Toleration and Tolerance in Theory and Practice

Bibliographic Data

ID6265262
AuthorsBernard Crick (corresponding author)
Year1971
Volume6
Issue2
Pages143-171
Publication date1971-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGovernment and Opposition (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0017-257X • E-ISSN: 1477-7053
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1477-7053.1971.tb01214.x
OpenAlexW2074305415
LanguageEN
Citations received12

1 WOULD DEFINE TOLERANCE AS THE DEGREE TO WHICH WE ACCEPT things of which we disapprove. Such a definition is only to define roughly, for the moment, what we are talking about, it does not settle any argument and it will require elaboration before it can be shown, as I hope to, that it is an important subject for historical and social research, hitherto neglected or often treated most superficially, that is either shallowly or purely on the level of ideas. ‘Tolerance’ I will use as a specific term-we are tolerant of this and that. ‘Toleration’ I will use for explicit theories or doctrines which state that we should be tolerant (or as tolerant as possible) of wide classes of actions or types of belief and behaviour. All societies accept to some degree, however small, some things of which government, public opinion or tradition disapprove. Many of these latter are trivial, both in contemporary and subsequent perspectives; but there are plainly many cases of significant and important degrees of tolerance existing in societies long before theories or doctrines of toleration emerge – which fundamentally are no older than the 16th century and do not become commonplace until the I 8th. Indeed, in many ways, as I will argue later, degrees of tolerance in autocracies are more interesting to study (and have been less studied) than intolerance in politicaldemocracies, or whatever term one chooses to use for modern polity

Argument (complex analysis · Autocracy · Democracy · Economics · Epistemology · Law and economics · Political science · Politics · Polity · Positive economics · Sociology · State (computer science · Subject (documents · Toleration · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Religion and Society Interactions

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