Tolerance and Respect
I have been thinking and discussing with a friend about the difference between tolerance and respect, and would find other opinions to be beneficial.
Thoughts on Respect:
Respect must be the act of esteeming a view or person, in the sense that the one who respects holds the other in high regards and supports/agrees with it. In order to respect, one must restrain negativity by means of rules constructed in tradition, refusing to inflict harm on the respected.
On Tolerance:
Tolerance is not the same as respect, although respect can have aspects of tolerance. This must be the restraint of negativity in order to avoid conflict or harming another, not necessarily due to benevolence towards the other. For instance, one may tolerate another's annoying habits without respecting the person or the habit.
Thoughts on Respect:
Respect must be the act of esteeming a view or person, in the sense that the one who respects holds the other in high regards and supports/agrees with it. In order to respect, one must restrain negativity by means of rules constructed in tradition, refusing to inflict harm on the respected.
On Tolerance:
Tolerance is not the same as respect, although respect can have aspects of tolerance. This must be the restraint of negativity in order to avoid conflict or harming another, not necessarily due to benevolence towards the other. For instance, one may tolerate another's annoying habits without respecting the person or the habit.
Comments (27)
Tolerance would be the conclusion that in the long run, x is essentially noise. :grin:
To note : a "tolerance", in French Civil Law, is an acquired right that was once challenged but recognized to have been issued in the past, and on the basis of this previous issuance, should continue being issued.
A nice little old lady has walked her dog over my yard for the last 20 years. For some reason after 20 years I start being a little whiner about it. She brings me to court, and gets herself a "Tolerance of accessibility". She can now legally walk her dog all over my property, because I had allowed her to do so in the past and nothing changed except me becoming an ass.
Tolerance as a principle:- It falls out of the reality that war is expensive, always the worst outcome for most of the people involved, and best avoided whenever possible. Tolerance opens up a space for the other's co-operation. You behave nicely, and if the other reciprocates, everything is copacetic. But tolerance has its limits, it's subject to the more important principle of survival (you have to survive before you can flourish, and a rule built to enhance flourishing isn't necessarily useful for survival) - to tolerate real threat may be part of a strategy up to a point, but too much tolerance not only gives you up to the possibility of death by a thousand cuts, but it also turns you into a target for other predators and parasites.
Tolerance as a policy, or a form of discipline-: We have all sorts of tribal, animalistic, status-jockeying urges, and sometimes they're useful, but in a modern context, mostly they're not. So when we find ourselves having those sorts of feelings - such as instinctive dislike or distrust of the alien, often very useful in our ancestral environment - in an inappropriate context, like the context of modern life, we can tame those feelings.
Eventually, as tolerance becomes instinctive, it produces a suave attitude to intrusions of novelty. Then you have a canny, mature population.
My youngest son came home from his first semester at college saying: Courtesy given, respect earned. Which is a refined version of what I taught by example which was to always be courteous but implied respect (ie: Dr, Professor etc.) has to be earned. Now I will give the title of respect on first meeting, since I know the level of dedication to achieving the degree and title but their actions determine if I continue to use that title. I think my jaded approach came from being instructed to call my Mom's new husband "Dad" when I already had a Dad. As a child it angered me that I was expected me to call someone by their Title when they had done nothing to warrant it.
As far as tolerance? I have yet to embrace the idea. I am either on or off, people either love me or they hate me, there is little in-between so to speak and that is okay with me.
Tolerance in the past was used to distinguish the minority from the majority, it had a very religious/ethnic dimension. Jews, Quakers, Papists were tolerated or not within varying normative contexts. Tolerance from the majority standpoint set limits and conferred permission on what could or could not be tolerated. These permissions from the minorities viewpoint might be considered intolerant. Just recently we have had similar discussions regarding the rights of individuals of the same sex to get married. The majority tolerated the union of same sex couples, but without any right to be married, thus denying them of the legal rights of heterosexual couples. On June 26, 2015 in the US the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot ban same-sex marriage thereby securing the legal permission for same sex couples to be legally married. The finer details of this normative permission are still being worked out in places like Texas.
Tolerance seems to be an equivocation because depending on who is using it, the same set of circumstances can be viewed as tolerant or intolerant. When someone says they tolerate something it suggest that while they believe that something is wrong, that they can still accept and live with its existence, in spite of its being wrong.
Respect I think is a form of toleration, only instead of a hierarchical permission granted, it proceeds along at the same narrative level. Religious tolerance is now a question of respect. We respect each others religious beliefs even though we don't accept them for our self.
Depending on the issue involved, permission and/or respect may be useful way to analyze the relative merits of various positions.
Hmm, interesting... So then the person must allow encroachment on his/her property if it was previously allowed, which then causes a loss of ownership. Seems like a good reason to not be tolerant.
Does it make more sense for societies to aim for "tolerance" rather than "respect" of specified persons or groups?
So tolerance can be a selfish endeavor, such as declining engagement in a conflict against an opponent that held the strongest possibility of victory, in order to preserve one's self.
What about things that one does not see as wrong, such as rude table manners? For example, a child may eat with his hands in a public place, and has not done anything morally wrong or right. Most surrounding people tolerate it, perhaps even laughing over the matter.
True. I haven't thought of it on a spectrum.
Good point. Respect must be on an individual basis, and cannot be held generally. Should one respect an idea, then that idea must be studied. Tolerance of a concept, however, does not require in-depth study, but just a vague idea and mostly indifference.
Should a society aim for complete tolerance, then absolute moral relativity would exist, which is never a good idea.
It's more complicated than that. The most common situation in which legal tolerance are recognized occurs when a property is completely locked in by other properties, with no access to a road. This happens a lot with the old familial domains we had that are sub-sub-subdivided each time someone in the family decides to have spawns.
A few generation down the road, the new owner of one of the locking properties decides to renovate his house and as a result blocks the access to the locked property, simply by building on his own land. Locked proprietor brings locking proprietor to court to have his tolerance recognized, and thus forces the other guy to cancel his renovation.
This does not affect the rights of property of the owner, because if the owner can prove that the tolerance affects his normal usage of the property, he can get the tolerance revoked. On the other hand, prescription can : if someone uses a property in an open and licit way for a certain amount of time (something like 10 for land and 4 for everything else), and the rightful owner fails to contest the usage, then he can loses the property altogether. The point of legal prescription is that land and property are meant to be used for the good of private and public interests, not to be put down on a deed and ignored until it can be flipped.
More philosophically (but there is nothing more philosophical than Law!) perhaps, the traditional opposite to tolerance is not respect, but alterity.
Tolerance is the allowance of an act of behaviour of which we do not approve. It is an essentially the neutralization of a negative attitude toward the Other.
Alterity is the allowance of the Other as another. It's the constant neutralization of the pulsion which leads to us having to tolerate anything and everything, because it's the neutralization of that which always try to understand the Other as the Same.
Would it be disrespectful to tell a person that has earned your high regards, that something he said was just plain stupid even if what he said was just plain stupid? I think it would be more respectful to tell them the truth even if it hurt.
But it would be hurtful, even if you said it with total respectfulness and honesty.
My favorite saying, or at least one of them.
If the truth hurts, it is time to change it.
Ouch
No, if the foo shits wear it.