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Religious Tolerance1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

Elmer John Thiessen
Affiliation:
Medicine Hat College

Extract

One reason why religious intolerance is so widespread, according to Newman, is that many people do not understand what tolerance means. Thus, “many intolerant people actually think that they are tolerant, and liberal people usually have trouble explaining to them why they are wrong” (147). Newman therefore begins his book with an analysis of the concept of tolerance. “Tolerance involves tolerating, that is, accepting, enduring, bearing, putting up with; it involves acceptance in the sense of refraining from any strong reaction to the thing in question; it is half hearted, an attitude towards something that is not liked, loved, respected, or approved of; and it is often, though not always, understood as a praiseworthy act or virtue” (6).

Type
Critical Notice/Etude Critiques
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1984

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References

2 J. P. White, for example, in his analysis and defence of a compulsory curriculum brings to the fore the problem of the status of the child and frankly admits, “We are right to make him unfree now so as to give him as much autonomy as possible later on” (J. P. White, Towards a Compulsory Curriculum [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, [1973], 22).

3 Harold G. Coward, Religions Pluralism and the World Religions (Madras: The Dr. S. Radhakrishnan Institute for Advanced Study in Philosophy, University of Madras, 1983), 127, 95.