Tolerance among the Virtues. By John R. Bowlin

Abstract

At a time when the challenge of living with difference and disagreement becomes ever more acute, this is a timely book on a pressing subject. John Bowlin’s study begins with reflections on witnessing ‘cockfighting’ in Oklahoma, an experience which challenges his previous conceptions and leads him to conclude that: (1) there is widespread mistrust of tolerance as an adequate response to difference, with the suspicion it leads either to indifference or moral collapse; (2) there is a need to view tolerance as a virtue, as a ‘habitual perfection of action and attitude’ (p. 3), and not, as most historians see it, as a response to modernity after the Enlightenment; and (3) because of this, many fail to see its link to the Christian understanding of ‘forbearance’, love’s patient and enduring response to disagreement. His response is to offer a ‘perfectionist account of tolerance’, arguing for tolerance as the ‘virtue that belongs to justice as one of its parts’ (p. 5). This involves consideration of how tolerance has been part of society in all times and places, what terms are best to describe it, how it engages with other possible responses to difference (e.g. acceptance, indifference, coercion, contest, and correction), and how it operates within societies like our own (liberal, democratic, and pluralist), before, finally, exploring its ‘sibling’ relationship with forbearance.