Rescuing Toleration

Toleration has been recently attacked both on practical and on theoretical grounds. On practical grounds, confronting religious terrorism, many commentators have asked whether toleration can remain the general policy toward cultural and religious diversity. Theoretically, toleration has been questioned as to its analytical capacity in the realm of partisan politics. This paper aims at countering such criticisms, by means of a conceptual clarification especially focused on the notion of intolerance, intolerable and response to intolerance. The controversial cases arising in contemporary democracy are usually focused on the limits of toleration, hence on the intolerable, by stretching the interpretation of the self-defense and of the harm principle. The author argues that the stretching is often excessive and the resulting interpretations too contentious to provide solid grounds for the intolerable. Alternatively, issues of toleration can be examined from the point of view of tolerance/intolerance. This viewpoint can clarify issues at the descriptive level, sorting out who was tolerant and who was intolerant and what was intolerable, while disagreement may persist at the normative level, according to the favored justification of toleration.