Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
1 SHALL ARGUE THAT TOLERANCE IS CENTRALLY A MORAL CONCEPT (although it is also used in a variety of non-moral ways). My differences with the two papers, with which I in many ways agree, derive from this observation. I shall argue that the definition they use must be extended to allow for claims to legitimacy characteristic of cases of tolerance, and I shall further argue (against Dr King) that tolerance characterizes social groups in a less formal sense than he allows, and (against Professor Crick) that tolerance is primarily a social rather than a political phenomenon.
1 This is why Crick’s observations about homosexuals read so oddly. If he does not approve of ‘queers as a category’ but can only produce what he himself regards as ‘rationalizations’ to support his approval, then one might well ask what right has he cither to tolerate or not to tolerate them?
2 ‘An Observer’ Message from Moscow, London, 1969, p. 98.