Tolerance paradox

The tolerance paradox becomes effective when a tolerant power, because of its tolerance, allows or enables intolerant forces to limit or abolish their own tolerance.

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The philosopher Karl Popper first described the paradox in 1945 in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies , Volume 1.

Karl Raimund Popper defines a person or group as intolerant according to the following characteristics:

1. Denial of a rational discourse
2. Invocation and use of violence against those who think differently and supporters of other ideologies

When it comes to intolerant people, Popper distinguishes between two categories:

1. First degree intolerance: intolerant of a person's manners and customs because they are foreign to them.
2. Second-degree intolerance: intolerant of a person's manners and customs because they are intolerant and dangerous.

However, since we as humans are not able to know the true motives of our counterparts, a fundamental, insoluble problem now arises. It is difficult for an outsider to distinguish whether a person who expresses himself intolerantly belongs to the first or second degree.

The use of intolerance in the name of tolerance should accordingly be cautious and only as a last resort .

“I don't mean to say that, for example, we should definitely suppress intolerant philosophies by force; as long as we can get them over with rational arguments and as long as we can keep them in check with public opinion, their suppression would certainly be highly unreasonable. But we should claim the right to repress them by force if necessary, for it can easily turn out that their representatives are unwilling to meet with us at the level of rational discussion and begin to argue as to reject such; they can forbid their followers to listen to rational arguments - which they call a deception - and they may advise them to answer arguments with fists and pistols.

We should therefore, in the name of tolerance, claim the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should argue that any movement that preaches intolerance is outside the law, and we should treat incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal as incitement to murder, robbery, or reintroduce the slave trade ”

Popper fundamentally rejects universal tolerance.

“The paradox of tolerance is less well known : Unrestricted tolerance necessarily leads to the disappearance of tolerance. Because if we extend unlimited tolerance even to the intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant social order against the attacks of intolerance, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them. "

See also

• Political correctness
• Cancel Culture

literature

• Essay competition 2014 of the Friedrich August von Hayek Society on the subject of liberalism and tolerance - congruent or full of tension?
  • Contribution by Benjamin Buchthal, awarded first place ( online )
  • Contribution by Daniel Nientiedt, awarded second place ( online )
  • Contribution by Jan Seidel, awarded third place ( online )
• Barbara Pasamonik: The Paradoxes of Tolerance . In: The Social Studies , Vol. 95 (2004), pp. 206-210.

Web links

• The Concept of Toleration and its Paradoxes . In: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
• Tolerating the intolerant .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karl Popper: The Open Society and Its Enemies . Routledge, London 1945. German translation: The open society and its enemies , Volume 1. Francke, Bern 1957; 8th, arr. Edition, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, ISBN 978-3-16-147801-7