Toleration in Conflict: Past and Present: 103 (Ideas in Context, Series Number 103) - Softcover

Forst, Rainer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1316621677 ISBN 13: 9781316621677

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2016

Synopsis

The concept of toleration plays a central role in pluralistic societies. It designates a stance which permits conflicts over beliefs and practices to persist while at the same time defusing them, because it is based on reasons for coexistence in conflict - that is, in continuing dissension. A critical examination of the concept makes clear, however, that its content and evaluation are profoundly contested matters and thus that the concept itself stands in conflict. For some, toleration was and is an expression of mutual respect in spite of far-reaching differences, for others, a condescending, potentially repressive attitude and practice. Rainer Forst analyses these conflicts by reconstructing the philosophical and political discourse of toleration since antiquity. He demonstrates the diversity of the justifications and practices of toleration from the Stoics and early Christians to the present day and develops a systematic theory which he tests in discussions of contemporary conflicts over toleration.

About this title

Review:

'... simply the most impressive philosophical work specifically on toleration that I have ever read ...' John Horton, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

'From the Bible through the Church Fathers and the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment, and into modernity, Forst demonstrates how efforts to theorize toleration turn into their opposite: the same conceptual resources that advanced toleration are later employed to advance intolerance.' Vincent Lloyd, Studies in Christian Ethics

Book Description:

Toleration is an indispensable yet ambivalent concept in pluralistic societies. Is it based on mutual respect or on condescension? Why is it right to tolerate what is wrong? This book is the most comprehensive existing study of debates over toleration since antiquity and develops a theory for our time.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1316621677
• ISBN 13: 9781316621677
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 662