Tolerance and the conflict of reasons in pluralistic and democratic societies

While tolerance is acclaimed almost unanimously as an indispensable value i n pluralistic and democratic societies, the meaning of this virtue is far f rom obvious. There are good reasons to believe that the inflationary expect ations addressed to it tend to cover up its specific difficulty. The A. the refore offers a conceptual analysis of the conditions of tolerance, placing particular emphasis on the conflict of reasons internal to the tolerating person, and pointing to the reflective structure of practical reason. In th is formal characterization, tolerance appears as a kind of permission groun ded in the principle of exclusion of certain reasons for acting. If indeed tolerance presupposes such a complex balance of reasons, its moral value ca n never be taken for granted since it depends entirely on the quality of th e reasons on the balance sheet.