Michael Walzer makes a historical sweep of various cultures to identify how groups of people with different histories, cultures and identities can coexist peacefully together. On Toleration is an important work for an increasingly diverse and pluralistic society. Walzer maintains that the virtue of tolerance, in its multivarious forms, is the key virtue for peaceful coexistence and a necessary condition for human flourishing. Walzer is unique in that he takes great pains to avoid abstract formulations of the virtue of tolerance. He states that, "the alternative I mean to defend is a historical and contextual account of toleration and coexistence, on that examines the different forms that these have actually taken and the norms of everyday life appropriate to each" (p 3). But, he also remains a non-relativist -- he wants to gather historical examples that demonstrate a common principle that he can extrapolate to avoid radical relativism (For a fuller understanding of how Walzer uses historical validation to avoid radical relativism, see his book Thick and Thin).
Walzer begins by concentrating his discussion on the virtue of toleration on the cultural, religious and way of life differences that exist within a particular community. He lists five dominant attitudes toward the "other" in a group -- five attitudes of toleration: (1) resigned acceptance for the sake of peace; (2) passive, relaxed, benignly indifferent to difference; (3) a principled recognition that others have rights -- even if they exercise those rights in unattractive ways; (4) openness to others; and (5) enthusiastic endorsement of others. Where tolerance is present in a community, one of these five attitudes is also present (Ch. 1).
Walzer moves on to describe five political arrangements of toleration: (1) multinational empires (ancient Rome), (2) International society, (3) Consociations -- voluntary cooperation between communities that promotes a pseudo-common citizenry, (4) nation-states and (5) immigrant societies. While exceptions exist (he lists four -- France, Israel, Canada and the European Community) Walzer argues that each of these political arrangements fosters one or more of the above attitudes on toleration (Ch. 2). Further, Walzer maintains that in each political arrangement, practical issues of power, class, gender, religion, education and civil religion haunt the practice of toleration.
After providing the framework for understanding toleration, Walzer makes an important distinction between modern and postmodern perspectives on toleration. For moderns, toleration is focused on the inclusion of individuals and on group recognition -- the coexistence of strong groups and free individuals, with all of its difficulties, is an enduring feature of modernity (p 87). Walzer argues that postmodern toleration has no clear boundaries and no secure identities. Postmodernity has loosened the moorings of personal and communal identity and set the individual adrift in a multicultural malaise. Therefore, he argues that tolerance, especially in the uniquely individualistic immigrant society that is the United States of America, should be focused on the strengthening of voluntary associations and minority groups -- a place where individuals can find an identity and a shared set of practices. Ideally democracy (social democracy in his case) is the political arrangement that allows for equality of groups and the potential for equal representation. He concludes that, "individuals are stronger, more confident, more savvy, when they are participants in a common life, when they are responsible to and for other people" (p 104). Consequently democracy needs its critics "who possess the virtue of tolerance, which probably means critics who have loyalties of their own and some sense of the value of associational life".
In the end, I find Walzer's account of toleration a bit too flat, but it is a significant account -- one that America these days could use going back over. As a counter voice to Walzer, I offer an account that I do think is closer to the truth: