Tolerance vs. respect

Tolerance leads to our allowing differences to exist. But respect leads to our trying to learn from them. And here, the attempt to learn from beliefs that differ from our own may well conflict with the kind of negative freedom for which toler­ance is a necessary condition. I do not, in an open society, ask to be left alone in the security of my own beliefs. And I do not leave others alone in the security of theirs. I try, on the contray, to improve my situation by learning from others and from what they believe. This is not tolerance. It is respect. And I would even say that the ideal of open society is more closely aligned to positive freedom that it is to negative freedom … . [31-2]

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