Toleration, power and the right to justification: Rainer Forst in dialogue

Toleration is widely accepted as a praiseworthy attitude, and one that is crucial to successful co-existence in modern liberal societies. But as ongoing debates about abortion, headscarves, same-sex marriage and extremist political parties demonstrate, questions about the grounds and scope of toleration are still live political issues.In this book, Rainer Forst, Leibniz Prize-winner and one of the stars of contemporary critical theory, provides a powerful account of the tensions and dilemmas that pervade the discourse of toleration. His lead essay situates the concept in relation to both political liberty and his wider project of a critical theory of justification. Differentiating between 'permission' and 'respect' models, he identifies the three components of toleration - objection, acceptance and rejection - and presents a model for understanding and negotiating them.Forst's essay is then read by an international group of scholars, consisting of Teresa M. Bejan (Oxford), John Horton (Northampton), Chandran Kukathas (LSE), Daniel Weinstock (McGill), Melissa S. Williams (Toronto), Patchen Markell (Cornell) and David Owen (Southampton). They critically examine his reconstruction of toleration, his account of political liberty and the form of critical theory that he articulates in his work on such political concepts. The book concludes with Forst's reply to his critics.