justification of
toleration, however, is the principle *credere non potest nisi
volens*, which holds that only faith based on inner conviction is
pleasing to God, and that such faith has to develop from within,
without external compulsion. Conscience therefore must not be and
cannot be forced to adopt a certain faith, even if it were the true
one. Yet, Augustine who defends these arguments in his earlier
writings, later (when confronted with the danger of a schism between
Roman Catholics and the so-called Donatists) came to the conclusion
that the same reasons of love, of the two kingdoms and of the freedom
of conscience could also make intolerance and the use of force into a
Christian duty, if it were the only way to save the soul of another
(esp. Augustine 408, letter # 93). He cites numerous examples of
reconverted Catholics to substantiate his position that the proper use
of force combined with the right teaching can shake men loose from the
wrong faith and open up their eyes so as to accept the
truth--still "from within." Accordingly, individual
conscience can and sometimes must be subjected to force. Christian
arguments thus both form the core of many modern justifications of
toleration and yet are janus-faced, always bound by the superior aim
to serve the true faith. Similar to Augustine, Thomas Aquinas later
developed a number of reasons for limited and conditional toleration,
drawing especially strong limits against tolerating any form of
heresy.



The question of peaceful coexistence of different
faiths--Christian, Jewish and Muslim--was much discussed in
the Middle Ages, especially in the 12th century. Abailard
and Raimundus Lullus wrote inter-religious dialogues searching for
ways of defending the truth of Christian faith while also seeing some
truth--religious or at least ethical--in other religions. In
Judaism and Islam, this was mirrored by writers such as Maimonides or
Ibn Rushd (Averroes), whose defense of philosophical truth-searching
against religious dogma is arguably the most innovative of the period
(see esp. Averroes 1180).



Nicolas of Cusa's *De Pace Fidei* (1453) marks an
important step towards a more comprehensive, Christian-humanist
conception of toleration, though in the conversations among
representatives of different faiths his core idea of "one
religion in various rites" remains a Catholic one. Still, the
search for common elements is a central, increasingly important topic
in toleration discourses. This is much further developed in Erasmus of
Rotterdam's humanist idea of a possible religious unity based on
a reduced core faith, trying to avoid religious strife about what
Erasmus saw as non-essential questions of faith
(*adiaphora*).



In contrast with this "irenic" humanist approach, Luther
defended the protestant idea of the individual conscience bound only
to the word of God, which marks the limits of the authority of the
church as well as of the secular powers of the state (Luther 1523).
The traditional arguments of free conscience and of the two kingdoms
were radicalized in this period. The protestant humanist Sebastian
Castellio (1554) attacks the intolerance of both Catholic and
Calvinist practices and argues for the freedom of conscience and
reason as prerequisites of true faith. In this period, decisive
elements of early modern toleration discourse were formed: the
distinction between church authority and individual religious
conscience on the one hand and the separation of religious and secular
authority on the other.



Jean Bodin's work is important for the further development of
modern ideas of toleration in two ways. In his *Six Books of a
Commonweal* (1576), he develops a purely political justification
of toleration, following the thought of the so-called
*Politiques*, whose main concern was the stability of the
state. For them, the preservation of political sovereignty took
primacy over the preservation of religious unity, and toleration was
recommended as a superior policy in a situation of religious plurality
and strife. This, however, does not amount to the (late modern) idea
of a fully secular state with general religious liberty. More radical
still is Bodin's religious-philosophical work on the
*Colloquium of the Seven* (1593), a discourse among
representatives of different faiths who disagree about fundamental
religious and metaphysical issues. For the first time in the tradition
of religious discourse, in Bodin's work there is no dominant
position, no obvious winners or losers. The agreement that the
participants in the conversation find is based on respect for the
others and on the insight that religious differences, even though they
can be meaningfully discussed, cannot be resolved in a philosophical
discourse by means of reason alone. Religious plurality is seen here
as an enduring predicament of finite and historically situated human
beings, not as a state to be overcome by the victory of the one and
only true faith.



Marked by bitter religious conflicts, the 17th century
brought forth a number of toleration theories, among them three
paradigmatic classics: Baruch de Spinoza's *Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus* (1670), Pierre Bayle's *Commentaire
Philosophique* (1686) and John Locke's *A Letter
Concerning Toleration* (1689). In his historical critique of
biblical religions Spinoza locates their core in the virtues of
justice and love and separates it from both contested religious dogmas
and from the philosophical search for truth. The state has the task of
realizing peace and justice, thus it has the right to regulate the
external exercise of religion. The natural right to freedom of thought
and judgment and to "inner" religion cannot, however, be
entrusted to the state; here political authority finds the factual
limits of its power.



Bayle's *Commentaire* is the most comprehensive attempt
to refute the arguments for the duty of intolerance that go back to
Augustine (and especially his interpretation of the parable
"compel them to come in," where the master orders his
servants to force those who were invited to the prepared supper but
did not attend to come in; see Luke 14, 15ff.). In his elaborate
argument against the use of force in matters of religion, Bayle does
not primarily take recourse to the idea that religious conscience must
not and cannot be forced, for he was aware of the powerful Augustinian
arguments against both points (cf. Forst 2008 and Kilcullen 1988).
Rather, Bayle argued that there is a "natural light" of
practical reason revealing certain moral truths to every sincere
person, regardless of his or her faith, even including atheists. And
such principles of moral respect and of reciprocity cannot be trumped
by religious truths, according to Bayle, for reasonable religious
faith is aware that ultimately it is based on personal faith and
trust, not on apprehensions of objective truth. This has often been
seen as a skeptical argument, yet this is not what Bayle intended;
what he suggested, rather, was that the truths of religion are of a
different epistemological character than truths arrived at by the use
of reason alone. Connecting moral and epistemological arguments in
this way, Bayle was the first thinker to try to develop a universally
valid argument for toleration, one that implied universal toleration
of persons of different faiths as well as of those seen as lacking any
faith.



In important respects, this is a more radical theory than the (much
more popular and influential) one developed by Locke, who
distinguishes between state and church in an early liberal perspective
of natural individual rights. While it is the duty of the state to
secure the "civil interests" of its citizens, the
"care of the soul" cannot be its business, this being a
matter between the individual and God to whom alone one is responsible
in this regard. Hence there is a God-given, inalienable right to the
free exercise of religion. Churches are no more than voluntary
associations without any right to use force within a legitimate
political order based on the consent of the governed. Locke draws the
limits of toleration where a religion does not accept its proper place
in civil society (such as Catholicism, in Locke's eyes) as well
as where atheists deny any higher moral authority and therefore
destroy the basis of social order.



In the 18th century, the conception of a secular state with
an independent basis of authority and the distinction between the
roles of citizen and believer in a certain faith were further
developed, even though Locke's thought that a stable political
order did require some common religious basis persisted (with a few
exceptions, such as the French materialists). In the course of the
American and the French Revolutions a basic "natural"
right to religious liberty was recognized, even though the
interpretations of what kind of religious dissent could be tolerated
differed.



Thinkers of the French Enlightenment argued for toleration on various
grounds and, as in Bodin, there was a difference between a focus on
political stability and a focus on religious coexistence. In his
*On the Spirit of the Laws* (1748), Montesquieu argues for the
toleration of different religions for the purpose of preserving
political unity and peace, yet he warns that there is a limit to the
acceptance of new religions or changes to the dominant one, given the
connection between a constitution and the morality and habits of a
people. In his *Persian Letters* (1721), however, he had
developed a more comprehensive theory of religious pluralism. The
difference between the two perspectives--political and
inter-religious--is even more notable in Jean-Jacques
Rousseau's writings. In his *Social Contract* (1762), he
tries to overcome religious strife and intolerance by
institutionalizing a "civic religion" that must be shared
by all, while in his *Emile* (1762) he argues for the primacy
of individual conscience as well as for the aim of a non-dogmatic
"natural religion."



The idea of a "religion of reason" as an alternative to
established religions for the sake of overcoming the quarrels between
them was typical for the Enlightenment, and is found in thinkers such
as Voltaire, Diderot and Kant. In his parable of the rings (which goes
back to medieval precursors) in the play *Nathan the Wise*
(1779), G. E. Lessing offers a powerful image for the peaceful
competition of established religions that both underlines their common
ancestry as well as their differences due to multiple historical
traditions of faith. Since there is no objective proof as to their
truth for the time being, they are called upon to deliver such proof
by acting morally and harmoniously until the end of time.



John Stuart Mill's *On Liberty* (1859) marks the
transition to a modern conception of toleration, one that is no longer
occupied with the question of religious harmony and does not restrict
the issue of toleration to religious differences. In Mill's
eyes, in modern society toleration is also required to cope with other
forms of irreconcilable cultural, social and political plurality. Mill
offers three main arguments for toleration. According to his
"harm principle," the exercise of political or social
power is only legitimate if necessary to prevent serious harm done to
one person by another, not to enforce some idea of the good in a
paternalistic manner. Toleration towards opinions is justified by the
utilitarian consideration that not just true, but also false opinions
lead to productive social learning processes. Finally, toleration
towards unusual "experiments of living" is justified in a
romantic way (following Wilhelm von Humboldt), stressing the values of
individuality and originality.



The story of toleration would have to be continued after Mill up to
the present, yet this short overview might suffice to draw attention
to the long and complex history of the concept and to the many forms
it took as well as the different justifications offered for it. Seen
historically, toleration has been many things: An exercise of love for
the other who errs, a strategy of preserving power by offering some
form of freedom to minorities, a term for the peaceful coexistence of
different faiths who share a common core, another word for the respect
for individual liberty, a postulate of practical reason, or the
ethical promise of a productive pluralistic society.


## 4. Justifying Toleration



Many of the systematic arguments for toleration--be they
religious, pragmatic, moral or epistemological--can be used as a
justification for more than one of the conceptions of toleration
mentioned above (section 2). The classic argument for freedom of
conscience, for example, has been used to justify arrangements
according to the "permission conception" as well as the
"respect conception." Generally speaking, relations of
toleration are hierarchically ordered according to the first
conception, quite unstable according to the conception of
"coexistence," while the "esteem conception"
is the most demanding in terms of the kind of mutual appreciation
between the tolerating parties. In each case, the limits of toleration
seem either arbitrary or too narrow, as in the esteem conception,
which only allows toleration of those beliefs and practices that can
be ethically valued.



Accordingly, in current philosophical discussions of toleration in
multicultural, modern societies, the "respect conception"
is often seen as the most appropriate and promising. Yet in these
discussions, toleration as "respect" can be justified in
different ways. An ethical-liberal, neo-Lockean justification argues
that respect is owed to individuals as personally and ethically
autonomous beings with the capacity to choose, possibly revise and
realize an individual conception of the good. This capacity is to be
respected and furthered because it is seen as a necessary (though not
sufficient) condition for attaining the good life (cf. Kymlicka 1995).
Hence the argument presupposes a specific thesis about the good
life--i.e., that only an autonomously chosen way of life can be a
good life--which can, however, reasonably be questioned. One may
doubt whether such a way of life will necessarily be subjectively more
fulfilling or objectively more valuable than one adopted in a more
traditional way, without the presence of a range of options to choose
from. Apart from that, the ethical-liberal theory could lead to a
perfectionist justification of policies designed to further individual
autonomy that could have a paternalistic character and lack toleration
for non-liberal ways of life. In other words, there is the danger of
an insufficient distinction between the components of objection and
rejection mentioned above (section 1).



Thus, an alternative, neo-Baylean justification of the respect
conception seeks to avoid a particular conception of the good life,
relying instead on the discursive principle of justification which
says that every norm that is to be binding for a plurality of persons,
especially norms that are the basis of legal coercion, must be
justifiable with reasons that are reciprocally acceptable to all
affected as free and equal persons. Such persons have a basic
"right to justification" (Forst 2012a) which gives them
the power to reject one-sided ethical or religious justifications for
general norms. For a complete argument for toleration, however, this
normative component has to be accompanied by an epistemological
component which says that ethical or religious reasons, if
reciprocally contested, cannot be sufficient to justify the exercise
of force, since their validation depends on a particular faith that
can reasonably be rejected by others who do not share it; its validity
reaches into a realm "beyond reason," as Bayle said (see
also similar arguments by Rawls 1993, ch. 2, and Larmore 1996, ch. 7).
Thus toleration consists of the insight that reasons of ethical
*objection*, even if deeply held, cannot be valid as general
reasons of *rejection* so long as they are reciprocally
rejectable as belonging to a conception of the good or true way of
life that is not and need not be shareable. While such a distinction
between ethical reasons for objection and stronger, morally
justifiable reasons for rejection tries to overcome the "paradox
of moral tolerance" (see section 1 above), the "paradox of
drawing the limits" would be solved by seeing as tolerable all
such views or practices that do not violate the principle of
justification itself (see Forst 2013).



With such a reflexive turn in the debate about toleration, a number of
questions arise as to the alleged superior validity of the principle
of justification and the plausibility of a neo-Baylean epistemology
distinguishing between faith and knowledge. Can there be an impartial
justification that is not in the same way a "party" to the
contest of ethical truths and world-views? Might there be the
possibility, using a phrase John Rawls (1993) coined in the context of
his theory of justice, of a "tolerant" theory of
toleration that is at the same time substantive enough to ground and
limit toleration?


## 5. The Politics of Toleration



Any concrete use of the concept of toleration is always situated in
particular contexts of normative and political conflict, especially in
societies that are transforming towards increased religious, ethical
and cultural pluralism - even more so when societies are marked
by an increased awareness of such pluralism, with some cultural groups
raising new claims for recognition and others looking at their
co-citizens with suspicion, despite having lived together for some
time in the past. These social conflicts always involve group-based
claims for recognition, both in the legal and in the social sphere
(see generally Patten 2014, Galeotti 2002). Contemporary debate has
focused on questions of respecting particular religious practices and
beliefs, ranging from certain manners of dress, including the burka,
to certain demands to be free from blasphemy and religious insults
(Laborde 2008, Newey 2013, Nussbaum 2012, Leiter 2014, Taylor and
Stepan 2014, Modood 2013, Forst 2013, ch. 12). The general questions
raised here include: What is special about religious as opposed to
other cultural identities (Laborde and Bardon 2017)? When is equal
respect called for and what exactly does it imply with respect to, for
example, norms of gender equality (see Okin et al. 1999, Song 2007)?
What role do past injustices play in weighing claims for recognition,
and how much room can there be for autonomous forms of life in a
deeply pluralistic society (Tully 1995, Williams 2000)?



Other connected and intensely debated issues of toleration include
free speech and "hate speech," (Butler 1997, Waldron 2012,
Gerstenfeld 2013) as well as the ways in which new forms of digital
communication change the nature of social and political discourse
(Barnett 2007).



Finally, in light of Goethe's remark that to tolerate also means
to insult, those working from the perspective of a critical theory of
toleration discuss how power can be exercised not only by denying
toleration but also by disciplining when granting toleration (Brown
2006, Brown and Forst 2014). As much as a politics of toleration aims
to express mutual respect, it also involves disagreement, mutual
criticism, and rejection. We still face the challenge of examining the
grounds and forms of a politics of toleration as an emancipatory form
of politics.