Sometimes, before we care about other people or love them, we must learn to tolerate them. This is only a first step, at level one of ethical attainment/development. Socially and culturally, tolerance is a necessary first step toward peace.
Tolerance may not be much but it is a beginning. We cannot love people we cannot even tolerate.
For some people, tolerance is never an issue. For others, it is always the issue, the ever-present impediment to love, fellowship and a life of service.
Tolerance may best be characterized as “a value orientation towards difference”. It is challenged when we are confronted with “cultural, religious, and ideological beliefs and practices” that differ from our own. “Evidence suggests that intolerance may be a lower level of reasoning in a social cognitive developmental progression.” “Intolerant individuals attach all symbolic value to a small number of attributes and are irrespectful of people with different ones. Tolerant people have diversified values and respect social alterity.”
“Tolerance entails acceptance of the very things one disagrees with, disapproves of or dislikes. Tolerance can be seen as ‘a flawed virtue’ because it concerns acceptance of the differences between others and ourselves that we would rather fight, ignore, or overcome.” “As a consequence of living in a heterogeneous society, there is a growing need for skills to coexist peacefully with others.” “While tolerance is recognised as important, especially to diverse societies, understanding tolerance poses complexities, both theoretically and in practical application.” “Tolerance is considered a critical and adequate response to the challenge of how conflicting ways of life can freely express themselves and peacefully coexist with each other. A society that is culturally, religiously, and ideologically plural implies diversity of substantive worldviews and lifestyles.”
Opposites include intolerance.
Real
True Narratives
- Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini, Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance (NYU Press, 2003).
- Josh Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (University of Chicago Press, 1980).
- Matthew Kuefler, The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (University of Chicago Press, 2006).
- Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval & Modern Times (Behrman House, 1961).
- Ole Peter Grell & Bob Scribner, eds., Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
From the dark side:
- Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World (Houghton Mifflin, 2018): “A story of religious intolerance on a massive scale”.
Technical and Analytical Readings
- James Kraft and David Basinger, eds., Religious Tolerance through Humility: Thinking with Philip Quinn (Ashgate, 2008).
- Wendy Brown & Rainer Frost, The Power of Tolerance: A Debate (Columbia University Press, 2014).
- Wendy Brown, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (Princeton University Press, 2006).
- John R. Bowlin, Tolerance among the Virtues (Princeton University Press, 2016).
- Denis Lacorne, The Limits of Tolerance: Enlightenment Values and Religious Fanaticism (Columbia University Press, 2016).
- C.S. Adcock, The Limits of Tolerance: Indian Secularism and the Politics of Religious Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2014).
- Suzanna Danuta Walters, The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions are Sabotaging Gay Equality (New York University Press, 2014).
- John J. Sullivan & George E. Marcus, Political Tolerance and American Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1982).
- Yohanan Friedman, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
- Paul K.J. Han, Uncertainty in Medicine: A Framework for Tolerance (Oxford University Press, 2021).
- Hans Oberdiek, Tolerance: Between Forbearance and Acceptance (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001).
- Melissa S. Williams and Jeremy Waldon, Toleration and Its Limits (NYU Press, 2008).
- Sara Bullard, Teaching Tolerance (Doubleday, 1996).
- Fethullah Gülen, Toward a Global Civilization of Love and Tolerance (The Light, Inc., 2004).
- T.M. Scanlon, The Difficulty of Tolerance: Essays in Political Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
I have no objection to any person’s religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don’t believe it also. But when a man’s religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him. [Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or the Whale (1851), Chapter 17, “The Ramadan”.]
Novels and stories:
- Lionel Shriver, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers, 2016): “. . . call it dystopian finance fiction. When the novel opens, America is perched on the cusp of catastrophe, though no one knows it yet. The population is still reeling from the aftershocks of “the Stonage” (an abridgment of Stone Age), the technology blackout in 2024 that brought the entire country to a halt . . .”
- Jenni Fagan, The Sunlight Pilgrims: A Novel (Hogarth, 2016): “Dylan is an orphaned giant whose mother, to obscure his troubling lineage, told him he was the product of a fallen angel and a mortal woman. . . Stella is a double, both a boy and a girl. The local lore about the sunlight pilgrims of the novel’s title tells of a race who drink light to live through the darkest times. But Fagan does not use metaphor as poetic immunity for her characters or her readers. The novel leaves them — and us — in a deeply troubling and unresolved moment. The world looks like a place of our darkest imagination, but it is all too real.”
- Leah Hager Cohen, Strangers and Cousins: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2019): “As in a Shakespearean comedy, disparate relationships will find a way to be resolved, and familial love, at least, will prevail. It’s wise Aunt Glad, in her own life’s twilight, whose words provide the novel’s ultimate plea for acceptance, of others and of ourselves: 'We must always try to embrace reality.'”
Poetry
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Luigi Boccherini, Piano Quintets: the fortepiano, an intermediary step between the harpsichord and the modern piano, couples with the bowed strings with some difficulty, which sounds a bit like an uneasy truce. In addition, Boccherini’s style was emotionally flat and matter-of-fact. Here is a link to ten of the quintets played on period instruments.
Boccherini, String Quartets: Op. 2, G. 159-164 (1761) (approx. 65-72’); Op. 8, G. 165-170 (1768) (approx. 75’); Op. 9, G. 171-176 (1770); Op. 15, G. 177-182 (1772) (approx. 55-60’); Op. 22, G. 183-188 (1775); Op. 24, G. 189-194, (1776-1778); Op. 26, G. 195-200 (1778) (approx. 55-60’); Op. 32, G. 201-206 (1780) (approx. 90’); Op. 33, G. 207-212 (1781) (approx. 55-60’); Op. 39, G. 213 (1787) (approx. 21’); Op. 41, G. 214-215 (1788) (approx. 44’); Op. 44, G. 220-225 (1792); Op. 48, G. 226-231 (1794); Op. 52 , G. 232-235 (1795) (approx. 70-75’); Op. 53, G. 236-241 (1796); Op. 58, G. 242-247 (1799) (approx. 100’); here is a link to an album of quartets from Opp. 39 (1787), 41 (1788) & 64 (1804) (1995) (69’): after an ebullient start in Opus 8, Boccherini’s string quartets convey a sense of keeping one’s distance, respectfully and peacefully.
Hector Berlioz, Béatrice et Bénédict (1862) (approx. 105-110’) (libretto): a young man and a young woman are simultaneously drawn to and repelled by each other. They declare their “love” for each other, then declare a mutual truce. “Berlioz keeps only (Shakespeare's) Béatrice et Bénédict love story, dropping the Ado of Don John’s scheme against Hero.” The opera may reflect Berlioz’s life: “Berlioz, who loved Harriet (his first wife) and conducted himself with dignity throughout, nevertheless took a mistress in 1841: an opera singer named Marie Recio (who eventually become the second Mrs. Berlioz). Two years later—in 1843—Harriet Smithson walked out, never to return.” Performances with video are conducted by Rhorer, and in Lyon in 2021. Excellent audio-recorded performances are conducted by Colin Davis in 1963, Nelsons in 1992, and Colin Davis in 2000.
Other works:
- Franz Schubert, Piano Sonata No. 5 in B-flat Major, D. 557 (1817) (approx. 12’)
- Schubert, Piano Sonata No. 6 in D Major, D. 566 (1817) (approx. 16-25’)
- Gustav Holst, Beni Mora (Oriental Suite), Op. 29, No. 1, H 107 (1910) (approx. 17’): audience members hissed and booed when they heard themes from Arabic culture.
- Barbara Harbach, Civil Civility for Chamber Orchestra with Soprano, Flute, Violin and Piano (2016) (approx. 29-30’)
Music: songs and other short pieces
Visual Arts
Rembrandt van Rijn, The Unity (Agreement) in the Country (1641)
