Table Of ContentISSUES IN POLITICAL THEORY
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ISSUES IN POLITICAL THEORY
Series editors: PETER JONES and ALBERT WEALE
Published
Christopher J. Berry: Human Nature
Tom Campbell: Justice
Michael Lessnoff: Social Contract
Richard Lindley: Autonomy
Susan Mendus: Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism
Andrew Reeve: Property
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Toleration and the Limits of
Liberalism
Susan Mendus
M
MACMILLAN
© Susan Mendus 1989
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission
of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied
or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to
this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and
civil claims for damages.
First published 1989
Published by
MACMILLAN EDUCATION LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
Typeset by Wessex Typesetters
(Division of The Eastern Press Ltd)
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Mendus, Susan
Toleration and the limits of liberalism.
1. Toleration
I. Title
179'.9
ISBN 978-0-333-40406-5 ISBN 978-1-349-20056-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20056-6
For my parents
Contents
Acknowledgements IX
1 The Concept of Toleration 1
Racial intolerance: preliminary considerations 1
Sexual toleration and the tyranny of opinion 3
Religious toleration: historical and conceptual
considerations 6
The circumstances of toleration 8
The scope of toleration 9
The paradox of toleration 18
2 Locke and the Case for Rationality 22
The historical background 23
Morality and rationality 28
Reasons and consequences 35
Tolerated and tolerators 39
Concluding remarks 42
3 Mill and the Case for Diversity 44
The simple principle: positive and negative 46
The value of diversity 50
The importance of autonomy 53
Locke, Mill and the tolerant society 55
Autonomy and perfectibility: the case against Mill 57
Moral progress and its place in Mill's philosophy 59
4 The Justification of Toleration 69
What is liberalism? 70
The definition of liberalism 71
The possibilities for liberalism 74
Liberalism and scepticism 75
vii
Vlll Contents
Liberalism and neutrality 79
Criticisms of neutrality 80
The nature of neutrality 83
Why liberals favour neutrality 86
Liberalism and autonomy 88
What is autonomy? 89
The development of autonomy 95
Autonomy and liberty 97
Autonomy and toleration 102
Conclusion 108
5 Toleration in a Liberal Society 110
The principle of neutrality 113
Neutrality: concept and practice 114
The scope of the neutrality principle 117
The scope of neutrality and Mill's harm principle 121
The right and the good 126
The test of neutrality 129
Intentional and causal neutrality 129
Positive and negative neutrality 131
The requirements of neutrality 133
Personal and external preferences 139
Conclusion 142
6 Choice, Community and Socialism 146
The main highways to toleration 148
Choice 149
Rationality 151
Toleration in socialism 154
Guide to Further Reading 163
Bibliography 165
Index 169
Acknowledgements
This book was written during the academic years 1985-7, when I
was Morrell Fellow in Toleration at the University of York.
Those two years were exceptionally happy ones for me, both
professionally and personally. My thanks go to the Trustees of the
C. and J. B. Morrell Trust who generously funded my research;
to my colleagues in the Political Theory Workshop at the University
of York, where many of the arguments of the book were first
presented and discussed; to Albert Weale and Peter Jones, who
provided very helpful and constructive comments on an earlier
draft of the manuscript; and to Steven Kennedy, my editor, who
has remained good-natured and patient through many extended
deadlines. They have all been better friends than I deserve, and I
am deeply grateful to them.
A special debt of gratitude is owed to my colleague John Horton,
who read and commented on the entire manuscript. Over many
years he has been an astute critic and a generous friend. Without
his support I would have given up long ago and I wish, for his
sake, that this were a better book.
My thanks go the Aristotelian Society for permission to reprint
part of my paper 'Liberty and Autonomy', which first appeared in
the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1986-7.
Finally, I am grateful to my husband, Andrew, who bought a
word processor and did not see it or me for a very long time.
The author's royalties from the sale of this book are donated to
Amnesty International.
SUSAN MENDUS
IX
1 The Concept of
Toleration
'I hate him for he is a Christian.' (Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene
III)
Racial intolerance: preliminary considerations
In modern society, problems of toleration arise most often and
most obviously in connection with racial, religious or sexual
matters: in Britain, the Brixton disorders of 1981 were held to be
both a symptom and a consequence of a deeply embedded racial
intolerance. Reporting on the disorders, Lord Scarman remarked;
'All the evidence I have received, both on the subject of racial
disadvantage and more generally, suggests that racialism and
discrimination against black people - often hidden, sometimes
unconscious - remain a major source of social tension and conflict'
(Scarman, 1986, p.l72). Racial intolerance and discrimination,
whilst not identified as the direct cause of disorder, were held to
be important social conditions serving to create a disposition
towards violent protest of the sort which flared in Brixton on the
weekend of 10--12 April 1981. Members of the black community
attributed their poverty and deprivation to racial discrimination
and, as Scarman puts it; 'once you have deprivation and once
minorities perceive that they are at the end of every queue, then
race heats up the furnace of anger to an unbearable temperature'
(pp.xiv-xv).
If this is the lesson of Brixton, it is a lesson which had been
learned long before in America. In the wake of the urban rioting
which swept the United States from 1964 onwards, the Report of
the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (The Kerner
Report, 1968) commented upon the attitudes of young blacks
1
