← Philosophy TalksAll podcasts #09 · Tolerance · Planned for Tuesday 27 October Send a question
#09 · Coming soon
Trailer · Planned for Tuesday 27 OctoberKimon Ivanov · Cedric Pots · Jean-Maurice Henkel

Where does freedom end and responsibility begin?

“Is tolerance a sign of weakness or of strength?”

Send us a question before we recordFollow the show on SpotifyBefore you listen ↓Join the book waitlist
What we will argue about

Tolerance isn't passive acceptance. It's an active skill, perhaps an art, and like the art of loving it is very hard to practise well. You have to take in another person's position before you answer, disagree on content without making it personal, and notice the moment when tolerating a view turns into enabling harm. We end on an image: freedom as a circle that reaches exactly as far as the next person's.

Three colleagues, one question, recording soon.
Layer 2 · The questions

Why we're asking this now

Our power episode raised an uncomfortable idea: tolerance can only be extended from above, while acceptance needs equals. That made us want to look at tolerance on its own. What is it, where are its limits, and who gets to set them?

Follows from the power episodeIf tolerance is a privilege of the powerful, what is left of it as a virtue?
The main question

Where does tolerance end and complicity begin?

The sub-questions

The questions the conversation is built on.

  1. Is knowing your own boundaries already tolerance, or just self-awareness?
  2. Is there a real difference between tolerating a belief and tolerating the person who holds it?
  3. When do opinions become facts in the mind of the believer, and what can shift them back?
  4. Does a system need rebels to stay healthy, or does it only put up with them because it can't get rid of them?
  5. Is equal treatment always the right default, or does real equality sometimes need different treatment?

Questions for you

To think about on your own, before or after listening.

  1. Which view do you tolerate but have never really tried to understand?
  2. When did you last disagree with someone on content without making it about them?
  3. Where is the edge of your circle, and who is standing on it?

Questions to discuss

For a coffee, a class or a reading group.

  1. Can you be so open that you become exploitable?
  2. How do you argue for treating one person differently in a system built to treat everyone the same?
  3. Is a metaphor a way of understanding someone, or a way of avoiding them?
The ten-year question

If you had held today's idea of tolerance ten years ago, would this conversation have been any different?

Layer 3 · The tension

Where the conversation pulls

Tension A

Tolerance is an art

Take in the other position completely before answering. Disagree on the content, never on the person. Accepting that others really do see the world differently is a sign of maturity.

The active view
Tension B

Tolerance needs limits

Each tolerated step normalises the next, until the original line is no longer visible. Limits clarify what you are actually defending, and knowing when to step in is practical wisdom.

The boundary view
Tension C

The circle of freedom

Your freedom is a playing field that ends where another person's begins. Tolerance keeps those circles from collapsing into each other or swallowing one another.

Where we landed
The line we keep returning to

Tolerance is not a lack of conviction. It is a refusal to persecute.

Layer 4 · A first taste

A first taste

Taste 01

Metaphor as a method

The evening opened with metaphor. A good metaphor lets you take in a position from the inside, to hear an opinion rather than just register it. That is why tolerance starts with imagination.

“The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.”Ralph W. Sockman
Taste 02

How beliefs get fixed

Following Charles Sanders Peirce, we talked about four ways people settle a belief: tenacity, authority, intuition and the scientific method. Even science rests on a large shared assumption, that our agreed tools fit our questions. The most reasonable route is to check our assumptions together, in conversation.

Taste 03

A system built for the average

Education is designed for the average student, not the outlier. Equal treatment is the fair starting point, but sometimes treating people equally means treating them differently. Where tolerance meets fairness is one of the hardest questions in the episode.

“Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.”John F. Kennedy
Layer 5 · Before you listen

Find your own starting point

Before you listen

Tolerate or step in?

Before you listen: five everyday situations. Go with your first instinct, then compare it with where the conversation lands.

1. A colleague holds a political view you find wrong but harmless.

2. A friend keeps making jokes at someone else's expense.

3. A group chat slowly drifts into rumours about a person who isn't in it.

4. A student does the work in an unusual way that still meets the goal.

5. Someone you love makes a life choice you would never make.

0 of 5 answered

Layer 6 · Ask before we record

Questions for the recording

We haven't recorded this one yet. Answer one of these, or send the question you most want us to argue about. We'll read a selection on air, with your permission.

  • Is tolerance a sign of weakness or of strength?

  • What can shift an opinion back once it has hardened into a fact?

  • Who gets to draw the edge of the circle?

Before we record

Your question can change the conversation. Send it now and it may become one of our sub-questions, or the opening of the episode.

Questions that make it into the episode will appear here after it's released.
Layer 7 · Go deeper

Keep pulling the thread

Get ready

We'll announce the release in The Minutes and on Spotify. Until then, the questions above are yours to think about.

Get notified

Reading list

  • The Fixation of Belief (1877)Charles Sanders PeirceThe four methods of settling a belief.
  • The Art of LovingErich FrommLove as a practised skill, the model for our art of tolerance.
  • The Open Society and Its EnemiesKarl PopperOur suggestion for going further: the paradox of tolerance.

Where this question leads

Coming: When does power corrupt?Tolerance from above, acceptance at eye level.
#2 Is perception everything?Opinions hardening into facts.
#4 Heart & mindThe certainty of the objection.

The Minutes. After each episode: the edited notes, the quotes we argued about and the question we couldn't close. One e-mail per episode.

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