Toleration and Democracy

Recent acts of violence have given greater urgency to questions about religious and racial intolerance. But today - as in former times - we do not just find conflicts about where to draw the limits of toleration; rather, we also find conflicts about whether toleration is a virtue at all. For some, it is essential for a flourishing pluralistic democracy; for others, it is a pre-democratic attitude and practice, in Goethe’s famous words, “an insult.” This lecture explains these conflicts and argues for a particular democratic notion of toleration.
Professor Rainer Forst, Political Theory and Philosophy, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, is a leading German philosopher and political theorist whose primary areas of research are pragmatism, tolerance and political and social justice. He has been called the most important political philosopher of his generation.
Rainer Forst, Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University
04/29/2015
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