Rainer Forst discusses the position of Nietzsche, according to
whom the modern concept of toleration represents selflessness and
indifference. Nietzsche claims that the modern subject is moulded
and transformed by the objects of toleration—in a certain analogy to
our premodern views of recognition. Forst argues convincingly that
Nietzsche is wrong, pointing out that a tolerant subject needs to have
a strong and stable personal identity in order to practise toleration
effectively.^18
At the same time, Forst admits that such person has a‘complex and
differentiated’identity that relates adequately to the complexities of
reality.^19 While he takes such an identity to be stable and strong, he
also acknowledges Richard Rorty’s claims that the lack of final
vocabularies may lead to an ironic personality and that toleration is
connected with tragic inner conflicts.^20 Although I agree with Forst
that tolerant people have a strong identity, such claims show that a
conceptual problem can be observed here. In this limited sense, a
discrepancy between the powers of recognition and toleration can be
argued, since, while the intellectual history of recognition proceeds
from changing identity towards a relatively stable self, the intellectual
history of toleration looks different in this respect.
In addition to such differences, the transition from the second
to the third paradigm may also reveal some similarities between
religious recognition and the overall history of toleration. We saw
in section 3.1 that Hobbes and Locke do notfit neatly into the
second paradigm. Their concept of‘acknowledgement’is a personal
conviction that does not insist that it was caused by its object. While
Locke thinks, for instance, that the worship of God is something that
everyone knows and acknowledges, he considers that people can
acknowledge different religious truths and that the church is basically
a‘voluntary society’. This emphasis on personal autonomy brings
Hobbes and Locke into the vicinity of the third paradigm.
Given this, the Enlightenment view of toleration is something that
the third paradigm of religious recognition assumes or at least
approaches. They both teach a stable personal conviction that can
perform the act of toleration and the act of existential attachment.
Therefore, there is a certain relation between the modern concept
of toleration and the view of recognition as existential attachment.
(^18) Forst 2003, 666–74. (^19) Forst 2003, 671. (^20) Forst 2003, 673–4.
216 Recognition and Religion