Stephen Moriarty
On Tolerance
(I believe that J S Mill wrote an essay of this title. I haven’t read it. What I am trying to do here is set out my own thoughts.)
Religious tolerance is really agnosticism or atheism. If I believe that members of another faith do not take their religion seriously, then I may feel I have the luxury of granting them the right to go through the motions of their religion, safe in the knowledge that they will allow me to go through the motions of mine. If I suspect that they take their religion seriously, I would be very brave as an atheist or agnostic to allow them to proselytise successfully if their religion contains any indication that they have a tendency to treat non-believers as inferiors. If I take my own religion seriously, and it also contains some element of disdain for non-believers, I would be only too convinced of the folly and danger of so doing. Some religions may forbid action to prevent such proselytisation by other religions, but it behoves politicians to protect all their citizens, martyrs or not. We must conclude that it is not tolerance that brings religious peace, but rather that religious peace brings tolerance, wisely or no.
It must be in the minds of most liberals that contact with other religions breeds atheism or agnosticism en soi. We must ask, however, does contact between religion and agnosticism or atheism have a similar result, or might it be that, in this case, religion is the beneficiary? Following commandments from faith and fear of god is one way of organising society, and it may appear to some to have advantages over “tolerance”, secular-law, free-love and market-forces. Allowing religious proselytisation, then, can only be done with the knowledge that religion may win and tolerance may lose.
Secular tolerance is sometimes a regrettable necessity. It may be politic, but it is hardly a virtue. I may, for the sake of argument, disapprove of certain lifestyles or businesses, not because of the harm people do to themselves – that is none of my business – but rather because of their tendency to drag other people down into the gutter with them (this is discours indirect libre!). I might decide to tolerate people like this because it is impossible to frame and/or enforce laws that interrupt their lifestyles without encroaching on the liberties of other people, and I might frequently make this argument; but I would never renounce my right to say exactly what I think of these people. We do not need freedom of speech to enjoy the dubious right to be tolerated, we need it so that we can explain our disapproval. In this way we might persuade, and thus avoid legislation, or worse. Tolerance, then, is an act rather than an attitude, except when it refers to a willingness to allow other people the maximum of individual self-determination consistent with the rights of others. This kind of tolerance, however, is a logical consequence of “liberty”.
The only consistent position for the attitudinally-tolerant (as opposed to people who speak their minds) is complete laissez-faire. If one is willing to concede that one may be wrong about something and that the other fellow may be right, then why not tolerate murderers and bank-robbers? The moment one admits that there are limits to tolerance, that law is sometimes necessary (and surely nearly everyone can agree that certain actions are beyond the Pale) the concept becomes devoid of virtue: one tolerates because one doesn’t feel sufficiently certain that it is wrong, or because it is not very wrong (when we might feel that it is a matter of “give and take”), or because there is no practical alternative.
This “wrongness” must include a judgment as to whether something poses a threat to oneself or one’s loved-ones. One cannot be obliged to tolerate a mortal-danger or a danger to one’s liberties. This may limit one’s assessment of the scope of individual self-determination, if one sees mortal-danger in, for instance, a refusal to do National Service, or in an adherence to a disloyal ideology. Neither can we expect other people to tolerate something they are too weak to prevent; instead we should join cause to defend the rights of all.
In conclusion: “tolerance” is an unhelpful idea because it is usually a misnomer for something else – the consequences of liberty or reason, or of weakness.
