PRINCIPLES FOR A FREE SOCIETY TOLERATION

Principles for a Free Society
By Nigle Ashford
Toleration
“All men are liable to error.”
John Locke
What is toleration?
Toleration is the belief that one should not interfere with behaviour or
actions of which one disapproves. It has two essential characteristics:
disapproval of particular behaviour and a refusal to impose one’s views
on others. Someone cannot be described as tolerant of something of
which he approves. It must be distinguished from moral indifference,
when one has no interest in the moral consequences of the actions of
others, or moral relativism, a belief that one morality is as good as any
other. Parents who ignore the misbehaviour of their children would not
be displaying tolerance. Neither is someone refusing to condemn the
mistreatment of women, such as the forced binding of feet to make
them smaller, on the grounds that to do so would be ‘western cultural
imperialism.’ Toleration requires some moral principles, in order both to
disapprove of actions and to justify forbearance from interfering.
Because toleration still involves disapproval, minority groups, such as
gays, often feel that toleration is not enough, but seek acceptance that
there is nothing wrong with their actions. Some forms of interference
may be legitimate, such as moral persuasion and the use of reason and
argument, but not coercion or force. For example, one may try to
encourage a friend to stop smoking, but one would not call for a ban on
smoking or steal his cigarettes. Toleration may take a passive form, a
reluctant necessity in order to enable people to live in harmony with
each other, while a more positive toleration may revel in the benefits of
diversity. It is one of the foundations of a civilised society; that one can
live with others of very different values and beliefs.
Threats to toleration come in two forms. From totalitarians of the
extreme left and right, who are fundamentalists in their beliefs. They
entertain no doubts about the truth of their convictions and therefore
feel no compunction in using power to suppress immorality. The second
threat comes from political correctness, which believes that many views,
- 89 -
whether true or not, cause offence and pain to others, such as racial, religious
and sexual minorities, and therefore should be banned.
Philosophers on toleration
The concept of toleration is relatively new as a guiding principle for society.
Most societies in the ancient world and the middle ages believed that a
society in order to function and maintain order required a high degree of
homogeneity. Heretics and minorities had either to be converted or
expelled. The history of Europe was one of religious wars where it was
thought necessary that all should worship God in the same way. Even
when the authority of the Catholic church was challenged by Protestantism,
it was often done by religious dissenters who wished to replace the
church’s authority with a new one arising from their own beliefs.
Freedom to write
One of the earliest philosophical calls for tolerance was by the English
poet John Milton, who protested against censorship in his pamphlet
Areopagatica in 1644. He was opposed to a parliamentary bill to require
every printing press to be licensed by the government. Censors could
refuse to licence a press which published unorthodox or subversive material.
They had the power to ban “false, forged, scandalous, seditious,
libelous and unlicensed papers, pamphlets and books to the great
defamation of religion and government.” Milton was one of the first
thinkers to provide a principled defence of the freedom to write and
publish.
Milton argued against print censorship on a series of grounds. Firstly, in
order to be virtuous, one must know vice. Secondly, one cannot trust
censors to make such decisions unless they are incapable of error, and no
person is. Thirdly, truth is stagnant if belief is justified solely by claims
to authority. Fourthly, one should refute and not silence wrong opinion.
Fifthly, the government may censor the truth by mistake.
- 90 -
Religious toleration
Freedom from persecution in the area of religion was the theme of John
Locke in his Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). His argument was
essentially that if the role of the state was to protect life, liberty and
property, then it had no right to meddle in the area of men’s souls. “The
toleration of those that differ from others in matter religion” is both consistent
with, and required by, Christian teaching based on love and charity.
Religious beliefs cannot be secured by coercive means. Coercion operates
on a person’s will through penalties, but belief and understanding are not
subject to a person’s will and therefore one cannot acquire it by pretending
to believe. “What is gained in enjoining by law what a man cannot do,
however much he may wish to do it? To believe this or that to be true is
not within the scope of our will.” He made it clear that his call for toleration
was not based on skepticism or doubts about the existence of God or
the true method of worship. He held no subjective view of morality.
He had three main arguments. Firstly, intolerance is unchristian. No one
can be a true Christian who does not practice charity. To persecute others
because of their heretical beliefs is necessarily uncharitable, so such
persecution is unchristian. Secondly, he accused them of inconsistency.
The persecutors proclaim their goal is to save souls, but there are many
worse sins-Locke identified “whoredom, fraud and malice”–which are
not prosecuted with the same zeal. In a contemporary example, gays
note that their opponents frequently portray them as a threat to the
family, but the threat comes from young single parents and divorce. Yet
much less effort is directed towards these issues, which may lead one to
doubt that ‘pro-family’ campaigners are indeed motivated by concern
about the family. Thirdly, he saw it as based on irrationality. Beliefs cannot
be changed at will as they are based on one’s conception of what is
true of reality, which cannot be changed by force, as the Catholic
Inquisition sought to do.
Experiments in living
John Stuart Mill in On Liberty sought to obtain toleration for a greater
range of speech and lifestyles than religion, as part of his wider defence
- 91 -
of freedom. He defended what he called “experiments in living” which
would allow competing ideas of the good life to be lived and compared.
In particular he provided a famous defence of free speech. Like Locke, as
it was beyond the ability of force to change people’s genuine convictions,
he doubted the rationality of those who would even seek to try.
The case for toleration
First, toleration is one important expression of a commitment to individual
freedom, where one follows one’s own vision of the good life,
which may be very different from that of most other people. Individuals
should be autonomous, exercising control over their own lives and circumstances.
Second, truth can only be discovered through the free competition
of ideas. The individual can determine truth only by listening
and considering a range of different arguments and opinions. Personal
truth cannot be imposed. This is still based on the idea that there is such
a thing as truth, but knowledge of it can only be imperfectly grasped,
and continually needs to be improved. Third, there is a vital distinction
between public and private life. Individuals should be allowed to believe
in the most absurd ideas- that they were kidnapped by aliens- provided
it does not interfere with others. Fourth, personal and moral development
requires individuals to make choices, both in order to have a better
understanding of themselves and to recognise the consequences of their
actions. Mill in particular feared the dangers of conformity in which
conventional opinion would dissuade people from experimenting with
new ideas. Fifth, economic and social progress is dependent on individuals
presenting unconventional ideas and new ways of thinking, most of
which will turn out to be foolish or mistaken, but some of which will
provide the dynamism for society. Alexander Graham Bell would have
been dismissed as totally eccentric or even mad when he first suggested
that one could talk with others through what became the telephone.
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech demands the right to print, publish, and broadcast
anything, provided it did not directly harm anyone, however offensive it
might be. Racist, sexist, revolutionary, pornographic, homophobic lan-
- 92 -
guage and ideas should be allowed and, if necessary, criticised. Muslims
were deeply offended by The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie but were
wrong to seek to ban the book and execute the author. John Stuart Mill
wrote the most famous defence of free speech in On Liberty. “If all
mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more
justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would
be justified in silencing mankind…. If the opinion is right, they are
deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they
lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier
impression of truth produced by its collision with error.”
The right to freedom of speech is based on four arguments. Firstly, the
fallibility argument accepts that we might be wrong. As humans we are
all fallible in our reason and instinct. If we suppress a view it might
emerge later that the view we suppressed was true. We could only be
sure that it is not true only if we assume we can never make a mistake.
Even the fact that a view is held by the overwhelming majority of people,
or the most educated, is not sufficient to justify suppression. Views
that were held to be firmly true by almost everyone have later been
found to be incorrect. Galileo was persecuted by the church for his
claim that the earth revolved around the sun, and not the sun around
the earth as was the common belief at the time. Only later was it
demonstrated that Galileo was correct, and the Copernican theory
accepted. Secondly, even ideas that are largely false may embody partial
truths. Since opinions are rarely, if ever, completely true, the only way
we can discover what is missing is to allow largely false opinions to be
presented, from which a fuller truth may emerge.
Thirdly, even if current opinion is the truth, if it is not challenged and
criticised, the understanding of the truth will wither and die. The
reasons for its truth will be forgotten, and its acceptance based on
prejudice rather than thought. Unless ideas have to be vigorously
defended they will fall into disuse and misunderstanding. “However
unwilling a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility
that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration
that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly
discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma and not a living truth,”
- 93 -
wrote Mill. “Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon
as there is no enemy in the field.” Fourthly, truth will not lead to action
if it not challenged. People may accept the established opinion but it
will not be a deeply held conviction and therefore will have little influence
on their actions.
Limits of toleration
However toleration should not apply to every action. When someone
else is directly harmed by another’s action that should be condemned
and perhaps punished. A demagogue calling for foreign immigrants to be
killed and their homes burned should be prosecuted for encouraging
violence. Coercive acts such as rape should be punished. Sexual acts
between adults and children, even if voluntary, should be forbidden
because young children are incapable of understanding the consequences
of their actions. There are also limits to how much forbearance is justified.
There is a considerable difference between the use of government force
and power and the personal expression of disgust and offence. It may be
appropriate to criticise someone who has failed to be faithful to their
spouse but it would be wrong to fine or imprison the faithless spouse.
One may wish to condemn boxing as a violent and inhumane sport
but as long as those who participate do that voluntarily and in knowledge
of the potential dangers, boxing should not be banned. A Roman
legal principle is particularly apposite here: “to one who consents, no
injury is done.” The same principle applies to sado-masochism.
The fundamentalist threat
One source of intolerance is fundamentalism, the assumption that one
cannot be wrong. This is at the core of the belief system of totalitarians
of the left and right, communists or fascists. This need to be intolerant
of intolerance is used to justify a ban on extremist parties in Germany.
There is a ban in both Germany and France on anyone claiming that
the Jewish Holocaust - in which 6 million Jews as well as homosexuals,
gypsies and Jehovah’s witnesses, were killed - never happened. The historical
evidence is overwhelming that it did and those who make such
- 94 -
claims appear to be driven by anti-Semitism. However the principle of
free speech would defend the right of anti-Semites to express such opinions
and then demonstrate that these claims are false.
Political correctness
Political Correctness (PC) is the use of language about socially sensitive
matters, such as race and gender, in a way designed not to offend and
would seek to ban the expression of ideas that would give offence. As a
matter of politeness, one should always try to avoid causing unnecessary
offence. But PC language manages to create offence to others by restricting
their freedom of speech, so it is self-defeating. It seeks to censor
thought and expression either through the law or through a high degree
of social pressures, delegitimating as unspeakable certain ideas.
However, offending others is sometimes necessary and desirable.
Jonathan Rauch shows how political correctness is usually driven by
humanitarian considerations, but the consequence is to protect only
certain sorts of speech and actions. It can be as authoritarian in it’s own
ways as totalitarianism. In the search for increased respect for minorities
it creates a new group of the oppressed, the silenced. The search for
truth is largely conducted through criticism, which the philosopher of
scientific knowledge, Sir Karl Popper, called falsificationism. As Rauch
claimed, we have a right to offend and a responsibility to check and be
checked.
Toleration as civilisation
In order to live with others in a diverse and pluralistic society, respect
for the rights and liberties for all to lead their own lives is a necessity.
One of the central features of civilised behaviour is that one should not
use violence to solve conflicts. However that does not absolve one of the
responsibility of criticising the immoral behaviour of those with whom
one disapproves. It only limits the methods that one can use. Humility
and an acceptance of human fallibility must be combined with a search
for the truth and disdain for those who refuse to allow their ideas and
behaviour to be open to criticism.
- 95 -
Reading
H.L. Hart, Law, Liberty and Morality, Oxford, Oxford University Press,
1963.
Alan Haworth, Free Speech, London, Routledge, 1998.
John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, Hague, Martinus Nijhoff,
1963 (1689).
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, London, Penguin, 1971 (1859).
John Milton, Areopagatica, London, Dent, 1993 (1644).
Jonathan Rauch, Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought,
Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Questions for thought
1. Are there any forms of sexual behaviour that should be prohibited?
2. Is it ever justifiable to ban something from being published or spoken,
including racist, sexist and homophobic remarks?
3. Should boxing be abolished?