Although this article appeared in
First Things twenty-two years ago, it seems more pertinent in today’s
environment than in 1993. Is it possible
to be morally neutral in today's society? Another word identified with moral
neutrality is toleration. Is toleration morally neutral?
J. Budziszewski in an article
with the same title, The Illusion of
Moral Neutrality, states that "there is no such thing as
Neutrality." The very word "toleration" declares that one has
already made a judgment call, because "to tolerate something is to put up
with it even though we might be tempted to suppress it." Thorndike &
Barnhart’s Dictionary, defines "tolerance" as "a willingness to
be tolerant and patient toward people whose opinions or ways differ from one's
own." By expressing a belief in tolerance one has of necessity determined
an opinion or an act as wrong, but at the same time have also determined that
the prohibition of that opinion or act would be a greater wrong.
In a similar vein, intolerance
manifests itself in two different ways. Budziszewski calls the first way
"softheadedness", which is "an excess of indulgence - putting up
with something we should suppress." He calls the other way
"narrowmindedness", which is "a deficiency of indulgence -
suppressing what we should put up with."
Therefore he leads us to this
proposition: "Tolerance cannot be neutral about what is good, for its very
purpose is to guard goods and avert evils." He continues his line of
reasoning by calling tolerance a "moral virtue" and claims that it is
not "a moral rule, a moral attitude, a moral feeling, or a moral
capacity."
In defense of tolerance being a
moral virtue he states: "For it is a mean between two opposed vices, one
of them characterized by excess and the other by deficiency, its location to be
discovered in the case-by-case exercise of practical wisdom. The circumstantial
element in the practice of tolerance is right judgment in the protection of
greater ends against lesser ends. This is no different from any exercise of
practical wisdom, except insofar as its constant element, right judgment in the
protection of ends against mistaken means, makes it special."
He states: "Virtue cannot
... be taught simply by means of an exhaustive list of rules."
Budziszewski goes into our
society's lack of consensus on toleration.
By quoting Chesterton, ("It
is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself
a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any
relation to reality at all."), he is attempting to lay the foundation for
the fact that all of us in our society have an Ultimate Reality, or as he
states, "there is something to which every knee bows [which] ... is the
person's god."
As Budziszewski noted; "[N]o
one escapes ceding ultimacy to something whether it deserves ultimacy or not...
[O]ne need not be conscious of his god, or even conscious that he has a god.
One might think he has no god, or that he is ‘looking for’ or ‘waiting for’ a
god. One may even be converted from one god to another. But one will have a
god-or at least be on the road to having one."
Budziszewski continues, "What
you can tolerate pivots on your ultimate concern. Because different ultimate
concerns ordain different zones of tolerance, social consensus is possible only
at the points where these zones overlap. Note well: The greater the resemblance
of contending concerns, the greater the overlap of their zones of tolerance.
The less the resemblance of contending concerns, the less the overlap of their
zones of tolerance. Should contending concerns become sufficiently unlike,
their zones of tolerance no longer intersect at all. Consensus vanishes."
The point of his article is that
Budziszewski maintains that our "cultural wars" will get worse
because there is no consensus as to what constitutes "tolerance" in
our society. Budziszewski concludes, "The reason for this is that our
various gods ordain not only different zones of tolerance, but different norms
to regulate the dispute among themselves. True tolerance is not well tolerated.
For although the God of some of the disputants ordains that they love and
persuade their opponents, the gods of some of the others ordain no such
thing." As our society becomes more and more diversified, or as a
multiplicity of Ultimate Realities continually manifest themselves, toleration,
becomes more and more untenable.
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