Aristotle on tolerance and apathy

Back in May Mykel Pick­ens wrote an arti­cle on theooze.com on tol­er­ance and what exactly tol­er­ance means:

I’ve been think­ing a lot about tol­er­ance these days. What is tol­er­ance? Who is to be tol­er­ated? Is tol­er­ance needed in today’s soci­ety? Should we, as Chris­tians, be tol­er­ant? Aris­to­tle said that tol­er­ance is the last virtue of a dying soci­ety. When I first heard this quote, I thought he was argu­ing for tol­er­ance, but in fact he is say­ing that when our last virtue is tol­er­ance, then we have no virtues.

I believe we need to value each other, not just sim­ply tol­er­ate each other. I agree with Aristotle’s state­ment, that when tol­er­ance is the last virtue in our soci­ety, we have lost all hope; our soci­ety is going to die. Instead, when we value each other; when we truly seek to love and respect each other, that’s when the King­dom of God is truly at work. That’s true Chris­tian­ity at work.

Before I con­tinue giv­ing my thoughts on the arti­cle I firstly want to point out that I can­not find the quote as it has been attrib­uted to Aris­to­tle. I’ve heard the quote said a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways: tol­er­ance is the last virtue of a dying soci­ety; tol­er­ance and apa­thy are the first signs of a dying soci­ety; tol­er­ance is the last virtue of a depraved soci­ety, etc. How­ever, and please cor­rect me if I’m wrong (with cita­tion), as far as I’m aware Aris­to­tle did not say the above. At best I could attribute this quote to D. James Kennedy (who did not attribute what he said to Aris­to­tle) who said, ‘Tol­er­ance is the last virtue of a depraved soci­ety.‘¹ More on this later as it’s impor­tant how Kennedy is defin­ing and speak­ing of tol­er­ance in this context.

Regard­less of if Aris­to­tle said the above we must still con­sider if it’s true. On the one hand I very much dis­agree, on the other I agree. With­out being para­dox­i­cal what I mean by this is that our def­i­n­i­tion and how we define tol­er­ance is greatly impor­tant. UNESCO (United Nations Edu­ca­tional, Sci­en­tific and Cul­tural Orga­ni­za­tion) in the ‘Dec­la­ra­tion of Prin­ci­ples on Tol­er­ance’ defined tol­er­ance as follows:

• 1.1 Tol­er­ance is respect, accep­tance and appre­ci­a­tion of the rich diver­sity of our world’s
  cul­tures, our forms of expres­sion and ways of being human. It is fos­tered by knowl­edge, open­ness,
  com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and free­dom of thought, con­science and belief. Tol­er­ance is har­mony in dif­fer­ence.
  It is not only a moral duty, it is also a polit­i­cal and legal require­ment. Tol­er­ance, the virtue that
  makes peace pos­si­ble, con­tributes to the replace­ment of the cul­ture of war by a cul­ture of peace.

• 1.2 Tol­er­ance is not con­ces­sion, con­de­scen­sion or indul­gence. Tol­er­ance is, above all, an active
  atti­tude prompted by recog­ni­tion of the uni­ver­sal human rights and fun­da­men­tal free­doms of oth­ers.
  In no cir­cum­stance can it be used to jus­tify infringe­ments of these fun­da­men­tal val­ues. Tol­er­ance is
  to be exer­cised by indi­vid­u­als, groups and States.

• 1.3 Tol­er­ance is the respon­si­bil­ity that upholds human rights, plu­ral­ism (includ­ing cul­tural
  plu­ral­ism), democ­racy and the rule of law. It involves the rejec­tion of dog­ma­tism and abso­lutism
  and affirms the stan­dards set out in inter­na­tional human rights instruments

• 1.4 Con­sis­tent with respect for human rights, the prac­tice of tol­er­ance does not mean tol­er­a­tion
  of social injus­tice or the aban­don­ment or weak­en­ing of one’s con­vic­tions. It means that one is free
  to adhere to one’s own con­vic­tions and accepts that oth­ers adhere to theirs. It means accept­ing the
  fact that human beings, nat­u­rally diverse in their appear­ance, sit­u­a­tion, speech, behav­iour and
  val­ues, have the right to live in peace and to be as they are. It also means that one’s views are not to
  be imposed on oth­ers.²

Per­son­ally, I find the above def­i­n­i­tion a bit wordy and self-contradictory, espe­cially that last sen­tence of 1.4 (it is, after all, an impo­si­tion to state that no views are to be imposed on oth­ers. ).  It’s a work­ing def­i­n­i­tion though, so I’m going to mod­ify it down to some­thing sim­ple. To be tol­er­ant is to show respect of (and/or for) other people(s) and groups, regard­less of dif­fer­ences whether they are dif­fer­ences in race, reli­gion, gen­der, opin­ion, ide­ol­ogy or age. It is not a devalu­ing of the object being tol­er­ated. If I tol­er­ate you it means I respect you. If I respect you it means in some capac­ity, I value you. There is always the dan­ger of mar­gin­al­iz­ing that which you’re tol­er­at­ing, how­ever more on this below.

I’m reminded of a quote falsely attrib­uted to Voltaire, ‘I dis­ap­prove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.‘[3.Evelyn Beat­rice Hall, The Friends of Voltaire (http://www.archive.org/stream/friendsofvoltair00hallrich/friendsofvoltair00hallrich_djvu.txt), apho­rism 199.] It was a sum­ma­tion of Voltaire’s Trea­tise on Tol­er­a­tion. I’m won­der­ing why Pick­ens has cre­ated a dichotomy between tol­er­a­tion and value — I value many peo­ple, I sus­pect a lot of peo­ple value many peo­ple, how­ever I and oth­ers also tol­er­ate those same peo­ple we value. What is sug­gested by Pick­ens is that we replace tol­er­ance with love and respect for one another. It’s my con­tention, how­ever, that tol­er­ance, in it’s true bib­li­cal sense, is show­ing love and respect for one another. For valu­ing peo­ple — made in the image of God — regard­less of where they stand or what they believe or who they may be. Of dis­agree­ing with­out being dis­agree­able while tak­ing a stand for (absolute, unchang­ing) truth.

Pick­ens con­tin­ues with two illustrations:

A story was told to me about an old Jew­ish man who told a group of reporters that he no longer wanted to be tol­er­ated. He could not stand to be tol­er­ated. The reporters could not believe what they were hear­ing from this 80 year old Jew­ish man who had sur­vived the holo­caust. How could this man not want tol­er­ance? What he was really say­ing, was that tol­er­ance is hope­less. What he wanted was to be val­ued. He didn’t sim­ply want peo­ple to tol­er­ate his exis­tence, he wanted them to value him as a human being and for all that he brought to this life. When we tol­er­ate some­thing or some­one we are not apply­ing any value to them. In fact we are say­ing that you have no value, you are sim­ply some­thing to be tolerated.

What we need to start doing is valu­ing each other regard­less of our dif­fer­ences. I can still dis­agree with you, but still value you as a per­son. A few months ago Car­rie Pre­jean, Miss Cal­i­for­nia USA, was berated for her stance on same sex mar­riage after her appear­ance in the Miss USA pageant. Regard­less of how you feel about same sex mar­riage, we really need to be civil and respect each other. Both sides on this issue have been guilty of some nasty mud­sling­ing, but these same peo­ple who urged every­one to be tol­er­ant and open minded about gay mar­riage, were the same peo­ple who began to devalue her and were intol­er­ant of her beliefs. This is what tol­er­ance does. It deval­ues us. It makes us less human. It is not the way of Christ.

Begin­ning with the sec­ond illus­tra­tion first, I believe Pick­ens is con­fus­ing tol­er­a­tion in a bib­li­cal sense with tol­er­a­tion as it has come to be largely defined by our soci­ety and cul­ture. With that said, Pick­ens analy­sis of worldly tol­er­a­tion is dead on accu­rate. This sec­ond sense, that tol­er­a­tion not only includes ‘putting up with’ but also ‘accept­ing’ of the dif­fer­ences in oth­ers, is where I would agree that tol­er­a­tion is the last virtue of a depraved soci­ety. This view of tol­er­a­tion always makes ‘the other’ the vil­lain. If every­thing is accepted then noth­ing is sacred. Well, almost every­thing.

The dan­ger, of course, is that no mat­ter how well we may have defined tol­er­ance and how con­sis­tent we may be in liv­ing out this def­i­n­i­tion of tol­er­ance, there is always the chance of mar­gin­al­iza­tion. This is what we see in Pick­ens first exam­ple which I agree with, short of say­ing valu­ing and tol­er­a­tion are mutu­ally exclu­sive; they aren’t, and doing away with tol­er­a­tion is not the answer. Pick­ens, in fact, summed up well what tol­er­a­tion should be, ‘valu­ing each other regard­less of our dif­fer­ences’