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A CRITIQUE OF
PURE· TOLERANCE/
f
ROBERT PAUL WOLFF
II
BARRINGTON MOORE, JR.
HERBERT MARCUSE
BEACON PRESS
BOSTON
CONTENTS
"Beyond Tolerance" copyright
©
1965
by Robert Paul Wolff
"Tolerance and the Scientific Outlook"
copyright
©
1965
by Barrington Moore, Jr.
"Repressive Tolerance" copyright
©
1965
by Herbert Marcuse
"Postscript 1968" copyright
©
1969
by Herbert Marcuse
Library of Congress catalogue card number 65-20788
A II rights reserved
Beacon Press books are published under the auspices
of the Unitarian Universalist Association
Printed in the United States of America
First published by Beacon Press in 1965
First published as a Beacon Paperback in 1969
Robert Paul Wolff gratefully acknowledges permission
to
reprint a passage from
The Loyal and the Disloyal
by
Monon Grodzins, copyright
©
1956 by the University
of Chicago.
International Standard Book Number:
0-8070-1559-8
Fifth printing, December 1970
Foreword
Beyond Tolerance
BY ROBERT PAUL WOLFF
v
3
Tolerance and the Scientific Outlook
BY BARRINGTON MOORE, JR.
53
Repressive Tolerance
BY HERBERT MARCUSE
81
FOREWORD
THE authors apologize for the title which
they have lightly yet respectfully plagiarized.
Their small book may contain some ideas that
are not alien to Kant. More than modesty makes
us refer to a footnote in the
Critique of Pure
Reason:
"the 'I think' expresses the act of deter-
mining my existence." We like to apply this sen-
tence not as Kant did here to the transcendental
subject only, but also to the empirical one.
The first essay is by a philosopher steeped in
the analytical tradition, an authority on Kant,
and, if interested in social theory and history, al-
lergic to any emanations from the spirit of Hegel.
The last essay is also by a philosopher, an authori-
ty on Hegel, who considers the contemporary
analytical tradition dangerous, where it is not
nonsense. The author of the middle essay is a
sociologist trained in a tradition that regarded all
philosophy as absurd and dangerous. That we
have managed to produce a book together is in
itself some small tribute to the spirit of toleration.
Inhabitants of the larger Cambridge academic
community, we often met and as friends passion-
ately argued some of the issues discussed in the
following pages. Some time ago we agreed to set
down our thoughts about tolerance and its place
vi
Foreword
in the prevailing political climate. Though we
have read and pondered one another's writings,
and
m~dified
our own views according to our
respective degrees of stubbornness, we have not
so~ght
in any .way to merge them. The reader
will have no dtfficulty in finding where we dis-
agree.
. On
~he
other hand, from very different stan-
mg pomts and by very different routes, we ar-
rived at just about the same destination. For each
of us the prevailing theory and practice of toler-
ance turned out on examination to be in varying
de~r~es hyp?~ritical
masks to cover appalling
pohttcal reahttes. The tone of indignation rises
sharply from essay to essay. Perhaps vainly, we
hope
~hat
readers will follow ·the steps
in
the
reasonmg that produced this result. There is,
after all, a sense of outrage that arises
in
the head
as well as the heart.
R.P. W.
B.
M.
H.M.
BEYOND TOLERANCE
BY ROBERT PAUL WOLFF
THE virtue of a thing, Plato tells us in the
Republic,
is that state or condition which en-
ables it to perform its proper function well. The
virtue of a knife is 'its sharpness, the virtue of a
racehorse its fleetness of foot.
So
too the cardinal
. virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and
justice are excellences of the soul which enable
a man to do well what he is meant to do, viz., to
live.
As each artifact or living creature has its char-
acteristic virtue, so too we may say that each
form of political society has an ideal condition, in
which its guiding principle is fully realized. For
Plato, the good society is an aristocracy of merit
in which the wise and good rule those who are
inferior in talents and accomplishment. The prop-
er distribution of functions and authority is called
by
Pla~o
"justice," and so the virtue of the Pla-
tonic utopia is justice.
Extending this notion, we might say, for ex-
ample, that the virtue of a monarchy is loyalty,
for the state is gathered into the person of the
king, and the society is bqupd:together by each
subject's personal duty
t;Q
·Ilim. The virtue of a
REPRESSIVE TOLERANCE
BY HERBERT MARCUSE
THis essay examines the idea of tolerance
in our advanced industrial society. The conclu-
sion reached is that the realization of the objec-
tive of tolerance would call for intolerance
toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opinions,
and the extension of tolerance to policies, atti-
tudes, and opinions which are outlawed or sup-
pressed. In other words, today tolerance appears
· again as what it was in its origins, at the begin-
ning of the modern period-a partisan goal, a sub-
versive liberating notion and practice. Converse-
ly, what is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance
today, is in many of its most effective manifesta-
tions serving the cause of oppression.
The author is fully aware that, at present,. no
power, no authority, no government exists which
would translate liberating tolerance into prac-
tice, but he believes that it is the task and duty of
the intellectual to recall and preserve historical
possibilities which seem to have become utopian
possibilities-that it is his task to break the con-
creteness of oppression in order to open the men-
This essay is dedicated to my students at; Brandeis
University.

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