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PARTISAN REVIEW
must be present at all stages of contact with other people's opinions and
ideals. Hare argues for the plausibility of his thesis and tells us how ex–
pansive the limits ofliberals' respect for other points of view ought to be:
It is part of the liberal's ideal that a good society, whatever else it is, is
one in which the ideals and interests of all are given equal considera–
tion. It is, to use Kantian language, a kingdom of ends in which all
are, at least potentially, legislating members.... He may even think
that a diversity of ideals is in itself a good thing ... because it takes ali
sorts
to
make a world. If the liberal's ideal is of any of these kinds, he
is not betraying it but following it if he tolerates other people's pursuit
of their ideals, provided that, where the pursuit of one ideal hinders
the pursuit of another, there shall be ... a just distribution of advan–
tages and disadvantages. It is only the last proviso which prevents the
liberal from allowing even the fanatic to pursue his ideals without im–
pediment; but the liberal is not required by his own ideal to tolerate
intolerance. "
In practice, it might be difficult to be sympathetically open to all
points of view. This, however, does not discredit the sympathetic attitude
itself, since what matters here is not infinite sympathy to an infinite num–
ber of opinions but a certain disposition which reveals itself in contacts
with new phenomena and consists in encouraging and welcoming diver–
sity in human life. On the other hand, sympathetic openness modifies our
definition of "the fanatic." In this view, the fanatic is transformed. The
fanatic is no longer a person with excessive, religious or quasi-religious,
and usually mistaken enthusiasm for a certain system of beliefs. Since the
sympathetically open person is self-defined as one who approves and
works for diversity, then by contrast, the fanatic is someone who acts and
speaks against diversity as an organizing principle, someone who does not
necessarily hold one set of opinions and launch a crusade to impose it on
others but who opposes egalitarian diversity in principle and who chooses
some form of hierarchy in social life as a necessity.
Because both tolerance and fanaticism reveal themselves, in real life,
as tendencies and dispositions (the first for milder and the second for
stricter criteria of selection of acceptable societal ideals), it is reasoned that
all those who cherish the value of diversity must perceive those even
merely considering the subjection of the purality of ideals to selection and
hierarchical organization to be intolerant. According to such reasoning,
one does not have
to
try very hard to be vulnerable to the charge of in–
tolerance to diversity. Thus, the growth of the pluralistic order is likely to
increase the number of suspicions of fanaticism. The more diverse the
world, the greater the probability that any statement, act, thought, or idea
