Paradox of Tolerance?

[Ana the Ist]

I would love to be able to take credit for this but I cannot. I will post the meme below as it states things succintly and clearly.

However, I remember the first time I saw this. It was a few days after a discussion here on CF highlighted the idea for me:
View attachment 329750

Sadly, this didn't solve any kind of problems for me in my head. It was comforting to know that it was "a thing" but it didn't help me create an appropriate approach for dealing with intolerant people.

I realized though (after reading the meme below) that maybe we need to not be looking at tolerance as a moral construct. And really, why should it be a moral construct? There's nothing INHERENTLY moral about being tolerant any "everything". Not only that but tolerating something truly awful can very easily put ourselves in morally compromised positions. So maybe it isn't a moral construct...But then what is it....


And then.....
View attachment 329751

Thoughts?

I would ask what you think "intolerant" means in this context.

And I'm probably going to start quoting Mill.

“There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation.”

 

[rambot]

All this depends on who is currently the established "norm." They are the ones who declare and define what the standard is, and therefore who is deemed tolerable and who is not. Just be forewarned tomorrow YOU and your group may be the outsiders looking in. YOU may be the ones who are considered the intolerants that the "norms" refuse to allow in (tolerate) because of YOUR intolerance of others. Everyone who disagrees with the "normies" will always be deemed "intolerant" and therefore not tolerated.
This is all just blah-blah gobbledygook for the easily bamboozled. Typical sophomoric tripe. Toss it out with the garbage.

1. i would note that this idea does not necessarily refute thr argument.

2. I feel like this is easily something that could have been said at a National Socialists party meeting in Germany in 1936. I mean, one MUST have this attitude if you are intolerant and wish to have your intolerance cast upon society as a whole.

Though I supposed that's a Godwin.

 

[SavedByGrace3]

1. i would note that this idea does not necessarily refute thr argument.

2. I feel like this is easily something that could have been said at a National Socialists party meeting in Germany in 1936. I mean, one MUST have this attitude if you are intolerant and wish to have your intolerance cast upon society as a whole.

Though I supposed that's a Godwin.

The the obvious difference is that the NAZI were not the resistance. The were the ones in power. We are the resistance. We are the ones on the outside looking in. They are the brown shirts.
You cannot claim to be both the oppressed and the oppressors at the same time. You could win a lot debates... but only as a legend in their own minds.

 

[Hans Blaster]

1. i would note that this idea does not necessarily refute thr argument.

2. I feel like this is easily something that could have been said at a National Socialists party meeting in Germany in 1936. I mean, one MUST have this attitude if you are intolerant and wish to have your intolerance cast upon society as a whole.

Though I supposed that's a Godwin.

It works perfectly fine for a NSDAP meeting in 1930 as well. (not in power, outsiders, anti-tolerance)

 

[Chesterton]

I would love to be able to take credit for this but I cannot. I will post the meme below as it states things succintly and clearly.

However, I remember the first time I saw this. It was a few days after a discussion here on CF highlighted the idea for me:
View attachment 329750

Sadly, this didn't solve any kind of problems for me in my head. It was comforting to know that it was "a thing" but it didn't help me create an appropriate approach for dealing with intolerant people.

I realized though (after reading the meme below) that maybe we need to not be looking at tolerance as a moral construct. And really, why should it be a moral construct? There's nothing INHERENTLY moral about being tolerant any "everything". Not only that but tolerating something truly awful can very easily put ourselves in morally compromised positions. So maybe it isn't a moral construct...But then what is it....


And then.....
View attachment 329751

Thoughts?

There is no paradox. The first meme is wrong because the answer is "Yes", a tolerant society should tolerate intolerance. The second meme is much more wrong, and frighteningly so.

Tolerance is very wrong. If anyone were to ever tell me they tolerated me, I'd be so insulted I'd wanna punch them in the nose.

 

[rambot]

There is no paradox. The first meme is wrong because the answer is "Yes", a tolerant society should tolerate intolerance.

You say "should". Why should it? Why should they take the abuse of others?

The second meme is much more wrong, and frighteningly so.

OK. Care to elaborate?

Tolerance is very wrong. If anyone were to ever tell me they tolerated me, I'd be so insulted I'd wanna punch them in the nose.

Lol.

 

[rambot]

The the obvious difference is that the NAZI were not the resistance. The were the ones in power. We are the resistance. We are the ones on the outside looking in. They are the brown shirts.
You cannot claim to be both the oppressed and the oppressors at the same time. You could win a lot debates... but only as a legend in their own minds.

For the TIME BEING Christians continue hold many elected seats. Look at what happened with the Supreme Court.

Look how you manage to get books about homosexuals removed from classroom.

CULTURALLY Christians are on the losing end but to think, politically and in terms of governance you don't have any power? I'm sorry. That's just not true.

 

[SavedByGrace3]

For the TIME BEING Christians continue hold many elected seats. Look at what happened with the Supreme Court.

Look how you manage to get books about homosexuals removed from classroom.

CULTURALLY Christians are on the losing end but to think, politically and in terms of governance you don't have any power? I'm sorry. That's just not true.

Just like everyone else, we inflect our beliefs and concepts into both the culture and, in a democracy, government. It is unavoidable. But looking at current events and the trends, it is waning. But as far as being on the losing end... that book has been already written. God, and His people, win in the end. Best choose to be on His side!

 

[The Liturgist]

The second hole is the idea of a "social contract". There is no such thing as a social contract.

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t the idea of a social contract first expounded upon by Socrates in the context of Athenian democracy, and also, his reverent appreciation of the idea of the social contract formed between himself and Athens a major reason why he drank the hemlock rather than escaping via the plans presented to him by his friends? I recall this was attested to in the apologia written for him by both Plato and Xenophon.

 

[Merrill]

Many good replies to this, but I will add my own:

The graphic from the OP featuring Popper's Paradox is a paraphrase of what he actually said. And he added:

"I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise."

Notice how the graphic doesn't include that part--because people are abusing this idea for their own gain.

The leftists who abuse Popper's Paradox have a rhetorical objective:

1. We have an ideology and social norms that we wish to protect. That includes tolerance for *our* ideology
2. Ideologies and opinions that oppose ours are "intolerant" in that our ideology is the only one that is true and just.
3. It is right to persecute those who oppose us on these grounds, as their ideology and opinions would upset our social order.

Far-right extremists could also adopt such a view, but they typically use a different approach

It is not evasive to say that the term "tolerance" has no set definition, because while it has a dictionary definition, it also has an operational meaning (think of freedom from vs. freedom to). In this instance, tolerance is that which is extended to ideologies and norms which we support--it is an affirmation.

The "social construct" that the rhetoric teacher (and for the record, I taught rhetoric and philosophy at a university--I've published in it) tries to apply here works to some degree in that it hints on the above. We should not be universally tolerant to everything that stands against our societal beliefs---we should not tolerate pedophiles calling for the molestation of children, or extremists calling for violence against religious or ethnic groups. Our First Amendment and our laws have boundaries and limitations.

But I would warn people against abusing this idea. Vladimir Putin uses it to justify his suppression of "homosexual propaganda" in Russia. ANTIFA uses it to justify violence at public-speaking events.

 

[Chesterton]

You say "should". Why should it? Why should they take the abuse of others?

A tolerant society should tolerate intolerance because it's tolerant, by definition. I didn't say anyone should take any abuse.

As someone pointed out, this is difficult to discuss if you don't provide a definition of tolerance. And also a definition of abuse.

OK. Care to elaborate?

It's just license to persecute anyone you arbitrarily disagree with, as fascists and communists do. As others have mentioned, I've never seen the social contract. Never signed one in writing, nor agreed to one orally. If you can provide a copy of it, I'll forward it to my attorney and see if he advises me to agree to it.

 

[The Liturgist]

I would love to be able to take credit for this but I cannot. I will post the meme below as it states things succintly and clearly.

However, I remember the first time I saw this. It was a few days after a discussion here on CF highlighted the idea for me:
View attachment 329750

Sadly, this didn't solve any kind of problems for me in my head. It was comforting to know that it was "a thing" but it didn't help me create an appropriate approach for dealing with intolerant people.

I realized though (after reading the meme below) that maybe we need to not be looking at tolerance as a moral construct. And really, why should it be a moral construct? There's nothing INHERENTLY moral about being tolerant any "everything". Not only that but tolerating something truly awful can very easily put ourselves in morally compromised positions. So maybe it isn't a moral construct...But then what is it....


And then.....
View attachment 329751

Thoughts?

Concerning Popper, I am mainly familiar with his philosophy of science and his philosophy of history, both of which were critiqued by the late Professor Burleigh T. Wilkins of the University of California in Has History Any Meaning? The title of the book I would note is obviously intended to be answered in the affirmative, as Wilkins was by no means a Nihilist, indeed an opposition to crypto-Nihilism seems to permeate those works of his I have read.

I read the aforementioned critique of Popper’s philosophy of history after being enthralled by Wilkins articles in opposition to the NATO intervention in Kosovo, or rather how that intervention was conducted, which were generally supportive of my view, which is that the intervention had the effect of inadvertently causing an “ethnic cleansing” of Serbian Orthodox Christians from their ancestral homeland in Kosovo while seeking to prevent the sinister formerly Communist Yugoslavian dictator Slobodan Milosevic from “ethnically cleansing” the Albanian Muslims in Kosovo. The values of civilization compel us to oppose all ethnic cleansing, which at best is a substitute for genocide facilitated by deportation (for example, the forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey after WWI, and later, the forced population exchange between Cyprus and Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus, and at worst, a cover for actual genocides, for example, what happened to the Kurds in Iraq or the Bosnians in Srpska in the early 1990s, or what is now happening to the Christians of the Middle East, as well as other religious minorities such as the Alevis, Bektasis and Mevlevis of Turkey, and of course what also happened in 2013-2018 to the Yazidis of Sinjar in the Nineveh Plains, and what many report is happening to the Rohingya Muslims of Burma and the Uighurs of China.

Professor Wilkins also wrote an interesting and rather edgy book which touches on these subjects in the early 1990s, with the rather provocative title Terrorism and Collective Responsibility, although the work is by no means an apology for or justification of terrorism. Also I am told that at conferences Wilkins would frequently joke, on the subject of smaller states breaking away from larger states, “If at first you don’t secede, try, try again.”

Essentially his philosophy was classically liberal in the tradition of John Rawls, with the addition of a deep skepticism about certain entities tasked with upholding the tenuous and at times ethereal yet in many cases literally vitally important framework that constitutes International Law.

The

 

[The Liturgist]

Vladimir Putin uses it to justify his suppression of "homosexual propaganda" in Russia.

This actually takes us into the realm where I find myself starting to disagree with the liberal philosophy of Rawls, etc, and find myself increasingly troubled by the manner in which our society, in an inverse of the Russian scenario, actively persecutes and discriminates against those who (very correctly) regard homosexuality as a sin.

For this we traditional Christians are accused of hate speech, even if we make it clear that we hate the sin and love the sinner; we are mocked on television and in the legacy media; it is insinuated that we ourselves are closet homosexuals, and now we are likened to
Putin, when the reality is that among most people of the former Soviet Union, homosexuality is frowned upon, even more so in places like Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan than in Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova. For that matter, from the data I have seen, the Ukrainians share with Russia an unfavorable view of homosexuality. The only really neo-liberal multicultural countries in the former Soviet Union where homosexuality is not viewed with the same hostility are the Baltic States, but even here, we find the conservative attitudes of Eastern Europe that reach their fullest expression in Hungary under Orban.

 

[The Liturgist]

2. I feel like this is easily something that could have been said at a National Socialists party meeting in Germany in 1936.

Having studied the horrors of National Socialism in some detail, including viewing their speeches and rallies, translated, which is a most unpleasant experience, by the way, I believe I can definitively pronounce with some authority a considered opinion that no one in this thread has expressed a statement which, even if stripped of its thread-specific context and used in the abstract, would be anything other than a complete non-sequitur in the halls of the Reichstag or other carefully stage-managed NSDAP fora.

 

[Merrill]

This actually takes us into the realm where I find myself starting to disagree with the liberal philosophy of Rawls, etc, and find myself increasingly troubled by the manner in which our society, in an inverse of the Russian scenario, actively persecutes and discriminates against those who (very correctly) regard homosexuality as a sin.

For this we traditional Christians are accused of hate speech, even if we make it clear that we hate the sin and love the sinner; we are mocked on television and in the legacy media; it is insinuated that we ourselves are closet homosexuals, and now we are likened to
Putin, when the reality is that among most people of the former Soviet Union, homosexuality is frowned upon, even more so in places like Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan than in Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova. For that matter, from the data I have seen, the Ukrainians share with Russia an unfavorable view of homosexuality. The only really neo-liberal multicultural countries in the former Soviet Union where homosexuality is not viewed with the same hostility are the Baltic States, but even here, we find the conservative attitudes of Eastern Europe that reach their fullest expression in Hungary under Orban.

Excellent points

I would add that when I tell a gay friend that I don't support the lifestyle, it is not because I hate him, or are somehow rejecting his or her identity, it is just the opposite. As a Christian and a friend, I love him / her and want what is best, and what is in accordance to God's wishes.

We are not human doings, we are human beings. There are many sins aside from homosexuality, yet that one seems to be the hardest for people to shed. There is adultery, theft, etc. --all seem to agree, including those who engage in it, that those things are wrong and sinful, but homosexuality is different

Sin doesn't lead anywhere good--and it typically leads to disaster. Jesus is not permissive, he is demanding. He is not some drinking buddy or weak parent who tells you want you want to hear. Jesus does not "tolerate" sin, but he offers a way out.

 

[zippy2006]

I realized though (after reading the meme below) that maybe we need to not be looking at tolerance as a moral construct. And really, why should it be a moral construct?

I'm not sure how it would help if it is a "social construct" rather than a "moral construct." The difficulty is self-contradiction, and the self-contradiction will presumably apply to social contracts just as it applies to moral constructs. Social contract theorists aren't any happier with self-contradiction than moral theorists.

Here is what Popper says in chapter 7, footnote 4 of his book, The Open Society and Its Enemies:

Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.​

​

(Wikipedia)​

​

This is a curious footnote, which has only become acutely relevant with the rise of modern, democratic, secular states. Church Life Journal published a book chapter from a Polish philosopher that is good on this topic: Is Democracy Moral?

 

[zippy2006]

Paradox of Tolerance?

...Note that this is not a paradox, it is just the commonsensical truth that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Our culture struggles with even mildly nuanced ideas such as these, but for Aristotle it was a first principle of ethics. For Aristotle virtue is always found in the mean (the middle between two extremes). For some reason we think that if something is good then it must be absolutized. If green beans are good, then we can't eat anything else. Monomania has infected our culture, our philosophies, and our theologies.

 

[Ana the Ist]

1. i would note that this idea does not necessarily refute thr argument.

The argument lacks meaning and substance. It doesn't say anything about tolerance/intolerance. Are we talking about speech? Behavior? Media? Art? What in the world are we talking about regarding tolerance?

2. I feel like this is easily something that could have been said at a National Socialists party meeting in Germany in 1936. I mean, one MUST have this attitude if you are intolerant and wish to have your intolerance cast upon society as a whole.

Though I supposed that's a Godwin.

Or applies equally to anyone who thinks that the meme makes a good point.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t the idea of a social contract first expounded upon by Socrates in the context of Athenian democracy, and also, his reverent appreciation of the idea of the social contract formed between himself and Athens a major reason why he drank the hemlock rather than escaping via the plans presented to him by his friends? I recall this was attested to in the apologia written for him by both Plato and Xenophon.

The modern conception of the social contract is more Rousseau than Socrates.

 

[Ana the Ist]

For the TIME BEING Christians continue hold many elected seats. Look at what happened with the Supreme Court.

There are legitimate uses of power...and illegitimate.

People voted for representatives, and they voted for policy.

You don't have to agree with the policy but you can't claim oppression.

Look how you manage to get books about homosexuals removed from classroom.

By voting.

CULTURALLY Christians are on the losing end but to think, politically and in terms of governance you don't have any power? I'm sorry. That's just not true.

They do...but it's legitimate. How about the people who put those books into classrooms....does anyone recall voting for gender ideology in first grade? Racial heirarchy in through high school? How about white privilege struggle sessions? Anyone?