On Toleration

Description

Michael Walzer examines five "regimes of toleration" - from multinational empires to immigrant societies - and describes the strengths and weaknesses of each regime, as well as the varying forms of toleration and exclusion each fosters. Walzer shows how power, class, and gender interact with religion, race, and ethnicity in the different regimes and discusses how toleration works - and how it should work - in multicultural societies like the United States. Walzer offers an eloquent defense of toleration, group differences, and pluralism, moving quickly from theory to practical issues, concrete examples, and hard questions. His concluding argument is focused on the contemporary United States and represents an effort to join and advance the debates about "culture war," the "politics of difference," and the "disuniting of America." Although he takes a grim view of contemporary politics, he is optimistic about the possibility of coexistence: cultural pluralism and a common citizenship can go together, he suggests, in a strong and egalitarian democracy.

First Sentence

Philosophical argument in recent years has often taken a proceduralist form: the philosopher imagines an original position, an ideal speech situation, or a conversation in a spaceship.

Excerpt

Philosophical argument in recent years has often taken a proceduralist form: the philosopher imagines an original position, an ideal speech situation, or a conversation in a spaceship.

Subjects

Other Editions

• On TolerationYale University Press1999-01-01
• On tolerationYale University Press1997-01-01
• On TolerationYale University Press1997-01-01
• Traité sur la tolérancePaperbackGallimard1998-05-15
• On TolerationYale University Press1999-01-01
• On TolerationPaperbackYale University Press1999-04-10