A Critique of Pure Tolerance
A Critique of Pure Tolerance is a 1965 book by the philosopher Robert Paul Wolff, the sociologist Barrington Moore Jr., and the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, in which the authors discuss the political role of tolerance.
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- If you're looking for a deeper analysis than this article offers, I have some recommendations for the interested reader in considering our modern way of life within capitalism and its relation to our wellbeing and our concepts of 'freedom', mainly from a Left perspective though not necessarily so. I hope these are useful:
* The Frankfurt School on the "culture indutsry"[0], which is the effect of capitalist mode of production on our culture (specifically art and within that, most focus is on the literary arts though it easily applies to music too).
* Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle[1], describing the world at a deeper level to as Marx put it, or rather, a deeper analysis of our society from a situationist point of view.
* Marx's concepts of commodity fetishism[2] and alienation[3], describing the effects which the capitalist mode of production has on the psychological well being of the working class.
* The extensions from this, again I must refer to the Frankfurt School, I'm in the middle of a book called Escape from Freedom[4] by Erich Fromm. He wrote a foreword to the second edition 25 years after its first publication, in which he claims that the conditions he describes of the freedom of man in capitalist society have become even more important to analyse for our wellbeing overall. It is a psycho-sociological work, and I haven't read it in full, I'm slowly making my way through it, however from what I've read I would recommend it for its interesting point of view.
* For a critique of the notions of tolerance in society and pluralistic democracy (which is supportive of "true" democracy, of power of the people as individuals rather than religious, ethnic or social interest groups), I recommend in particular the first and third essays (the third by Marcuse, the first by Richard Wolff) from A Critique of Pure Tolerance[5]
[0] https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/cultu...
[1] https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.ht...
[2] I must first note that "commodity fetishism" is absolutely not about how people are materialistic and value material wealth over spiritual or moral action. It is about how through the market, the interactions between people themselves are hidden and proxied such that the commodity itself is fetishised, to use that term in the sense of meaning "of unnatural excessive focus" https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/e.htm#fetishism
[3] Alienation is a concept that Marx borrowed from 18th century philosopher G.W.F Hegel, it's one which is generally deeper than how Marx uses it, and there are others who interpret it differently to Marx. Here is the Marxian view, though there are others you can find. https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/l.htm#alienation
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_Freedom and there are links to download mobile-friendly versions of the work here: https://libcom.org/library/escape-freedom
[5] PDF version here: https://monoskop.org/images/5/55/Wolff_Moore_Marcuse_A_Criti...
- > It's not clear if the rate limiting is biased against certain perspectives.
This is unavoidable. "The dignity of the platform" is a euphemism for moral cowardice masquerading as reason and civility.
Someone like Charlie Kirk - a bigoted troll who used "debate" as a weapon - would have fitted right in here, because he couched his bigotry in a civil manner.
MLK is relevant here, in his description of "moderates":
> more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.
Some other references:
"Stop glorifying ‘centrism’. It is an insidious bias favoring an unjust status quo": https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/28/centri...
"Can the Center Hold Any Meaning?": https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/political-centr...
"A Critique of Pure Tolerance": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Critique_of_Pure_Tolerance
- There is absolutely an inverse relationship here, but it's between "post-modernism," incorrectly labeled liberalism, and education. Most students attending American/West European universities have unfortunately been indoctrinated by New Left ideology instead of being "educated."
What you call liberalism today is proof of the absolute stranglehold of the New Left and post-modernist ideology over Western intellectuals. Allan Bloom wrote about it in "The Closing of the American Mind" discussing how Frankfurt School nihilists such Herbert Marcuse and Michele Foucault and post-modernists such as Jacques Derrida burrowed into the Ivy League (later the rest of academia) beginning after WWII, fully taking off in the 60s.
New Left liberalism and post-modernism are unfortunately the bastard children of Nietzschean Nihilism. The belief that truth is relative is contrary to Enlightenment values of reason and fact based observations. Of course, post-modernists believe that Enlightenment thinkers were racists because they were white Europeans and math is racist because Europeans systematized modern math (never mind that the founding fathers of Algebra and Trigonometry were mostly Persians). Be that as it may, please spare us the lecture about how Liberals "believe in science" and conservatives are close minded.
There is nothing Liberal about mainstream American culture, as it is the product of Frankfurt School ideology (Please read Herbert Marcuse essay on A critique of Pure Tolerance)and what you call "Conservatism" is actually classical liberalism. So dear Alice, welcome Through the Looking-Glass aka America in 2022!
- >Foucault's Pendulum
What's this about?
>Critique of Pure Reason
What did you find particular challenging to your worldview? As a side note, you may be interested in Critique of Pure Tolerance which has an essay by Robert Wolff and Marcuse. Have you seen The Dialectic of Enlightenment?
- That's almost a word-for-word restatement of Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" essay in A Critique of Pure Tolerance, which is essentially stating that Tolerance is only a great good so long as it means tolerance for Marxist ideas and that no leftwingers should ever be tolerant towards rightwing views.
- There's an interesting essay about democracy in America (well, there are hundreds if not thousands probably) but what's unique is that it's a criticism levelled against the idea of democratic pluralism, and from where it emerges - the 'tolerance' of the democracy, the idea that rather than the individual action expounded by the classical liberals (for all their faults) there is now a system in which representative voices are heard - whether those are religious or ethno-groups or worker groups or business groups. The key part, though, is that the group is recognised as legitimate by the others and only then will it be tolerated.
The idea of this tolerance is a kind of peaceful existence, which, the author argues, is inadequate for democracy but makes us feel good.
The essay is "Beyond Tolerance" by Robert Wolff, and it's part of a three essay book called Critique of Pure Tolerance, which as the name may not suggest to the reader is written from a strongly left-wing point of view (it even contains an essay by Frankfurt School critical theorist Herbert Marcuse!). You can read the PDF of it here, I hope others are as enlightened by it as I was: https://monoskop.org/images/5/55/Wolff_Moore_Marcuse_A_Criti...
