Volume 6, Number 10 · June 9, 1966
A Virtue in Question
By Henry David Aiken
A Critique of Pure Tolerance
by Robert Wolff, by Barrington Moore Jr., by Herbert Marcuse
Beacon, 117 pp., $2.45
The prime movers of the liberal tradition have always recognized that the virtue of tolerance has its limits. John Locke provides a case in point. In his celebrated Letters on Toleration, Locke defended the widest possible legal and political tolerance of private persons and associations. He made exceptions, however, of three groups: Catholics both because they would abrogate the liberties of others and because they owe allegiance to a 'foreign power,' Mohammedans because their traditional practices render them in effect unassimilable by a Western European body politic, and atheists because in denying God's existence they show themselves to be impervious to distinctions between right and wrong. As Bertrand Russell once said, John Locke was the most conservative of revolutionists. Perhaps this is the reason why, although his political philosophy frequently goes out of fashion, it never quite becomes obsolete.
Review, 2570 words
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