The fight for justice is seen as the most basic struggle in our pursuit of peace on earth. But in our multicultural world where the very nature of justice is in dispute, appeals to the truth cause no more than disagreement and dissent. Do we need to give up on justice, and embrace toleration? Is toleration the true foundation of a reasonable and better society? How can we tolerate the beliefs and practices we find most abhorrent and different from our own? Should we?

LSE professor of political theory Chandran Kukathas presents his radical theory of toleration without limits.

By the end of the course, you will have learned:

• What toleration consists of and when we can have it.
• 17^th century French philosopher Pierre Bayle’s argument for unlimited toleration.
• The role that radical toleration must play in promoting a more open, true and reasonable society.
• The limitations of the social-contract theory as a model for explaining and justifying society.
• Why in the modern world we need to take toleration, not justice, as the governing ideal of society and political theory.
• Where the communitarian argument for the importance of social unity and shared convictions in political philosophy goes wrong.
• Why toleration is such a challenging ideal to achieve in our social reality.