Toleration is a concept full of paradoxes, normative as well as epistemological. How can it be right to tolerate what is wrong or bad? How can I be convinced that my beliefs are true and yet also believe it to be true that I should tolerate those beliefs which are not true?
There are (at least) three prominent answers to these questions.1 First, the skeptical solution (or rather, evasion of the problem): there is no sufficiently justified belief in the truth or untruth of said beliefs; and among reasonable people in such an epistemological predicament, toleration is the normative conclusion that follows. Second, there is the dualistic approach (which comes in various forms): the truth of, say, my religious beliefs is one thing, and the truth of my normative commitments to toleration quite another. Reasons connected to the latter tell me why it is right—or even demanded—to tolerate what is wrong as seen from the first perspective. Finally, there are monistic positions: it is one and the same belief system that gives me reasons both to disapprove of certain beliefs or practices and to tolerate them nevertheless. Such a system of beliefs can be of a religious or “liberal” or some other nature.
In his impressive and challenging chapter, ranging from a conceptual and normative discussion of a number of arguments for (and against) toleration to a cultural-sociological discussion of the present predicament of American liberalism, both internally and externally, Steven D. Smith argues against the first two approaches for a particular, complex version of the third one. He opts for a form of monistic liberalism that is closer to Locke than to Kant or Mill (or contemporary Kantians and Millians), one that generates its inner strength from knowing its particular ethical-religious roots and that can be tolerant because of that rootedness. This can be phrased in terms of another paradox—which for Smith is only apparent—that liberal toleration of religion must itself be justified on the basis of religious beliefs. In my brief comments, I will discuss some of the problems I see with this intriguing view and present some arguments for a certain form of the second, dualistic approach.
I should start by saying that I agree with Smith’s critique of the first, skeptical solution. Not only does it try to evade the main problem too easily, but there also is no natural way from skepticism to toleration, for it can also lead to social and religious conservatism, as in Montaigne and Lipsius, or to intolerance towards those skeptical of skepticism. Hence I also believe that we should look for a “kind of tolerance that is compatible with (and indeed derived from) the affirmation of truth” (271). More specifically, I am in agreement with Smith on
(a) the need for a conception of toleration that does not sacrifice the tolerant person’s belief in the truth of his or her ethical or religious doctrine but rather presents normative reasons for toleration that a religious believer can accept. This means that
(b) such reasons must not rest on a skeptical epistemology or on a “neutralist” standpoint that—in a self-defeating way—doubts the truth of its own moral stance.
Yet I disagree with Smith’s main thesis, which is that
(c) the “orthodoxy” that grounds toleration cannot rest on some “universal” norms—which Smith sees as an illusion—but rather on the self-conscious affirmation of the “liberal” or, more specifically, “American creed” consisting of a firm belief in the truth of sentences like “all men are created equal,” knowing that there can be no secular ersatz for the religious grounding of such a creed.
My central argument is that this main thesis (c) is a possible, but not the only and not the best conclusion based on premises (a) and (b). Thus my counter-thesis is, to be sure, not that there can be no toleration of religions that is itself based on a particular, Christian moral stance. Rather, my thesis is that this is an insufficient basis for a justifiable form of democratic toleration in a pluralist society, where we need a general argument for the duty of toleration as well as its limits. It seems to me that Smith’s position, according to which liberal toleration of religions presupposes a kind of religious liberalism, harbors the danger that this very ground will necessarily limit the possibilities of toleration in a problematic way.
These are large and complex issues, and in these brief comments, I cannot do more than present a few short arguments for my critique and counter-proposal.2
As far as Smith’s first section on the “Elements of Toleration” is concerned, I want to note two things. First, if we distinguish (as we should) three kinds of reasons characteristic of a judgment of toleration—reasons of objection to a certain practice or belief, reasons of acceptance that say why the false or wrong beliefs or practices still should be tolerated, and reasons of rejection, marking the limits of toleration3—Smith’s analysis seems to presuppose that all of those reasons have only one source: what he terms the “base position” or “orthodoxy.” Yet at this point of conceptual analysis, we should allow for the possibility that there is more than one source for such reasons, i.e., that there could be religious reasons of objection to a belief and yet other, moral reasons for toleration. A dualistic position cannot be ruled out from the start by way of conceptual argument.
Second, it is noteworthy that the agent of toleration Smith focuses on is “the state” (or “government”) and that therefore the state itself judges certain views or ideas from a “base position” (244). Hence from the start we find toleration to be an issue not primarily between citizens but between the state and certain individuals or groups the views of which the state judges as being false or wrong yet—given certain considerations—still within the realm of the tolerable. By definition, the structure is a vertical one, not one of horizontal, reciprocal relations.4 This leaves open the possibility that the state’s “orthodoxy” is a religious one and that its tolerance is reduced to not forcing this orthodoxy on (certain) citizens who have different beliefs, for example because it is believed that forcing the conscience of others is a sin before God—very much the same way as was historically the case in the Edict of Nantes (1598) or the Toleration Act (1689). Hence I doubt that such a scheme already deserves the (admittedly quite vague) name of “liberalism” (as counter-posed to “illiberal” and “ultraliberal” views), for surely the early Augustine already believed in such an argument.5 If we look for a “liberal” scheme of toleration, we need to say more about the way the distinctions between the three categories of the orthodox, the tolerable and the intolerable are being made.
This is exactly what we find in Smith’s next section on arguments against and for toleration. I agree with his discussion of arguments against the claim that possession of the truth legitimates the use of force on non-believers, and I also think that he rightly highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments that have been given, both epistemological (such as the argument for skepticism) and normative, such as the one about the voluntariness of faith. The later Augustine had refuted this argument long before Jonas Proast did so in his debate with Locke, and much in the same way: it is not true that conscience cannot be brought to the truth by the proper use of force, for even if we cannot produce inner convictions directly by external force, we can liberate men with the help of terror (Augustine) from their false beliefs and then instruct them in the right way, so that they can find their own way to the one and only truth (we present them with). Blocking the road of error with “thorns and briars” (Proast)6 is a way of leading human beings to the path of truth and inner conviction. And more than that, the true believer has a duty to do so, not just for the sake of those who might be infected in the future (haeresis est infectivum vitium, as Aquinas said), but also for those who already are infected and could lose their eternal life. Ultimately, of course, these are all duties one owes to God, not primarily to human beings.
At this point, however, I diverge from Smith’s position and turn to Pierre Bayle, while Smith dismisses his approach. Since I explain my interpretation of Bayle in my article in this volume, I will be brief here. He presents a reflexive normative argument for toleration combined with an epistemological one. The approach does indeed, as Smith notes, rest on what we can call the principle of reciprocity, or better yet the principle of reciprocal justification, which Bayle takes to be a higher-order principle that cannot be reasonably contested. Now the reason for Smith’s rejection of such a theory is that, according to him, Bayle’s call for reciprocal restraint in the face of irresolvable religious disagreement rests on a dubious, seemingly skeptical premise: “that the religions are relevantly similar” (254) with respect to the truth. Smith argues (a) that such a skeptical stance does not do justice to what it means to believe in the truth of one’s doctrine and (b) that the idea that there could be a mutual willingness among citizens to “act only on universally acceptable grounds” is a “pleasant illusion” (255).
These arguments go to the core of my own views on toleration, and I disagree with both of them. First, Smith rightly points out that Bayle’s reciprocity argument does require an epistemological premise, a “relativization” of the truth claim of religions. Yet the argument that Bayle presents is not—contrary to what many think about him—a “skeptical” argument. Rather, it is an argument about the difference between faith and knowledge, an argument for a distinction between two kinds of truth claims: those that can be finally decided by the means of “natural reason” alone, and those that are allowed for but not clearly decidable by reason, but ultimately by faith. About the latter, there can be and there will be what Rawls calls “reasonable disagreement”:7 disagreement about beliefs that are being held as true for reasons that are not contrary to reason but “beyond reason” (dessus de la raison, as Bayle says)8 in the sense that among finite reasonable beings there can be no “proof” of that truth. Yet what is important to see is that this is not skepticism; you have good reasons to believe your religion to be the right one and superior to the others, just so long as you see it for what it is: religious faith. According to Bayle, those who would give up their faith because of that, i.e., because they cannot prove its truth in a demonstrative way, are not good believers.9
As far as Smith’s second point with respect to the normative principle of reciprocity is concerned, I would hold with Bayle that the best case for toleration is a combination of the abovementioned epistemological argument with a normative principle of reciprocal justification: any use of force has to be mutually justifiable, and religious reasons that are disputed among the relevant parties are not good reasons for forcing others to act in a certain way (or believe certain things). Such a principle of justification Bayle sees as a principle of practical “natural” reason, of “natural light” which “enlightens all spirits,” whether they belong to a specific faith or not.10 Here is where I find the normative “truth” I would see as a ground for toleration: the truth of a principle of practical reason in light of which every person has a “right to justification,” as I call it, a right to be given adequate reasons for norms to which he or she is supposed to be subject. It is a reflexive truth, for it is presupposed by those who seriously engage in the controversy over the grounds and limits of toleration respecting others as persons worthy of equal respect.
As I see it, there are two reasons for Smith’s rejection of such a principle or right. Either it is the combination of that principle with skepticism and the view that skepticism fails in the face of religious beliefs—a combination that does not exist, as I tried to show—or it is the argument that such a principle of reciprocity is not generally acceptable, as a matter of fact, given the higher order “deep pluralism” not just of religious beliefs, but also of conceptions of justice and morality (255). Yet, at this point, Smith’s argument seems to shift significantly: So far, the question has been what the superior normative argument for toleration is; now the question seems to be which argument, empirically speaking, is generally accepted, or rather actually acceptable in given circumstances, as the argument proceeds. But this change of argument seems to commit a particular kind of naturalistic fallacy, a shift from the sphere of “ought” and “ought not” to the sphere of “is” and “is not” and back such that from the assumption of a factual nonexistence of a moral consensus on the principle of reciprocity it is inferred that the principle in dispute has no claim to be morally valid. Yet this is an invalid inference: morality is about the legitimate solution of conflicts and can thus hardly expect to be beyond conflict; general acceptability is what morality aims at, but general acceptance is not what constitutes it. I have reason to believe that Smith would agree with that, for as I said the main point of his argument is that we must hold onto moral truth—in a counterfactual, objective sense—if toleration is a to have a firm grounding.
Hence the grounding I suggest is a Baylean-Kantian one: an epistemological argument for “reasonable disagreement” that does not sacrifice religious truth claims—in line with point (a) in section II above—and a moral argument for reciprocal justification, i.e., a “freestanding” principle of respect (and, I would add, but cannot argue here, of practical reason). This accords to point (b) in section II above.
Such a justification of toleration does not, I believe, fall into the category of a self-defeating “ultraliberalism,” for the basic moral right to justification clearly is a substantive moral principle. And as compared to the conception of toleration that Smith proposes, one that is ultimately based on religious truth, the one I suggest has two major advantages.
The first advantage is that its notion of “equal respect” has a closer connection to the idea of democratic self-government. This avoids the problem alluded to above (section III), that Smith’s conception seems to allow for a religious majority, even if democratically formed, to dominate basic political institutions and deny minorities equal standing within them (though tolerating these groups, as long as they accept their inferior status). Toleration would not mean that “the state” or dominant majorities “put up with” minorities without granting them equal status in the law (think of homosexual marriage, religious symbols in the classroom, etc.)—which is not, to be sure, what Smith argues for, but it is a potential danger I see in his conception. Toleration, rather, would mean that in the case of religious disagreement, both sides, majority and minority, see that their reasons are insufficient to be the basis for general legal norms regulating basic social and political institutions. Democracy, I agree, is government “of the people, by the people, for the people” (259), yet that does not mean that majorities have the right to make their religious views the basis of general law, if basic institutions are concerned. Contrary to Smith’s critique of an “ultraliberal” notion of democracy, this is what democracy means: rule by mutually justifiable norms.11 This is a fundamental demand of democratic justice.
Such a notion of democracy encounters two of Smith’s important critical arguments, that of the “impoverished soul” and that of “impoverished discourse” in the public realm (261–69). Against the first argument, I believe that it is not an impoverishment but rather an enrichment of the “soul” if a person, in her full identity as person and citizen, keeps holding fast to her beliefs and still sees that it would be wrong if all those like her, say, all “Smiths,” would impose their religious beliefs on all the others, say, the “Millers,” by making those beliefs the basis of general legal norms. Every such “Smith” remains committed to his or her beliefs, yet sharing a belief in justice with all others, he or she acts in a tolerant way. One does not have to shed one’s identity in order to be tolerant and accept the borders of mutual justification; rather, this is part of one’s overall moral identity. There is no schizophrenia involved here. You can, of course, firmly believe that the cross is a symbol of the true faith, yet you can at the same time firmly believe that in a pluralistic society it would be wrong to have it put up in classrooms of public schools by law.12 Ultimately, then, the dualistic approach I defend has to be able to provide a comprehensive and complex view of a moral person who sees him- or herself within different contexts of justification, knowing what kinds of reasons are good reasons in a given practical context.13 A dualistic view does not split people’s minds; what it does is explain the insight that I may be convinced of the truth of certain values, constituting what it means to live a good and worthy life, and yet know that for reasons of justice and respect I must not impose this view on others who disagree with these values. I know that in order to have the authority to subject them to certain norms, I need moral arguments of a different, a stronger kind. I “owe” them mutually acceptable reasons.
Political discourse in such a society would not be impoverished, either, for such forms of mutual toleration presuppose that one knows the other’s point of view and argues against it; tolerating them requires knowing what one dislikes about them. The public forum would in no way be empty. That decisions should not be based on reciprocally contested religious beliefs, for which no side can give mutually non-rejectable arguments, does not mean that such views would not be allowed in the public realm. Rather, it is a matter of political fairness that they are—just as the demand for justified toleration is a matter of fairness.
The second advantage of my conception of toleration over Smith’s approach concerns the issue of moral foundations. From a Baylean-Kantian perspective, the attempt to ground toleration on religious “truths” like “all men are created equal in the image of God” is haunted by problems that lead us back into the historical struggles for toleration—and that require us to look for an alternative normative framework by learning the lessons of that history. Let me mention two important considerations in that respect.
(a) It was a long and painful process in European history to establish the idea of the independent moral worth of a “human being” without seeing that being primarily in the light of divine creation. For as long as the latter was the case, human beings had the highest duty to honor their creator and to observe his laws. The religious idea of “human dignity” did not exclude atheists and heretics by accident: they were seen as betraying their own creator and appeared as not morally trustworthy; in an important sense, they were morally illiterate. A secular notion of human dignity is by no means easy to establish philosophically,14 yet the attempt to do so has good historical and philosophical reasons. For to ground moral respect in a religious framework at the same time means to limit and qualify it. After all, it is the care for the soul that is the main concern for a Christian, and every moral duty first and foremost is a duty owed to God. Any argument for the moral respect of the autonomy of human beings has to be constructed on that basis and cannot be an independent one.
(b) This is not to deny, of course, that there can be an identity between one’s “most fundamental beliefs” (269) as a religious believer and as a “liberal,” i.e., that the commitment to liberalism can be grounded in a commitment to God. And if that is the case, toleration may be based on beliefs like that of the freedom of conscience or other considerations. Yet, if one’s religious beliefs and one’s liberal commitments part company in a given conflict, where the former say “X is God’s will,” while the latter say “X is incompatible with liberal principles,” and if these very principles have their foundation in religion—what will then take priority? At this point, orthodoxy may turn orthodox and religious liberalism return to religion; and contrary to Smith, who discusses this risk and sees it as not very “serious” (270), I think such conflicts show the problem of religious arguments for toleration: they end where the “fundamentals” are concerned but it seems that the conflicts where they are concerned are precisely the conflicts where we need toleration the most. Toleration is the virtue that is required when one’s fundamental beliefs are challenged, at which point we would hope that persons have a “most fundamental” belief that they owe each other mutual respect, apart from what God seems to demand. Otherwise, there is no shared language of justice or of the duty of toleration—or, of the critique of acts of intolerance as morally wrong. With Bayle, I do not believe that it is a vain dream of reason to argue for such a common viewpoint;15 rather, it is the real lesson that the history of conflicts over freedom and toleration teaches us: that there is a “truth” in the principle of reciprocal justification and the right to be respected equally that lies on a different level than a clash of religious truths. The idea that both the reflexive principle of mutual justification for norms that are to be generally binding (and that claim to be mutually justifiable), on the one hand, and a religious conviction about the nature and will of God, on the other, are “creeds” that lie on the same level of justification and contestation strikes me as a form of “ultraliberal” relativism that is impossible to defend.
Though I cannot go into it here, this may also be what we have to keep in mind when we are “looking outward” to the conflicts on the global level, to the so-called clash of civilizations. Here I find a position that advocates the affirmation of an “American creed” that is at the same time universalist and culturally “thick” (and local) potentially self-defeating and quite problematic, especially with regard to the question of the “extension” of such values to “other communities characterized by other cultures” (266). Even if it is true that in intercultural conflicts it is important to be aware of one’s own values and principles and their limitations, it is also true that solutions to such conflicts call for the construction of a common normative basis that is mutually justifiable. And thus the idea of mutual justification itself should be good starting point.
1. Historically and systematically speaking, there are more than these three approaches to toleration, such as those concerned with pragmatic and strategic considerations. For an analysis of the variety of justifications for toleration from early Christianity onwards, see my Toleranz im Konflikt. Geschichte, Gehalt und Gegenwart eines umstrittenen Begriffs (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), part one.
2. As fully developed in Forst, Toleranz im Konflikt, part two. Briefer versions of the main arguments are to be found in my “Toleration, Justice and Reason,” in Catriona McKinnon and Dario Castiglione (eds.), The Culture of Toleration in Diverse Societies (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2003), 71–85, “Tolerance as a Virtue of Justice,” Philosophical Explorations 4, 2001, 193–206, and “The Limits of Toleration,” Constellations 11, 2004, 312–325.
3. For this analysis of toleration, see my “Toleration, Justice and Reason,” 71f. See also the analysis of the components of “objection” and “acceptance” by Preston King, Toleration (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), ch. 1. Glen Newey, Virtue, Reason and Toleration (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1999), ch. 1, also distinguishes between three kinds of reasons in his analysis of the structure of toleration.
4. On this point, see the distinction between a “permission conception” of toleration and a “respect conception” in “Toleration, Justice and Reason,” 73–76.
5. I discuss Augustine’s arguments against and (later) for religious force in my “Pierre Bayle’s Reflexive Theory of Toleration,” this volume 78–113.
6. Jonas Proast, The Argument of the Letter Concerning Toleration, reprint of the edition of 1690 (New York: Garland, 1984), 10.
7. See John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 54–66. Also Charles Larmore, “Pluralism and Reasonable Disagreement,” in The Morals of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), ch. 7.
8. Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary, Selections, tr. by Richard H. Popkin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), 410.
9. Ibid., 429.
10. Pierre Bayle, Philosophical Commentary, tr. Amie Godman Tannenbaum (New York: Lang, 1987), 31.
11. See my “The Rule of Reasons. Three Models of Deliberative Democracy,” Ratio Juris 14, 2001, 345–78.
12. I refer here to a famous case in Bavaria, more fully discussed in Forst, “A Tolerant Republic?,” in: Jan-Werner Müller (ed.), German Ideologies Since 1945 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 209–20.
13. On this point, see my Contexts of Justice: Political Philosophy Beyond Liberalism and Communitarianism, tr. J. M. M. Farrell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), esp. ch. 5.
14. For such an attempt, see my “Moral Autonomy and the Autonomy of Morality: Toward a Theory of Normativity After Kant,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 26, 2005, 65–88.
15. For a different view, see Jeremy Waldron, “Toleration and Reasonableness,” in McKinnon and Castiglione (eds.), The Culture of Toleration in Diverse Societies, op. cit., 13–37.