Repressive tolerance

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Repressive tolerance is the title of an essay by the German sociologist and philosopher Herbert Marcuse . This essay is part of the 1965 published Critique of Pure Tolerance .

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In this essay on Repressive Tolerance , dedicated to Brandeis University students, Marcuse formulates thoughts that have had a major impact on the student movement in the United States and Europe. In it he describes the idea of ​​tolerance developed at the beginning of modern times as a partisan goal , as a subversive, liberating concept and practice . There is currently no power , authority or government that implements liberating tolerance . On the contrary, the type of tolerance practiced strengthens the power of, for exampledestructive violence in Vietnam .

Marcuse, on the other hand, formulates a utopian conception of society in which the individual lives freely in harmony with others and public and private welfare is guaranteed for all. The aim is to bring about a society in which people are not enslaved by institutions . The currently prevailing tolerance, also in democratic states, accepts aggressive politics , armament , chauvinism and discrimination on racial and religious grounds .

According to Marcuse, there is an objective truth which, through discussion of the people in the form of individuals and members of political and other organizations , should determine the policy of a future democratic society. For Marcuse, this idea of freedom precludes an unlimited tolerance of retrograde movements . In reality, impartial tolerance protects the already established machinery of discrimination. In his essay he legitimizes this program by stating: The telos of tolerance is truth.

For example, the Socialist German Student Union took up Marcuse's ideas and thus justified the striving for a better new social order.

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literature

  • Andreas Fisahn : Repressive tolerance and the "pluralism" of the oligarchies . In: PROKLA . journal for critical social science 38 (2008), no. 3 (152), pp. 355–377.

See also

Individual proof

  1. ^ A b Herbert Marcuse: Repressive Toleranz , Essay, 1965