Abstract

Popper was one of the first to diagnose the danger of tolerating those who might undermine toleration. He suggested that new forms of intolerance and violence have created an “unpleasant condition” that the classical liberal philosophers didn’t witness and therefore toleration should be limited only to those who are tolerant and withdrawn from those who are intolerant in the first place. Following Popper, the question “should the intolerant be tolerated?” is usually asked in order to justify a negative answer. In this paper I propose that intolerance as a sole or primary reason to determine toleration is misleading and will probably result with limited toleration and much intolerance. Rather, what is really at stake, I suggest, is whether and how new forms of violence create a kind of intolerance that shouldn’t be tolerated. First, focusing on the question of tolerating the intolerant I compare Popper with the classical liberal philosophers and discuss his explanation of the shift that he undertakes. Then, I examine Ghandi’s creative counter paradigm to the Nazi-kind of threat to toleration, which Popper was, probably, not aware of. Contrary to Popper’s view I find that most cases of intolerance are partial and transient and not total. Thus, I conclude that we better start with the attitude of tolerating the intolerant.