The End Of ToleranceTolerance is out. Affirmation is in.
By JOHN HIRSCHAUER
APRIL 26, 2022
Thomas Aquinas argued that human law, because it is “framed for a number of human beings the majority of whom are not perfect in virtue,” should not criminalize every vice. Instead, he argued, the civil power should ban “only the more grievous vices, from which it is possible for the majority to abstain.”
Needless to say, Aquinas was not a relativist. Thomas never denied that the acts in question were, in fact, vicious—violations of the divine law for which the offender could lose his eternal soul. His suggestion that the state “tolerate” certain vicious behaviors was a prudential concession to human nature, not an endorsement of vice.
Tolerance, both as a prudential concession to human nature and as a liberal value, has fallen out of fashion. In part, this is because tolerance is judgmental. To “tolerate” something—a poorly cooked meal, an annoying houseguest, the garish paint job on your neighbor’s house—acknowledges the existence a standard from which the tolerated thing deviates. You “tolerate” your neighbor’s stupid yard sign not because “Science Is Real” qualifies as a penetrating insight, but because you want to be polite.
British philosopher John Gray made this point in a 1992 essay, “Toleration: And the Currently Offensive Implication of Judgement.” He argued that, in spite of its hippy-dippy connotations, exercising tolerance actually requires “strong moral convictions.”
“When we tolerate a practice, a belief or a character trait, we let something be that we judge undesirable, false or at least inferior,” Gray wrote. “
- ur toleration expresses the conviction that, despite its badness, the object of toleration should be left alone.”
It is because of this implication of judgement that tolerance has fallen out of fashion in favor of what the White House calls “affirmation,” that is, an unqualified endorsement of a person’s beliefs and choices. Behind this shift is the belief that nothing is really true or false, that what matters is not whether the emperor has clothes, only whether he’ll be really upset if you tell him he’s naked. The demand for affirmation always comes from a place of insecurity.
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-end-of-tolerance/
