Power and distaste: tolerance and its limitations

Abstract

The paper is divided into two parts, a short introductory section called ‘The case for tolerance’, and a longer section, ‘Beyond tolerance’, which contains the major part of the argument. The burden of that argument is that there are good reasons for thinking that tolerance is not the progressive virtue it is usually assumed to be. Rather, it is argued, tolerance is merely one more ruse of domination. It makes more palatable those social arrangements that work to the benefit of the already powerful and privileged, but it does not seriously bring them into question, much less challenge or threaten to undermine them.