Tolerance vs. Empathy

Hence it is, therefore, that a thing is loved more than it is known;

since it can be loved perfectly, even without being perfectly known.

-St. Thomas Aquinas

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the secular idea of “tolerance” today. It is absolutely mortifying to be labeled as “intolerant” today in fear that you may offend someone. However, what this word does not allow for is true knowledge. People cannot even discuss certain topics because of the intolerance of it all. I think there needs to be a key distinction made between being tolerant of someone and empathizing with someone.

The definition of tolerance at Merriam-Webster Online states:

1: capacity to endure pain or hardship : endurance, fortitude, stamina

2 a: sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own b: the act of allowing something : toleration

3: the allowable deviation from a standard; especially : the range of variation permitted in maintaining a specified dimension in machining a piece

4 a (1): the capacity of the body to endure or become less responsive to a substance (as a drug) or a physiological insult especially with repeated use or exposure tolerance to painkillers>; also : the immunological state marked by unresponsiveness to a specific antigen (2): relative capacity of an organism to grow or thrive when subjected to an unfavorable environmental factor b: the maximum amount of a pesticide residue that may lawfully remain on or in food

Definition #2 is the one most applicable to this discussion. Tolerance is to have sympathy for practices differing from one’s own beliefs. Tolerance could also be the act of allowing something. What does this mean though? Sympathy is to "have common feelings", to share a similar experience. Sympathy is extremely important and is unlikely to breed resentment. Resentment exists only when one subject is made to feel an object. So what of the Christian who has no experience with a Muslim or a Muslim who has no similar experience or common feeling with a Christian? Can one have true sympathy for the other? I would argue no.

The next definition of tolerance is "the act of allowing something". Well, what if something is wrong? What if that something is rooted in error or falsity? Is it ethical to just allow something for the sake of tolerance? Where can the line be drawn?

Fr. Guido, O.P., shared some information regarding tolerance during a class. He basically shared the idea that tolerance has a temptation to minimize real differences. It has a temptation to make the ‘other’ not so other. We have a tendency to confuse the other’s difference with error. We have the temptation to see the other in terms of ourselves.

Let's see what empathy is and compare it to tolerance.

Merriam-Webster Online states:

1: the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it

2: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this

Empathy does not necessarily require common feelings or similar experience. True empathy does not make the other into an object. It does not have narcissistic tendencies and it cannot be faked. It is to acknowledge the other as a true other, but to have an understanding (although perhaps not a complete understanding) of the experience the person is going through.

This in comparison with tolerance is much more beneficial. For people to be able to have true differences is important and in fact real. However, people can still have differences and empathize with one another. We can go even further than just tolerating another. Toleration puts a blind eye to differences and tries to make every difference a union. This just does not make sense and it does not allow for error.

Empathy does not minimize the real difference in the other. Love, rather than tolerance, should exist between two people who are different.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote to the Ambassador to Germany:

The Church, however, does not impose herself. She does not force any one to accept the Gospel message. In fact, the faith in Jesus Christ which the Church proclaims can only exist in freedom, so tolerance and cultural openness must be a feature of the encounter with the other.

Tolerance, however, must never be confused with indifferentism, for any form of indifference is radically opposed to the deep Christian concern for man and for his salvation. Authentic tolerance always also implies respect for the other, for man, the creature of God whose existence God willed.

The tolerance we urgently need, and I also mentioned this in Munich, "includes the fear of God - respect for what others hold sacred. This respect for what others hold sacred demands that we ourselves learn once more the fear of God. But this sense of respect can be reborn in the Western world only if faith in God is reborn" (Homily, 10 September 2006; L'Osservatore Romano English edition, 13 September, p. 7).

Here, it seems like Pope Benedict is arguing for true empathy in the "encounter with the other".

St. Thomas Aquinas said something similar to, “When you know something, you conform the object to yourself. When you love something, you conform yourself in light of the thing you love”.