Tolerance%20and%20Nietzsche

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Tolerance and Nietzsche

• Michael Lacewing
• enquiries_at_alevelphilosophy.co.uk

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Tolerance

• We can only tolerate practices, values, and
  beliefs of other people when these differ from
  our own.
• Not minding or caring isnt really tolerance,
  which involves not acting (in certain ways) on
  ones opposition to the practice etc.
• Restraint is not out of fear or powerlessness,
  but out of moral or political reasons for being
  tolerant.

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Tensions

• Should a liberal society tolerate a minority
  culture that doesnt respect its values?
• It rejects the values of individual autonomy and
  tolerance in favour of the authority of
  tradition, and seeks to enforce its values within
  the cultural community.
• If it were the majority culture, it would
  advocate legal and social sanctions against those
  who disagreed.
• Can, or should, liberals tolerate the intolerant
  or intolerable?

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Paradox

• Tolerance is most needed when one view rejects
  tolerance. If both agree that individual autonomy
  must be respected, little tolerance is needed.
• If the reason for tolerance is to respect
  autonomy, why would we tolerate a view that did
  not respect autonomy? Dont we increase autonomy
  by not tolerating views that do not respect
  autonomy?
• But if a liberal society could only tolerate
  cultures that accept liberal values, how would
  this be tolerance at all?

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Defending tolerance

• To argue that intolerant views cannot be
  tolerated is not intolerance. E.g. it is quite
  different from the intolerance of a view that
  tries to impose a specific way of living on
  people.
• We cannot refuse to make any value judgment about
  different cultures or we lose the value judgments
  that favour tolerance over intolerance.

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Why be tolerant?

• Strife
• Fallibility
• Autonomy
• As happiness
• As respect for equality
• Diversity

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Nietzsches suspicion

• Modern ideas of happiness and equality are
  expressions of a herd morality
• Goodness of heart impotence
• Humility fear
• Patience cowardice
• Forgiveness the inability to take revenge
• Justice the desire for revenge
• This damages what is truly valuable or great,
  which requires suffering and inequality.

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Happiness

• Happiness as opposition to suffering
• Pity
• Peacefulness
• Altruism
• Communal utility
• Equality
• This produces people who are modest, submissive,
  and conforming.

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Equality

• Samuel Johnson So far is it from being true
  that men are naturally equal, that no two people
  can be half an hour together, but one shall
  acquire an evident superiority over the other
• Equality favours the unexceptional and mediocre,
  and undermines greatness.
• Why should the great be tolerant of the mediocre
  or respect their autonomy?

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Nietzsches values

• Nietzsche praises noble values
• a sense of ones goodness independent of others
  opinions,
• a willingness to take responsibility
• an ability to tolerate and use suffering
• Do these commit to inegalitarianism and
  intolerance? How should a great person react to a
  lack of greatness in others?

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A defence

• Herd values are appropriate for the herd, but
  shouldnt be imposed on great people. Nietzsche
  is arguing for tolerance!
• We only get intolerance if we think greatness
  justifies exploiting the herd. But why think the
  only value of herd individuals is to promote the
  greatness of others?