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it in a very different manner.
Other Kantian arguments are possible and I will consider some in
Chapter 2 but the problems with the approaches I have examined so far
are perfectly general. They all start by assuming the value of freedom and
autonomy as such. But these assumptions already presuppose a liberal
perspective that precludes the values like salvation and community that
the opponents of toleration think are more important than that kind of
freedom. If the opponents are right, then they can argue that some
freedom may be taken away for the sake of the higher value of salvation.
Yet, anyone who believes that religious values are paramount indeed,
anyone who takes the claims of religion seriously must maintain that in
any conflict between them, salvation is more important than freedom.
They may think freedom is highly valuable, but only if and when it does
not conflict with salvation. Indeed, the religious who support toleration
Arguments for toleration 29
think that no conflict either can occur or does occur in a liberal society.
The opponents of toleration are simply not so optimistic.
Toleration as a virtue
Finally, we need to consider arguments for toleration within the virtue tra-
dition of ethical thought. In the contemporary literature, proponents of
virtue theory are often suspicious of toleration as a virtue; indeed, they
often invoke the ancients and their conceptions of the virtues as a way to
combat what they see as the emptiness of a modern culture built on tolera-
tion (MacIntyre 1984: ch. 2). Most virtue theorists, then, either do not
support toleration at all, or they support it quite grudgingly. For example,
Alasdair MacIntyre argues for a form of toleration, but only because the
modern state cannot generally be trusted to promote any worthwhile set
of values, including those of autonomy and liberty (MacIntyre 2000:
143). For MacIntyre, then, toleration is the best we can expect in the
world as it is modern and corrupt but he would prefer to be in an
altogether different world. Of the virtue theorists who do embrace tolera-
tion, like William Galston (1991: especially ch. 10) and Stephen Macedo
(1990: especially ch. 7), most do so within a general theory that already
accepts liberalism and the toleration that goes with it. Their goal is to
outline the virtues required in a liberal, tolerant state, so they do not offer
an independent argument for the virtue.
Two important exceptions to the general hostility towards the liberal
regime among virtue theorists are Judith Shklar and Martha Nussbaum.
Shklar (1984), following the example of Michel de Montaigne, a
contemporary of our Parisian Catholics of 1572, sees the key element of
liberalism in a respect for diversity based on fear (see Creppell 2003: ch.
4). Like Montaigne, Shklar thinks we should construct a theory of virtues
built on the idea of putting cruelty first (Shklar 1984: 8). Putting
cruelty first, she argues, forces us to focus on what we do to people, and
it thereby prevents us from harming them in the name of religion or any
other cause. By avoiding the vice of cruelty, then, we accept a kind of tol-
eration (Shklar 1984: chs 1, 6). Shklar herself, however, recognizes that
putting cruelty first ignores the traditional idea of sin (Shklar 1984: 8,
240). For that reason alone, the religious warriors of France would find it
unacceptable. More importantly, the idea of cruelty obviously depends on
defining a notion of harm, so that doing certain things rather than
others count as cruel. But, just as the Parisian Catholics would have
rejected Mill s conception of a harm, they would also reject Shklar s.
They would think that real cruelty lies in letting someone condemn them-
selves to eternal damnation, not in inflicting merely temporal suffering: A
benevolent, medicinal, kindly meant cruelty is, Shklar admits, a Chris-
tian duty (1984: 240). Indeed, she concedes that the whole idea of
putting cruelty first is built on a prior rejection of a view of the world
30 Arguments for toleration
that was entrenched in the sixteenth century; it appeals to a notion of
kindness and humanity that is foreign to the people to whom we want it to
appeal. Such an approach seems, then, most unpromising as Montaigne
recognized in his own day: rather than try to change the world, he retired
to his study in disgust at the wars around him that he could do little to
assuage.
Nussbaum has, I think, a more promising approach. She sketches a
view of the virtues based on the classic Aristotelian conception of the
virtues as the proper responses to characteristic human activities (Nuss-
baum 1993). For example, the proper response to fear of important
dangers is courage; the proper response to bodily appetites and their
pleasures is moderation (Nussbaum 1993: 246). Although Nussbaum
only implicitly discusses toleration as a virtue, she does think that one of
the central human functional capabilities is the capacity to form a
conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the plan-
ning of one s life which, she says, entails protection for the liberty of
conscience (Nussbaum 1999c: 41, see Nussbaum 1992: 222; 1999b).
Putting these two insights together, we could think of toleration as the
proper response to the sphere of activities concerning our attitudes
towards those whose opinions differ from our own. Indeed, as Barry
Barnes (2001) points out, since no rule or standard interprets itself, we
need a kind of toleration of others and their views to engage in the dia-
logue that is necessary to apply a standard that everyone already accepts.
Seen in this way, toleration is a necessary part of every life. On Nuss-
baum s view, then, toleration is not simply a modern, Western value
because, like other virtues, it is not culturally specific. Each of the virtues
is an answer to a universal question about how to act although different
cultures may offer different answers to those questions, and more than
one of those answers may be morally acceptable (Nussbaum 1993:
255 60). Thinking of toleration as a kind of traditional virtue has some
distinct advantages. Like all virtues, toleration has its limits, so thinking
of it as a virtue forces us to think about when the exercise of toleration is
appropriate and when it is not. In addition, seeing toleration as a virtue
encourages us to think of it as an attitude for which we must be educated
and habituated over the course of our lives.
However, this minimal virtue of toleration is not enough to sustain the
practices in which we are interested. Insofar as they work, they apply
clearly only within communities. The toleration that is needed to engage in
dialogue among those who disagree only applies to people who identify
themselves as a community. That argument simply does not apply to
people with whom we think we have no need of dialogue. To have an
argument that toleration between communities is necessary, we need to
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