Toleration is lauded as a chief virtue of contemporary liberalism. Without this virtue, it seems, citizens are illequipped to reconcile ethical disagreements appropriately in pluralistic societies. In recent scholarship and practice, however, toleration has undergone significant transformation. The tolerant citizen, we are told, avoids causing the discomfort or pain associated with uncomfortable conversations, criticism, or even difference of opinion. Regrettably, this understanding of toleration hinders rather than facilitates dialogue and conflates pain or discomfort with cruelty. To offer a more viable theoretical grounding for toleration, this article turns to the third unnamed virtue of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. When conceptualized as an Aristotelian moral virtue with vices of both deficiency and excess, it is clear how toleration, taken too far, becomes a vice. Moreover, Aristotle's principles of contextual sensitivity, other-regarding virtue, and non-cruel pain constitute a better foundation for restoring toleration as a healthy virtue for liberal citizens.
Jeffrey Green's The Eyes of the People (EOP) outlines a basic distinction between two models of popular power in a democracy. On the one hand, there is what Green calls the vocal model, which has dominated the way popular power has been conceptualized since the rebirth of democracy at the end of the eighteenth century. According to this model, the People is understood as a legislative voice-as a set of preferences waiting to be translated into laws and policies. EOP demonstrates that despite the diversity of approaches to democratic theory, the vocal model has informed virtually all philosophies of democracy. For example, it informs not only democratic idealists of the nineteenth century, like Mill and Tocqueville, but equally contemporary models (like aggregationists and deliberative democrats) who, even if more skeptical about popular self-legislation in any simplistic sense, continue to envision the People as a vocal, decisional force. The problem with the vocal model, Green explains, is twofold: failing to account for the fact that most citizens most of the time are not engaged in political decision making, it is disconnected from reality; second, it is hegemonic because, leading ordinary citizens to exaggerate their political capacity, it blinds them to the distinction between an elite with special decision-making authority and the great many without power. It is not surprising, then, as Green notes, that the very notion of the People has come under pressure in recent years, as numerous scholars of democracy (e.g., pluralists), unwilling to treat the People as a monolithic vocal being, have argued for jettisoning the concept altogether.But rather than abandon the idea of the People, Green develops a competing model of popular power, which he calls the ocular model-or also the plebiscitary model. Within the ocular model, the People-the mass of everyday citizens in their collective capacity-is conceived as a spectating rather than decision-making being: it watches leaders and other elites who appear on the public stage. If the central ideal of the vocal model is autonomy (the People's self-authorship of the laws), the central ideal of the ocular model is
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This article inquires into the moral successes and failings of the superrich in America. To do this, we turn to Alexis de Tocqueville who outlines a set of expectations for any privileged elite. Drawing from his Old Regime, Memoir on Pauperism, and Democracy in America, we argue that the superrich are obliged to a particular kind of charity, which we specify as philanthropy. To fulfill their philanthropic duties, the superrich must steadfastly attend to three obligations: maintaining their local communities, safeguarding local liberties, and providing moral leadership. In the conclusion, we suggest how the superrich might be disciplined unto this virtue.
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