A good book on the complexities of tolerance?
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1prosfilaes
Someone on Facebook linked to The intolerance of tolerance, and the complexities of tolerance are something I've wanted to read a book on for a while now. Unfortunately, I'm ultimately getting the view that L.A.Markham's review is entirely correct: "This book is a treatment on tolerance and how it has changed for the worse from an evangelical Christian perspective." To quote atimco's review:
"In the original definition of tolerance, people believed that there was absolute truth that could be known. You would tolerate people whose views were in opposition to your own, and you were free to engage in open, vigorous debate. You could tell someone that he/she was wrong and still treat that person with respect and dignity. The new definition of tolerance, strongly influenced by postmodernism, holds that there is no absolute truth and therefore telling a person that he/she is wrong is intolerant. ...
Carson cites well-documented case after case of the way that the new tolerance suppresses freedom of speech in the name of toleration. ... Prison ministries have been sued for partnering with state institutions to reduce recidivism (with excellent results) through Bible study and prayer...."
Why should the fact that I believe in absolute truth push me to accept you using the resources of the state to spread your falsehood (yeah, I'm saying he's wrong; he gave me permission to call him out on his falsehood) among wards of the state? I get the feeling that he wants the type of toleration where his group is in charge and they tolerate the other people, and the idea that his group is the one that's going to be tolerated by the majority is unacceptable.
It's also the modern stuff, like "College professors have been fired for stating viewpoints that their universities did not agree with." I don't know what case he's referring to, but I suspect there have been cases of this going back to the creation of universities. Another reviewer says the definition has changed over the last 50 years, so Bertrand Russell being removed by a court from his position at the City College of New York was apparently under the old definition. We can mention the Civil Rights Movement; D. A. Carson would assuredly tout Christian involvement, but MLK's Letter from a Birmingham Jail is pretty damning about the white Christian support he got.
The invocation of postmodernism stands out; I've read that new students were never interested in postmodernism at university anymore, and what little interest there is is because of people like Jordan Peterson and D. A. Carson blaming it for everything. It seems so counter reality; I'd say that few Americans are as hardcore about "there is an absolute truth and I absolutely know it" as Christians like Carson, but most of them believe in some sort of absolute truth.
Dropping that; perhaps I've said too much, as I haven't read the book. It just sets me off; like the Hobby Lobby case, where evangelicals get to avoid the law because of their religion, but Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists don't. Or when evangelicals demand the religious right not to sell to a gay wedding, but immediately got hostile when people point that that would provide the religious right not to sell to an interracial or possibly even black wedding. The latter is big; they don't want gay rights to be protected, so that deserves a religious cutout, but they don't want to deal with the fact that everyone else with religious reasons to be racist or antiChristian would logically get the same cutouts from the same law, just about race or religion. There also seems to be a willful ignoring of the fact that most people who support gay rights (esp. marriage) do so not because of some vague tolerance, but because we believe that gay rights and gay marriage is key to the health and happiness of gay members of our society and therefore to our society as a whole.
In any case, I tend to see tolerance as a part of Rawlsian justice. Behind the veil of ignorance, we don't know what race, religion or gender we'd be, so our society should be patient with everyone. I don't always know how to balance that, particularly religious and philosophical objections versus more fundamental rights. So let's finish this with the request for a better book about the philosophy of tolerance.
"In the original definition of tolerance, people believed that there was absolute truth that could be known. You would tolerate people whose views were in opposition to your own, and you were free to engage in open, vigorous debate. You could tell someone that he/she was wrong and still treat that person with respect and dignity. The new definition of tolerance, strongly influenced by postmodernism, holds that there is no absolute truth and therefore telling a person that he/she is wrong is intolerant. ...
Carson cites well-documented case after case of the way that the new tolerance suppresses freedom of speech in the name of toleration. ... Prison ministries have been sued for partnering with state institutions to reduce recidivism (with excellent results) through Bible study and prayer...."
Why should the fact that I believe in absolute truth push me to accept you using the resources of the state to spread your falsehood (yeah, I'm saying he's wrong; he gave me permission to call him out on his falsehood) among wards of the state? I get the feeling that he wants the type of toleration where his group is in charge and they tolerate the other people, and the idea that his group is the one that's going to be tolerated by the majority is unacceptable.
It's also the modern stuff, like "College professors have been fired for stating viewpoints that their universities did not agree with." I don't know what case he's referring to, but I suspect there have been cases of this going back to the creation of universities. Another reviewer says the definition has changed over the last 50 years, so Bertrand Russell being removed by a court from his position at the City College of New York was apparently under the old definition. We can mention the Civil Rights Movement; D. A. Carson would assuredly tout Christian involvement, but MLK's Letter from a Birmingham Jail is pretty damning about the white Christian support he got.
The invocation of postmodernism stands out; I've read that new students were never interested in postmodernism at university anymore, and what little interest there is is because of people like Jordan Peterson and D. A. Carson blaming it for everything. It seems so counter reality; I'd say that few Americans are as hardcore about "there is an absolute truth and I absolutely know it" as Christians like Carson, but most of them believe in some sort of absolute truth.
Dropping that; perhaps I've said too much, as I haven't read the book. It just sets me off; like the Hobby Lobby case, where evangelicals get to avoid the law because of their religion, but Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists don't. Or when evangelicals demand the religious right not to sell to a gay wedding, but immediately got hostile when people point that that would provide the religious right not to sell to an interracial or possibly even black wedding. The latter is big; they don't want gay rights to be protected, so that deserves a religious cutout, but they don't want to deal with the fact that everyone else with religious reasons to be racist or antiChristian would logically get the same cutouts from the same law, just about race or religion. There also seems to be a willful ignoring of the fact that most people who support gay rights (esp. marriage) do so not because of some vague tolerance, but because we believe that gay rights and gay marriage is key to the health and happiness of gay members of our society and therefore to our society as a whole.
In any case, I tend to see tolerance as a part of Rawlsian justice. Behind the veil of ignorance, we don't know what race, religion or gender we'd be, so our society should be patient with everyone. I don't always know how to balance that, particularly religious and philosophical objections versus more fundamental rights. So let's finish this with the request for a better book about the philosophy of tolerance.
2LolaWalser
Isn't "evangelical Christian perspective" a dead giveaway what their position is going to be from the get-go?
No one who "evangelises" is going to be anything less than an absolutist. Of course that any smidgen of relativism and real respect for opposing views is going to piss them off.
No one who "evangelises" is going to be anything less than an absolutist. Of course that any smidgen of relativism and real respect for opposing views is going to piss them off.
3paradoxosalpha
I have a copy of A Critique of Pure Tolerance on my TBR shelf. It seems to be acquiring some urgency.
