Pluralism, Secularism, and Tolerance

Pluralism, Secularism, and Tolerance Kelly James Clark, Kevin Corcoran Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Volume 3, Number 4, Winter 2000, pp. 627-639 (Article) Published by Michigan State University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/rap.2000.0005 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/29847 Access provided by Australian National University (30 Sep 2018 02:47 GMT) FORUM PLURALISM, SECULARISM, AND TOLERANCE KELLY JAMES CLARK AND KEVIN CORCORAN INTRODUCTION The intolerance of practitioners of various religious groups toward practitioners of other such groups has been well documented. Ancient antagonisms were exacerbated by zealousness for a culture’s god. The early Hebrews routed villages devoted to competing gods, destroying women and children alike. Romans, with their cult of Caesar, sought to squash the early Christian church. The institutionalization of Christianity by the Roman Empire set an apparently pacifistic religion on a path of violence. The Crusades sought unsuccessfully but at great human expense to rid the Muslim infidels from the holy land. The atrocities and religious wars of the Reformation, committed by all sides, caused the river Seine to run red with blood. Native Americans have been exploited and destroyed under the banner of God. Christopher Columbus brought the gospel and germs to the new world, taking back slaves and gold. In our own day we have witnessed the excesses of religious fundamentalists around the world who kill in the name of god or in defense of fetuses. In light of considerations such as these, some might be led to conclude that intolerance has been the peculiar vice of the religious. On the other hand, one might assert that we are indebted to the Enlightenment triumph of reason over revealed religion for laying the foundation for an age of tolerance. One might be led to believe, therefore, that tolerance is the peculiar virtue of the secularist. We have just painted two pictures with broad strokes. According to the on e ,i n to lerance seems to be the peculiar vice of the religious. According to the other, tolerance Kelly James Clark is associate professor of philosophy and Kevin Corcoran is assistant professor of philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. © Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol.3, No. 4,2000, pp. 627-639 ISSN 1094-8392 628 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS appears to be the peculiar virtue of the secularist. Both accounts, we believe, are mistaken. That religious people have inflicted some of the greatest atrocities in the history of human civilization cannot be denied. But intolerance and inflicting suffering are not limited to the religious. In our century alone, the atrocities inflicted by deeply committed atheists rival (numerically) all of the atrocities of the previous centuries combined. The Holocaust,1 the killing fields, the Soviet pogrom, the rape of Nanking, the revolution in China, and the world wars betray any secular hope that religious people are especially inclined toward intolerance. Human beings as su ch ,i t would seem, are not inclined toward tolerance of competing religious, social, political, or moral beliefs and practices. As Anthony Appiah has astutely observed, “we [human beings] are naturally impatient for harmony.”2 The pressures toward intolerance are multiplied in our increasingly diverse society. Our country is not a melting pot where differences are extinguished, but an alphabet soup. It is not unusual to find in one small block—in neighborhoods all across our country—people of African American, Filipino, Jewish, homosexual, fundamentalist Christian, Hispanic, Irish Catholic, Dutch, and Moslem identities. The discrete letters of this soup bump against one another in ways unimagined even a generation ago. And here the rub’s the rub. Different people with different beliefs and practices make us feel uncomfortable and threaten our security and sense of certainty. Ridding our neighborhoods, cities,and countries of unwelcome practices and unfamiliar beliefs would help us create a community where all that we do and believe would be enshrined and enf orced. If we succeeded at such a task, we would have made our community in our own image, which, while not embracing the other, does foster an expansive affirmation of self and clan. The pur pose of this essay is to analyze the notion of tolerance. We will argue, contrary to the stories with which we opened, that tolerance makes sense only against a backdrop of religious or moral conviction. Judgments of tolerance and intolerance require a conception of the good or the true. Secular relativists who believe that all religions are false and that detached neutrality is the preferred posture to assume on all matters religious and moral cannot coherently be tolerant.3 Furthermore, tolerance requires a thick conception of the self, a conception of considerable religious or metaphysical substance. Next we shall argue that there are limits to tolerance—not just any kind of behavior or belief ought to be tolerated—and that those limits are set by a harm principle. Because of fundamental disagreements about human nature and fulfillment, however, there will be widespread disagreement about what exactly constitutes harm. We enumerate three approaches to arrive at consensus concerning the limits to tolerance and recommend one of them as the preferred approach in an environment characterized by diverse religious, moral, and political convictions. FORUM 629 TOLERANCE ANALYZED The argument of this section is simple. Although people with deep and sincere moral or religious convictions are often intolerant, deep and sincere moral or religious convictions are necessary preconditions of tolerance.4 One cannot be tolerant if one does not have religious or moral beliefs. Tolerance comes from the Latin tolerare, to bear or endure; it carries the connotation of putting up with a weight or a burden. So what is tolerance and what the weight it bears? Tolerance, as we understand it, is the disposition to endure or bear peoples’ beliefs and practices that one finds either false or immoral.5 Tolerance assumes that there are some beliefs and practices that are not burdensome, presumably one’s own beliefs and practices. But there are clearly, for the tolerant person, some beliefs that are burdensome to see practiced or believed. In order for us to feel burdened by the beliefs and practices of others, we must first hold our own beliefs and practices against which others’ beliefs and practices are judged. It is precisely because this person believes something that I believe is false or that person does something that I judge wrong, that I am in a position to tolerate such beliefs and practices. But it is not sufficient for the creation of a burden simply for someone to disagree with me. “You say potato, I say potahto.” You prefer Ohio State, I prefer Michigan. I do not tolerate your preferences because I am not overly committed to Michigan. In order for me to tolerate your preference,I must also care deeply about this football rivalry. Tolerance requires, in addition to disagreement, an element of caring or deep commitment to the belief or practice in question.6 I prefer blue jeans but I do not tolerate those who prefer Bugle Boys.I do not tolerate because I do not care much about slacks-wearing practices. So toleration requires both judgments about proper beliefs and practices and an element of caring for those beliefs and practices. And this sort o f caring must be deep, which is why tolerance is usually discussed in connection with matters of fundamental human concern, where depth of care is measured by our emotional attachment to such matters.7 This makes it easier to see why we human beings seem so inclined to intolerance. We invest ourselves in the things we care about. Those who disagree with us are claiming that what we care about is unworthy of care and, in so doing, they denigrate our investment (and we denigrate theirs, of course). Moral, religious, and political disagreement is a threat precisely because the other devalues our beliefs and practices. And we pose a threat to others when we believe or proclaim that they are woefully w rong or immoral. Our natural impulse is to secure our own beliefs and practices against the perceived threat of alien beliefs and practices. The easiest 630 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS way to do this is to dismiss those alien practices and beliefs by rejecting or otherwise distancing the person whose beliefs and practices they are. Tolerance is morally worthwhile precisely because,although the beliefs of the other are devalued, the tolerant person values the person who holds those beliefs. The tolerant person wills to treat the other as intrinsically valuable in spite of his rejection of her fundamental human concerns. Thus, tolerance for beliefs and practices contrary to our own is the fruit of a cultivated disposition to subdue our natural inclination to distance, reject, or hold at arm’s length others whose beliefs and practices differ from our own. The tolerant person is, rather, disposed to recognize the other as an object of inestimable worth. The tolerant person says, in effect, our fundamental disagreement does not diminish my estimation of your worth as a human being and, therefore, though I disagree with your beliefs or practices, still I will endure them. Intolerance, on the other hand, encourages the tendency to attribute base or ignoble motives to those who differ from us. The intolerant person does not value the other. Rather, acceding to the natural inclination to reject the other, she does all that is within her power to put the other down. There is a natural human tendency to ascribe character flaws to the other while blaming circumstances for our own shortcomings. Suppose Stewart shows up late for a meeting. My natural inclination is to attribute his tardiness to a defect in his character—he is unconcerned about other people,he is irresponsible,he is self-absorbed,he is “a Jew.” Now suppose that I show up late for a meeting. My natural inclination is to blame it on circumstances—one of my kids was sick, traffic was awful, I got stopped by a train, I got wrapped up in my grading of papers and lost track o f time, etc. We are naturally inclined to attribute to others the worst of motives for even the most minor offenses. Consider how you judge others who cut you off in traffic and how you excuse yourself when you do exactly the same thing. It is easy, in this Nietzschean day and age, to attribute base motives to those with differing religious or moral beliefs and practices. One might denigrate those who are opposed to homosexuality, believing that they require a scapegoat against whom they can judge themselves to be holy, clean, or righteous. Judgments of the other’s immorality can, of course, sustain self-righteousness. Or one might believe that people like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart castigate the practices of others simply because of their own hidden desires. But, even in these cases, tolerance resists this impulse toward suspicion. There is also a tendency, which tolerance often resists, to call into question the very rationality of those whose practices and beliefs are different from our own. One can scarcely read student editorials on political or social issues in campus newspapers, for example, without noticing how quickly argument gives way to personal attack. How could any right thinking person possibly vote for Clinton (the chubby, money-grubbing womanizer who is a closet liberal)? How could any reasonable person possibly listen to Rush Limbaugh (the tubby, money-grubbing FORUM 631 demonizer who is an out-of-the-closet conservative)? Can you really look into the face of someone who differs from you on matters of fundamental human concern and believe that they are equally sincere truth seekers? It is important to point out, before moving on, that we do not claim that valuing the other entails respecting the beliefs and practices we tolerate, although we might both tolerate and respect them. Suppose, for example, that try as you might you cannot work up respect for the beliefs and nonviolent practices of the Nazi sympathizer, racist, or homophobe. You judge their attitudes so odious that you simply cannot accord them respect or admiration. In such cases, the tolerant person, while not respecting the beliefs and nonviolent practices of the Nazi, racist, or homophobe, will nonetheless continue to value such individuals as persons. The tolerant person will not, in other words, allow the disrespect she accords those beliefs to effect in her a corresponding devaluing of the persons who hold them. Were she to devalue the persons involved, tolerance would give way to intolerance and she might be inclined to treat the holders of opposing beliefs as subhuman or mere animals; e.g., she might wish to extinguish their behavior by either incarcerating them or euthanizing them. On the other hand, the tolerant person might not only tolerate the belief that abortion is morally wrong, and endure some of the nonviolent practices of those in the prolife movement,she might also respect the beliefs and practices as the plausible outcomes of honest and sincere truth seeking. We said earlier that the virtue of tolerance only makes sense against a backdrop of religious or moral conviction. This is so for two reasons.First, tolerance and intolerance require a conception of the true or the good.8 It is only out of such a conception that our own beliefs and practices emerge and take form, and without these beliefs and practices we are incapable of judging the beliefs and practices of others. In other words, without disagreement there is no burden to bear, nothing to tolerate. It is the weight of disagreement that makes tolerance possible. The more the beliefs/practices touch fundamental human concerns, the more one is tempted towards dogmatism, arrogance, and intolerance. It is only when one is faced with belief/practice competitors that the virtue of tolerance can be exercised and developed. Second, it is the cultivated disposition to value others who disagree with us that lies at the root of principled tolerance. I tolerate the beliefs and practices of others because I recognize them as beliefs and practices of persons of intrinsic and inestimable worth. But it is only a thick conception of persons that can coherently ground that worth. It is a conception of persons as icons of God,divine image bearers, objects of divine love, or some other suitably thick conception of persons, that can account for the intrinsic and inestimable worth of human beings. Moreover, a religious conception of persons seems to lend itself to a recognition of the creatureliness of persons, the belief that we humans are finite, frail, and fallible. Thus I can endure or bear the beliefs and practices of others because they have been produced by frail and fallible image-bearers of the divine. 632 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS Theism adds a rich conception of freedom to this mix. Theists believe that God created humans with morally significant freedom and that God values the free development of character, as well as free contribution to society. The result of this freedom is both remarkable creativity and virtue—and unspeakable horror and vice. God, apparently, was willing to risk vice and horror in order to allow for freedom and creativity. It should not go unnoticed that the holy writ of the three great monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—disavows the notion that God is intolerant (at least ante-mortem) of the multifarious uses of human freedom. God willingly permits wickedness without immediate punishment and virtue without immediate reward. A thick conception of persons as finite creatures, endowed with intrinsic value, and free to carve out their own character, combines to provide a rich foundation for the valuing of persons. If tolerance is to be a virtue whose cultivation can be plausibly defended, persons must be endowed with recognizable worth. The secularist, for whom everything is OK except intolerance and religion, cannot be exercising tolerance when she embraces (say) homosexuals. She can affirm them, shake their hands, endorse their lifestyle, and labor to ensure their rights but she cannot tolerate their behavior. Only the person who believes homosex9 to be immoral and cares deeply about sexual ethics can be tolerant of the practice. The secularist might (and no doubt should) will to cultivate tolerance with respect to those who disagree with her, those toward whom she is so often intolerant—religious believers and traditional moralists. The problem for the secularist, however, is that such people hold substantive beliefs, and secularists are often loath to tole rate such beliefs.Likewise a relativist about religion or morality cannot coherently exercise tolerance toward the moral or religious absolutist because she lacks a commitment to a conception of the good or the true in contrast to which moral or religious absolutist beliefs would be judged by her to be false or immoral. Moreover, if the secularist claims to recognize the intrinsic dignity and worth of her fellow human beings and, on this basis, endures or bears the beliefs and declarations of the moral or religious absolutist, then her tolerance will lack any substantive justification. She will be, with respect to tolerance, as the political liberal often is with respect to justice. Rawlsian justice as fairness, for example, rests on a conception of persons as free and equal. Yet Rawls refuses to ground this conception of persons in metaphysics and ontology; rather it is for him simply a matter of political expediency.10 But absent metaphysical or ontological grounding, the Rawlsian seems to have no rational justification to offer on behalf of her theory of justice to those whose conception of persons differs radically from her own. Suppose, for example, I b elieve people are radically unequal and that any person with membership in a race other than the Aryan is not worthy to receive justice. What rational justification can the Rawlsian offer me on behalf of her theory of justice? It would seem,none. So it is with the secularist. The relevant questions for her are these: Why believe people are possessors of inestimable worth and value? FORUM 633 Instead, why not conceive of persons whose b eliefs and practices differ from one’s own as subhuman and,therefore,their beliefs and practices as unworthy candidates for tolerance?11 What rational justification does the secularist have to offer for her tolerance? What story can she tell about why we should resist the tendency to denigrate the other? Without a thick conception of persons, it seems she has none. Tolerance, then, bears up the person who holds differing beliefs and practices of fundamental human concern and urges us to say, “I will resist the temptation to think of myself as better than you due to our differing beliefs and practices. I value you as a person, a divine image bearer.” Of course, tolerance does not mean that we will not try to persuade the other of the error of his or her ways (after all, we believe them to be mistaken on matters of fundamental human concern). So we might add,“But,I disagree with you,and here is why.” Intellectual and moral humility, born of a profound awareness of one’s own finitude and creatureliness,may also add, “And I recognize that I might be mistaken, that I might be the one with blind spots; you tell me why you think I’m wrong.” Tolerance is the precondition of genuine dialogue. Tolerance is morally worthwhile precisely because it disposes us to repair the human fabric torn by moral and religious disagreement. It affirms our common humanity, dignity, frailty, and situatedness. And genuinely valuing the other is the precondition of a flourishing pluralistic society.12 THE LIMITS OF TOLERANCE There are and must be limits to tolerance. This in no way contradicts what has already been said. Something is tolerable within limits. Beyond these limits lies the intolerable and the impermissible. Although we can value (say) a Hitler as an object of inestimable worth, a fellow image-bearer of the divine, we cannot tolerate his practice of human extermination and world domination. Although we can, perhaps with effort, acknowledge that the Jeffrey Dahmers of the world are icons of God, we cannot permit them to cannibalize. Although slave owners are themselves created in the image of God, we cannot tolerate their mistreatment of slaves. How do we set the limits to tolerance? The answer, or so it seems, is that harm to others is the natural limit to tolerance.13 We cannott tolerate Hitler’s, Dahmer’s, or the slave owner’s intolerable behavior, because it harms other people. The beliefs and practices of the homosexual,however, who chooses his partners and does not harm children ,m i ght legitimately be tolerated by those whose beliefs commit them to the immorality of homosex. The beliefs and practices of racists, however, especially those that issue in physical harm to others, clearly fall outside the pale of the tolerable and permissible. You can believe whatever you like about “niggers,” “wops,” “dagos,” “fags,” “honkies,” “kikes,” or “spiks” but we will not let you lay a hand on the persons alluded to by those derogatory terms. 634 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS Dahmer’s tastes can run toward human flesh, but we will not tolerate cannibalism. The religious fundamentalist can heap private scorn and derision on whomever he likes, but he cannot kill or torture infidels. When beliefs spill over into harmful actions toward others, tolerance has reached its limits. We might think, therefore, that harm to others is the natural limit to tolerance, but that simply will not do. There are clear cases when practices that bring about harm to another ought to be tolerated. Many of the practices of doctors and dentists harm their patients. Soldiers in wartime harm their enemies. Good economic policies in times of financial crisis can harm some classes of people. Police harm criminals. And so on. Surely it is right and proper to tolerate some practices that harm others. What mitigates against these sorts of harms is the good they produce. The doctor and dentist work for the health of their patient; the soldier and police for justice, the economist, for long-term financial stability. As long as the good produced is greater than the harm inflicted, these sorts of behaviors are, though harmproducing, within the limits of tolerance.14 But there is a deeper problem lurking for limits to tolerance. We have already argued that tolerance is only sensible when practiced against a background of commitments about matters of fundamental human concern. These commitments specify and prescribe the importantly true and the significantly good. But the importantly true and the significantly good will likewise prescribe the limits of harm. We forbid the recreational use of heroin because it deprives its subjects of free will and disintegrates the human person. There are laws against animal sex and torture, not only because of the effect on the animal—the human being who participates in such practices is on a slide toward overvaluing the sensual and undervaluing all of life (there is an impressive correlation between young killers of their peers and their childhood torture and killing of animals—Jeffrey Dahmer, for instance). These are areas where we might all agree that people ought not be able to harm themselves. But, in this neighborhood ,t h ere are problematic cases. One might believe that the homosexual degrades herself, that the racist cultivates subhuman character traits, that the religious fundamentalist and all his ilk engage in self-injurious behavior. One might believe, therefore, that for their own sake, we ought to prevent their beliefs and practices. The Inquisitor believes that non-Roman Catholic beliefs will lead one to hell. Thus, it will seem to the Inquisitor that inflicting harm, to encourage repentance, is most legitimate. Torture may be specified precisely because it prevents a greater harm. Adherents of natural law (or of the Torah) can make a plausible case that the practice of homosex is harmful even if all of the participants are freely willing adults. And racist attitudes harm those who have them. Why shouldn’t we, for the good of racists, be intolerant not only of their practices but also of the beliefs that produce the practices? Perhaps we should imprison all white supremacists, connect electrodes to the racist centers of their brains, force them to watch “Amistad” repeatedly, and poke them with a cattle prod every time their racist neurons are stimulated. FORUM 635 Surely we would be helping them to become better persons in the process (and would be making our own, small contribution to the new world order). Where do we draw the line, in a pluralist society with competing conceptions of human good and hence of human harm, between those sorts of harms that are permissible and those sorts of harms that are impermissible? SETTING THE LIMITS OF TOLERANCE What sorts of harms should be permitted, according to the virtue of tolerance, and what sorts of harms should be forbidden? We took a first stab at answering this question in the preceding section—we should not permit harms to other people. But not just any harm to others will do. Some harms—like those of the dentist or surgeon—benefit others. We should be intolerant, we shall suggest, of those harms which inhibit human flourishing . Here we are likely to offend nearly everyone. Indeed, we are likely to come off as American liberals dressed in quasi-religious clothing. But, what the heck. We will not make any progress without first taking a step and, besides, our founding parents seemed right about some of these matters. How, in a pluralistic society, can we agree on what stimulates and what restrains human flourishing? Some lessons gleaned from past and present human affairs suggest that humans flourish best when they are Secure against violent assault and free to believe what they like, exercise their moral, religious, and political beliefs, associate with like-minded people, contribute to the common good as they see fit, and control their own destiny.15 We ought, therefore, to tolerate differing beliefs, religious practices, civic groups, and social practices. Any actions which prevent human beings from flourishing ought not to be tolerated. Note that this list of necessary conditions specifies that we should be tolerant of different beliefs—be they religious,moral, social, or political. We should be tolerant of different religious practices—even if they include (say) the use of peyote. We should tolerate the free association of like-minded people—including (say) men’s groups, Nazi organizations—or we should be tolerant of such beliefs and practices unless and until they harm others. But there are hard cases. We should tolerate the use of peyote but what about animal or human sacrifice (assuming that all of the participants to the latter are willing and believe their actions contribute to their flourishing)? Should we tolerate 636 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS female genital mutilation or the oppression of women? Should we tolerate abortions or the bombing of abortion clinics (when the latter does harm people)? Should we tole rate clubs with only white, male, non-Jewish members (suppose all of this club’s members agree not to benefit financially from this club)? We have said nothing to suggest that the conditions for human flourishing set out on our list fix the limits of harm for all persons in all places and times. Surely some people will object that Nazism harms people in some manner or other—the children of Nazis, Jews, and blacks, or even the Nazis themselves. Many will find abhorrent what the Nazi sees as essential to human flourishing. What to do under such circumstances? Here we seem to have reached the limits of argument. Where there is fundamental disagreement about human nature and fulfillment there will also be divergent views about what constitutes harm. Under these circumstances one might simply hold up for veneration the kind of person most likely to endorse our minimalist list of necessary conditions for human flourishing. That is, one might believe that all that we permit and encourage as a society ought to contribute to the creation of people who are willing to permit diverse beliefs and practices. This person, hers el f ,h owever, might not hold many beliefs of religious or moral significance. She might have few allegiances and willingly abstain from moral judgments. This kind of human,she might believe, is the kind of human that flourishes. So, seeking to create society in her own image, she will disparage religious and moral commitments and encourage detachment. She might, in the meanti m e ,p ut up with religious and absolutist beliefs but only grudgingly and under a thin veneer of tolerance. But underneath the veneer lies intolerance—she simply cannot bear the beliefs and practices of people with strong and deep religious and moral convictions. She will work for the elimination of such beliefs and practices from the public, and eventually, private arena. This, so it seems to us, is the not-so-covert intention of some secular liberals. Consider Richard Rorty, for example. His thin view of persons fails him precisely at this point. He self-consciously defends his thin view of persons against a thick, theistic or metaphysical view. Historicists “have denied that there is such a thing as ‘human nature’ or the ‘deepest level of the self.’ Their strategy has been to insist that socialization, and thus historical circumstance, goes all the way down—that there is nothing ‘beneath’ socialization or prior to history which is definatory of human beings.” We have been freed, Rorty contends, from theology and metaphysics. But to what end? Here’s the problem for Rorty’s thin conception of persons: he must accept that there is no answer to the question “Why not be cruel?” He can give no justification for the harm principle; he can only assert and attempt to non-rationally persuade. Despairing of rational persuasion, his goal is to make everyone thin—theistically and metaphysically bereft. Rorty’s goal is to make “irony universal,” i.e., to make everyone in his own gaunt and ghostly image.16 A second alternative is simply to admit that ideas of the good are prior to, in this context,notions of the tolerable and therefore of harm.17 The issue of priority arises FORUM 637 in connection with the question,“Ought the limits to harm and of tolerance emerge from principles whose justification is impartial with respect to those of diverse and competing religious, moral, philosophical, and political convictions?” Those who believe the answer to this question is “no” believe that conceptions of the good are prior to considerations of permissible harms and of tolerance. But if this question is answered in the affirmative, the specter of incommensurability raises its ugly head; it might seem to us that nothing can be done to reach consensus about the limits to permissible harms, and therefore the limits to tolerance. We think, however, that there are three alternative courses of action open to one seeking consensus under pluralist conditions, given the priority of the good. First, we could aim for consensus by the wholesale persuasion and conversion of all of those whose conception of the good differs from our own. Second, we could bypass persuasion and aim for consensus by force of power. People who disagree with us can be tortured, repressed, or otherwise coerced to see the light. Finally, at least with those whose conception of the good is sufficiently robust, we could seek not for wholesale conversion but rather for an intersection of relevant beliefs. Here the task is to engage in the hard work of delving into the richly textured belief systems of our fellow human beings and searching within those systems for elements that underwrite mutually justifiable limits. But if there is radical incommensurability between these systems, the unfortunate consequence is that the likelihood of our arriving at consensus by this route will be vanishingly small. Even so, this is the alternative we favor. Why? We favor the last alternative not because conversion and persuasion are inconsistent with tolerance. They are not. As we have already seen, tolerance is exercised when we believe others to be in error about matters of fundamental human concern. When we believe someone to be in error, persuasion is one eminently plausible response. The second view secures consensus, but only at the costly expense of violating the conditions for human flourishing previously established. We favor the third alternative for two reasons. First, it strikes us that attempts at wholesale conversion are likely to fan the flames of intolerance and dogmatism, effecting the exact reverse of what our attempts at conversion are trying to secure. We believe that on a playing field teeming with diverse and deeply held moral, political, and religious systems of belief and practice, looking within competing systems for elements that can underwrite mutually justifiable limits to harm is less likely to inflame old wounds and incite new rivalries. Second, we believe that significant human freedom to carve out one’s own identity ought to be recognized and nourished and that the third alternative is less likely than attempts at conversion to be viewed as interfering with that freedom. That alternative is, therefore, more likely to achieve consensus among persons of competing religious, moral, and political convictions. And when we cannot reach an overlapping consensus, what do we do then? We keep searching and engaging in humble dialogue. That there are and will be times when a consensus cannot be reached is simply a reality we must live with even if, 638 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS from the perspective of conviction, we must also lament it. Tolerance, and gentle persuasion tempered by humility, should guide us as we seek to navigate a societal landscape marked by a plurality of differing identities. CONCLUSION That toleration is morally worthwhile seems clear. That we can, to everyone’s satisfaction, set the limits to tolerance once and for all seems highly unlikely, short of violating the very conditions necessary for human flourishing. We have argued in this essay that tolerance is a virtue that requires deep religious or moral conviction. Moreover, it is rooted in a thick theistic or metaphysical conception of the self. We have also argued that there are limits to tolerance and that these limits are set by a harm principle. When it comes to delimiting the extent to which harms are permissible, however, our task is complicated by the diverse conceptions of the good that dot the landscape of contemporary societal life. We believe that in a pluralistic context such as ours the best we can do to reach consensus, without ourselves violating the conditions necessary for human flourishing, is to seek within competing systems of belief and practice an intersection of beliefs relevant to establishing meaningful boundaries to harm. It is this alternative that seems to us the most promising in a context teeming with diversity. NOTES 1. We do not mean to imply that there were not religious influences on the Holocaust. 2. K. Anthony Appiah, “The Multiculturalist Misunderstanding,” The New York Review of Books, October 9,1997,36. 3. The relativist, we shall argue, may be tole rant of, say, religious b elievers and of moral absolutists, but,as we shall see,there is an obvious lack of logical fit between her tolerance and her relativism. 4. A similar view of tolerance has been offered by Peter Nicholson:“Toleration is the virtue of refraining from exercising one’s power to int erfere with others’ opinion or action although that deviates from one’s own over something important, and although one morally disapproves of it.” From “Toleration as a Moral Ideal”in Aspects of Toleration, ed. John Horton and Susan Mendus (London: Methuen,1985),166. Mary Warnock objects that restricting tolerance to moral matters is too narrow. See “The Limits of Toleration,” in On Toleration, ed. Susan Mendus and David Edwards (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1987),125f.Our own view is mo re in line with Warnock’s but develops more deeply the notion of tolerance. This is also one important respect in which our view of tolerance differs from Ed Langerak’s.Langerak’s account of tolerance does not depend conceptually on moral or religious convictions. See his “Toleration, Cooperation and Respect,” in Hessel Bouma, et al., Christian Faith, Healthcare and Medical Practice (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s, forthcoming). 5. For purposes of this paper, we will restrict tolerance to matters of belief and practice. What we say about tolerance of beliefs and p ractices, however, also applies to disagreements of attitude, which one may not regard as false or immoral. 6. Even in the case of disagreement of attitudes there will be an element o f care or deep commitment present. See, for example,the discussion of disagreement in C.L.Stevenson’s “Emotive Meaning of FORUM 639 Ethical Terms,” in Ethical Theory: Classical and Contemporary, ed. Louis Pojman (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Co.,1989),370-79. 7. Thus, “what matters” falls on a continuum and is person-relative. For some people how one squeezes a tube of toothpaste is a matter of fundamental concern and may call for tolerance of those of opposing practice! 8. Or perhaps the beautiful too, if one wishes to extend tolerance to matters aesthetic. 9. We distinguish homosex—the practice of same-sex sexual relations—from homosexuality—the fundamental sexual orientation toward members of the same sex. For it seems perfectly consistent for one to believe the former to be immoral but the latter amoral. 10. See Rawls’s discussion of these issues in “Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical,” in Communitarianism and Individualism, ed.Shlomo Avineri and Avner de-Shalit (New York: Oxford University Press,1992). 11. This seems to be just what underlies Daniel D ennett’s intolerance with resp ect to religious believers who deny that human beings are the product of evolution: “To watch, to have to participate in, the contraction or e vaporation of beloved features of one’s heritage is a pain only our species can experience,and surely few pains could be more terrible. But we have no reasonable alternative,and those whose visions dictate that they cannot pea cefully coexist with the rest of ours we will have to quarantine as best we can,minimizing the pain and damage, trying always to leave open a path or two that may come to seem acceptable.” From Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (New York: Penguin Books,1995), 519. 12. Here too the secular relativist runs into trouble. The person of religious conviction has (but the secular relativist lacks) grounds for even thinking pluralism and diversity are “goods” to be celebrated. When pressed,the person of religious conviction can appeal to the fecundity of a creator God who pronounced a blessing upon and takes great delight in a world of immense variety, a creator-God who has given to us human beings the task of cultivating creation along lines that preserve and extend this rich texture of multifarious diversity. The secular relativist, by contrast, has no way to ground pluralism and diversity as “goods.” 13. This seems to be the criterion offered by John Locke in his seminal essay on tolerance, “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” when he claims practices ought to be permitted as long as there is no injury done to an yone, no prejudice to any person’s g oods. Interestingly, Locke contends that toleration does not extend to atheism because atheists, he believes, have no reason to keep the promises, covenants,and oaths which are essential to the proper functioning of society. “The taking away of God,though but even in thought,dissolves all.” John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), ed. J. H. Tulley (Indianapolis: Hackett,1985). 14. Even here there are limits to tolerance,as in the case of a doctor who experiments on her patients without their consent (some of these experiments work and some do not). In the case of economic policies, one class of society may be made by those in power to suffer inordinately for the long-term greater g ood of society as a whole. And justice and tranquility may be secured, either in war or peace, by harming the innocent. We declawed a hostile aggressor in the Middle East but with, to our minds,an intolerable number of civilian casualties. Perhaps a greater good resulted—the new world order—but some of the costs were impermissible. 15. We assume, in good Maslowian fashion, that lower-level needs for food,shelter, clothing are taken care of. 16. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1989),xiii. 17. This notion bears a family resemblance to Rawls’s discussion of the right and the good. See John Rawls, “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 17 (1988): 251-76.