Toleration in Conflict: Past and Present

by Rainer Forst

• ISBN13: 9780521885775
• ISBN10: 0521885779
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-02-25
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The concept of toleration plays a central role in pluralistic societies. It designates a stance which permits conflicts over beliefs and practices to persist while at the same time defusing them, because it is based on reasons for coexistence in conflict - that is, in continuing dissension. A critical examination of the concept makes clear, however, that its content and evaluation are profoundly contested matters and thus that the concept itself stands in conflict. For some, toleration was and is an expression of mutual respect in spite of far-reaching differences, for others, a condescending, potentially repressive attitude and practice. Rainer Forst analyses these conflicts by reconstructing the philosophical and political discourse of toleration since antiquity. He demonstrates the diversity of the justifications and practices of toleration from the Stoics and early Christians to the present day and develops a systematic theory which he tests in discussions of contemporary conflicts over toleration.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Between Power and Morality: The Historical Discourse of Toleration

Toleration: concept and conceptions

More than a prehistory: Antiquity and the Middle Age

Reconciliation, schism, peace: humanism and the Reformation

Toleration and sovereignty: political and individual

Natural law, toleration and revolution: the rise of liberalism and the aporias of freedom of conscience

The Enlightenment - for and against toleration

Toleration in the modern era

Routes to toleration

A Theory of Toleration

The justification of toleration

The finitude of reason

The virtue of tolerance

The tolerant society

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