A desire for Tolerance
The Jewish question in Europe is about tolerance and relates to the question what means to be an individual. Augustine in the City of God wanted to create a cosmic order, the sentiment was found in Plato Republic sense of order. If, individual do not fit or submitted to collective view, for what ever reason the Jews in Christian Europe or Islam, the code set a code to put outsider, since continues decent collapse to killing the disorder, manifested in Pogroms, persecutions in both religions, but is not unique to any particular religion. In many cases is projected to ideology, politics, social behavior and sciences. The Crusade and eventually the holocaust is collapse to eliminated differences to the internal collective social cohesion.
Montaigne and Spinoza, both are products of the two expulsions of the Jews from Spain, the first one by the Muslins in the 12 Century and the second in 1492 by Christian Spain, being different and outsider had a price, Erasmus seeing the bloody conflict between Protestant and Catholic papist also proclaim the need of tolerance.
The roots of conflict have many aspects like economics the case of the Balkans, where the city being the commerce centers after the conquest by the Turks, most of the cities inhabitants convert to Islam and the peasants continue with the Christian tradition. When the traditional economic model base on land lost his economic value a conflict between the city and town come to clash not only in process of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, but during WWII, in Croatia leader, lead by a priest Genocide not only Jews but Slavs.
Religion has been use as weapon, since religion force appeal to certainty and authority given of certainty. The power of religion appeal to the emotions and these emotions can turn into uncontrolled forces, but power of Authority combine with emotions Ethical compass is lost.
Experiments done 60’s where regular individuals put with opportunity to harm another (in this case electric shocks), where ever there background, the long the victim was not aware of the attacker the participates, and the most for tell experiment was prisoners and wards, where sadistic and cruel behavior was the norm, if there was not control.
To be Ethical or do the right thing as more the convictions, in WWII many who safe Jews where not juts for self interest, since being found, was shoot on the spot in the better cases to work camps, in most recent time in Ruanda, where the elite where Catholic perpetrate the Genocide, this is not the first time during 1933 to 1942, when SS in Nazi Germany open the doors to others, 60 % SS officers, where Lawyers and Catholics.
Being Ethical (Individual Choice), Moral (Social Expectation) does not mean to do what is right thing. To do the right thing first you need to see the other is not the other, meaning there is not second class of heaven for the other: who does not belong to the particular club or society. The other is defined by the group or a leader who define the rules.
Tolerance is build in the equality, where everyone is not above or below, is not about who owns or define rule, because equality mean acceptance of difference, but not jus difference, but equality, what Spinoza and Montaigne ask and demand is equality of difference, where God, Gods, Race, Gender or Sexual orientation, economics, age is not the issue. The issue of equality is about being able to acceptance the different and work in the difference.
