Tolerance in World History

Peter Stearns

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780415789301
• eBook ISBN: 9781351839198
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

This volume draws together the many discrete studies of tolerance to create a global and comprehensive synthesis. In a concise text, author Peter Stearns makes connections across time periods and key regions, to help clarify the record and the relationship between current tolerance patterns and those of the past. The work is timely in light of the obvious tensions around tolerance in the world today – within the West, and without. A historical backdrop helps to clarify the contours of these tensions, and to promote greater understanding of the advantages and challenges of a tolerant approach.

1

DEFINITIONS AND RATIONALE

“Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice … for we have no other criterion of reason beyond the … opinions and customs of the country we live in.”

–Michel de Montaigne

These are troubled times for tolerance – of diverse views, and diverse groups. Several Islamic states – against the religion’s best though not invariable tradition – actively persecute religious minorities. Many Americans and Europeans fulminate against the construction of new mosques, or defile those that exist. China’s leadership, not usually a beacon for accommodating dissidence in the best of circumstances, seems to be narrowing the circle of acceptability. Political dissent is more widely attacked in Turkey. A successful American presidential candidate gains wide notice by villainizing many Hispanic immigrants. Tolerance for gay rights and lifestyles, advancing in some places, is in equally active retreat elsewhere. A number of countries appear bent on freely electing, or considering electing, leaders with authoritarian mindsets impatient with the niceties of tolerance – and often actively hostile to various minorities as well, whether Muslims in France or Kurds in Turkey. The current patterns and divisions remind us, at the least, of the fragility of tolerance – and at the worst they may suggest a deeply troubling future. A new political science study warns that, globally, increasing numbers of people, while supporting democracy in the sense of wanting a right to vote, are dropping off its tolerance component, uninterested in protecting minorities or dissident views. Here’s the key reason to reconsider tolerance not only in its present forms, but in its wider past.

Globalization, and most particularly cultural globalization, raises new challenges for patterns of tolerance, forcing larger groups of people into regular contact with diverse ideas and groupings – arguably to a greater extent than ever before in human history. Reactions obviously vary. Some people clearly delight in the new variety of values and lifestyles around them, but others – and probably, a majority – sense at least a vague discomfort, and many become fearful about their ability to preserve their real or imagined identities.

This in turn forms the context in which a new historical sketch of tolerance, and its alternatives, can be ventured. There is actually surprisingly little work on tolerance in a global historical context, so this book breaks some new ground. But there also is no question that key aspects of tolerance, and its checkered evolution, have been examined historically. This book, accordingly, benefits from many established studies. And while the best-known accounts focus on the move toward tolerance in the early modern and modern West, in the aftermath of brutal religious wars and then the rise of a new rationalism, important work applies to some other tolerance issues as well. It remains true that the social science and psychological literature on tolerance outweighs historical study, even though there can be no claim that we are exploring virgin territory.

Several factors call for another effort in the field. The opportunity to add emphasis to the historical approach on this vital subject provides obvious spur; few social science accounts recognize the complexity of tolerance issues in times past. The book’s relative brevity may increase its utility for certain readers, eager to learn more about the subject but not interested in massive detail.

Two goals are particularly important. First, the lack of global or comparative viewpoint is an important deficiency, as most existing studies are chopped up into smaller regional or chronological pieces: tolerance has clearly become an international issue. Contemporary evidence suggests that globalization and tolerance do not mix easily, but assessing the interaction obviously requires an appropriately global framework. Many Western studies deliberately neglect the rest of the world, and sometimes convey the impression that the West invented tolerance in the first place and gradually, if incompletely, enlightened other, more recalcitrant global societies. During the culture wars of the 1990s, when advocates of a Western civilization course locked horns with world historians, one strange argument even urged that only the Western tradition should win attention because of all the cultures in the world it was the only one that manifested tolerance: the argument was illogical, and as we will see inaccurate, but it did perversely highlight the desirability of broadening the global range in assessing tolerance traditions. It is vital to know a variety of tolerance patterns, their strengths and limitations, and how they have fared in the past and how they might relate, in the contemporary world, to what has undeniably become an important Western thrust. In fact, many earlier approaches are often either ignored – for example, the tolerance advantages of most polytheistic religions – or widely misunderstood (sometimes, willfully misunderstood), as in the case of the tolerance traditions of Islam. Improving the record adds historical accuracy and, in some instances, enhances opportunities for tolerance today.

And second, as suggested above, it is pretty clear that contemporary conditions, including global communications and new patterns of migration, are putting heightened pressure on tolerance in various places, including segments of the West itself. This time of testing makes it doubly important to gain a fuller sense of the history of the approach and how it has withstood, or failed to withstand, challenges in the past, including earlier instances of interregional contacts. Assessing the new attacks on tolerance, and their causes, must of course be part of this historical approach.

History, above all, provides occasions simply to think more widely and constructively about tolerance, as this book is meant to indicate. The past suggests key problems that tolerance has encountered, both old and new, and this perspective usefully relates to tolerance issues today. It points to multiple forms of tolerance, and explores the kinds of questions that surround the phenomenon. While the record does not, in my opinion, point to a glorious path of progress, it does highlight the benefits tolerance brings, and the kinds of individual as well as social commitments that can make tolerance a more consistent force – all, again, particularly valuable in the contemporary moment.

Beyond this, the more global approach, while it cannot possibly address all the nuances involved, points to the range and variety of tolerance itself. The characteristic modern Western stance on tolerance thus emerges as an important option, but not the only path. Other tolerance traditions – focused, for example, more on group activities than on individual rights against the state – deserve attention as well, not only because they enrich historical understanding but because they apply directly to disputes and alternatives in the present day. While this book unquestionably devotes considerable attention to the Western emphasis, for example, in stressing issues around religious freedom, there is ample opportunity to consider different approaches, both past and present, and to note frequent limitations in the Western preoccupations, during the still-recent age of imperialism, for example, or where minority groups are concerned.

Several other preliminaries are vital. First, I will make no effort to conceal my conviction that tolerance is a vital and deeply constructive value, for societies and individuals alike. Indeed, one result of a historical evaluation will be to highlight its positive qualities. Tolerance has avoided or in some definable cases ended periods of bloody war and conflict. In a globalized world, and amid so many pluralistic societies, tolerance seems vital for durable peace – and peace is preferable to violent strife. There’s a good case to be made as well for the role of tolerance in fostering wider intellectual creativity – as in the flowering of Arab culture a thousand years ago, or the European scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. And at least in most contemporary conditions, given the variety of beliefs and population groups in most societies, tolerance seems a vital component of successful democracy – though I will carefully note that today and in the past many non-democracies have been tolerant as well.

A belief in the importance of tolerance is not meant to downplay the various reasons that intolerance has made sense, and continues to make sense, to many people and many societies both in times past and in the present. Intolerance can bolster social identity, against bewildering diversity – an obvious issue in the present day. It can seem to protect vital truths, without which human morality or opportunities for spiritual salvation might be jeopardized. The whole issue of the relationship between tolerance and religious or moral relativism is an obvious complexity that must be addressed in several historical settings: does contemporary tolerance, for example, jeopardize crucial standards for sexual morality? Intolerance can also seem to serve as a protection for children and families, against the challenge of uncomfortable beliefs or styles of life – for attacks on threatening ideas or practices often involve deeply personal issues. Facile dismissals of intolerance do not benefit historical analysis. Indeed, it has to be recognized that tolerance sometimes conflicts with other progressive goals: most modern revolutions, for example, bent on advancing social justice and limiting traditional upper-class privilege, go through a long phase of intolerance against counterrevolutionary attacks and arguments. Difficult priorities, around tolerance, have to be recognized at many points. Overall, however, the need for historical appreciation of the many reasons for intolerance does not require that the preference for tolerance be concealed, nor should it inhibit displaying past and present evidence for the preference itself.

The Challenge of Definition

A crucial preliminary involves the recognition that tolerance is hard to define, whether the focus is on past debates or current controversies. Does tolerance require that all opinions be given equal weight, even though some seem daft in the light of all available evidence? (Must a contemporary science program, in the name of tolerance, specifically teach creationism or intelligent design, along with evolution? Must Holocaust studies make a bow to Holocaust deniers?) Does tolerance mean that opposing views are permitted, but not given equal stature with the preferred truth? (How tolerant was traditional Islam in allowing several other religions to exist but only on payment of a special tax? How tolerant were the Protestant countries that allowed some other Christian religions to practice their faith but forbade their faithful from gaining political office?) How tolerant should a contemporary liberal be of political traditions that suppress dissident opinions? (Does a commitment to human rights limit the appropriate tolerance for regimes in places like China, whose advocates sincerely believe that too much dissent would jeopardize stability and social progress?) Should intolerance be tolerated?

Here’s a first and vital step in moving toward definition. As one social scientist puts it, “tolerance of absolutely everything is out of the question,” which means that the key issue is “where will we draw the line between the tolerable and the intolerable” – and there is no easy answer. For example: many contemporary observers understandably attack the practice of female genital mutilation, on grounds of its obvious harm to women and their sexual pleasure; this means, in turn, that important beliefs among many groups in northeastern Africa (women’s views often included) must be judged intolerable. But who is authorized to make decisions of this sort, about where the limits of tolerance must be drawn? There are no clear-cut responses to questions of this sort, and the tension will show in many sections of this book. Readers should be alert to areas where tolerance of established customs – even customs less offensive than female circumcision – harms the welfare of many of the people involved – for no amount of advance definition can possibly yield agreement on what is intolerable. We only need to acknowledge that there is a boundary, that complete tolerance is a historical impossibility. And we can also note key historical moments when a transition occurs, and a practice or institution once regarded as normal – like slavery – becomes in the majority view absolutely intolerable.

Here’s a next step in definition: tolerance requires some sense of a difference between one individual or group and the ideas or practices of others. Many sociologists have emphasized the grudging aspect of tolerance, deeming it a “flawed virtue” that requires acceptance of differences one would prefer to combat: “putting up with something you don’t like.” Thus tolerance may be quite compatible with prejudice: one can dislike a group but recognize, perhaps after some unpleasant conflict, their right to exist. One recent anthropological construct indeed describes an intriguing variant labeled “antagonistic tolerance.” Here, two religious groups manage to coexist, sometimes actually sharing a religious site despite an incompatibility of beliefs, so long as the practitioners of the minority religion accept the effective dominance of the majority. Thus a Muslim edifice in Turkey bears a clear label: “don’t light a candle, pray to Allah” – but it is very clear that a group of Bulgarian Christians actually use the locale as well and burn their candles despite the injunction, while recognizing Muslim control of the structure. The potential limitations of tolerance prompted one advocate, Mohandas Gandhi in India, normally, as we will see, a staunch supporter, to lament: “I do not like the word tolerance, but could not think of a better one. Tolerance implies a gratuitous assumption of the inferiority of other faiths to one’s own.” And a few social scientists insist that tolerance is only involved when a different belief, practice, or group is actually disliked but allowed to exist nevertheless.

It is not accurate, however, simply to identify tolerance and tension, and this book will not insist on the oppositional aspect in all cases – as opposed to awareness of difference. Tolerance, obviously, can include the hesitant, or conflict-weary, permission for expressions of alternative views, but amid clear inequalities of access and acceptance. But it can also approach an anything goes stance that offers opportunities for any opinions that do not involve some “clear and present danger” to others, or it can hover somewhere between these extremes. It can coexist with active disapproval of ideas or groups whose existence one consents to; or it can involve genuine respect for people with different ideas who are nevertheless clearly striving for truth and morality in their own way. It’s the range, and the resultant inability to offer one hard-and-fast definition, that constitutes the key point. A tolerant individual may thus delight in diversity, or reluctantly accept it in preference to outright bloodshed, while trying to keep a personal distance. The inability to offer a single interpretation of this aspect of tolerance is an important limitation, but also another invitation to a brief historical appreciation. For the meanings of tolerance – given the lack of one overriding construct – emerge best through assessing the options that various societies and cultures have worked out in specific historical settings – on up to the present day.

But it is also true that in some cases what is initially an application of tolerance generates such wide acceptance that tolerance becomes unnecessary. A humble but recent example in the United States and some other societies: a hundred years ago, left-handers were viewed as evil or psychologically perverse, and most children were forced to be right-handed. By the 1950s, however, greater tolerance prevailed, and left-handers were increasingly free to go their own way. But over time, handedness so declined in significance – except in sports – that active tolerance was no longer involved at all: left-handers simply became people. Again, tolerance is only involved when some difference is widely perceived.

On a related point: this book focuses on tolerance rather than just toleration, though of course the two are closely related. Toleration normally refers to protection of diverse ideas, often with emphasis on limiting interference or repression from the state through some definition of rights. Tolerance has a wider meaning, embracing acceptance not only of diverse, even clashing, ideas but also different groupings and different styles of life – what sociologists describe as a trinity of targets, political and ideological but also moral and social.

This leads, finally, to the most widely discussed definitional issues, where social scientists of various stripes have actively sought to pin down what tolerance involves. A common result is a distinction between political tolerance and social tolerance. Political tolerance or toleration, particularly the domain of political scientists, involves legal protections for various civil liberties, normally enforced by the state. A tolerant government thus protects freedom of religion and expression, the rights of identifiable minorities, and so on. Social tolerance, in contrast, focuses on pressures from different groups within a society, enforced by peer activities or prejudices. Thus a political system may be tolerant, but informal social arrangements impede the free operation of certain minority groups or styles of life. This book will make active use of this distinction, particularly in the more recent periods, from the nineteenth century onward.

At the same time, however, the political–social distinction is not hard and fast. Social pressures may thus intrude on political rights – as when a minority group, though legally entitled to vote, is impeded through the prejudiced interference of dominant social groups and informal arrangements such as the location of voting sites. Issues of lifestyles – for example, homosexuality – may be primarily regulated through group arrangements and prejudices, but nevertheless receive some backing in formal law. The political and social definitions of tolerance are genuinely helpful in calling attention to the various contexts in which tolerance may be practiced or thwarted – but they are not hard and fast and they apply much more clearly to modern contexts than to pre-modern settings.

The most important point – aside from the slipperiness of any precise definition – involves the need to emphasize the range of topics to which tolerance applies, and which this book seeks to capture. For while we will certainly focus on issues around tolerance or intolerance for different beliefs, including religious beliefs and also political views, we will explore a wider compass. As Michael Walzer has pointed out, tolerance in the beliefs domain relates closely to issues of population minorities and personal habits, where political and social forms of tolerance can mix. France, for example, committed still in the main to tolerance of varied beliefs, has encountered difficulties when it comes to tolerating some of the practices, including styles of dress, for groups like devoted Muslims. The resulting tensions apply both to law and to the wider domain of social tolerance. On another front, only recently, and only in some places, has tolerance clearly extended to formal acceptance of gay lifestyles, whatever the commitment to diverse ideas about sexuality in principle. The key categories are linked but not identical, and at various points we will consider the whole range: beliefs, but also subgroups and lifestyles. The spectrum is essential both to not only grasp tolerance issues today but also to ap...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Definitions and Rationale
• 2 Early Societies and Civilizations
• 3 Christianity and Islam
• 4 New Directions and New Challenges: The Early Modern Period, 1450–1750
• 5 Tolerance in the Long Nineteenth Century: New Triumphs, New Challenges From Atlantic Revolutions to the Two World Wars
• 6 Tolerance in Contemporary World History: A New Balance Sheet
• 7 Globalization – and a New Retreat?
• Conclusion
• Index