New Ethics, Recognition, and Arguments for Toleration

In this article, I analyze a series of publications on “new ethics” and propose to define this term as a demand for “hyper-recognition” for those whose group identity has been previously dis-criminated against.I argue that contemporary moral and political philosophy can justify any of the three desirable moral attitudes between individuals and groups: tolerance (negative), recog-nition (equality), and hyper-recognition (new ethics in domestic discourse). In my opinion, the most adequate option in the moral sphere remains classical negative tolerance. To support this thesis, I compare the mechanisms of tolerant consciousness (J. Horton, D. Heyd) with the mechanisms of recognition (A. Galeotti, P. Jones) and show that there are either logical contra-dictions or undesirable practical consequences in both the principle of recognition and the principle of hyper-recognition. I do not reconstruct or analyze the whole approach marked as “theory of recognition” here (A. Honneth, N. Fraser and some others prominent philosophers have been playing the key role in the theory) as far I plan to compare pros and cons of tolera-tion being substituted by recognition in a very narrow domain of morality. I accept the idea that domains of morality, politics, and law as far as normative principles these spheres hold at their ground are somehow overlap and shift in respect to the borders of each sphere in real public debates, but in this paper, I rather prefer to treat them as if they are not intertwined. In conclu-sion, I outline the task of modern tolerance theory as the search for and justification of contex-tually sensitive second-order grounds for implementing an effective tolerant attitude.