R YSZARD LEGUTKO
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will be regarded as a expression of the intention to exclude, patronize,
limit, subject, discriminate.
The pluralistic liberal who is enchanted with diversity, despite re–
peated declarations that the pluralistic world serves the cause of truth
better than any other system, paradoxically has no difficulty in accepting
the assumption shared by Marx, Lenin, Foucault, and many others: truth
is primarily a partisan weapon; it is power or a regime rather than a theo–
retical concept. Therefore dispersing truth is a matter as urgent as dispers–
ing power. In their struggle against the concentration of truth, pluralist
liberals argue that analogous to the plurality of the centers of power there
are just as many possible versions of truth. Their argument is undoubtedly
ingenious, and it serves the same purpose as the postmodern assault on the
concept of the center itself The ultimate aim of those who resort to this
argument is not to facilitate the exchange of ideas in order to have a better
and truer understanding of the world but, in their view, to prevent the
emergence of any dominant truth-power structure, to fight fanaticism.
Contemporary toleration has ceased to be what it once was - a prac–
tical skill that enabled people to live together - and has become a
complex theoretical issue. Just as negative toleration was in theory and
practice insolubly linked with several human virtues and vices, so positive
toleration seems closely connected with several political ideals - justice,
diversity, equality, liberty, fraternity. Yet this latter association is a most
dubious one. It is relatively easy to demonstrate that negative toleration
can humanize political order, but it is a much greater challenge to posit a
complex theory of a superior political system built on the idea of positive
toleration. Since it is agreed that negative toleration has indeed
humanized political order, then it must also be agreed that it is possible to
settle essential questions and differen<;es about political order and philoso–
phy irrespective of the problem of positive toleration (although toleration,
naturally, may add to the value of particular solutions) . Yet in the face of
such evidence, efforts to connect positive toleration with actual political
ideals continue to imply that the concept of positive toleration itself
contains a comprehensive set of fundamental philosophical assertions.
There would be nothing obviously wrong in maintaining a political
philosophy serving the cause of toleration, were it not that it involves a
deception. If we fail to keep in mind the distinction between negative and
positive toleration, we may easily be misled into believing that both make
the same demands of us. The deception lies in the assertion that a political
philosophy of toleration or, more precisely,
the ideology of toleration,
con–
veys nothing more than a minimal requirement. Its supporters want to
persuade us that only a minor concession related to an outer form of be–
havior - as negative toleration is - is necessary: we should be civilized,
