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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
The history of the idea of tolerance is marked by a rift between its original meaning and its modern one. At first tolerance was understood as the effort made to put up with certain reprehensible acts or lapses with regard to society's values, since rules can never be respected at all times without life becoming unbearable. Conceived originally as a discretion on the part of authority, it progressively acquired the meaning of a “right to differ.” “The idea that a free space must obligatorily be assured to each member of the community,” writes Ghislain Waterlot, “is a relatively new idea that is fundamentally very modern.”
1. G. Waterlot, Tolérance et modernité, généalogie et destin d'un concept, unpubl. thesis, Lille, 1996.
2. Ibid., p. 8, n. 11.
3. This issue, which is still alive in France, raises the question of whether or not public schools may accept young muslim girls who come to class wearing the Islamic veil.
4. P. Dumouchel, "La Tolérance n'est pas le pluralisme," in: Esprit, 8/9 (1996), p. 175, n. 17.
5. Ibid., p. 181, n. 28.
6. On this question see the debate between D. Moynihan and C. Krauthammer in: Le Débat, 81 (1994).
7. On this subject see A. Garapon and D. Salas, La République pénalisée, Paris, 1996.
8. D. Lochak, "For intérieur et liberté de conscience," in: Le for intérieur, Paris, 1995, p. 200.
9. P. Ricœur, "Tolérance, intolérance, intolérable," in: Lectures I, Paris, 1991, p. 300.
10. Ibid., p. 296.
11. In this case, judges had to decide on the stopping of a respirator for a young victim of the collapse of a stadium in Sheffield, England.
12. In this case, the executive powers asked the supreme court to take a stand on the ownership of a mosque constructed over an ancient Hindu temple and which had become, over the course of the years, a focal point of communal tensions in India.
13. Regarding the contested presence of the crucifix in Bavarian state schools.
14. P. Raynaud, "La Démocratie saisie par le droit," in: Le Débat, 87 (1995).
15. Which is to say, the extreme right of nationalistic and xenophobic France.
16. This conflict set into opposition a Catholic congregation wishing to erect a convent on the edge of the former concentration camp and provoked the wrath of Jewish groups.
17. Jurists distinguish between instantaneous infractions whose effects are imme diately spent, such as murder, and continual violations which are repeated over and over, such as the possession of stolen goods.
18. J. Altounian, "Porter le nom d'ancêtres clandestins (trauma d'un génocide ‘secret' chez les descendants des survivants arméniens)," in: Violence et poli tique, Paris, 1995, p. 155.
19. Klaus Barbie, head of the Gestapo in Lyon during World War II, was con demned for crimes against humanity in a trial 40 years after the fact (1987).
20. Le Monde, 22 August 1996.
21. P. Raynaud, "L'Hygiénisme contemporain et l'écologie: une permissivité répressive," in: La Nature en politique ou l'enjeu philosophique de l'écologie, Paris, 1993, pp. 138-49.
22. E. Durkheim, De la division du travail social, Paris, 1978, p. 48.
23. See G. Waterlot (note 1 above), pp. 39-41, 548.
24. P. Ricœur (note 9 above), p. 301, with my emphasis.
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