Tolerance

[Dave Monroe]

Borradori, Giovanna.  Philosophy in a Time of Terror:
   Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida.
   Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003.

Part Two
Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides—A Dialogue
with Jacques Derrida

"The word 'tolerance' is first of all marked by a
religious war between Christians, or between
Christians and non-Christians.  Tolerance is a
Christian virtue, or for that matter a Catholic
virtue.  The christian must tolerate the
non-Christian, but, even more so, the Catholic must
let the Protestant be.  Since today we feel that
religious claims are at the heart of the violence ...
we resort to this good old word 'tolerance' ....  
Peace would thus be tolerant cohabitation.  Though I
clearly prefer shows of tolerance to shows of
intolerance, I nonetheless still have certain
reservations about the word 'tolerance' and the
discourse it organizes.  It is a discourse with
religious roots; it is most often used on the side of
those with power, always as a kind of condescending
concession ...

[...]

   "Indeed, tolerance is first of all a form of
charity.  A Chrsitian charity ....  Tolerance is
always on the side of the 'reason of the strongest,'
where 'might is right'; it is a supplementary mark of
soveriegnty, which says to the other from its elevated
position, I am letting you be, you are not
insufferable, I am leaving you a place in my home, but
do not forget that this is my home ...

[...]

"... Tolerance is actually the opposite of
hospitality.  Or at least its limit.  If I think I am
being hospitable because I'm being tolerant, it is
because I wish to limit my welcome, to maintain power
and retain control over the limits of my 'home,' my
sovereignty, my 'I can' (my territory, my house, my
language, my culture, my religion, and so on).... we
accept the foreigner, the other, the foreign body up
to a certain point, and so not without restrictions. 
Tolerance is a conditional, circumspect, careful
hospitality.

[...]

"... a limited tolerance is clearly preferrable to an
absolute intolerance.  But tolerance remains a
scrutinized hospitality, always under surveilance,
parsimonious and protective of its sovereignty.   In
the best of cases it's what I wouyld call a
conditional hospitality ....  We offer hospitality
only on the condition that others follow our rules,
our way of life, even our language, our culture, our
political system, and so on....  But pure and
unconditional hospitality does not consist in such an
invitation ('I Invite you, I welcome you into my home,
on the condition that you adapt to the laws and norms
of my territory, according to my language, tradition,
memory, and so on').  Pure and unconditional
hospitality, hospitality istelf, opens or is in
advance open to someone who is neither expected nor
invited, to whomever arrives as an absolutely foreign
visitor, a new arrival, nonidnetifiable and
unforeseeable, in short, wholly other.... a
hospitality of visitation rather than invitation.  The
visit might actually be very dangerous, and we must
not ignore this fact, but would a hopsitality without
risk ... be true hospitality?  ...
   "An unconditional hospitality is, to be sure,
practically impossible to live ....  Whatever ahppens,
happens, whatever comes, comes ....  Unconditional
hospitality, which is neither juridicial nor
political, is nonetheless the condition of the
political and the juridicial.... I am not evn sure
whether it is ethical, insofar as it does not even
depend on a decision.  But what would an 'ethics' be
without hopitality"" (pp. 125-9)

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/15789.ctl

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