Tolerance: how far, and decided by whom?
Nobody defends a tolerance without limit, and nobody defends its absence. The whole debate bears on where the limit lies and on the authority that sets it.
Tolerating is not approving
Tolerance presupposes a disagreement: one does not tolerate what one approves of, one approves of it. That is a useful distinction, because it shows that tolerance has a real cost for the one who exercises it, and that it is not indifference.
This distinction clears up common misunderstandings. Asking someone to tolerate a practice is not asking them to find it good, and the reverse is also true: refusing to approve is not equivalent to refusing to tolerate. Many disputes turn on that confusion.
It also has a political consequence: a tolerant society is not a society of agreement, but a society in which disagreement does not entail prohibition. It is a more demanding regime than it seems, since it requires putting up with what one disapproves of.
The problem of the limit
Karl Popper formulated the central difficulty under the name of the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance also protects those who want to abolish tolerance, and ends up destroying itself. In the opposite direction, too broad a limit allows any practice to be set aside by declaring it threatening.
There is no automatic criterion for placing that limit, and that is what makes the subject politically charged. The usual criteria are harm caused to others, reciprocity and constraint exercised on third parties, but their application to a concrete case remains debated.
The harm criterion and its difficulties
The most widespread criterion, in the tradition of John Stuart Mill, holds that a liberty should be limited only to avoid harm to others. It has the advantage of being clear and the drawback of placing all the weight on the definition of harm.
Depending on whether one includes only material injury, or also offence, damage to an identity, or diffuse harm to a social climate, the same criterion produces opposite conclusions. It is there, and not on the principle, that the real disagreement lies.
Who decides, and by what procedure
The second question is as important as the first. A limit set by law, by a judge, by a profession or by social custom has neither the same stability nor the same routes of challenge. Two people who agree on where the limit lies may disagree about the authority legitimate to set it.
That question is often the most decisive in practice. A limit set by law is debated and revisable; a limit set by social custom is more shifting and less contestable, for want of a body to appeal to.
What this implies for situating oneself
A questionnaire that asks about tolerance must separate the two planes. Asking whether one accepts a given practice measures a position; asking who should decide measures something else, and the two answers combined describe a person far better than either alone.
The test to apply to yourself is simple: for a practice you disapprove of, could you say on what conditions you would accept that it remain permitted? An answer to that question is worth more than any declaration of tolerance.
Key points
Tolerating presupposes a disagreement: it is neither approving nor being indifferent.
The paradox of tolerance forbids an absent limit as much as too broad a one, without supplying an automatic criterion.
The harm criterion shifts the whole debate onto the definition of harm.
Where the limit lies and who sets it are two distinct questions.
This article describes documented mechanisms and disagreements. It recommends no position, no party and no vote, and commits to no reading other than that of the work it cites.
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