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3Педагогические науки UDC 371.035
THE ISSUE OF TOLERANCE
M. Abduhamidov1, I. Erkinov2
Abstract
The article discusses conceptual and historical analysis of the tolerance issue, works of many great eastern and western philosophers are analyzed who made their contribution into the development issues of tolerance.
Keywords: tolerance, religious confessions, liberty of conscience, conviction, religion, friendship among nations, religious extremism, terrorism, international safety.
Traditions are the main meaning of human life. Each nation has its own customs, habits, religion, traditions and views. However, if we look back in to past, nations have social-economic and political problems, transnational conflicts which have not been solved till now. So, when people are looking for solution to these problems, traditions and customs are being seen significant part of our life. Essentially, traditions based on tolerance, are very important. Moreover, tolerance is one of the links, which connect people, despite their social position, religion, nationality and race.
The issue of tolerance was significant in any period of human's life. A bulk of scientists and thinkers had raised these issues in their works. Abu Ali ibn Sino (Av-icenna), Abu Nasr Forobiy and many other eastern thinkers were among them. F a-mous poetry Alisher Navoi also wrote about tolerance in his poems and plays. Moreover, tolerance and to be tolerant become more and more important over the past decades, as people are on th% way of developing and they want to live in peace with each other.
According to UNESCO, misunderstanding among nations was the reason of suspicion and distrust, and as a result, diversity of conflicts and disputes were appeared. From this point of view, it is close to one of the Eastern philosopher Abu Rayhon Beruniy's saying that people looks to the things like enemies, if they do not know them. (Abu Rayhon Beruniy)
Tolerance is the consequence of humanity. It is clear that the individual, who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a opponent. This horrible discord, which has lasted for so many centuries, is a very striking lesson that we should pardon each other's errors; discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.
Tolerance is a value: it's something we should care about. It involves sho wing respect for each other's opinions and points of view. 'Respect' in this context does not have the usual connotations of admiration and approval, because we might find infuriating, wrong, or silly what others are saying, but still tolerate it. Respect is best understood here as regard for another's freedom to voice their opinion.
The heart of tolerance is self-control. When we tolerate an activity, we resist our urge to forcefully prohibit the expression of activities that we find unpleasant. More abstractly, toleration can be understood as a political practice aiming at neutrality, objectivity, or fairness on the part of political agents. These ideas are related in that the goal of political neutrality is deliberate restraint of the power that political authorities have to negate the life activities of its citizens and subjects. Related to toleration is the virtue of tolerance, which can be defined as a tendency toward toleration. Toleration is usually grounded upon an assumption about the importance of the autonomy of individuals. This assumption and the idea of toleration are central ideas in modern liberal theory and practice.
Ыбдууамидов Мууаммаджон Абдууалим угли - преподаватель, Ферганский государственный университет, Узбекистан.
2Эркинов Илуомжон Элмуроджон угли - студент, Ферганский государственный университет, Узбекистан.
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The virtue of toleration is implicit in Socrates' method of allowing many diverse perspectives to be expressed. In seventeenth century Europe, the concept of tolerance was developed as liberal thinkers sought to limit the coercive actions of government and the Church. They argued that human beings are fallible and should have epistemic modesty. Further, an individual know his or her interests best and requires tolerance by others in order to find the best way to live.
An epistemological argument for toleration can be traced to Socrates. However, this ideal becomes explicit in the thinking of Milton, Locke, and Mill. The epis-temological claim is that one should tolerate the opinions and beliefs of the other because it is either impossible to coerce belief or because such coercions not the most useful pedagogical approach. This idea can be developed into a claim about the importance of diversity, dialogue, and debate for the establishment of truth. Finally, this approach might lead to a form of relativism or skepticism that puts the idea of toleration itself at risk.
There are, of course, many good moral reasons to encourage our fellow citizens and agents to be tolerant, not the least of which is that ignorance and prej u-dice, to which we are all susceptible, incline even the best of us toward vicious behavior. In the unfortunate cases where ignorance and prejudice cannot be corrected or eliminated, we ought to try at least to de-fang them, ameliorate their effects and soften the severity of their blows.
We have seen that epistemological concerns can lead us to toleration. Moral concerns can also bring us to toleration. Tolerance as a moral virtue might be linked to other moral virtues such as modesty and self-control. However, the most common moral value that is thought to ground toleration is a concern for autonomy. We ought to refrain from negating the other when concern for the other's autonomy provides us with a good reason not to act. Toleration that follows from a commitment to autonomy should not be confused with moral relativism. Moral relativism holds that values are relative to culture or context. A commitment to autonomy, in opposition to this, holds that autonomy is good in a non-relative sense. A commitment to autonomy might require that I allow another person to do something that I find abhorrent, not because I believe that values are relative, but because I believe that autonomy is so important that it requires me to refrain from negating the autonomous action of another free agent. Of course, there are limits here. Autonomous action that violates the autonomy of another cannot be tolerated.
Mill's account of the principle of liberty is helpful for understanding this idea of toleration. Mill tells us that we should be given as much liberty as possible, as long as our liberty does not harm others. This is in fact a recipe for toleration. Mill's argument follows from certain basic assumptions about individuals.
1. Each individual has a will of his own.
2. Each individual is better off when not compelled to do better.
3. Each individual knows best what is good for him.
4 Each individual is motivated to attain his own good and to avoid actions that are contrary to his self-interest.
5. Self-regarding thought and activity can be distinguished from its effects upon others.
Of course, the ideal of toleration is a difficult one to enact. This difficulty is related to the tension between first-order reactions and second-order commitments that is found within the spiritual economy of an individual. This is why the idea of tolerance as a virtue is important. Virtues are tendencies or habits toward good action. In the case of the virtue of tolerance, the tendency is toward respect for the autonomy of others and toward the self-discipline necessary for deliberately restraining first-order reactions. Virtues are usually thought to be integrated into a system of virtues. Tolerance is no exception. The virtue of tolerance is closely related to other virtues such as self-control, modesty, generosity, kindness, mercy, and forgiveness. One must be careful, however, not to conclude that the virtue of tolerance is a tendency toward indifference or apathy. Tolerance demands that we moderate and control our passions in light of some larger good, whether that good be respect for autonomy or an interest in self-control; tolerance does not demand
Педагогические науки
that we completely refrain from judging another free agent.
Moral toleration asks us to restrain some of our most powerful first-order reactions: negative reactions to persons, attitudes, and behaviors which we find repugnant. Without the tension between first-order reactions and second-order commitment, toleration is merely indifference. Indifference usually indicates a failure at the level of first-order judgment: when we are indifferent, we do not have any reaction, negative or positive, to the other. Such a state of indifference is not virtuous. Indeed, it would be vicious and wrong not to react strongly against injustice or violations of autonomy.
We often confuse indifference with toleration. However, indifference is flawed as a human response for two reasons. First, it rejects the truth of first-order reactions. First- order reactions should not be ignored. Our emotional responses are important ways in which we connect with the world around us. When we react negatively to something, this emotional reaction provides important information about the world and ourselves. Tolerance does not ask us to deaden our emotional responses to others; rather it asks us to restrain the negative consequences of our negative emotional responses out of deference to a more universal set of commitments. Second, indifference is often closely related to general skepticism about moral judgment. The moral skeptic claims that no set of values is true. From this perspective, both first-order reactions and second-order commitments are mere tastes or preferences without any final moral significance. From this skepticism, indifference with regard to any moral evaluation is cultivated because all of our moral values are thought to be equally groundless. The difficulty here is that moral skepticism cannot lead to the conclusion that it is good to be tolerant, since the skeptic holds that no moral value can be justified. If we claim that toleration is good and that tolerance is a virtue, toleration cannot be the same thing as indifference.
This distinction between tolerance and indifference is important for explaining the spiritual disruption that occurs when we strive to become tolerant. Indeed, the difficulty of toleration can be understood in terms of the difficulty of the middle path between indifference and dogmatism. Indifference is easy and satisfying because it sets us free, as it were, from the difficult human task of judging. Likewise, dogmatism is easy and satisfying because it follows from a seamless synthesis of first-order reaction and second-order commitment. Toleration is the middle path in which there is a conflict between first-order reaction and second-order commitment. Toleration thus requires self-consciousness and self-control in order to coordinate conflicting parts of the spiritual - economy. The discipline required for toleration is part of any idea of education: we must learn to distance ourselves from first-order reactions in order to move toward universal principles. First-order reactions are often wrong or incomplete, as are immediate sense perceptions. And yet, education does not ask us to give up on first-order reactions or sense perceptions. Rather, it asks us to be disciplined and self-critical, so that we might control first-order reactions in order to uphold more important principles.
Tolerance can be a personal value, because each one of us can be tolerant of the opinions of others. It can also be a political value, if a whole society is tolerant. Although the behaviour of individuals in a society matters, most philosophers have been concerned to analyse and defend tolerance as a political value: one that a whole society should show. One reason for this is that unlike other values, such as compassion for example, it is possible to make laws to promote tolerance by protecting the right of individuals to express freely their opinions. An example of such a law in the UK is Article 10 of the Human Rights Act. Laws that afford such protection can in turn help create a culture of tolerance. The aim of this section is to give a more precise definition of tolerance and then examine why we should be tolerant.
In the UK, Article 10 of the Human Rights Act is such a law since 1998:
«Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises)).
The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries; with it duties and responsi-
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bilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
Note that when we speak of diversity of opinions, we speak about a fact: the fact that there are lots of different points of view. When we speak about tolerance we speak about a value, which tells us how we should behave when confronted with this fact: that we should respect these different points of view. Tolerance is hard to achieve because individuals within a society manifest it, when they are exposed to a diversity of points of view; and societies manifest it when they are able to protect such diversity. But at the personal level, the more we care for the matter about which we disagree the harder it is to behave tolerantly, and the more loathsome we find the views expressed the less we want to be tolerant. The difficulty then at the social level is to ensure that minority points of view are protected, no matter how strongly the majority opinion is against them.
References:
1.«Tolerance as a factor of development and flourishing»lslam University of Tas h-kent press, Tashkent, 2007.
2.Beiner, Ronald. What's the Matter with Liberalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
3.Berlin, Isaiah. «Two Concepts of Liberty»in Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1969.
4.Cook, John W. Morality and Cultural Differences.Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1999.
5.Fiala, Andrew. «Toleration and Pragmatism»in Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 16: 2, 2002, - P. 103-116.
6.King, Preston. Toleration.London: Frank Cass, 1998.
7.Locke, John. Letter Concerning Toleration in Steven M. Cahn ed. Classics of Modern Political Theory.New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
8.Humans Rights Act of UK, 2008.
© M. Abduhamidov, I. Erkinov, 2016.
УДК 371.035
ПРОБЛЕМЫ ТОЛЕРАНТНОСТИ
М.А. Абдухамидов, И.Э. Эркинов
Аннотация. Статья посвящена концептуальному и историческому анализу понятия толерантности, в ней анализируются работы великих восточных и западных мыслителей прошлого, в также ряда современных ученых, которые внесли свой вклад в разботку проблемы толерантности.
Ключевые слова: Терпимость, религиозные конфессии, свобода, убеждение, религия, межнациональная дружба, религиозный экстремизм, терроризм, международная безопасность.
© М.А. Абдухамидов, И.Э. Эркинов, 2016.
