Tolerance and Nietzsche

1. Tolerance and Nietzsche Michael Lacewing enquiries@alevelphilosophy.co.uk

2. Tolerance • We can only tolerate practices, values, and beliefs of other people when these differ from our own. • Not minding or caring isn’t really tolerance, which involves not acting (in certain ways) on one’s opposition to the practice etc. • Restraint is not out of fear or powerlessness, but out of moral or political reasons for being tolerant.

3. Tensions • Should a liberal society tolerate a minority culture that doesn’t respect its values? • It rejects the values of individual autonomy and tolerance in favour of the authority of tradition, and seeks to enforce its values within the cultural community. • If it were the majority culture, it would advocate legal and social sanctions against those who disagreed. • Can, or should, liberals tolerate the intolerant or intolerable?

4. Paradox • Tolerance is most needed when one view rejects tolerance. If both agree that individual autonomy must be respected, little tolerance is needed. • If the reason for tolerance is to respect autonomy, why would we tolerate a view that did not respect autonomy? Don’t we increase autonomy by not tolerating views that do not respect autonomy? • But if a liberal society could only tolerate cultures that accept liberal values, how would this be tolerance at all?

5. Defending tolerance • To argue that intolerant views cannot be tolerated is not intolerance. E.g. it is quite different from the intolerance of a view that tries to impose a specific way of living on people. • We cannot refuse to make any value judgment about different cultures or we lose the value judgments that favour tolerance over intolerance.

6. Why be tolerant? • Strife • Fallibility • Autonomy • As happiness • As respect for equality • Diversity

7. Nietzsche’s suspicion • Modern ideas of happiness and equality are expressions of a ‘herd morality’ • Goodness of heart: impotence • Humility: fear • Patience: cowardice • Forgiveness: the inability to take revenge • Justice: the desire for revenge • This damages what is truly valuable or great, which requires suffering and inequality.

8. Happiness • Happiness as opposition to suffering • Pity • Peacefulness • Altruism • Communal utility • Equality • This produces people who are modest, submissive, and conforming.

9. Equality • Samuel Johnson: ‘So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other’ • Equality favours the unexceptional and mediocre, and undermines greatness. • Why should the great be tolerant of the mediocre or respect their autonomy?

10. Nietzsche’s values • Nietzsche praises ‘noble’ values: • a sense of one’s goodness independent of others’ opinions, • a willingness to take responsibility • an ability to tolerate and use suffering • Do these commit to inegalitarianism and intolerance? How should a great person react to a lack of greatness in others?

11. A defence • Herd values are appropriate for the herd, but shouldn’t be imposed on great people. Nietzsche is arguing for tolerance! • We only get intolerance if we think greatness justifies exploiting the herd. But why think the only value of herd individuals is to promote the greatness of others?