ABSTRACT
We saw at the end of the last chapter that the most promising account of why persons in opposition ought to practise toleration with respect to at least some of their differences – the reasonableness defence of toleration – can deliver on its promise only if it is accompanied by an account of when the complaints of any party against those they oppose ought to be addressed in law (or ought to register as legitimate in the political zeitgeist) in virtue of a political harm having been done to this party; in other words, the harm can be established as such in public reason. In the absence of such an account the reasonableness defence provides no principled way of adjudicating the competing claims of reasonable people whose opposition constitutes a problem of toleration, such as Waldron’s entrepreneurial pornographer and sensitive Muslim.
