The Power of Tolerance A Debate

We invoke the ideal of tolerance in response to conflict, but what does it mean to answer conflict with a call for tolerance? Is tolerance a way of resolving conflicts or a means of sustaining them? Does it transform conflicts into productive tensions or does it perpetuate underlying power relations? To what extent does tolerance hide its involvement with power and act as a form of de-politicization? Two major theoreticians of tolerance debate the uses and misuses of tolerance in a dialogue that is rich in critical and conceptual reflections on power, justice, discourse, rationality, and identity.