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Toleration or Latitude? Two Models for Liberal Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2016

Richard Vernon
Richard Vernon*
Affiliation:
Western University
*
Department of Political Science, Western University, 1151 Richmond St., London ON, N6A5C2, Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Theories of toleration maintain that people sometimes have good reasons not to act on their convictions, however strong. Theories of latitude maintain that one should doubt the strength of one's convictions. While toleration has often been taken to be foundational for the liberal tradition, another view (made fully explicit by Brian Barry's Justice as Impartiality) is that we should look, rather, to the idea of latitude, as exemplified in late seventeenth-century Anglican writings. Taking these writings as its initial point of reference, the article maintains that toleration, rather than latitude, should be seen as foundational for the liberal tradition, which is better understood in terms of what one person owes to another than in terms of the relative validity of their beliefs.

Résumé

D'après certaines conceptions de la tolérance, l'on pourrait bien, pour de bonnes raisons, être amené à agir à l'encontre de ses propres convictions, pour fortes qu'elles soient. D'autre part, il existe des théories de la latitude selon lesquelles tout individu doit douter de la force de ses convictions. Bien que la tolérance ait souvent été considérée comme l'une des bases de la tradition libérale, une toute autre idée, formellement explicitée par Brian Barry dans Justice as Impartiality [Justice et Impartialité] affirme que nous devrions considérer plutôt l'idée de latitude à partir des ouvrages anglicans de la fin du XVIIe siècle. C'est sur la base de ces ouvrages que l'auteur avance l'idée que c'est en fait la tolérance et non pas la latitude que l'on devrait tenir pour notion fondatrice de la tradition libérale, cette dernière étant mieux comprise comme ce dont un individu est redevable à un autre, plutôt qu'ayant rapport à la validité relative de ses croyances.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 663 - 678
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 2016 

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