The aim of this book, first published in the 1980s, is to set out the logic, implications and applications of toleration. It offers an analysis of the philosophy of toleration, constructs a history of toleration as a series of negations of specific intolerances, details the place of "procedural scepticism" in the determination of truth and falsity," and explores the relevance of tolerance to justice and to equality in plural democratic states.
This new edition seeks to clarify key points. It reviews and confirms toleration conceived as a negation of intolerances. It reviews and confirms the coherence of embedding "procedural scepticism" in "ideational tolerance." It returns to the discussion of toleration as a value. King has elsewhere moved increasingly towards the view that "tolerance" in a dramatically unequal world, may be more apt than "liberty," and that "friendship" may rightly trump over "power."
But the most important concern of this new edition is to affirm the continuing importance of distinguishing between the logical analysis of the construct and moral commitment to it. While there is a morality plainly implicit in this work, its approach is primarily analytical.

This is a collection of Professor Preston King's essays on the history of ideas. The title invokes the embeddedness of the past in, and the sly complexity of, what we call altogether too summarily the present. These essays are united by a persistent concern with the philosophy of history, especially the history of ideas. They all emerge from an early view by King of the interpretation of past and present. This was a view in turn complemented and contradicted by those from whom King learnt most, located in or around the London School of Economics: Michael Oakeshott, Karl Popper and Isaiah Berlin. The author's concern, above all else, is to demonstrate the incoherence, even absurdity of the notion that the past can have nothing to teach us - whether mounted by those who argue that history is unique or that it is merely contextual.

In this collection, contributors discuss a central theme which is both theoretical and practical - the role of the state in achieving social justice in modern market systems from a socialist perspective. They reject the cult of choice and of rational egoism.

This is a collection of Professor Preston King's essays on the history of ideas. The title invokes the embeddedness of the past in, and the sly complexity of, what we call altogether too summarily the present. These essays are united by a persistent concern with the philosophy of history, especially the history of ideas. They all emerge from an early view by King of the interpretation of past and present. This was a view in turn complemented and contradicted by those from whom King learnt most, located in or around the London School of Economics: Michael Oakeshott, Karl Popper and Isaiah Berlin. The author's concern, above all else, is to demonstrate the incoherence, even absurdity of the notion that the past can have nothing to teach us - whether mounted by those who argue that history is unique or that it is merely contextual.