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Toleration and Tolerance in Theory and Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Bernard Crick
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1 WOULD DEFINE TOLERANCE AS THE DEGREE TO WHICH WE ACCEPT things of which we disapprove. Such a definition is only to define roughly, for the moment, what we are talking about, it does not settle any argument and it will require elaboration before it can be shown, as I hope to, that it is an important subject for historical and social research, hitherto neglected or often treated most superficially, that is either shallowly or purely on the level of ideas. ‘Tolerance’ I will use as a specific term-we are tolerant of this and that. ‘Toleration’ I will use for explicit theories or doctrines which state that we should be tolerant (or as tolerant as possible) of wide classes of actions or types of belief and behaviour. All societies accept to some degree, however small, some things of which government, public opinion or tradition disapprove. Many of these latter are trivial, both in contemporary and subsequent perspectives; but there are plainly many cases of significant and important degrees of tolerance existing in societies long before theories or doctrines of toleration emerge – which fundamentally are no older than the 16th century and do not become commonplace until the I 8th. Indeed, in many ways, as I will argue later, degrees of tolerance in autocracies are more interesting to study (and have been less studied) than intolerance in politicaldemocracies, or whatever term one chooses to use for modern polity.

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Articles
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Government and Opposition , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1971 , pp. 143 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1971

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References

1 Paine, Rights of Man, Penguin edition, p. 107.

2 Where Paine and Marcuse go wrong is to identify all procedures with ideology. It is obviously reasonable to expect men positively to agree with some procedures, the occasionally unwelcome results of which they may only merely tolerate, even reject morally, but none-the-less accept peaceably.

3 Banton, Michael in a chapter on ‘Social Distance’ in his Race Relations, London, 1967 Google Scholar quotes Robert E. Park; ‘Everyone, it seems is capable of getting on with everyone else provided he keeps his proper distance’; and he discusses ‘social distance scales’. But while such scales can measure one type of acceptance-rejection factor they may have little or no relevance for our purposes to many types of disapproval factors present in tolerance.

4 See Tajfel, Henri, ‘Cognitive Aspects of Prejudice’, published in Journal of Bio-social Sciences supplement No. 1, Bio-Social Aspects of Race, 1969.Google Scholar

5 Some would argue that this comprehension must imply some respect for those who pose the threat. In some Kantian and minimal sense of recognizing that we are dealing with fellow men, yes; but I cannot agree that this is Always conscious: much tolerance appears to be purely pragmatic.

6 The emergence of toleration is a precondition for the emergence of free institutions — they are dependent upon it; but both logically and historically there can be significant tolerance without general freedom and liberalism.

7 Mr Geoffrey Green of Sheffield University, who holds the Morrell Studentship in Toleration, is attempting to do just this in his thesis research. I am grateful to him for several ideas.

8 A Critique of Pure Tolerance, Boston, 1969, p. 84.

9 Ibid., p. 85

10 ‘The factual barriers which totalitarian democracy erects against the efficacy of qualitative dissent are weak and pleasant enough compared with the practices of a dictatorship which claims to educate the people in the truth. With all its limitations and distortions, democratic tolerance is under all circumstances more humane than an institutionalized intolerance which sacrifices the rights and liberties of the living generations for the sake of future generations. The question is whether this is the only alternative.’Ibid., p. 99. And the further question is whether his alternative allows further alternatives. His answer seems to be, ‘Sorry, necessarily no’, based, I honestly believe, on some mysticism about the number three or triadic progressions.

11 Ibid., p. 4

12 See his ‘Myth, Ideology and Revolution’, pp. 212–13 in Crick, Bernard and Robson, William A., eds., Protest and Discontent, Pelican, 1970.Google Scholar But I am alarmed to find myself put in such company by him. My In Defence of Politics simply offered a minimal justification of political activity as conciliating groups. I did not ever suggest that this was more than the framework in which we debate - or shall debate - ‘What should be done ?’, political justice.

13 The Poverty of Liberalism, New York, 1968, p. 136.

14 Quoted by Hill, Christopher in his God’s Englishman, London, 1970, pp. 67–8.Google Scholar