I don’t think I’ve ever seen the paradox of tolerance used that way. Even in the original formulation from Popper, it’s specifically an argument for restricting the principle of tolerance, based on the consequences of society being too tolerant.
The problem with the paradox of tolerance, (as I’ve seen it used) is people use it as an argument to justify putting limits on the principle which are in fact arbitrary and unjustified; they just say “we can’t tolerate the intolerant” as a cached excuse for doing violence to political enemies while still professing a belief in tolerance.
As such, your defence sounds to me like it’s ceding the ground. I don’t believe in tolerance-conditional-on-reciprocity, I believe in tolerance.
You’ve set up a dichotomy between limited (e.g., reciprocal) tolerance and absolute tolerance by presuming that the limitations would be arbitrary and unjustified, but the limitations are justified by self-preservation (in case of Popper, tempered by preferring rational discourse if possible), so what you’ve said is an illustration of the fallacious argument this question is about.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the paradox of tolerance used that way. Even in the original formulation from Popper, it’s specifically an argument for restricting the principle of tolerance, based on the consequences of society being too tolerant.
The problem with the paradox of tolerance, (as I’ve seen it used) is people use it as an argument to justify putting limits on the principle which are in fact arbitrary and unjustified; they just say “we can’t tolerate the intolerant” as a cached excuse for doing violence to political enemies while still professing a belief in tolerance.
As such, your defence sounds to me like it’s ceding the ground. I don’t believe in tolerance-conditional-on-reciprocity, I believe in tolerance.
You’ve set up a dichotomy between limited (e.g., reciprocal) tolerance and absolute tolerance by presuming that the limitations would be arbitrary and unjustified, but the limitations are justified by self-preservation (in case of Popper, tempered by preferring rational discourse if possible), so what you’ve said is an illustration of the fallacious argument this question is about.