Tolerance has long functioned as a central discipline of pluralistic societies: a way of living with deep disagreement without requiring consensus, affirmation, or suppression. In recent decades, it has faced challenges from multiple directions. Critics on the left argue that liberal tolerance masks domination and that tolerating hate speech harms the vulnerable. Critics on the right contend that tolerance has been weaponized into a demand for affirmation, or that it has hollowed out the moral commitments necessary for social cohesion. Still others, from postliberal traditions, reject tolerance in favor of thicker visions of the common good rooted in shared religious or moral authority.
This conference adopts a diagnostic approach, aiming to clarify what is at stake in contemporary disputes over tolerance and to explore the conditions under which coexistence remains possible in morally divided societies.
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