H4 Wendy Brown on Tolerance

Group 4 Members: Yusra Mohammed, Erin Paul, Larissa Wolf, Evan Lester, Keaton Davis

Post by: Keaton Davis

Today, we talked about tolerance, and whether this word is the most accurate representation of what we need to attain as a society.

Wendy Brown, who gave her thoughts on tolerance in Philosophy Bites, believes that tolerating someone means you are dealing with a problem.  Larissa and Erin fell more or less into this line of thought, while Evan, Yusra, and I thought differently.  It came down to our definition of the word "tolerance."  Evan looked at tolerance as less disrespectful than neutral.  Larissa and Erin, on the other hand, saw tolerance as carrying an air of superiority over the subject being tolerated.

This lead to our search for a more accurate word to describe what we should implement as a culture.  A couple suggestions were "accept" and "acknowledge."  We finally opted for "acknowledge," because one can acknowledge someone else's beliefs without condoning them.  Respect is still shown, but not necessarily agreement.    

However, this still didn't exactly answer the question, "Where does 'tolerance' fit in?"  With more discussion, we found that there are two levels of our lives on which we could implement tolerance: a personal level and a political level.  Matthew, a floater, said that tolerance would be more appropriate on a personal level because our own self is being infringed upon (like if a drunk guy is being obnoxious towards you), so we have a right to either tolerate it (smile and do nothing) or do something about it (tell him to shut up).  However, as a couple other people pointed out, on the political level, where we are not directly impacted by someone's beliefs or actions (like religious beliefs or lack thereof), we should choose to acknowledge them, or respectfully agree to disagree, as Larissa said.

Another floater, Zach,  took a different approach.  He saw tolerance as the neutral state in between acceptance and rejection.  His example is as follows: Attending a gay wedding is accepting it, joining the picketers protesting it is rejecting it, and walking past it but not doing anything (even if you have a particular view on gay marriage) is tolerating it.

Mason, yet another floater, mentioned elected officials and how it doesn't make sense for them to just say, "Present" instead of actually voting on a particular subject.  They're being paid to have an opinion; they should share it!  This brought up the idea that we should not be afraid to voice our opinions just because people do not agree with them.  The point of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism is to provide an environment in which people can freely share and support particular beliefs without fear of being shut down.

Overall, I really enjoyed the conversation we had today, and I hope we will continue to develop it in our comments! 

Also, due to the somewhat intricate nature of our discussion, I may not have completely done it justice in my summary.  I may have scrambled what idea belongs to whom and how many people shared a particular thought, or even misinterpreted our final consensus.  If that's the case, please forgive me, and correct me in the comments!