Tolerance: A Sensorial Orientation to Politics

In Tolerance, Lars T�nder offers a thought-provoking theory on what tolerance means in pluralistic societies. T�nder begins by showing the limitations of the way democratic theory currently understands tolerance: either as a form of restraint or as benevolence, but always divorced from what it is that the tolerant person really senses. According to T�nder, what is missing from current theories of tolerance is the idea of pain, or the lived experience of what it means to become tolerant. Introducing what he calls a "sensorial orientation to politics" and a "theory of active tolerance," he argues that the act of becoming tolerant (and the reasoning it entails) depends on sensing the world in an expansive manner attentive to the new and unforeseen. In order to illustrate, he engages with a number of theorists, from Seneca, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Marcuse to Locke, Kant and Mill, and he draws upon a wide range of examples, including the 2005 controversy over the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs, Dave Chappelle's comedy, and methods of torture used in the war on terror. Tolerance is at once a sweeping account of the history of political thought and an invitation to rethink the meaning of tolerance within the sensorial conditions that define twenty first century democratic politics.

About the Author :
Lars T�nder is an assistant professor in political theory at Northwestern University.

Review :
"Lars T�nder's approach in Tolerance to the potentially stale problem of toleration is bracingly original. Seeking to move beyond the traditional battle lines of toleration's supporters and its critics, T�nder shows us how we can see distinctly democratic modes of toleration in our active processes of somatic (as well as discursive) engagement with others, particularly when we willingly endure pain. Ranging from philosophy to comedy and visual art, Tolerance is a creative, thoughtful and, above all, generous contribution to our knowledge of what it means to live in pluralist democratic societies."--Andrew F. March, Yale University, author of Islam and Liberal Citizenship "T�nder's Tolerance makes an extraordinary and subtle claim: our rationalizations and justifications of tolerance can never live up to the felt burden of toleration. Rather than the proliferation of passive reasons that anaesthetize the lived experiences of everyday encounters, Tolerance calls for a 'sensorial reasoning' that attends to the trials, tribulations, and especially pains, that call forth a disposition of toleration. Masterfully argued engaging both contemporary and historical sources, as well as explorations of current events including the Danish cartoon war, T�nder has given us nothing less than a transvaluation of one of the most important - and urgent - concepts of modern political thought."--Davide Panagia, Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies, Trent University "[A]ppropriately impassionedELT�nder makes a compelling case that democratic theory would benefit from a more nuanced assessment of the political resonance of pain." -- Perspectives on Politics "[T]imely and important bookT�nder has something to say that needs to be heard in this present context." -- Theory & Event "[O]ffers a highly original and sharply presented analysis of one of the most important concepts in democratic theory... a book that exemplifies generosity in the way it reads others T�nder's penetrating account offers indispensable tools for discerning, negotiating, experimenting and struggling with... always-evolving relationships between modes of tolerance and modes of intolerance". -- Contemporary Political Theory