The Virtue Ethics Approach to Resolving the Paradox of Intolerance

From Clear and Present Thinking Chapter 9 pg. 187
“I think virtue ethics offers another possible resolution to the paradox [of intolerance]: A model of discourse ethics which includes the possibility, however small, that an excluded person could someday be welcomed back. In such a model, intolerant people would remain outside the conversation for as long as they remain a danger to it. But those inside the conversation move to exclude them in the manner of an educator, rather than the manner of a gatekeeper. They should preserve the hope, however faint that hope may be, that someday the intolerant will learn that intolerance is no path to any kind of good and worthwhile life. If and when the intolerant demonstrate that they’ve learned that lesson, we might have a reconciliation with them. This is virtue-ethics because it presupposes that everyone, even the very worst people, can change their habits of character and become better people if they decide to, and if they find (or if they’re shown) a better path to a worthwhile life. Now, I think it’s undeniably un-virtuous to enjoy the sight of someone being excluded: That would be schadenfreude, not virtue, even if the intolerant deserve their exclusion. Yet like every other ethics theory we’ve looked at so far, some critical questions can arise. Whose job is it to educate the intolerant? Might the safety of those inside the conversation matter more than the effort to include as many people as possible? What if the excluded person doesn’t learn anything—should [they] be excluded forever, and if so, would that only strengthen the paradox instead of solve it? And what if the view of human nature presupposed here is not supported by enough evidence in human behaviour?