Toleration and the challenges to liberalism: Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers some historical and theoretical reflections on the relationship between liberalism and toleration. It focuses on the question whether toleration is inextricably linked to liberalism or whether is it possible to develop a republican conception of toleration. The book discusses a variety of positions on liberal toleration as well as the challenge to liberal toleration posed by ethical pluralism. It also focuses on the relationship between toleration and modus vivendi. The book addresses right-wing populism as an example of ‘intolerant’ doctrines from the perspective of the limits of toleration as they are delineated in three contemporary theories of democracy: John Rawls’s political liberalism, Jurgen Habermas’s deliberative theory of democracy and Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism. It analyzes toleration as a deep practice and legitimate expectation expressed towards refugees.