Toleration is not an easy virtue.
There are plenty of arguments and positions that people advance that we, even as liberals, might be inclined to dislike. To coexist in a space with those with whom we disagree, and to accept as valid their viewpoints and perspectives, is far easier to achieve in theory than in practice. As much as liberalism supports the idea that people will hold a diversity of views, that is different from actually liking or endorsing what other people have to say. It’s a familiar sensation for anyone who holds strong ideological convictions to feel as though nails were being dragged across a chalkboard when someone disagrees with them.
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Yet for liberals, it is precisely the toleration of discordant and unharmonious voices that draws so many of us to the ideology. Liberalism, which fundamentally defends a baseline commitment to pluralism, is at its core dedicated to the idea that we can agree to disagree. Toleration is represented not only through the political debates we engage in—it means that we, as individuals, are tolerant of one another.
In a public sphere that is filled with polarized discourse, where the stakes of the present moment seem so exhaustingly high, and one’s own views are in need of a firm defense, an appeal to toleration becomes even more difficult. This makes it worth revisiting one of the age-old subjects of debates within the liberal tradition: what ought we, as liberals, to tolerate? What are the limits and boundaries for acceptable and unacceptable views and opinions? When can we leave the room? Are stronger measures ever justified, and if so, when? What are the perspectives and ideals that deserve our condemnation?
Judith Shklar, best known for her work “The Liberalism of Fear,” and beloved by many here at Liberalism.org, wrote an entire book on the banal and ordinary irritations that liberals (at least) need to learn to live with. She termed the result, Ordinary Vices (1984), “very tentative, an exploration rather than a statement, an effort to worry rather than to soothe.” It is not a definitive end point, but rather a way to begin thinking seriously about the relationship between liberalism and vice.
Her project starts from the idea that physical cruelty is the worst of all the vices, and that political institutions should be arranged to minimize physical cruelty as much as possible. As for the rest of the vices? It turns out that they are not as bad as we think. Toleration, then, requires that we accept a world of less than virtuous actors and behaviors. Christians refer to this as the fallen nature of humanity. For realists, it is to see the world as it is, and not as we suppose it to be.
Although the moralized language of virtue and vice may cause some to cringe, the vices Shklar particularly singles out are familiar to all of us. These are not behaviors that I, as an author and a liberal, am immune from. Part of the power of her work, through the personal storytelling it engages with, is the admission that we are all human in our failings and imperfections. Indeed, there is a sense of comfort taken in the idea that others have made mistakes like us. There is even a particular joy in the realization that we are not alone in our mishaps.
Now, Shklar defines ordinary vices as the “sort of conduct we all expect, nothing spectacular or unusual.” They are “the common ills we inflict upon one another every day.” What makes them distinct is how they “all share a special quality: they have both personal and public dimensions.” The sources of fiction and popular culture that Shklar seamlessly integrates into her book work so well as illustrative examples because of how common these vices are. They make for good novels and plays since they are deeply familiar to us.
There are certainly cases of extremely vicious behavior that are genuinely worthy of condemnation and disapproval. This is the case not only in action, but in argument. Individuals who seek to deny the basic recognition of others, whose views and perspectives are not only malicious, but whose voices shut down argument and debate, these are not cases of the banal and ordinary vices Shklar has in mind. What matters for present purposes is that many of the minor transgressions in our personal and political lives that cause us to cringe are both inevitable and not as bad as we might be inclined to feel that they are.
Shklar singles out four vices in particular that she contends liberals need to learn to live with: hypocrisy, snobbery, betrayal, and misanthropy. A brief illustration of snobbery and misanthropy can demonstrate how to think about banal viciousness and the kinds of moments that Shklar has in mind when she insists they ought to be excused.
Snobbery can be thought of as “the habit of making inequality hurt” (87). It is evident in those moments when a sense of disparity between parties arises. It suggests that one is in a better position relative to another. Given the liberal commitment to equality and the fundamental belief that individuals are, in a meaningful sense, equal in the eyes of others, and that they are to be treated that way—the discordant sound of snobbery is unsettling.
Indeed, there are entire industries that snobbery seems inescapably bound up in. Shklar uses American academia as her case in point, and those among her colleagues who take Harvard to be the center of the entire world (126–127). Many of us simply do not get to spend our lives at elite institutions in Boston, or anywhere else.
Often though, the practices and habits of the snobs are not as malicious or ill-intentioned as they seem. Their privilege may not be accompanied by the scornful view that one imagines them to hold. Inequality can still hurt, even when one is merely talking casually with a friend about their life circumstances, but it need not be malicious.
Even when our interlocutors are ill-intentioned, to be able to adopt a perspective of good humor towards it, to laugh it off and not take such barbs seriously appears a far better solution than allowing it to get to us. This is the remedy that Shklar recommends, rather than banishing the snob from society.
As it turns out, there is worse company to keep than our snobbish friend, who talks constantly of their trips to Europe.
Misanthropy is the vice of an individual who looks with contempt and scorn at the purportedly vicious humanity that surrounds them. A misanthrope is unable to tolerate or live with “vanity, cowardice, dishonesty, and treachery.” This sense of disdain comes out in downright cynicism towards others, or a passive dismissal of who and what people are. On Shklar’s telling, misanthropy can be motivated by an excessive dislike of vice, which is precisely what she is warning against.
To consider people as they are, and to defend that they ought to be allowed to be that way, risks an assessment that others around us are simply not that great. People do things all the time that appear worthy of condemnation. Anyone who has passed litter in a public park surely knows this feeling of exasperation and a desire for others to do better or be more mindful.
But there is a difference between the recognition that individuals are imperfect and the insistence that they ought to improve in order for us to value them. Misanthropy is what happens to liberals when they refuse to live with imperfection and instead silently scorn those they profess to defend. Even if a misanthrope’s judgements are not voiced to others, we often feel them just the same. Although one ought to tolerate the misanthrope, as a vice, misanthropy is fundamentally at odds with an ideology that aspires toward a robust defense of difference and diversity. Why would anyone care about humanity if they cannot stand it?
Like the other ordinary vices, hypocrisy and betrayal, it is not that Shklar approves of them or thinks we ought to spend more time betraying our loved ones or hiding behind a mask. It is rather that, in a world where people are hypocrites, snobs, and betrayers, what are we (as liberals) to do about it? Her suggestion is that we ought to accept it and focus our efforts on other priorities. We need to let things go.
Liberals, then, must tolerate quite a lot. Yet there is something more at stake here. We need the ordinary vices of others because, in a world that will always be full of flawed or fallen people, we must seek to understand the vices ourselves, from firsthand knowledge. They constitute an important part of what it means to actually live in the world. In Legalism, Shklar writes that “Pluralism is… treated as a social actuality that no contemporary political theory can ignore without losing its relevance, and also as something that any liberal should rejoice in and seek to promote….” (5). To celebrate diversity would seem to imply much more than a begrudging acceptance that individuals are different in their imperfections. It should seemingly be something that liberals are excited about.
When liberals discuss difference, they often highlight its positive features. Difference suggests to us the value of human creativity, self-expression, the diverse forms of artistic creation, and the entrepreneurship that can arise when we let people be and think as they are, unrestrained by arbitrary laws.
Shklar’s crucial intervention in Ordinary Vices is to remind us that there are non-ideal forms of human difference, and those too must be accepted and even (if minimally) celebrated. To live in a world where individuals are presumed free and equal means they will make mistakes and have foibles that irritate and enrage us at times. But there are better uses for our anger and indignation. There is also something meaningful in the process of developing close interpersonal relationships that provide insight into these imperfections.
Liberalism, then, requires us to accept others not merely at their best (which we rarely are) but at their worst. It is to take people as they come, with complicated histories and disorienting lives, rather than who we might imagine them to be, with a perfectibility and coherence that none of us could possibly have.
To embody this robust commitment to toleration, as I argue a liberal ought to, further requires a return to virtue. I do so with apologies to Shklar, who reprimands philosophers and political theorists for speaking too much about it. There are two virtues in particular that are especially relevant for the kind of acceptance I have in mind here: curiosity and humor.
Curiosity is an acceptance of uncertainty and our own limitations. To be a curious person is to state that I do not know, but I am interested in the process of getting to know, something. Curiosity asserts an epistemic limitation, and in some sense it is the natural opposite of arrogance. It also suggests a genuine sense of desire for the knowledge one does not have.
The beauty of curiosity is often personified in children, who ask a lot of questions. Immune from the arrogance that accompanies adulthood, they admit to not knowing anything at all and are constantly irritating their elders with the question “Why?” They are also frequently dissatisfied with their elders’ answers, or at least my 7-year-old is.
This is exactly the same question that we can ask when it comes to banal viciousness, that of “Why?” If our first reaction to others is one of scorn and admonition, it closes the door to a consideration of circumstances and intentions. So often we know very little about the private lives of individuals, who they are and what they do, or especially why they do it. To treat these vices with an interest, then, as a way to get to know others better, is certainly more admirable than portraying ourselves as an epistemic authority that we cannot possibly be.
Humor is one of the antidotes that Shklar suggests when we begin to take ourselves and our moral perspectives too seriously. It serves as a reminder that the stakes are commonly lower than we imagine, despite how hard-hitting things might feel in the moment.
Many comedies are often comedies of error. They depict human beings who allow emotions like arrogance and jealousy to lead them to make lousy choices. Choices that, again, many of us have made. Yet in their hyperbolic form, comedies allow us to see the redeemable and even charming features of the individual who exhibits these otherwise vicious behaviors. Jealousy, for example, is the result of loving too much or too deeply.
The capacity to make fun of, and have fun with, banal vices is then another way out of the tendency to scrutinize them too deeply or to try and change the world (and the people within it) in ways that are more easily imagined than carried out.
Political satire does precisely this—it invites us to laugh at situations we might consider serious. In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift fictionalizes political disagreement as a dispute about whether or not an egg should be cracked from the “big end” or the “small end” of the shell. For those of us who have cracked eggs, this really doesn’t matter. The way Tom Lehrer protested censorship laws was through the song “Smut,” a playful (and catchy) song about how he wanted to consume endless erotic works. The sheer popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey suggests he was onto something. It is precisely in these instances of frivolity that the pettiness of political problems is exposed. Satire also has the capacity to expose ideas and opinions that individuals hold as serious, in a light that renders them ridiculous. The way that The Adventures of Superman radio program criticized the KKK was through making fun of their handshakes and their hats.
Liberalism should not resign itself to the fact of pluralism. Liberalism should be willing to defend it enthusiastically, vices and all. What’s needed is less an exasperated sigh and more an excited acknowledgement for the idea that differences exist across individuals—and the world is better for it. It is a lackluster defense of difference if the tone is one of mere reluctance.
This requires an honest look at the forms differences can take. Difference is not found merely in the ways we mutually benefit one another. It requires us to take the good with the bad—and this means an acceptance of the ways that those around us fall short of the ideals they have, or that we might want them to have.
Kurt Vonnegut perhaps best reflects the form of liberal toleration that I have sought to defend in this article. In The Sirens of Titan, the fictional Harmoniums, who communicate telepathically, can convey only two possible messages to one another.
The first says: “Here I am, here I am, here I am.”
The second says: “So glad you are, so glad you are, so glad you are.”
We may always say more than just that. But liberals need to be glad, fundamentally, that people are here, as messy and as lacking in virtue as they are. Liberalism is an ideology which requires that we treat each other in a certain way, with a baseline of respect about who we are as separate individuals existing in the world together. This comes out in the pleasure of sitting in a public park and appreciating the strangers around you, with the Smithian recognition that “I am but one of a multitude, in no way better than any other in it.” People who, like you, have been far from perfect in their character and conduct. People who, like you, will continue in their imperfections.
If liberalism genuinely is an ideology of human freedom, that human freedom comes in an imperfect form.
And that is what makes people so interesting.
