PERPLEXITIES OF TOLERANCE

Abstract

Tolerance is one of the virtues upon which contemporary Europe prides itself. This notwithstanding, and as history undeniably attests, it is a virtue perhaps more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Europe's often terrifying history as well as some of its pride or at least the intention to earn the right to be proud were both very evident at the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of one of the most abhorrent of those breaches of tolerance, the Reichsprogromnacht (Kristallnacht) of 1938. This event was all the more abhorrent because it paved the way for what was to become the absolute lowest point in European history and culture. During his commemoration speech, the president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pottering, declared that in the last fifty years, Europeans have learned "to let [themselves] be guided by one particular value which gives the European Union its true soul: this value is tolerance. And it took [them] centuries to learn this". 1 Indeed, not only did it take Europeans centuries to create the institutions which we hope will express and foster the virtue of tolerance, the very concept of toleration seems to resist elucidation. Attempts to interpret, analyse, justify and define the nature and the limits of this virtue are pervasive of many important periods in the history of European moral and political thought. As Patrick Loobuyck, Theo de Wit and Susan Mendus remind us in their discussion of this centuries-long history of debate, the authors who have contributed to our understanding of tolerance are among the most important of Europe's political and moral thinkers including Augustine, Bodin, Bayle, Spinoza, Montesquieu, Locke, Lessing and J.S. Mill. Which goes to show that tolerance as a moral and political virtue has a European quality to it if only because it is an everpresent object of European debate and discussion.