Dominik Balg - Live and Let Live: A Critique of Intellectual Tolerance

This book is a translation of the original German edition Leben und leben lassen by Balg, Dominik, published by J.B. Metzler, an imprint of Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE in 2020. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.

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Tolerance in matters of religion, politics, and lifestyle is presumably one of the great civilising achievements of the Enlightenment and a basic prerequisite for the functioning of modern open societies. Without tolerance, how would it be possible for people with very different orientations to live together peacefully and freely? Former President Joachim Gauck spelled out the matrix of a combative tolerance in his book Toleranzeinfach schwer (Tolerancesimply difficult), which is well worth reading: We should respect others and struggle together with them to reach compromises, as long as they accept democratic constitutional rights and behave tolerantly themselves. Below the level of this practical tolerance, however, there is now a deeper problem that has so far gone almost completely unnoticed in research, although it is no less relevant for all of us: How should one actually behave towards the opinions of others if they do not agree with ones own opinion even after prolonged discussions? One could simply cling dogmatically to ones own point of view, one could abstain from judgement because one cannot ultimately decide who is right, or one could simply tolerate that the other holds to his own opinion even if one does not give in oneself. This last attitude is what Dominik Balg calls the position of intellectual tolerancea tolerance that refers neither to people nor to ways of life, but to opinions themselves. That one can nevertheless respect dissenting opinions as legitimate, even though one believes them to be wrong, is an immensely tempting notion that apparently also makes it possible to navigate unimpeded between dogmatism and scepticism in the disagreements of the living world. Dominik Balgs study convincingly demonstrates that the demand for a general intellectual tolerance, despite its initial appeal and despite its widespread acceptance in everyday life, is, on closer inspection, neither reasonable nor useful on the path to truth. According to Balg, we should not be tolerant but open-minded and humble when we encounter persistent dissent. This finding of the study is surprising, eye-opening, and highly relevant to the public and scholarly debates of our time. A courageous, an important, a wonderfully easy-to-read book that I would recommend to anyone interested in how to deal sensibly with disagreement.

During the work on this dissertation, I was supported by several persons, whom I would like to thank at this point.

First of all, I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Thomas Grundmann not only for the excellent supervision of my PhD, but moreover for the irreplaceable professional support and encouragement throughout my studies. I could not have wished for a better teacher.

Prof. Dr. Sven Bernecker, as my second supervisor, always gave me valuable advice and contributed decisively to the completion of this thesis with helpful feedback on individual chapters. I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Anne Burkard, among others, for her careful review of the submitted manuscript, the results of which were of great help, especially in revising it for publication. I would also like to thank Prof. Dr. Sanford Goldberg for some important technical advice.

Finally, I would like to thank Jan Constantin, Steffen Koch, and Karolin Meinert, but also Jan Khl, Jakob Ohlhorst, Fabian Peter, Chris Ranalli, Carina Schleeweit, Peer Schittenhelm, Tim Steeger, Marius Waldau, and Sven Wunderlich, for their support in terms of content as well as personal support and their friendship. Without them, my PhD time would have been much less enjoyable.

I would like to thank the German Research Foundation for funding my doctoral project.