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A Value Pluralist Defense of Toleration

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Abstract

In situations where we ought to tolerate what we morally disapprove of we are faced with the following moral conflict: we ought to interfere with X, we ought to tolerate X, we can do either, but we cannot do both. And the aim of this paper is to clarify the relationship between toleration as a value commitment and value pluralist and value monist approaches to moral conflict. Firstly, value monists side-step the moral conflict at the heart of toleration. Nonetheless, secondly, it is not the case that toleration as a value commitment (or its pre-eminence among values) is entailed by value pluralism. Rather, the value pluralist line of argument that can be defended is that toleration is simply one value among others, that there is no general rule showing that it has priority over other values, but also that it cannot be excluded altogether as a value.

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Notes

  1. Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, “The Range of Toleration: From Toleration as Recognition Back to Disrespectful Tolerance,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 41(2015): 93–110.

  2. Andrew Jason Cohen, “What Toleration Is,” Ethics, 115 (2004): 68–95, 78–9.

  3. David Heyd, “Introduction,” in David Heyd (ed.) Toleration: An Elusive Virtue (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 3–17, 4.

  4. Susan Mendus, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1989), 8.

  5. Peter Balint, “The Importance of Racial Tolerance for Anti-racism,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39 (2016), 16–32

  6. Catriona McKinnon, Toleration: A Critical Introduction (London: Routledge, 2006), 14.

  7. John Horton, “Why the Traditional Conception of Toleration Still Matters,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 14 (2011), 289–305, 299.

  8. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, in John Gray (ed.) On Liberty and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991 [1861]); John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Gertrude Himmelfarb (ed.) (London: Penguin, 1989 [1859]).

  9. Heyd, “Introduction”; Thomas Scanlon, “The Difficulty of Tolerance,” in David Heyd (ed.) Toleration: An Elusive Virtue (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 226–39; Rainer Forst, “Toleration, Justice and Reason,” in Catriona Mckinnon and Dario Castiglione (eds.) The Culture of Toleration in Diverse Societies: Reasonable Tolerance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 71–85.

  10. Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Henry Hardy (ed.) Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004a [1958]), 166–217; Isaiah Berlin, “From Hope and Fear Set Free,” in Henry Hardy (ed.) Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004b [1964]), 252–79; Isaiah Berlin and Bernard Williams, “Pluralism and Liberalism: A reply,” Political Studies, XLI (1994), 306–09; Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); William A. Galston, Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); William A. Galston, “Value Pluralism and Political Liberalism,” in Verna Gehring and William A. Galston (eds.) Philosophical Dimensions of Public Policy (New York: Routledge, 2017 [2002]), 7–13; William A. Galston, The Practice of Liberal Pluralism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  11. David (D. D.) Raphael, “The Intolerable,” in Susan Mendus (ed.) Justifying Toleration: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 137–53, 139; see also John Horton, “Toleration as a Virtue,” in David Heyd (ed.) Toleration: An Elusive Virtue (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 28–43, 33.

  12. Thomas Nagel, “The Fragmentation of Value,” in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979 [1977]), 128–41, 129–30.

  13. Vincent Twomey, “Ordinary Citizens are Being Intimidated into Voting ‘Yes’ to Same-sex Marriage,” The Irish Times, 1 May (2015).

  14. See Mendus, Toleration, 3–5.

  15. David De La Croix and Fabio Mariana, “From Polygyny to Serial Monogamy: A Unified Theory of Marriage Institutions,” Review of Economic Studies, 82 (2015), 565–607; Amy Ickowitz and Lisa Mohanty, “Why Would She? Polygyny and Women’s Welfare in Ghana,” Feminist Economics, 21 (2015), 77–104; Nicola Iturriaga and Abigail C. Saguy, “‘I Would Never Want to be an Only Wife:’ The Role of Discursive Networks and Post-Feminist Discourse in Reframing Polygamy,” Social Problems, 64 (2017), 333–350.

  16. Joel Feinberg, “The child’s right to an open future,” in William Aiken and Hugh La Follette (eds.) Whose Child? (Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams and Co, 1980), 124–53; Mathew Clayton, Justice and Legitimacy in Upbringing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Allyn Fives, Evaluating Parental Power: An Exercise in Pluralist Political Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017).

  17. McKinnon, Toleration, 32.

  18. Joseph Raz, The Authority of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009 [1979]), p. 17.

  19. Raz, The Morality of Freedom, p. 58.

  20. Raz, The Morality of Freedom, p. 58.

  21. Raz, The Authority of Law, p. 22

  22. Raphael, “The Intolerable,” 139.

  23. See Horton, “Toleration as a Virtue,” 33.

  24. See Heyd, “Introduction,” 4.

  25. See Mendus, Toleration.

  26. See James Bohman, “Reflexive Toleration in a Deliberative Democracy,” in Catriona Mckinnon and Dario Castiglione (eds.) The Culture of Toleration in Diverse Societies: Reasonable Tolerance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 111–31.

  27. See Galeotti, “The Range of Toleration.”

  28. See Emanuela Ceva, “Why Toleration Is Not the Appropriate Response to Dissenting Minorities’ Claims,” European Journal of Philosophy, 23 (2012), 633–51.

  29. Bernard Williams, “Tolerating the Intolerable,” in Adrian W. Moore (ed.) Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006 [2000]), 126–34, 127.

  30. Mill, Utilitarianism, 137.

  31. Mill, On Liberty, 68, 70.

  32. Mill, On Liberty, 69.

  33. Mill, On Liberty, 121.

  34. Mill, On Liberty, 120.

  35. Mill, On Liberty, 139.

  36. Mill, On Liberty, 122.

  37. Mill, On Liberty, 120, 127.

  38. Mill, On Liberty, 153. See Gordon Graham, “Tolerance, Pluralism, and Relativism,” in David Heyd (ed.) Toleration: An Elusive Virtue (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 44–59.

  39. Mendus, Toleration, 56.

  40. Mill, On Liberty, 71.

  41. Mill, On Liberty, 120; emphasis added.

  42. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Herbert J. Paton, third edition (London: Hutchinson, 1956 [1785]), § 66–7.

  43. Cohen, “What Toleration Is,” 81.

  44. Forst, “Toleration, Justice and Reason,” 81; emphasis in original. See also Heyd, “Introduction,” 11–12; Scanlon, “The Difficulty of Tolerance,” 231.

  45. Mendus, Toleration, 107. See also Bernard Williams, “Toleration: A Political or Moral Question?” in Geoffrey Hawthorn (ed.) In the Beginning was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005 [1996]), 128–38, 138.

  46. See Jeremy Waldron, “Toleration and Reasonableness,” in Catriona McKinnon and Dario Castiglione (eds.) The Culture of Toleration in Diverse Societies: Reasonable Tolerance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 13–37, 30.

  47. Alasdair MacIntyre, “The Politics of Toleration,” in Ethics and Politics: Selected Essays, Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006 [1999]), 205–23, 222.

  48. Judith N. Shklar, The Faces of Injustice (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 116.

  49. Berlin, “Two Concepts,” 213–4.

  50. Berlin, “From Hope and Fear Set Free,” 32.

  51. Berlin, “Two Concepts,” 214.

  52. Berlin, “Two Concepts,” 173.

  53. See John Kekes, The Morality of Pluralism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 19.

  54. Bernard Williams, “Conflict of Values,” in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981 [1979]), 71–82, 80, and Bernard Williams, “Ethical Consistency,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 39 (1965), 103–24, 117.

  55. Peter Jones, “Toleration, Value-pluralism, and the Fact of Pluralism,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 9 (2006), 189–210, 194.

  56. John Gray, Isaiah Berlin: An Interpretation Of His Thought, second edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013 [1996]), 202.

  57. Berlin and Williams, “Pluralism and Liberalism,” 307.

  58. Galston, The Practice of Liberal Pluralism, 12.

  59. Berlin, “Two Concepts,” 212.

  60. Mendus, Toleration, 13.

  61. McKinnon, Toleration, 57.

  62. Galston, The Practice of Liberal Pluralism, 17–18.

  63. Galston, The Practice of Liberal Pluralism, 20.

  64. Galston, Liberal Pluralism, 38.

  65. Galston, The Practice of Liberal Pluralism, 21.

  66. Galston, Liberal Pluralism, 28n1.

  67. Galston, The Practice of Liberal Pluralism, 65, 69.

  68. Galston, “Value Pluralism and Political Liberalism,” 9.

  69. Galston, Liberal Pluralism, 25.

  70. Galston, Liberal Pluralism, 37.

  71. Galston, The Practice of Liberal Pluralism, 2; emphasis added.

  72. Galston, Liberal Pluralism, 9; emphasis added.

  73. Berlin, “Two Concepts,” 172, 213–4.

  74. Berlin, “Two Concepts,” 214.

  75. Gray, Isaiah Berlin, 202.

  76. Gray, Isaiah Berlin, 67, 202. See also John Gray, “Where Pluralists and Liberals Part Company,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 6 (1998), 17–36, 19.

  77. Gray, “Where Pluralists and Liberals Part Company,” 20.

  78. Gray, Isaiah Berlin, 67.

  79. Gray, “Where Pluralists and Liberals Part Company,” 24.

  80. See Allyn Fives, “The Freedom of Extremists: Pluralist and Non-pluralist Responses to Moral Conflict,” Philosophia, (2019), Available on line: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-018-0015-5.

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  1. School of Political Science and Sociology, National University of Ireland Galway, Galway, Republic of Ireland

    Allyn Fives

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Fives, A. A Value Pluralist Defense of Toleration. Philosophia 49, 235–254 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00217-2

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