What is the “paradox of tolerance” and is it legit?
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Let’s say, “I am tolerant of everyone”. That means you accept murderers, racists, etc. If I change the phase to “I’m only tolerant of people who are tolerant to everyone”, that would exclude yourself, as you are no longer tolerant of intolerant people”. At some point, if you want a tolerant world, you have to exclude a group of people.
How long can you tolerate nazis before the nazis take over, kill all the people who tolerated them, and then start a thousand year regime of intolerance?
How long can you tolerate nazis before the nazis take over, kill all the people who tolerated them, and then start a thousand year regime of intolerance?
How long can you tolerate nazis before the nazis take over, kill all the people who tolerated them, and then start a thousand year regime of intolerance?
To be more concrete, if you really want, say, gay people in your community spaces, you can’t be tolerant of people spouting off about how gay people should be burned alive.
Or, since people really aim for acceptance nowadays over mere tolerance; you can’t both accept gay people and those who openly want to murder them. They aren’t going to happily co-exist. A community has to choose.
There is a difference between being tolerant of, say, criticism of the powerful, or criticism of the government, and being tolerant of eliminationist rhetoric towards individuals in the community. The “paradox of tolerance” is the claim that it is ethically impossible not to have both. If you can acknowledge that those two stances do not have the same validity, then there is no paradox.
To be more concrete, if you really want, say, gay people in your community spaces, you can’t be tolerant of people spouting off about how gay people should be burned alive.
Or, since people really aim for acceptance nowadays over mere tolerance; you can’t both accept gay people and those who openly want to murder them. They aren’t going to happily co-exist. A community has to choose.
There is a difference between being tolerant of, say, criticism of the powerful, or criticism of the government, and being tolerant of eliminationist rhetoric towards individuals in the community. The “paradox of tolerance” is the claim that it is ethically impossible not to have both. If you can acknowledge that those two stances do not have the same validity, then there is no paradox.
To be more concrete, if you really want, say, gay people in your community spaces, you can’t be tolerant of people spouting off about how gay people should be burned alive.
Or, since people really aim for acceptance nowadays over mere tolerance; you can’t both accept gay people and those who openly want to murder them. They aren’t going to happily co-exist. A community has to choose.
There is a difference between being tolerant of, say, criticism of the powerful, or criticism of the government, and being tolerant of eliminationist rhetoric towards individuals in the community. The “paradox of tolerance” is the claim that it is ethically impossible not to have both. If you can acknowledge that those two stances do not have the same validity, then there is no paradox.
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