Introduction

Abstract

The introductory chapter presents the theoretical and conceptual framework of Tolerance: Experiments with Freedom in the Netherlands. The book concentrates on experiments with freedom and toleration in the Netherlands, which in the 1960s took the lead in a worldwide emancipation process. It was the first country to legalize euthanasia, soft drugs and gay marriage, albeit not always in a fully liberal way. In its analysis of political and social practice, the book views Dutch society as a social laboratory in which the political philosophy of liberalism is put to the test. This approach is based on the assumption that mankind can learn from both historical and current experience. The Introduction provides an analysis of the liberal concepts of tolerance, freedom, harm and offence, and expounds the principles of political liberalism and public reason. Next it specifies how this theoretical framework is applied to political practice in the subsequent chapters, which discuss the history of modern freedom and toleration; sexual morality; incest; drugs policy; euthanasia; the position of marginal groups like human ‘freaks’; public reason and slavery; group rights of cultural minorities; freedom of discriminatory speech; state neutrality and head scarves; and the endangered future of tolerance.