What Is Tolerance? From Concession to Recognition

What is tolerance? In its everyday sense, it is a concession and an attitude of putting up with others. We “allow” people whose opinions, way of life or religious faith differ from ours to live in the same space as we do, while they keep their own system of values. Tolerance starts from a disagreement that stays unresolved: we disapprove of a belief or a practice, but we decide not to interfere with the person who thinks that way and acts accordingly.

Whoever tolerates stands above the person they tolerate, either by belonging to a moral or cultural majority or simply by holding authority. For these reasons, tolerance has shown its limits in recent times. It began as a concession from the sovereign to religious dissenters, and it was defended as a strategy for living together in peace despite differences. Its first limit is that it accepts those differences only by reducing them to invisibility and silence.

The International Day for Tolerance and Our Interview with Roberta Sala

The International Day for Tolerance is observed every year on 16 November. The UN General Assembly established it in 1996, one year after UNESCO’s Declaration of Principles on Tolerance, which describes tolerance as an active attitude prompted by the recognition of universal human rights. For the occasion, we interviewed Roberta Sala, Full Professor of Political Philosophy and Dean of the Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University. Sala covered many topics: the relationship between tolerance and recognition, ethical pluralism, and the possibility of setting common rules for people whose convictions may differ deeply.

Tolerance in Philosophy: from Putting Up With to Accepting

Tolerance is a virtue when it involves a welcoming attitude towards those we disagree with. It means letting the reasons for acceptance prevail over those for objection, and so rejecting the prejudice that other people’s opinions are wrong. To tolerate, we therefore have to separate our own judgement from the decision about how to treat people who live or think differently. This virtue does not apply in every case, nor is it an absolute duty: it reaches its limit at the point where the reasons for rejection become stronger than those for acceptance. We tolerate ideas, not people, who deserve respect regardless: tolerating ideas different from our own does not mean abandoning ours, but recognising that others have the same right to defend theirs.

In politics, this distinction became especially important in Europe during the wars of religion, from the 16th century onwards. Faced with religious violence, tolerance offered a way of living together without requiring everyone to share the same faith. Dissent could survive instead of being suppressed.

Equal Dignity and the Neutrality of Liberal Institutions

Toleration granted by those in power, however, still falls far short of equality. In the historical forms Sala refers to, rulers may allow a religion other than the dominant one, as long as it stays in the private sphere. Dissenters gain protection, but they must accept limits on their public presence: the power that grants toleration keeps setting its terms. For their part, those who are tolerated do not wish to be merely tolerated. They want to be accepted as bearers of their own ideas and values, without feeling treated as less than equal by people who consider themselves superior. People want to be respected not despite their choices, but along with their choices.

The picture changes once we assume that people have equal dignity. Religious freedom, like the freedom to express personal convictions, then becomes a right that everyone can claim, even against the preferences of the majority.

In liberal societies, tolerance thus becomes the principle of impartial institutions. No religion or moral view can claim privileges in public space, and everyone has the right to equal treatment and to protection from discrimination based on the groups they belong to. In this form, tolerance is neutral, because it does not judge individual choices but protects them all equally.

Identity-Based Differences: the Limits of Neutrality

Neutrality, however, works for differences that depend on choices, such as religious and moral ones, and not for ascribed or identity-based differences, which concern belonging to a community and are not a matter of choice. In their case, it makes no sense to speak of tolerance. The people who carry them do not ask to be ignored, but to be seen, while the neutrality of institutions means ignoring such differences in public.

At this point, tolerance also concerns the public sphere. Equal citizenship requires that differences in values, culture and religion can be expressed in public, with respect for the rights of others and for peaceful everyday life. Others must be considered, Sala explains, «as bearers of the same rights or the same duties».

Asking citizens to make their identity invisible in order to be accepted, that is, to confine it to their private sphere, carries an inherent inequality. Some identities can show themselves without having to justify their presence, while others are admitted only as long as they do not show themselves.

Toleration as Recognition

The idea of “toleration as recognition” tackles this imbalance. Recognising a person means respecting their position as an equal, even when we do not share their choices. We can disapprove of a belief, but we must prevent that disapproval from turning into the denial of a right. Recognition combines the granting of rights with respect, and it may require positive action in support of minorities, redistributive measures or symbolic gestures to repair the discrimination they have suffered.

Laws apply to everyone in the same way, but they were inspired by the values and customs of the majority, so they ask more of those who do not share them. Declaring the formal equality of rights is not enough to achieve equal respect. This is why Sala points out that «these social standards should not also be understood as moral standards». That most people follow a habit tells us how widespread it is, and nothing about how right it is. Distance from that custom, in turn, is not a sufficient reason to judge someone inferior. The goals remain those that already drove tolerance: equality and justice; what changes is the means of pursuing them, which is no longer neutrality but public visibility.

Value Pluralism and a Society that Grows Richer

Pluralism takes seriously the fact that a single society holds different conceptions of the good life: ideas about what is worth pursuing, how to live and which obligations to recognise. Disagreements may concern faith, moral convictions or personal choices, and they cannot always be reconciled.

Sala draws on the tradition of the philosopher John Stuart Mill, author of On Liberty (1859). A society with different ways of living, she observes, widens the options open to its citizens and makes the most of value pluralism. Debate and experimentation help people choose more consciously and put to the test habits they have inherited without ever examining them.

A society that embraces value pluralism therefore grows richer, because in practice it allows its citizens to talk to one another, compare views and experience different cultures, which broadens their scope for free choice.

Pluralism and relativism are not the same thing: pluralism does not imply that every practice is acceptable or that every judgement has the same value, because the limit of harm to others still stands. Instead, pluralism lets us discuss differences without assuming from the start that the dominant model is superior. The question that remains is how to make shared decisions when debate does not lead to agreement.

Arendt: Discussing Without Assuming Agreement

To address this question, Sala turns to the philosopher Hannah Arendt and the importance of considering other people’s points of view. When we enter a public discussion, we have to deal with people for whom our premises may be far from obvious. Taking this possibility seriously means explaining our reasons and leaving others free to reject them. The invitation to see things from other people’s perspective does not mean changing our convictions without reflection or without having been persuaded by new reasons. It means adopting a broad outlook that reflects a willingness to engage and accepting that what we hold as truths may be, for others, only our opinions.

Rawls and the Liberal State: Reasons that Can Hold for Everyone

In Political Liberalism (1993), the American philosopher John Rawls discusses the political virtue of reasonableness. This is the willingness to recognise the pluralism of positions, based first of all on acknowledging the limits of our own knowledge and that of others. Reasonableness is the basis of coexistence between equals, that is, between people who can see others as they see themselves, each as the bearer of their own values. This mutual recognition is the foundation of democratic and liberal citizenship.

Reasonableness and reciprocity

Reasonableness therefore implies reciprocity. It could also be described as our willingness, as citizens taking part in public dialogue, to bracket our own truth without giving up on defending it as truth. We hold firm to our faith or moral vision without claiming that it gives us sufficient grounds to impose it on others, that is, without demanding that it become the basis of any law or form of coercion.

The Problem of Those Who Reject Reciprocity

One difficulty remains, as much practical as theoretical: how can we live alongside people who claim freedom for themselves but refuse to grant it to others?

Sala distinguishes between those who do not share liberal principles but still respect the rights of others, and those who reject even this possibility of coexistence.

One of the strategies discussed is reasoning from conjecture. The aim is to show the other person that, starting from their own convictions, they could find reasons to support liberal political values such as freedom, equal respect or at least tolerance. Another option is to point out the protections that a free society offers even to those who do not share its assumptions. Freedom of conscience allows people to keep minority beliefs without having to adopt the dominant ones. The condition is that they accept the constraints of peaceful coexistence, in particular the obligation not to harm others and to leave everyone free to believe what they wish. What matters is demonstrating that people can share an interest in peaceful coexistence even where they do not accept the moral principles on which it rests. Put simply, practical agreement is possible despite disagreement on values.

What Can We Ask of Tolerance?

Tolerance has limits, especially when it is understood as a concession or as putting up with others. Even so, where there are no shared reasons on which to build coexistence, we have to acknowledge that it still offers something: a minimum threshold from which to start working towards ever wider areas of agreement. If only for its stated purpose of peaceful coexistence, tolerance has value, because it does not erase differences but stops them from degenerating into the kind of conflict in which the strongest have the last word.

References

Arendt H., “Truth and Politics”, 1967.

Galeotti A.E., Toleration as Recognition, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Mill J.S., On Liberty, 1859.

United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 51/95, 1996.

Rawls J., Political Liberalism, 1993.

UNESCO, Declaration of Principles on Tolerance, Paris, 16 November 1995.