What's Wrong with Toleration? The Zhuangzian Respect as an Alternative

Toleration has been almost universally regarded as an indispensable virtue one ought to have when encoun-tering people of races, religions, languages, cultures, genders, and sexual orientations different from one's own. This is unfortunate, however, because toleration includes objection as one of its necessary compo-nents: to tolerate an object means to have objection to it though without interfering with it. However, it is wrong to think we have, and it is wrong for us to have, objection to people simply because of their races, religions, languages, cultures, genders, and sextual ori-entations different from us. The proper virtue we ought to cultivate in this context is respect as advocated in the Zhuangzi, which is fundamentally different from respect that has sometimes been associated with the very conception of toleration.