'Stop Being So Judgmental!’: A Spinozist Model of Personal Tolerance

In Mitja Sardoč (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Toleration. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 1077 - 1093 (2020)
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Abstract

This chapter considers the challenges to, and the resources for, cultivating a personal capacity for tolerance, given a Spinozist account of belief-formation. After articulating two main components of personal tolerance, I examine the features of Spinoza’s theory of cognition that make the cultivation of tolerance so difficult. This is followed by an analysis of Spinoza’s account of overcoming intolerant tendencies. Ultimately, I argue that the capacity of individuals to be tolerant depends crucially on the establishment of conditions of trust, conditions that are conspicuously lacking in many modern democracies.

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Justin Steinberg
Brooklyn College (CUNY)

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