If there was a noticeable decrease in your reading of boring material the last few weeks, it’s probably because I was chaperoning a study abroad trip with my students at a small university town in northern Germany and didn’t have the opportunity to post here at T&C. The culture shock is always pretty fun to observe, as the US students adjust to the German ways of doing things. A mantra that has been repeated in the program is that the German way of doing things “is not better or worse, just different.” A variant is “it’s not right or wrong, just different.” No one can mistake the Germans for not being thoroughly modern, in its philosophy of tolerance no less than in its environmentalism, engineering, and the like.
Clik here to view.
German pastries: undeniably different AND BETTER than American pastries
The statement is true as far as it goes and as far as it applies to the situations in which my students notice cultural differences. Germans eat healthier, drive less, walk more, recycle more, smoke more, drink more, have less handicap accessibility, etc., than Americans.
I always reflect on the juxtaposition of this mantra with one of the central activities of our trip, the visit to the Neuengamme concentration camp. In one sense, the mantra is a perfectly understandable reaction to a sin-filled past, whether it’s Nazism, slavery, Pol Pot, or any other atrocity. The premise seems to be that ideology can run amok, that the belief that I am right and others are wrong will ultimately lead to death camps or 9-11. Thus, the safe route is to adopt tolerance.
It also seems perfectly understandable, though, to reach the completely opposite conclusion: the Nazi atrocity is unambiguously an example of wrong-ness, of worse-ness. You can’t listen to the stories of Nazi doctors performing ghastly “medical” experiments on children and conclude that there is no right or wrong (BTW, watch “After the Truth” when you get a chance; clip here). Slavery and 9-11 make it crystal clear that there is a right and wrong, that the wrong can be horrible, and that therefore the pursuit of right is paramount if for no other reason than to give wrong the least possible chance of happening.
While the Germans are steadfast in their commitment to avoid future such atrocities, they seem to more readily adopt the tolerance mantra even after one of their own basically established his pontificate on Jesus Christ as the alternative to a “dictatorship of relativism.”
The philosopher doesn’t need such experiences of visiting concentration camps, though, to disprove the tolerance mantra. Defending the rightness of the “it’s not right or wrong, just different” mantra thereby disproves it, since the mantra’s believer would also have to consider acceptable the different proposition that there is a right and wrong. Tolerance of all beliefs necessarily requires tolerance of contradicting beliefs, which doesn’t leave the virtue of tolerance much of a foundation on which to stand.
So, logically, there must be right and wrong; it remains for us to follow the right. Thankfully the Author of Right gave us an example in Himself.
Shortly after returning from our trip, I see that Fr. Robert Barron has posted a typically excellent video on “The Limits of Tolerance.” Enjoy: