Abstract

if one wants to grasp tolerance politically, that is, as a problem of power and as organizing relations among citizens, subjects, peoples or states, then it must be understood, inter alia, as being enacted through contingent, historically specific discourses - linguistically organized norms operating as common sense. [...]any political discourse of tolerance - from that developed for handling Protestant sectarianism in seventeenth-century England to that used by the G.W. Bush Administration in the aftermath of 9/11 to distinguish the West from the rest, to that used by the Israeli state for describing (only) its policies toward homosexuals - is embedded within other discourses articulating the qualities and meanings of the religious, cultural, social or political order that the discourse of tolerance purports to pacify. [...]tolerance, correctly understood, is a virtue of the public use of reason.