Is There Meaning Without Judgment?

Frank Furedi, author of the forthcoming “On Tolerance: A Defence of Moral Independence”, takes to task Tariq Ramadan, who wants to bury the Enlightenment virtue of toleration and replace it with recognition. “Although Ramadan’s book is presented as a spiritual meditation on the problems of existence, it is actually an eclectic mixture of current intellectual prejudices and old-fashioned appeals to revelation and dogma. …Ramadan’s rejection of tolerance is driven by hostility towards the idea of critical judgment. But how can a ‘Quest for Meaning’ proceed without a capacity to judge? …‘Avoiding Meaning’ would perhaps have been a better title for this book.”