ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the idea of tolerance in our advanced industrial society. It shows what is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression. Generally, the function and value of tolerance depend on the equality prevalent in the society in which tolerance is practiced. In other words, tolerance is an end in itself only when it is truly universal, practiced by the rulers as well as by the ruled, by the lords as well as by the peasants, by the sheriffs as well as by their victims. The liberating force of democracy was the chance it gave to effective dissent, on the individual as well as social scale, its openness to qualitatively different forms of government, of culture, education, work—of the human existence in general.
