LARS TO/NDERcardinal? My point is that the effects of not answering these questions are far more impor-
tant than the theorists who follow in the footsteps of Locke and Kant are willing to
anticipate. My point is also that the effects reveal the need for a new project of tolerance
and toleration, one that approaches these two issues as equally important. The following
two points seek to define the contours of such a project.
The first item that a new project on tolerance and toleration must engage is the
nature of bodily dispositions. If it is the case that tolerance concerns the endurance of
pain and suffering, and if it is the case that this endurance is what determines the differ-
ence between the tolerable and the intolerable, then it is also the case that these disposi-
tions are of great importance to the overall discussion of tolerance and toleration. We
should not be put off by the fact that pain and suffering can be difficult to define. In fact,
we should see this as an invitation to think of pain and suffering as layered phenomena
that inscribe themselves on the bodies from which they arise. This attempt would proceed
not so much by talking about the inexpressible void that is pain and suffering—about
how pain and suffering have no voice of their own—as by exploring the way in which
these phenomena color bodily dispositions at the intersection of physical stimuli and
cognitive activity.^34 The upshot would be an appreciation of the multiple circuits of pain
and suffering, each of which has its own level of intensity, temporal permanence, and
overall direction. It would also be a better way of differentiating between these circuits,
among which some would be appropriate for a new politics of tolerance and toleration.
The second item that a new project on tolerance and toleration must engage is the
need to develop an alternative language of enlightenment. This language need not be one
of unreason or wildness. Instead, it should be one that puts the reasonable into question,
placing us at the brink of thought itself in order to explain ‘‘the upsurge of reason in a
world not of its making’’ (to quote the epigraph of this essay).^35 I would wager that we
do this most effectively if we pursue a double strategy—what we may characterize as
‘‘disruptive engenderment.’’ On the one hand, this strategy appreciates old categories of
thought but tries to refresh their meaning, creating a tension between the familiar and
the unfamiliar. On the other hand, the strategy also draws on unconventional material in
order to create new categories of thought. These categories may seem idiosyncratic, but
this is only because they seek to chart uncharted terrain. The idiosyncrasy is in that sense
part of the attempt to rethink tolerance and toleration. What is more, the categories that
this new language creates cannot be judged according to existing conventions. To the
contrary, we should judge them according to the way in which they alter the network of
meanings and significations that we put them back into. It is only if we do so thatrethink-
ing becomes a possibility.
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