Why Tolerate Religion

Suppose a fourteen-year-old boy comes to middle school wearing a dagger on his belt. Normally, the dagger would be confiscated and the boy reprimanded or suspended (or worse). But should the boy be allowed to keep the dagger on him if the dagger is no mere dagger but a central symbol of his family's religious beliefs? (It is part of the Sikh religion that men should wear daggers.) Would it make any difference if the dagger did not represent the boy's religious beliefs but just his rural upbringing and family tradition? Brian Leiter, known for his philosophical writing on Friedrich Nietzsche as well as his scholarship on legal realism, turns in this short, elegantly written book to questions of religious toleration. When should we “put up” with religion and religious believers, and when should religion be bound by neutral, generally applicable rules, such as the rule “no daggers in the classroom”? Leiter's answers to these questions are rigorously argued and smartly defended. If one wishes that Leiter had said more about x or y, or had better situated himself in the vast literature on law and religion, this is at worst a quibble and is at best a compliment.

Art · Dagger · Literature · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Theology · Toleration · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Religious Freedom and Discrimination