Peter Balint on Toleration

Moving ‘Beyond Toleration’?

(Or: Is Toleration Despotic?)

The importance of moving ‘beyond toleration’ has become a catchcry of many contemporary writers and activists. Tariq Ramadan, for example, writes: ‘toleration is intellectual charity on the part of the powerful…and we must get beyond it. When standing on equal footing, one does not expect to be merely tolerated or grudgingly accepted: that others endure and ‘suffer’ one’s presence is inadequate for oneself and detrimental to them.’

This line of argument is not even particularly new. Over two centuries earlier Thomas Paine wrote that ‘toleration is not the opposite of intoleration, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms.’

This call to move ‘beyond toleration’ – what I will call the Despotism Challenge – is based on an understanding of toleration as forbearance. That is, it necessarily entails an objection to some aspect of a person or group, the power to hinder that person or group, and intentionally not doing so.  

This challenge to toleration is certainly appealing: wouldn’t it be good to live in a world where nobody objects to other people, nor has the power to negatively interfere in their affairs? 

But the Despotism Challenge faces a number of problems. First, it assumes toleration must always involve objection. But this is not true. To see why, let us look at our use of the adjective ‘tolerant’. Sometimes we may applaud someone for a particularly tolerant act – perhaps a parent not stopping their child going out ‘dressed like that’. In this case, there is clear objection and the power to do something about it. The toleration here is a form of forbearance.

But at other times, we use the adjective more generally. For example, the way we might describe a person, an institution (perhaps a university), or even a society as being very tolerant. In this second case, we do not normally mean there is a lot of objection not being acted upon, but that there is usually little or no objection at all – even if there remains the power to hinder. It is this general sense of toleration (in which objection is not a necessary feature) which best applies to liberal states and liberal societies.  Here toleration is not necessarily a type of forbearance, it will primarily involve indifference. To be clear, this is not to say objection is never present, just that it is not a necessary feature of a general understanding of toleration.  

The second problem with the Despotism Challenge is that forbearance tolerance (where objection is necessary) may on many occasions actually be normatively preferable to the alternatives. One of the implied (and sometimes explicitly stated) implications of the Despotism Challenge is that respect or recognition of difference is a much better alternative.

While perhaps this may be possible from the state or state-like institutions (although I argue against this elsewhere), how can we even make sense of this as a demand on individuals in a liberal society? If we accept the basic liberal ideal of letting people live as they wish as long as they don’t harm others, then such an ideal is deeply troubling. Surely what matters is that people respect each other’s rights regardless of their views about each other’s differences; in other words, they minimally engage in forbearance tolerance.

If the resect for difference alternative was achievable, then such a society would no longer be very diverse (the range of respectable differences is quite likely much narrower than that of tolerable differences), and it would be a society that did not take people’s beliefs very seriously. Of course, if diversity and freedom of belief do not matter and homogeneity is being aimed for, then perhaps this is a better alternative; but it is an alternative that does away with one of the most basic liberal ideals.

What about the state then? Tolerant states will mainly be indifferent to the ways of life of their citizenry, and when individuals or groups clearly want to harm others they should certainly be intolerant. But there are also many cases where the state should engage in forbearance tolerance. Groups that do not believe in the equal worth of individuals – whether they be racist, sexist or otherwise – clearly violate the liberal state’s values of justice. But the importance of freedom of conscience and of association would seem to give liberal states good reasons not to interfere, at least initially, with the activities of such groups. Once again, it is the practice of toleration that allows such freedom and diversity – even, or especially, of things many will find objectionable.

Contrary to the Despotism Challenge, toleration – in either form – is not despotic, nor need it be ‘moved beyond’. It is a vital minimum in the relations between citizens; and from a state-citizen perspective, it allows those who do not hold liberal values and practices the freedom to live their lives as they fit. If one thinks that these liberal freedoms matter, then it is not toleration that looks potentially despotic, but perhaps certain forms of respect.  

Dr Peter Balint is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at UNSW Canberra. His most recent work is Respecting Toleration: Traditional Liberalism and Contemporary Diversity (Oxford, 2017). In 2011 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Morrell Centre for Toleration.    

For too long we have been "passively tolerant"...

This is the first in what will be a new series of Blogs from the Morrell Centre for Toleration (it is written in a personal capacity).

The Morrell Centre for Toleration exists to “increase the philosophical and historical understanding an appreciation of toleration as an idea and practice”. In future Blog posts, I hope to alert readers to new literature and debates and to discuss issues related to this purpose. What prompts this Blog is the use of the concept of “toleration” by the Prime Minister followed by comments by the Home Secretary. I won’t be discussing the content of what they propose – though I have views about that, which may well follow in a separate piece – but rather their use of the term “toleration” and what they might mean.

David Cameron’s speech is not available in full, but he is reported as saying

For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. It’s often meant we have stood neutral between different values. And that’s helped foster a narrative of extremism and grievance. This government will conclusively turn the page on this failed approach. As the party of one nation, we will govern as one nation… That means actively promoting certain values. Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights regardless of race, gender or sexuality.

The first question is, what is a passively tolerant society? Presumably, it is not to be understood by reference to its opposite: an actively tolerant one. David Cameron seems to want less toleration, not more.

The first gloss offered – that we should do more than say as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone – does not help. The law, social norms, and other forms of regulation set out what citizens can expect the state and other citizens to tolerate (this is not an uncontroversial view of toleration).

I can wear a loud shirt in a built up area and expect others – not matter how much they disapprove – to tolerate my doing so. I can reprimand my child or my dog in public in some ways of which others might disapprove, but insofar as I keep within the law, I can expect to be tolerated. And that’s the point: if David Cameron wants to introduce new legislation, which he clearly does, what he will do is make more things subject to legal regulation.

Let us suppose that legislation is brought forward to allow so-called “banning orders” on organisations that seek to “radicalise” people. Stay within the law – be an organisation that is recognised as seeking to inform, but not to radicalise – and you’ll be “left alone”. Of course, in practice the law is likely to be vague and things will not be easy, but Mr Cameron cannot be suggesting that legal sanctions could simply fall on people who are accepted as “obeying the law” (of course, legal sanctions fall on many people who are in fact obeying the law, but are not believed to be or who it is convenient for the state to treat as if they are not, but that is another matter).

What, then, of the second gloss? This seems to be a version of the quip that a liberal is someone who does not take his/her own side in an argument. We have been neutral between values; we have not promoted our (right) values – freedom of speech and of worship, democracy, the rule of law, equal rights, and so on – and that this is what it is to be “passively tolerant”. What is more, such passive tolerance has left a space for “extremism and grievance”.

The connection to grievance is hard to see, but is there any merit in the claim that tolerance leads to neutrality when it comes to values; a neutrality that in turn leaves a vacuum in the public sphere that can be filled by extremism?

To tolerate something is roughly to forebear from interfering in some practice that one judges objectionable when one has the power to interfere. Nothing in that suggests that promoting freedom and democracy is inconsistent with being tolerant unless promoting those things interferes in practices that lie within the limits of toleration.

Is there any reason to believe that the promotion of those values threatens practices or ways of life that ought to be tolerated? Insisting on “equal rights regardless of race, gender or sexuality” might do if it was enforced as it reads, but this Government is not about to insist that the Catholic Church appoint women priests or, for that matter, that the Garrick Club allow women members.

Perhaps the feeling is that we have been reluctant to promote those values even when the threatened practice ought not to be tolerated. That we have “turned a blind eye” to practices such a female genital mutilation or domestic violence in certain communities. And, that this permissiveness has left space for others.

If so, this is a failure, but it is not a failure of tolerance. Some things ought not to be tolerated – many more things ought to be – and it is a matter of justice and democratic politics to decide where the boundaries lie. In a liberal democratic society, we ought to tolerate people whose beliefs we find deeply objectionable, but we ought not to tolerate it when they act in ways that are contrary to just and legitimate laws. Think what you like, but obey the law and the state should leave you alone.

Interestingly, sent into the media studios to explain David Cameron’s speech, the Home Secretary Theresa May explained that “this government will challenge those who seek to spread hatred and intolerance” and that we needed to be more positive about the values that unite us: “things like democracy,… a belief in tolerance for other people, equality, an acceptance of other people’s faiths and religions.”

For Theresa May, then – and I suspect for David Cameron – it is passivity (not being positive enough about liberal values) that is the failing. Tolerance is a virtue to be celebrated. One should take comfort in that, but at a time when across the world people are being killed for their beliefs, condemning “tolerance” – even if in an unintelligible phrase like “passive tolerance” – is dangerous.

That leaves the question of whether there is space for both tolerance and the Government’s understanding that being “positive” requires introducing new laws to control its citizens. That is something for another Blog once the proposed legislation is clearer.

Liam Shields on Anglo-American Fairness and the State of the Union

As an Englishman who has recently moved to the US, I am constantly confused by aspects of American life. For instance, I don’t understand tipping, I am always surprised when I am asked how I would like my hamburger cooked, and I am especially flummoxed by the US political system, which seems designed to make change impossible. Nevertheless, I believe I have stumbled on something we have in common, an ideal of fairness that is worthy of discussion.

In Barack Obama’s recent state of the union address he promised decisive action to address inequality. He promised to expand opportunity for more American families and to build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class.  “What I believe unites the people of this nation ... is the simple, profound belief in opportunity for all - the notion that if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead” he said. This idea is one that resonates far beyond the USA. Indeed, it is strikingly similar to how some Conservative members of the British government present their mission: as “rebuilding the economy for those who work hard and play by the rules”. The core idea is simple and fairly clear: Any citizen should secure a good standard of living if they work hard and obey the law. Let’s call this Our Ideal.

I believe ours is a sound ideal and if it were better realized in the US and UK they would be much fairer places. However, there are two aspects of Our Ideal that we may find somewhat surprising. First, Our Ideal is not robustly egalitarian since its realization is compatible with huge inequalities. Instead, it aims at making people sufficiently well-off. To illustrate this point, imagine Bert and Ernie. Bert earns a decent living as a nurse and Ernie is a stockbroker who earns one hundred times as much. Both work hard. Both obey the law. Both earn a decent living. Many egalitarians would find this inequality unfair, but it cannot be condemned by Our Ideal.

Second, though not robustly egalitarian it is an ideal of ‘equality of opportunity’. It specifies the obstacles (unwillingness to work hard or obey the law) that may legitimately obstruct citizens’ from obtaining some good (a decent standard of living). Citizens have an opportunity for that good since they can work hard and obey the law or not. The good is neither unachievable nor guaranteed. However, Our Ideal has very radical implications of which our politicians may not be aware.

In societies like ours there aren’t enough decent jobs for everyone who is qualified, let alone everyone who works hard and obeys the law. Instead, co-citizens compete with one another to secure jobs that are necessary for most of us to secure a decent standard of living. When there are more hard-working law-abiders than jobs, some of them inevitably miss out what Our Ideal states is rightly theirs. Our Ideal cannot easily be reconciled with this competitive model of job allocation.

Our Ideal requires a radically different type of economy; an economy in which either i) anyone can secure a well-paid job if they are law-abiding and hard-working or ii) there are significant unemployment benefits for hard-working law-abiders who can’t get work due to the market. I take it that the best route to realizing ‘Our Ideal’ is to ensure that people are in work rather than on welfare. If we are serious about ‘Our Ideal’ then there are at least two things we can do.

First, we need to ensure there are enough jobs for every hard-working law-abider. This requires an increase in the supply of jobs. To achieve this government could become an employer of last resort or make it easier for those in well-paid jobs to decrease their hours without sacrificing a decent wage. The following example provides some illustration. Some people in very well-paid jobs may prefer to have free time and work half the hours for half the pay. Another person, who would otherwise be out of work, would likely be willing to work the remaining hours. If every well-paid job was like this, and if individuals could be adequately trained, this proposal would effectively double those well-paid jobs. Second, these jobs must pay enough to meet the decent standard of living. This could be achieved by increasing the minimum wage or by reducing the costs of having a decent standard of living. Because purchasing power fluctuates, wages must keep up with inflation and the cost of a decent standard of living. Alternatively, tax credits or transfers for those paid less than the minimum wage would have the same effect.

There may be some pleasant side-effects of pursuing Our Ideal. Rather than competing with one another for jobs and a decent standard of life, depending for our success on others’ failure, we might view one another in a different way, and see our own success as compatible with, rather than opposed to, their success. For when there is a scarcity of jobs we view our fellow citizens as a threat, rather than a compliment, to our own good. This new relationship might help arrest growing alienation from politics and society in general, especially among young people.

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I draw on ideas in the following articles and books:
Paul Gomberg, How to Make Opportunity Equal: Race and Contributive Justice, 2007, Blackwell.
Julie Rose, "Money Does Not Guarantee Time: Discretionary Time as a Distinct Object of Distributive Justice." Journal of Political Philosophy (2013).
Peter Westen, "The concept of equal opportunity", Ethics 95.4 (1985): 837-850.


Dr Liam Shields is a Post-doctoral Researcher at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford Universit, working on a Spencer Funded Project on Equality of Opportunity in Education. Dr Shields also holds a faculty position in Politics at the University of Manchester, UK. He is an alumnus of the University of York, where he read for the MA in Political Philosophy (The Idea of Toleration) in 2008-9, funded by a scholarship from the C & JB Morrell Trust.

Liam Shields tweets at @PhilosopherLiam

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Anyone interested in applying for a Morrell Trust scholarship for MA studies at the University of York in 2014-15, should consult these pages:

http://www.york.ac.uk/politics/postgraduates/taught-courses/ma-in-political-philosophy/ma-pol-leg-toleration/

http://www.york.ac.uk/politics/postgraduates/postgraduatefunding/

Adam Fusco on Toleration and the flag over Belfast City Hall

On the 3^rd of December 2012 a vote was held by Belfast City Council to remove the union flag from the dome on top of its city hall. An amended vote was passed by a council majority of nationalists with the support of the non-aligned Alliance Party. A compromise was reached in line with the flag-flying policy at parliament buildings at Stormont – the home of the Northern Ireland assembly. The flag will be absent for the majority of the year, except to mark specific occasions such as the Queen’s birthday, as a gesture to unionists. This solution is one that connects to the philosophical ideal of toleration.

The flying of the union flag has been a long-standing controversy in Belfast, as one can imagine, even in the current post-conflict scenario, where religious identity still acts largely as a synonym for one’s political affiliation. The flag has been a permanent fixture on top of City Hall since its opening on its current site in 1906. But with demographic change in the city and a particularly well-fought election campaign on the part of the nationalist Sinn Féin (and a bad one by the Ulster Unionist Party), in 2011, for the first time nationalists outnumbered unionists on the council, with the non-aligned Alliance party holding the balance of power between the two.  This meant that a motion was inevitably going to be brought to council to see the union flag, a symbol that is by most accounts only representative of the half the city, taken down.

This brought vociferous loyalist protest on the evening of the vote (see, for example, the report here). The protest reiterated the long-standing unionist commitment to the flying of the flag over city hall. The argument being that the union flag flies over every city hall in the United Kingdom by convention. So to remove the flag is to undermine the status Belfast that has as a United Kingdom city. 

This of course was countered by nationalist politicians who argued that the flag is by its very nature divisive. Nationalists have long contended that city hall is a public space and has to be, because of this very fact, an inclusive space for all the citizens of Belfast. This means that regardless of the symbol’s positive affirmation of U.K. cityhood for unionists, the flag has to be removed because it alienates and excludes nationalists.

These arguments, however, somewhat cloud the use of symbolism as a demonym for national-political ideology in Irish/Northern Irish politics. Unionists intrinsically value the union flag because they are unionists plain and simple. Many nationalists, particularly those of the Republican stripe, would most likely, when hard-pressed, like to see the Irish tricolour fly over city hall. Real-politick suggests however that no union flag, as a second best, is a better and more achievable option for nationalists than the status-quo. It is more realistic than the preferred option of the tricolour alone, which is an unacceptable position for unionists to ever accept.  

Indeed one of the mooted options during the consultation was to fly both the union flag and the Irish tricolour simultaneously side-by-side (see here). This was appealing to many nationalists, and even some unionists, but ultimately rejected because for many unionists – even though it would give parity to both traditions – it would ultimately symbolically legitimise the political presence of the Irish Republic in Northern Ireland.

Symbolism has a political potency in Northern Ireland politics that some in Britain may find hard to comprehend. What might seem trivial elsewhere has real political value, because symbols of British/Ulster and Irish nationalism have real meaning in the inter-relationship between religious and political identity. The compromise reached involves genuine toleration, like a lot of the political paradigm in Northern Ireland. For the union flag to have remained would have been an unacceptable solution. Unionists could have contended that nationalists should tolerate the flag, but this would have in meant in practice unionists failing to show toleration for nationalists' opposition of the flag. In this sense the flag remaining would have been a plainly intolerant move. This would have again been true if nationalists had pushed for the tricolour to be flown over city hall, a move that would have not found support from the Alliance Party, and quite likely from the moderate nationalist S.D.L.P. (and perhaps even in practice a pragmatic Sinn Féin).

But what of the equal recognition of both traditions, by having two flags? This is a move that does not solve the problem with reference to toleration; it is one that affirms difference. The problem with this solution is that it affirms and essentialises identity. Such a solution solidifies the fact that Protestantism equates with a unionist/British/Ulster identity and Catholicism with a nationalist/republican/Irish identity in Northern Ireland. The tolerant solution provides a political stabiliser that allows these forms of normatively contingent identification to be transcended. Unlike the Alliance Party position, which uncritically makes the assumption that both unionist and nationalist politics are sectarian by their very nature, rather what is sectarian about these forms of identifications is the idea that one is a unionist because they are Protestant and one is a nationalist because they are Catholic. But unionism and nationalism have the capacity however to both be non-sectarian ideals. It is because of this that toleration works as a means, that should be absolutely welcomed in this instance, to move towards a natural accommodation of difference, where politics can be conducted without reference to the constitution and persons can be seen not in terms of their identities, however configured.

Adam Fusco, originally from Belfast, is a PhD student at the University of York, and a graduate of York's MA in Political Philosophy (The Idea of Toleration), for which he was a recipient of a Studentship from the C & JB Morrell Trust.  His research focuses on questions of national identity, their role in contemporary citizenship, and Civic Republican theory.  

Professor Sue Mendus on press regulation, the limits to free speech, and the Leveson Inquiry

You cannot hope to bribe or twist

thank God! The British journalist

But seeing what the man will do

unbribed, there’s no occasion to (Humbert Wolfe)

In July 2011, and in the wake of the News International phone-hacking scandal, David Cameron set up an Inquiry into the ‘Culture, Practice and Ethics’ of the Press. This Inquiry, the Leveson Inquiry, has recently completed its formal hearings and is expected to publish its recommendations in November. What did Lord Justice Leveson hear and what should he now recommend? 

Leveson heard evidence from 474 witnesses of whom over 200 were classed as ‘media’ or ‘PR’. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of these were extremely wary - even suspicious - of the Inquiry and of the recommendations which might emerge from it. Some referred to it as a ‘show trial’, while others feared that it would (and will) result in recommendations for extensive curbs on press freedom. Mr Michael Gove MP, himself a former journalist, went so far as to claim that the very existence of the Inquiry had a ‘chilling effect’Gove on Leveson's "chilling effect". He advised Leveson to avoid recommending additional legislation, and he told the court that ‘freedom of speech doesn’t mean anything unless some people are going to be offended some of the time’.

Well, we can all agree on the importance of free speech, but before endorsing Mr Gove’s advice to Leveson, let’s pause for a moment and remember how we got here. The Leveson Inquiry was not set up because the press had offended some people (though it had). It was set up because significant sections of the press had used their freedom to: intercept the voicemail of a murdered teenager, make corrupt payments to the police, publish the private diary of a bereaved mother, and disclose the medical records of a Prime Minister’s son. They had also - allegedly - conspired to pervert the course of justice. All this is a very long way indeed from ‘causing offence to some people’, and Mr Gove must surely know that it is.

In particular, he must know that the real danger in Britain today is not that press regulation will undermine the freedom to offend. The real danger lies in the fact that press power is concentrated in the hands of comparatively few people, and those people have persistently used their power to benefit themselves and their political friends, while damaging and discrediting their political enemies. When this happens, a so-called ‘free press’ can quickly become an anti-democratic weapon which the powerful use to foist their own political preferences on an under-informed electorate. That is the real danger and, sadly, there is nothing new about it.

More than half a century ago, giving evidence to the 1947 Royal Commission on the Press, the National Union of Journalists (no less) conceded that only restriction of liberty would remedy the abuses of the press which were prevalent at that time. The same abuses are even more prevalent now, and it falls to Lord Justice Leveson finally to call a halt to them. My own hope is that he will recommend an end to the farce of self-regulation which is the Press Complaints Commission, and a strengthening of the existing anti-monopoly laws which did nothing to contain Rupert Murdoch's ambition and which almost allowed him to gain control of BSkyB. It is here, if anywhere, that hope for freedom lies.

Professor Sue Mendus

Sue Mendus is Morrell Professor Emerita at the University of York. 

Her departmental webpage can be found here. In 2004 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, and from 2008 to 2012 she was Vice President (Social Sciences) of the Academy. She is a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.

Her written and oral evidence to the Leveson Inquiry can be found here: http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/hearing/2012-07-16am/