The Intolerance of Tolerance

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In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: The new view of tolerance is quite different. Under the impact of postmodern epistemology, about which I’ll say more in a moment, people are more likely to be thought tolerant if they do not hold strong views. The reason for this is many thinkers in our world are pretty certain the notion of objective truth is incoherent. If there is no objective truth to which all people owe allegiance, precisely because it is intrinsically objective, then strong opinions are no more than strong preferences for a particular version of what we call truth. Fourthly, precisely because it did not depend on revelation, except what you can discover to be revelation, it became methodologically rigorous. It becomes the foundation for what we mean by modern science. It becomes methodologically rigorous. All of this, until very recently, still dominates all our universities. So if you write a dissertation on some topic the issue of the grade you get or whether or not you pass or fail will turn, perhaps, not even quite as much on your conclusions as on the rigor of the methodology you apply to the task. With time, of course, that discipline may revise the methods or reanalyze the foundations. It’s not as if everything is set in concrete. Nevertheless, methodologically, epistemologically, that’s how Western thought has developed. That’s how science has, in large part, developed. There are lots of little kinks that are put in.

That is to say, it argues very strongly that our foundations are themselves, human creations and, therefore, not secure. Methodologically, though there are rules that can be applied, they are themselves, creations that are tied to the subjective creations of certain approaches and certain kinds of foundations, and they have no objective status themselves.It’s more like we ask the question of a text, but the answer we hear … whether it’s right or wrong or indifferent, it’s what we hear … subtly shapes us so we’re now slightly different so when we approach it the next time around we’re just a bit different and ask slightly different things with slightly different sets of tolerances, so we go around and around in what came to be called the hermeneutical circle. Popper, Karl. "chapter 7, note 4". The Open Society and Its Enemies. Vol.1. ISBN 978-0-691-21206-7. OCLC 1193010976. With Popper, not to manipulate is more important than truth. With Foucault, manipulation is inevitable in human communication, but in any case, there is no objective truth accessible to us. Tolerance in such a rÈgime must come at the expense of truth, and those who disagree with it must be crushed because they’re intolerant. There’s the irony. Whether you think that’s good logic or not is irrelevant. He did, and he tied it to an entire structure of argumentation that is now entirely obsolete and we needn’t pursue here. The point is it begins with a finite “I.” It does not begin with God and the reservoir of omniscience. It begins with a finite “I.”

We argue that neither strategy truly captures tolerance, because in both prejudice remains fundamental to the measurement of tolerance. Footnote 2 Thus, regardless of whether dislike is assumed, as in the unpopular group strategy, or measured, as in the least liked approach, empirical findings actually reflect respondents’ attitudes towards an out-group. I circulated them to everybody, and then we got all the people together and we criticized each other’s papers for days. We took notes on all of this, and we revised them all and out popped another book. We did this five times over ten years … five books. It was very interesting. It was interesting just watching people come into a room.

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In addition to questions about tolerance, our survey includes a number of questions associated with prejudice, such as attitudes towards immigrants and homosexuals. We include these so that we can assess whether our items capture something distinct from prejudice. These additional items come from established cross-national surveys and have been validated in previous empirical research. We also ask respondents about their political preferences and voting behavior. As previously mentioned, the survey also includes demographic questions. For the same reason we cannot speak anymore of truth in ahistorical universal terms under postmodernism. Part of the irony is where as modernism was drifting toward increasing philosophical materialism, as far as I can see, the new postmodernism is more interested in this vague thing called spirituality, with both good and bad results. It’s far more interested in alternative realities than merely the physical world, but it is open to every kookish thing under the sun, too. Oberdiek, Hans (2001). Tolerance: Between Forbearance and Acceptance. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p.vi. ISBN 978-0-8476-8785-5. OCLC 45604024.

I shall argue that although a few things can be said in its favor, the notion of tolerance has changed, and the contemporary tolerance is intrinsically intolerant and is blind to its own shortcomings because it erroneously thinks it holds the moral high ground. It does not. Worse, this tolerance is, perhaps, socially dangerous and is certainly intellectually debilitating. There are better structures of thought for achieving the desired ends. That means the reason for being tolerant is not that we cannot know which ring is magic, nor the best way to find out which ring is magic is by free discussion, but rather since all the rings are equally magic or non-magic, it is irresponsible to suggest any of the rings is merely imitation and without magical power. We must be tolerant not because we cannot distinguish the right path from the wrong path but because each path is equally right. It’s extra rules that are put in, extra foundations that we’ve come to discover, and we’re moving as a body to new insights and deeper grasps. The model is still from the hard sciences. It’s very difficult for somebody to get a hearing who comes along and says, “Good grief. This is a really silly thing. It’s not an advance at all. It’s a retrograde step. Very technically impressive, but at the end of the day, it butchers the text and should be thrown out forthwith.” Walsham, Alexandra (12 October 2017). "Toleration, Pluralism, and Coexistence: The Ambivalent Legacies of the Reformation". Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte - Archive for Reformation History. 108 (1): 181–190. doi: 10.14315/arg-2017-0121. ISSN 2198-0489. S2CID 148602448.Our critique of this strand of research is methodological. By incorporating prejudice into the measurement of tolerance, these previous studies do not analyze attitudes about the existence of diversity nor do they investigate an “orientation toward groups outside of one’s own” (Dunn et al. 2009:284). Instead, they measure a willingness to accept specific groups as neighbors, which certainly speaks to how respondents feel about these groups and not diversity in general. Measuring attitudes towards a multitude of groups does not change this; these indices only tell us the extent to which one is prejudiced—in other words, if one is prejudiced towards one, two, or many, but always a subsample of out-groups. In summary, this conceptualization defines tolerance as a phenomenon distinct from prejudice and emphasizes reactions to diversity in all forms. However, previous research from this tradition has not measured tolerance in a way that is consistent with that definition. 2.3 Other Concerns: Abstraction and Multidimensionality Laursen, John Christian; Nederman, Cary, eds. (1997). Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration Before the Enlightenment. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-3331-5. I begin by stipulating I am not talking about every form of tolerance; rather the meaning of tolerance has changed in the last three decades or so and it is this new view of tolerance that must be challenged. Eventually, they take the matter up with Nathan the Wise, who patiently listens to their arguments and then offers his famous judgment. “Let each think his own ring is the true and magic one, and in the meantime, show forth gentleness and heartfelt tolerance toward the others.”

Bobo, L., & Licari, F. C. (1989). Education a

The reason why a lot of Christians, for example, were excluded from university education was exactly the same that you would exclude someone from university education in a science faculty in the West. If despite spectacular GPAs and spectacular test scores and all the rest, he said, “I do have to tell you, I don’t believe in the atomic theory of matter” he’s not going to get into a chemistry course in the Western world. It’s not going to happen. You’re going to wonder what sort of kook this is. The expression plausibility structure was coined by sociologist Peter Berger in his book, The Heretical Imperative. He uses it to refer to structures of thought widely and almost unquestioningly accepted throughout the culture. One of his arguments is that in tight monolithic cultures, like Japan, the reigning plausibility structures may be enormously complex because so many people share so many things in common. As a result, there may be many stances that are widely assumed, more or less unquestioned. Both these concepts contain the idea of alterity—the state of otherness. [3] Additional choices of how to respond to the "other," beyond toleration, exist. Therefore, in some instances, toleration has been seen as "a flawed virtue" because it concerns acceptance of things that were better overcome. [3] Toleration cannot, therefore, be defined as a universal good, and many of its applications and uses remain contested. [3] :2 Tolerance is often invoked as something to which individuals and societies should aspire, especially given diversity, in all its forms, is increasingly a feature of contemporary democracies. When tensions arise, some leaders call for a “greater tolerance” of particular groups or encourage general efforts to become “a more tolerant society.” For example, in 2004, then Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan said, “Tolerance, inter-cultural dialogue and respect for diversity are more essential than ever in a world where peoples are becoming more and more closely interconnected” (United Nations 2004). According to UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, “Tolerance is an act of humanity, which we must nurture and enact each in our own lives every day, to rejoice in the diversity that makes us strong and the values that bring us together” (UNESCO 1996). Yet, what does this mean in practice? That those who hold prejudicial attitudes should fight against their dislike of particular out-groups? That everyone should respect others’ values or attitudes even when they are contrary to their own? That society should always value or embrace diversity? Leaders rarely give answers to these questions. Unfortunately, science does not provide much guidance either.