Toleration: a Libertarian Viewpoint

"...liberty is the only thing that should always be tolerated...."

toleration  This is often held to be a virtue, and in particular a ^*liberal one. But it is not axiomatically clear why or even what it involves. To tolerate something is to allow it for whatever reason—when one has the ^*power to, at least try to, stop it—while disliking it or disapproving of it in some way. And this immediately often gives rise to the accusation of being inherently paradoxical: why should, could, or would we tolerate something we dislike or (even ^*morally) disapprove of when we need not? The short answer is that the ^*cost of stopping such a thing is too high. Thus, there is not an inherent paradox in the mere concept.

Toleration is a formal concept: it does not tell us what we should tolerate or why. Hence, someone cannot simply “be tolerant” without any, implicit, qualifying explanation. It would be absurd to think that we ought to be universally tolerant: that we ought to allow everything (for one thing, that would mean tolerating things that are inconsistent with each other). And not many people think that we should be tolerant of murder, rape, etc. So, one obvious question is, “Is there anything in general that should always be tolerated or not tolerated?”. To answer this first requires noticing that there is another important ambiguity, and asymmetry, about “toleration” that is analogous with ^*“free speech”: the ^*political versus the ^*social or personal.

Politically, aspects of ^*liberty are what have often required toleration. That is, the ^*state has come to tolerate certain types of people or practices within its ^*territory insofar as they are not ^*initiating impositions on others: ^*freedom of ^*religion was an early cause for such toleration, but also atheism, and much more recently sexual diversity. To practice full ^*impartial liberal toleration, the state thereby desists from either ^*persecuting or ^*privileging (both being always at other people’s imposed expense, as the state is socially ^*parasitic) the relevant people or practices: i.e., it ceases to ^*discriminate on that basis. But for the state to tolerate full liberty would be for it to abolish itself in favour of ^*anarchy.

Individual people only need to tolerate other people by not interfering with them in their person and ^*property. It is asking the impossible to hold that individuals must somehow support all categories of people and their practices, or allow them any access to their property, personally interact with them, or even respect them. But individuals are fully entitled to support, etc., any type of person or practice if they choose to do so with what is theirs to bestow. Thus, unlike political discrimination, personal discrimination of all kinds (that don’t flout liberty) is entirely compatible with (classical) liberal or ^*libertarian toleration, and so must itself be tolerated. To require that Peter must do any more than tolerate Paul’s liberty is thereby to fail to tolerate Peter’s liberty.

When ^*statists, especially the ^*politically correct or ^*woke (“liberals” in the degenerate modern sense), use “toleration” they sometimes mean the use of the state ^*aggressively to ^*coerce support, anti-discrimination, and privilege concerning the people or practices of which they approve; thereby proportionately not tolerating the liberty of all the other groups. This is imposing a negative sum ^*game that puts people in conflict with each other.

Liberal toleration (toleration of individual liberty), then, is useful as a prudential modus vivendi. Not to have it is to reduce both liberty and ^*welfare generally. But to go beyond prudence and morally affirm such toleration, as liberals and libertarians usually do, is likely to make for an even more stable and harmonious free society. Therefore, liberty is the only thing that should always be tolerated and its infringement never tolerated (within practical limits, at least).

All that said, an individual can certainly appear to be foolishly, ignorantly, imprudently, ^*bigotedly, etc., intolerant; even though this is solely with respect to his own opinions, person, and property. However, that appearance might be refuted by closer inspection; or it might really be due to similar intolerance in the observer. But even if an intolerance is based on some sort of mistake, ^*legally tolerating any intolerance done on a liberal basis is the only way to avoid some immediate intolerant ^*authoritarianism and perhaps a slide towards ^*totalitarianism.

Another so-called “paradox of tolerance” is the idea that “tolerating intolerance” will result in the ultimate triumph of intolerance. As held—inter alios—by Karl Popper (1902–1994), to preserve a tolerant society it can sometimes be necessary to be “intolerant of intolerance”. The confusion here is in not having a clear theory of what needs to be tolerated. Once we realise that only liberty of person and property should be tolerated the “paradox” disappears. If they ever spill over into being illiberal intolerances (not in terms of mere theories, or such things as so-called ^*“hate speech”, but actual impositions on persons and their property) then they become ^*torts or ^*crimes. (Popper makes an analogous mistake about liberty.)

Many philosophy articles and books spend much time attempting to answer the question, “What justifies toleration?”. Is the answer given here “producing a modus vivendi” or “maximising liberty”? No, the answer is, “Nothing”: toleration can only be conjecturally explained and defended from criticisms; not supported. See ^*critical rationalism.

(This is an entry from A Libertarian Dictionary: Explaining a Philosophical Theory [draft currently being revised]. Asterisks indicate other entries.)