Toleration On Trial

Toleration on Trial offers the only multidisciplinary study available on the issue of toleration, bringing together political psychologists, philosophers, sociologists, Islamic scholars, and political theorists to examine the most pressing debates in the field. The volume addresses the toleration question from a number of angles: toleration and its application to gay rights; Islam and toleration; institutional, ideological, and psychological preconditions for its practice; and philosophical and conceptual arguments for the principle of toleration. The common thread running throughout the volume is the core question: Is toleration primarily a product of institutional arrangements, or is it an attitude of individuals? To answer this adequately, the authors believe that a contemporary analysis of the possibility, significance and requirements of toleration must be fully cognizant of the democratic, or more accurately_politically mobilized_background in which toleration becomes a difficult issue. Conflicts between deeply divided groups within nations and between groups across political boundaries pose the issue of threat and risk to a practice or way of life that many peoples find difficult to accept. Can the idea and practice of toleration manage these in politically and ethically defensible ways? These essays address various aspects of the aim to establish or strengthen toleration among politically mobilized groups, in a context of contemporary democratic challenges.

Toleration on Trial offers the only multidisciplinary study available on the issue of toleration, in the context of deep and difficult conflicts over ideological, cultural, and identity issues in today's mobilized political environment. The importance of individual attitudes and institutional/cultural arrangements is explored as a central axis in the meaning of toleration as a principle and practically in relation to demands for toleration of religious expression, gay rights, and the Islamic sources of toleration.

Ingrid Creppell is associate professor of political science at George Washington University. Russell Hardin is professor of politics at New York University. Stephen Macedo is Laurence S. Rockefeller professor of politics and director of the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.