ABSTRACT
The concept of tolerance has a long history both as a personal and as a political virtue. In the context of the postwar multicultural immigration society, it once again became central to the public, political, academic, and philosophical debate. Tolerance has become again a common but still controversial concept. This contribution takes political philosophy as an initial framework, through which it clarifies how the contemporary liberal concept of tolerance differs from previous views and practices of toleration. We then describe why and how thinking about toleration has been supplemented in the past decades with the notions of ‘recognition’, ‘reasonable accommodation’, and ‘polyethnic minority rights’.
