Collection of essays asks when intolerance is appropriate and questions how tolerance can be fostered in a contentious and tightly populated world.

Toleration is a core issue within contemporary political debates. The chapters in this work reflect on the importance of tolerance and the dangers of intolerance, both historically and in the present day.

Toleration plays a key role in liberal thought. This book explores our current understanding of toleration in liberal theory and practice. Toleration has traditionally been characterized as the willingness to put up with others or their actions or practices despite the fact that one considers them as objectionable. Toleration has thus been regarded as one of the core aspects of liberalism: as an indispensable democratic virtue and as a constitutive part of liberal political practice. In modern liberal societies, where deep disagreements about social values and ways of life are widespread, toleration still seems to be of crucial importance. However, contemporary debates on toleration cover an immense variety of theoretical and political issues ranging from controversies over its exact understanding and conceptual scope as well as its practical boundaries, e.g., regarding freedom of expression or the legitimate role of religious symbols in educational institutions. The contributions to this volume take up a number of carefully selected key questions and problems emerging from these ongoing theoretical and political controversies in order to explore and shed new light on pivotal conflicts and tensions that pervade different conceptions of toleration. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

This book traces the growth of philosophical justifications of toleration. The contributors discuss the grounds on which we may be required to be tolerant and the proper limits of toleration. They consider the historical and conceptual relation between toleration and scepticism and ask whether toleration is justified by considerations of autonomy or of prudence. The papers cover a range of perspectives on the subject, including Marxist and Socialist as well as liberal views. The editor's introduction prepares the ground by discussing the essential features of the subject and offers a lucid survey of the theories and arguments put forward in the book. The collection arises out of the Morrell Toleration Project at the University of York and all the papers were written as contributions to that project. The discussion will be of interest to specialists in philosophy, in political and social theory and in intellectual history.

Offers fresh perspectives on the relationship between secularization, tolerance and democracy through a theoretically informed look at South Asian politics.

An expert re-interpretation of how religious toleration and conflict developed in early modern Europe.

What kinds of political arrangements enable people from different national, racial, religious, or ethnic groups to live together in peace? In this book one of the most influential political theorists of our time discusses the politics of toleration. Michael Walzer examines five "regimes of toleration"—from multinational empires to immigrant societies—and describes the strengths and weaknesses of each regime, as well as the varying forms of toleration and exclusion each fosters. Walzer shows how power, class, and gender interact with religion, race, and ethnicity in the different regimes and discusses how toleration works—and how it should work—in multicultural societies like the United States. Walzer offers an eloquent defense of toleration, group differences, and pluralism, moving quickly from theory to practical issues, concrete examples, and hard questions. His concluding argument is focused on the contemporary United States and represents an effort to join and advance the debates about "culture war," the "politics of difference," and the "disuniting of America." Although he takes a grim view of contemporary politics, he is optimistic about the possibility of coexistence: cultural pluralism and a common citizenship can go together, he suggests, in a strong and egalitarian democracy.