VERESS KÁROLY TO BE THOUGHTFUL OF THE OTHER

Abstract: In my paper I examine the question of tolerance. In the first part of the discussion I follow up the process in the course of which the problem of tolerance appearing in connection to the practice of religious freedom in the 17th-18th centuries leaves the territory of religious morality and the relation of church and state, and is placed into the empirical sphere of a general human relation to the otherness of the other, and with it to the private sphere of the individual. However, the intolerance continuously present in our life world still keeps the question in the forefront of theoretical interest. In the second part of the paper I examine the relationship of tolerance and intolerance, proving that the tolerance conceived as the experience of being tolerated induced intolerance. This situation can be exceeded by a change of attitude outlined by philosophical hermeneutics, the essence of which is the practical and behavioral application of the principle of “being thoughtful of the other”. The history of European philosophy has always been concerned with the question of the relationship of one and many, or singularity and multiplicity. This has never been an arbitrary interest, since at the same time it has always been one of the basic problems of the European man’s self-interpretation. The human being as an authentic being can be thought of as a unity which in all its individuals possesses the basic features of a human being. However, human existence in its actual experienced reality is divided into a multiplicity of individuals, persons, and personalities, and it is characterized by the difference of its purposes, interests, endeavors, relational and action forms, as well as by the variety of its cultures