Toleration and Freedom from Harm

Liberalism Reconceived

Andrew Jason Cohen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351804653
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Toleration matters to us all. It contributes both to individuals leading good lives and to societies that are simultaneously efficient and just. There are personal and social matters that would be improved by taking toleration to be a fundamental value. This book develops and defends a full account of toleration—what it is, why and when it matters, and how it should be manifested in a just society. Cohen defends a normative principle of toleration grounded in a new conception of freedom as freedom from harm. He goes on to argue that the moral limits of toleration have been reached only when freedom from harm is impinged. These arguments provide support for extensive toleration of a wide range of individual, familial, religious, cultural, and market activities. Toleration and Freedom from Harm will be of interest to political philosophers and theorists, legal scholars, and those interested in matters of social justice.

Part I Conceptual and Grounding Issues

1 What Toleration Is Not

Toleration has been called “the substantive heart of liberalism” (Hampton, 802). This should be understood as precisely as possible. That is the task of this and the next chapter. I offer a conceptual analysis of toleration in order to give a clear definition of this central liberal tenet. In this chapter, I isolate toleration from other notions; this provides us some guidance by introducing seven definitional conditions of toleration. I explicate and defend these in chapter 2. Putting the conditions together, I shall be defending the view that an agent tolerates when she intentionally and on principle refrains from interfering with an opposed other (or their behavior, etc.), though she believes she has the power to interfere.¹ This definition is neither normatively loaded nor sufficient for moral or political theory. In later chapters, we will explore how and why toleration matters. It is indeed, the normative limits of toleration that are my central concern. The first part of this book, though, concerns necessary preliminaries, beginning with the concept of toleration itself.

While we all likely have some inchoate ideas about toleration, it is also likely that these ideas are somewhat confused. Outside the world of academic philosophy, the term “toleration” is often used in different ways. Since much of that variation finds its way into scholarly thought, it is worth distinguishing toleration from other concepts with which it is often confused before engaging directly in conceptual analysis, as I do in chapter 2.² This will also provide some guidance for determining what the core idea of toleration is as we begin to see conditions necessary for toleration. These, indeed, will appear quite quickly in this discussion; it will nonetheless be worth looking at a number of other concepts that are often confused with toleration. Of course, I do not deny that the concepts I distinguish from toleration are related to it. If they were not, there would be no confusion! Some may be on a continuum with toleration, but we need not be concerned with that here.

A. Indifference, Simple Noninterference, Resignation

Toleration is not indifference or simple noninterference. If I see someone playing baseball (in which I have no interest) and I walk past without interfering, we would not say I tolerate the behavior. The reason for this seems straightforward: we think of ourselves as tolerating only when we recognize something and disapprove or, at least, dislike it. If someone is throwing a ball against my wall, I may tolerate it (or not)—in part because the behavior annoys. Some negative response is necessary for our lack of interference to count as toleration. Put another way, we must care.³ Absent caring about that which I refrain from interfering, I am not tolerating it. I may be indifferent to it. I may not even notice it.

From this brief discussion, we already see that we are the sorts of beings that can tolerate, that toleration requires noninterference, and that behavior is something that can be tolerated. These three facts seem uncontroversial; they will be conditions 1 (agent), 4 (noninterference), and 6 (object). What is also interesting is that toleration requires that the tolerator have some negative response; as Bernard Williams explains, “If you do not care all that much what anyone believes, you do not need … toleration … Indeed, if I and others in the neighborhood said we were tolerating the homosexual relations of the couple next door, our attitude would be thought less than liberal” (Williams 1996, 20). Interestingly, then, a world populated by individuals indifferent to those they do not know and like might be better than a world populated by individuals who know and tolerate those others. One way people can tolerate more often, after all, is to have more negative reactions.⁴ The need for a negative reaction will be condition 5 (opposition).

Having a negative reaction to something is not enough to make noninterference with it toleration. I may refrain from interfering with it, after all, because I recognize that I have no power to stop the disliked behavior, because the opposed other is physically stronger than I am or, differently, because others have rights “even if they exercise those rights in unattractive ways” (Walzer, 11; see also 59). Noninterference we resign ourselves to because we can’t do otherwise is not toleration. Toleration is not the same as simply enduring what one does not like—a sort of resignation, “mere restraint” (Heyd, 14), or “a kind of moral stoicism” (Walzer, 11). The person engaging in this form of noninterference—of, perhaps, the loud music player—resigns herself to living with others for the sake of peace, as if in a sort of modus vivendi⁵ or “pragmatic compromise” (Heyd, 4; see also Walzer, 10).

If my descriptions are accurate, why don’t we consider these activities toleration? Why, that is, does one’s resignation to one’s inability to prevent some behavior not count as toleration? Simply put, it’s because we think toleration is something we do for the right reasons. The presence of those reasons matters. Two prison inmates may be able to tolerate each other’s activities even though neither has any right to continue those activities and they both understand this. It needn’t be that they are merely resigned to suffering each other’s activities but if they are merely resigned, they would not be tolerating. We might say that one endures what one (believes one) has to; one tolerates what one (believes one) should.⁶

We must value our noninterference for it to count as toleration; the noninterference must be properly principled. This will be condition 3 (value).⁷ It is obvious, but worth pointing out, that for a case of noninterference to be principled, it must also be intentional—one does not act on one’s principles by accident. This will be condition 1.⁸

One must refrain from interfering for good reason for the noninterference to be toleration. That one must have good reasons clearly indicates that one’s belief states matter when we are trying to determine if one is tolerating or merely not interfering. Interestingly, belief states matter in a second way. Consider a new example. Say I try to persuade my sister not to have an abortion but then stand aside when she leaves to go to the family planning clinic. Surely, I may be tolerating her action. My attempt at rational persuasion—which, as will be made clearer in chapter 2, I will not consider interference—failed and I do not interfere with her actions, which, as my attempt at rational persuasion makes clear, I oppose. Now it may be that I am merely enduring her actions—that because I have no (legal) right to interfere, I can do nothing and so must have resigned myself to her action. This may be the case, but it need not be. Perhaps I mistakenly think I do have a (legal) right to interfere. If so, I may not be merely resigning myself to her action. I may be standing aside because, though I believe I can interfere, I also believe I should not—i.e., I value my noninterfering or her right to proceed and so my noninterference is based on a principled reason, as indicated is needed in condition 3.⁹ What we also should notice now is that this case clearly suggests that believing one has the power to interfere is relevant to toleration. It will be condition 7 (believed power).

Two admissions need to be made here. First, as motivations and belief states generally are often mixed and/or confused, there may be cases where determining whether an act is one of mere resignation or one of toleration is near impossible; indeed, it may be that there is no sharp line between the two. Second, complicating the first, there is a common sense of the word “tolerance” (itself discussed below) which is equivalent to endurance—one “builds one’s level of tolerance/endurance.” Given that and the common conflation of tolerance and toleration, confusions are not infrequent.

We have now (briefly) elucidated the seven conditions of toleration. These are:

1. the presence of an agent
2. who intentionally
3. and on principle
4. refrains from interfering with
5. an opposed
6. other (or their behavior, etc.) though
7. she believes she has the power to interfere.

Each of these will be examined and defended in chapter 2. Here, we continue our examination of concepts that are distinct though related to—and sometimes conflated with—toleration.

B. A Principle of Toleration

It will be noted that the seven conditions of toleration do nothing to tell us when we should interfere or refrain from interfering. Their joint presence indicates that toleration is present, not that it should be. When we say that toleration is at the heart of liberalism, we mean something like toleration’s presence in society is morally important. Indeed, its presence is of paramount moral importance. Its absence suggests a society is not liberal—or rather suggests either that the society is not liberal or that the society is so harmonious that liberalism is irrelevant because none its members oppose how any of their compatriots live (whether because they are indifferent to many of those compatriots or have universal love toward them). Assuming we won’t attain utopia any time soon, liberalism thus must include a view about when toleration should be present—for no one thinks toleration should always be present. We should not, for simple examples, tolerate murder and rape. Liberalism thus requires a normative principle (or principles) of toleration to adjudicate interference. I’ve already indicated that we can use the harm principle for that purpose and will discuss that further below, especially in chapters 3 and 6.¹⁰

In order to have a principle of toleration, one must be clear about what toleration is. With a clear understanding of toleration, we can move on to discuss possible principles and defend one (or more) against others. Toleration itself, then, is not a principle. Toleration, as I discuss it, is a form of behavior (refraining from interfering). That behavior must be principled, as we saw above and will discuss further in chapter 2, but that is a different matter. Again, being able to identify toleration is not the same as knowing when we should or must tolerate or knowing when we should or must not. This is why understanding what toleration is cannot be sufficient for moral or political philosophy—in itself it provides no normative guidance. We need a normative principle (or principles) of toleration for that purpose.

C. Pluralism, Multiculturalism, Diversity

Toleration is not pluralism, the view that insists there are multiple genuine values. Nor is it “enthusiastic endorsement of difference” (Walzer, 11; see also Langerak, 111) that might be better associated with certain sorts of multiculturalisms.

There may be multiple genuine values and if there are, I assume, we ought usually to tolerate (or at least not interfere with) people acting in ways meant to promote those values. This means, though, that pluralism and toleration are distinct. Believing that X is a value (or that X and Y are values), promoting X (or X and Y), and tolerating the promotion of X (or X and Y) are all different. One does not tolerate what one promotes. It may, of course, be that we recognize values without promoting them in any significant way. Nonetheless, to recognize X as a value is to recognize it as something not to oppose. (Should one, perversely, oppose a value, one might be able to tolerate it. Still recognizing it as a value and tolerating it are different. Recognizing that there are multiple values is distinct from toleration.)

Importantly, the claim that there is cultural diversity is distinct from pluralism, understood as the view that there are plural values. The first is an empirical claim only. Saying there is cultural diversity is not saying there should be cultural diversity or why there should be. Multiculturalists presumably believe not only that there is cultural diversity, but also that there should be. Some may believe the latter claim because they believe different cultures instantiate different values; some may believe it because they believe different cultures instantiate the same values but in different ways. We need not pursue that question.

Cultural diversity itself may or may not be a value,¹¹ but while toleration would make such diversity possible, the latter is not required for the former.¹² If no one brings different cultural (or other) views to the table, as it were, there likely is simply less to tolerate and the advocate of toleration need not be concerned. Of course, the advocate of multiculturalism may seek to bring different cultures to the table—because she wants to promote them. The advocate of multiculturalism, that is, promotes multiple cultures. Of course, she is thereby precluded from tolerating them—again, one does not tolerate what one promotes.¹³ She may, on the other hand, seek to encourage the toleration of one or more of the cultures she promotes by others who oppose those cultures. If she does, she will seek to provide good principled reasons for those with opposition to particular cultures to refrain from interfering with them.

Those advocating for the value of multiple cultures may wish to make toleration more intertwined with their view. Ingrid Creppell, for example, adds a condition to toleration that she takes to be of fundamental import: “one stays in a relationship with the person or group with whom one is in conflict [i.e., opposes] … the parties remain in the presence of one another in a nontrivial way” (Creppell, 4). Depending on what is meant by “nontrivial” or “the commonality of the ensuing relationship” (ibid), this may be what I have previously called a diversity condition,¹⁴ which I think is an acceptable addition to how we understand toleration, though unhelpful. Her “nontrivial ensuing relationship” seems, though, to mean something more and I am inclined, absent further argument in its defense, to reject it. An act of toleration is, as Creppell notes, “a unilateral act of one person toward another” (ibid)—when one person tolerates another, the other may be tolerating the first or not (indeed, may be doing nothing regarding the first). There thus does remain a relationship, but it remains trivially. I do not see why the conception of toleration must thereby be “one that acknowledges the fundamental feature of the maintenance of [nontrivial] relationship[s]” as Creppell would prefer—because I do not believe “toleration is about what connects persons to one another in a significant way despite differences and conflict” (Creppell, 6). Toleration is one possible way to react when there are differences—regardless of the presence or absence of a connection. To think otherwise is to think that there is no role for toleration in situations (perhaps international) where the two involved groups have no significant connection—and that seems like a mistake...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Conceptual and Grounding Issues
• Part II Normative Issues
• References
• Index