How far can we go being tolerant?

Good afternoon. For the next few minutes I am going to give you a presentation „How far can we go being tolerant?”

At first I was a little surprised about this topic, thinking how being tolerant can be even questioned and would it be possible to go too far with it. Being tolerant can be defined as an ability to bear, accept and trust different opinions, beliefs, attitudes, customs, manners, ideologies and above all-cultures. Being tolerant does not have to mean approval and understanding, but it sure means respect for all above mentioned factors. But being tolerant as we know generally means being polite and never question or remonstrate and here I can understand that it is possible to go too far with tolerance.

The famous philosopher Aristoteles from old Creece sees tolerance as the virtue being in the middle of apathy and cruelty or as said more precisely being between extremely tolerant and extremely in-tolerant. I believe he is right. Present-day people seem to be too much on the edges forgetting their personality, who they are and what is characteristic of them. Being extremely polite is widespread all over the World and this makes us, to be honest, quite phony and fake. If long time ago asking others how they are meant a real interest then the present-day this is only asked because it is thought to be very ethical and polite behavior. This kind of fake interest, I believe, is exactly being extremely tolerant. We should not disgrace others and above all ourselves with being too tolerant meaning being fake. Being tolerant as Aristoteles sees is much more respectful and truly makes our spirits more pure as we stand firm to ourselves. On the other hand, being too tolerant can be seen through tolerance towards other cultures. It is great and even impellent to respect and be interested in different cultures but only as far as it does not impact negatively our own cultural beliefs. It is intrinsic to some religions to impose their beliefs and if we let this happen by our tolerance then it could mean that we have gone too far.

And coming back to previously mentioned politeness – we have gone too far with our tolerance if we really do not respect these people we are speaking with and only pretend interest in hence of being ethical. Finally and most importantly, we have gone too far with being tolerant if we forget our own beliefs and distinctive limit of tolerance. I believe that we must be only moderately tolerant and stand firm to ourselves and to other people we have to maintain our character.

Thank you for listening and if you have any questions I will gladly answer them.


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