WENDY BROWNgood, in particular the good of individual autonomy.’’^10 But if autonomy is the liberal
good that tolerance aims to promote, tolerance is also understood as that which can only
be generated by autonomous individuals—that is, in part, the significance of its status as
a civic offering rather than a legal mandate. Tolerance thus requires in advance what it
also promotes. Conversely, tolerance as the abiding of behaviors or convictions other
than those to which one subscribes is conceived within liberalism as unavailable to the
unindividuated or nonliberal subject. The making of a tolerant world, then, literally re-
quires the liberalization of the world, a formulation endorsed by liberal democratic theo-
rists, pundits, and political actors ranging from Will Kymlicka to Thomas Friedman. As
Michael Ignatieff argues, ‘‘the culture of individualism is the only reliable solvent of the
hold of group identities and the racisms that go with them.’’ The ‘‘essential task in teach-
ing ‘toleration,’ ’’ he adds, ‘‘ is to help people see themselves as individuals, and then to
see others as such.’’^11
While Kant functions as the foundation stone for contemporary liberal theorists sub-
scribing to this formulation, the contribution of Freud to the ideology of the tolerant
liberal self and its intolerant organicist other is an interesting one. Many liberal theorists
concerned with tolerance implicitly or explicitly place Freudian assumptions at the heart
of their work or have tucked him into their arguments as a kind of authorizing signature.
What Freud offers, among other things, is an account of why liberal orders, in their
affirmation of the individual, represent themselves as the only possible regime type for
cultivating and practicing tolerance, while simultaneously promoting the pluralistic belief
structure understood to necessitate tolerance. Though Freud ratifies the ‘‘mature’’ (or
‘‘advanced’’) status of the individuated Westerner in this regard, he does not make an
ontological or permanent distinction between the individual and the group. In Freud’s
view, individuated subjects can regress into organicist formations at any moment, forfeit-
ing the definitive elements of proper individuation when they do so. Strong group identity
thus constitutes not an opposition to but a regression from the mature individuated
psyche. Even though Freud pathologizes the group (as irrational and dangerous), he does
not reify the rational individual as a permanent cultural achievement radically differenti-
ated from organicist subjects.
In what follows, then, Freud’s thinking will be both criticized and appropriated for a
critique of liberal thinking about tolerance. On the one hand, Freud’s progressive historical-
anthropological narrative, in which tolerant liberal orders represent the highest stage of
‘‘maturity’’ for man and are equated with civilization, will be read critically, especially
insofar as these themes are manifest in contemporary theorists of tolerance.^12 That is,
Freud’s equation of individuation with both ontogenetic and phylogenetic maturity, and
of solidarity or organicism with primitivism or regression, will offer a basis for grasping
the civilizational discourse that frames contemporary tolerance talk and converts it to the
purposes of liberal imperialism. On the other hand, Freud’s appreciation of the contin-
gency of groups, their basis in affect rather than essential traits, is valuable in deconstruct-
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