Posts com a Tag ‘Toleration in Conflict: Past and Present (T)’

Tolerance and toleration, especially at times of conflict are, indeed, hard to come by. But what are exactly these words? What do they mean? Forst addresses these questions in a thorough manner. He argues in favor of recognizing that there is but one concept of toleration, and four conceptions of it. But first let me set the stage of what are the four meanings of “toleration in conflict”: 1) it can be “an attitude or practice that is only called for within social conflicts of a certain kind” (Forst 2013:1), not solving conflicts, merely containing them; 2) that the demand for toleration arises with conflicts — not existing prior to nor beyond them, toleration is an integral part of conflicts being, itself, an “interested party”; 3) that toleration not only is an interested party in conflicts but also the object of conflicts itself; 4) that there is a conflict within the concept of toleration itself, derived from the fact that there is only one concept of toleration, even though differing conceptions have been formulated over time.

Having said that, Forst addresses the pressing issue of concept and conceptions of toleration. A concept can be defined as basic semantic components, whereas conceptions are interpretations of these elements/components. There are six such components that, taken together, form the concept of toleration: the context of toleration; the objection component; the acceptance component; the limits of toleration; that tolerance is exercised by one’s own free will; and that the concept of toleration can subsume either the need to contemplate minorities with certain rights and personal tolerance towards practices one is not personally fond of. To better grasp the concept one needs three elements: to understand the history of the conceptualization of toleration; to examine the concept in its normative and epistemological dimensions; and to situate the concept in today’s conflicts, evaluating its content objectively. Leia Mais