Nascent Thinker | Contemplations Along The Way

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 … (Read more)