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tylerrobinson1's review
3.0
A mix of essays from three differently trained philosophers and a sociologists.
Robert Paul Wolff in 'Beyond Tolerance' essentially writes a historical viewpoint of tolerance and the idea of free speech, seeing how it has unravelled over time, and ends with the idea that we should abandon tolerance in favour of the community. As he puts it "We must give up the image of society as a battleground of competing groups and formulate an ideal of society more exalted than the mere acceptance of opposed interests and diverse customs. There is need for a new philosophy of community, beyond pluralism and beyond tolerance" (61).
Barrington Moore Jr in 'Tolerance and the Scientific Outlook' offers a pretty ridiculous and naive 'ideal' society, wherein science and evidence alone are the yardstick for truth and tolerance. As Moore puts it "science is tolerant of reason; relentlessly intolerant of reason and sham." (91). Moore takes a very aphilosophical and sociologically ignorant view of science and its construction, assuming an idealistic positivistic worldview, which is not only naive and cold, but ignores the very regressive power of an overly rationalistic worldview. One can only guess that Moore never read Adorno's 'Dialectic of Enlightenment'...
Herbert Marcuse in 'Repressive Tolerance' argues in an albeit imperfect manner (but probably the strongest of the bunch), wherein he argues for the necessary intolerance of intolerant (which he broadly characterises as Right wing) viewpoints, to allow for the inequality of freedom to be suppressed. This essay hasn't aged particularly well, and is certainly of its time. I imagine the rather dated feel to it, in light of the modern discussions around free speech, have probably tarred its image, especially with the pseudo-documentaries and antiSemitic conspiracies about 'Cultural Marxism' mentioning this text explicitly. But I think this essay is dismissed too quickly, and a more careful reading is required, and especially one which takes the context of the work into account, as the suppression of the Left was much stronger in this time, and the only way to counteract this was by suppressing the Right.
Robert Paul Wolff in 'Beyond Tolerance' essentially writes a historical viewpoint of tolerance and the idea of free speech, seeing how it has unravelled over time, and ends with the idea that we should abandon tolerance in favour of the community. As he puts it "We must give up the image of society as a battleground of competing groups and formulate an ideal of society more exalted than the mere acceptance of opposed interests and diverse customs. There is need for a new philosophy of community, beyond pluralism and beyond tolerance" (61).
Barrington Moore Jr in 'Tolerance and the Scientific Outlook' offers a pretty ridiculous and naive 'ideal' society, wherein science and evidence alone are the yardstick for truth and tolerance. As Moore puts it "science is tolerant of reason; relentlessly intolerant of reason and sham." (91). Moore takes a very aphilosophical and sociologically ignorant view of science and its construction, assuming an idealistic positivistic worldview, which is not only naive and cold, but ignores the very regressive power of an overly rationalistic worldview. One can only guess that Moore never read Adorno's 'Dialectic of Enlightenment'...
Herbert Marcuse in 'Repressive Tolerance' argues in an albeit imperfect manner (but probably the strongest of the bunch), wherein he argues for the necessary intolerance of intolerant (which he broadly characterises as Right wing) viewpoints, to allow for the inequality of freedom to be suppressed. This essay hasn't aged particularly well, and is certainly of its time. I imagine the rather dated feel to it, in light of the modern discussions around free speech, have probably tarred its image, especially with the pseudo-documentaries and antiSemitic conspiracies about 'Cultural Marxism' mentioning this text explicitly. But I think this essay is dismissed too quickly, and a more careful reading is required, and especially one which takes the context of the work into account, as the suppression of the Left was much stronger in this time, and the only way to counteract this was by suppressing the Right.
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