About the Journal
Tolleration is an intentional, design-intensive approach to scholarship. Open access without fees means publicly funded scholarship does not sit behind a paywall. Named reviewers, where consent is given, make accountability and the co-production of knowledge visible in the citation record. Garamond, cream, maroon — and in dark mode, gold on black — form carries argument here as much as content does.
The name comes from the Latin tollere — to lift, to carry, to sublate — and its German cognate Aufheben: to negate, preserve, and elevate in one gesture. Tolleration is not tolerance. Tolerance leaves a position in place. Tolleration carries prior positions forward, transformed, into something they could not become alone. Thus, the goal is not only outward harmony — a space where divergent traditions and paradigms coexist — but the inward coherence that emerges through genuine dialogical encounter.
Envelopment
The standard picture places metaphysics inside philosophy — one branch among several. Tolleration places educational metaphysics as the wider and deeper field, with educational philosophy as one method of inquiry within it. The animation shows educational philosophy (EP) and educational metaphysics (EM) exchanging which one envelops the other. The larger circle is the one doing the carrying.
Two holons exchange which one envelops the other.
- EP — educational philosophy
- EM — educational metaphysics
- P — principial point of inquiry
The usual picture
Metaphysics is normally taught as one branch of philosophy, sitting beside logic, epistemology, axiology, and aesthetics. Philosophy is drawn as the larger circle, and metaphysics is drawn inside it.
Tolleration's picture
The Canadian Journal of Educational Metaphysics places educational metaphysics as the wider and deeper field — the study of what things are — with philosophy as one method of inquiry within it. Education generates its own metaphysical questions and can be studied at that depth directly (point P).
Consequences for a submitted paper
A paper grounded in educational metaphysics begins from a claim about what some educational phenomenon is — understanding, curriculum, a skill — and every later argument should be traceable back to that originating claim. The first principle is the holon — re: the widest and most comprehensive context — within which the rest of the paper is enveloped.
A note for the perennial tradition stream
Within Wisdom Traditions & Perennial Philosophy, first principles are applied somewhat differently. Elsewhere, a first principle is typically derived through argument. Within this stream, first principles are more often received — claims about the nature of intellect, the hierarchy of being, or the relationship between the particular and the universal, which a tradition holds to be constant and from which the educational claim is then drawn. The same requirement still applies: every argument should be traceable back to that principle. Authors should simply be explicit about whether their principle is derived or received, since reviewers assess each differently.
Paradigm or principle?
A paradigm names the lens through which a paper is read — for instance, neoliberalism, which treats the learner as a unit of human capital whose value is constituted by future productivity, or critical theory, which treats educational structures as sites where power and ideology are reproduced. Neither is, on its own, a first principle: each is a paradigm. A first principle is a claim about what something is, made from within or against such a lens. The two concepts are easily confused. If a submitting author is uncertain whether their submission is offering a paradigm or a first principle, the editor is encouraged to be contacted before submission. Conflating a paradigm with a principle is, more broadly, the post-truth condition: where opinion masquerades as fact.
Scope & Streams
The topics below are Tolleration's streams — open, ongoing lines of inquiry without deadlines or thematic closure. Work within any of these areas is welcome at any time. The journal holds the secular-to-sacred axis as a single continuous field — neither end is the default, and neither is admitted only as an object of study.
The institutional and philosophical conditions under which teachers are prepared — and what those conditions foreclose
First principles of educational thought; what education is before what it does
Virtue, character, wisdom, and the distinction between ethical formation and compliance with ethical frameworks
Frameworks that refuse the reduction of the learner to a measurable output — grounded in first principles, not merely asserted
Mindfulness and contemplative inquiry as registers of educational philosophy, not merely wellness interventions
Sophia perennis, non-Western epistemologies, and what modernity foreclosed in educational thought
What a curriculum is for, ontologically — not merely how it is designed or assessed
Hierarchical structures of knowing; the distinction between information accumulation and genuine understanding
Non-linear, emergent, and systemic perspectives on learning and educational change; chaos and self-organisation in educational contexts
The philosophical foundations of ecological thinking in education; the relational ontology of the human within nature
The study of the conditions, limits, and assumptions of epistemological frameworks themselves — how we come to know what counts as knowing
Recovering rigour without positivism; truth paradigms that address relativism without capitulating to it
Synthetic symbols, etymology, and iconographic analysis to recover meaning concealed in educational language, practice, and institution
How paradigms contain and constrain educational inquiry; paradigmatic blindness and what it takes to name a limit from outside one
The structural logic of envelopment as distinct from development; holarchical models; the complement to unfolding in educational theory
Streams & Special Issues
Streams
Tolleration publishes within open, ongoing streams rather than bounded thematic issues. A stream is not a special issue — it does not close, does not follow a trend, and does not impose a deadline. Streams are defined by a sustained question or area of inquiry rather than by a contemporary conversation. Authors working within a stream submit when the work is ready.
Current streams include: Educational Metaphysics & First Principles; Wisdom Traditions & Perennial Philosophy; Philosophy of Teacher Education; Epistemological Depth; and Envelopmental Theory. Streams are announced on the Aporiai page and remain open indefinitely.
Special Issues
Special issues at Tolleration are organised around genuine open questions — aporiai — rather than disciplinary fads or current debates. A special issue names an impasse the field has not resolved and invites sustained philosophical engagement with it. The distinction matters: fad-driven special issues close when the conversation moves on; aporia-driven issues remain open as long as the impasse holds.
Deadlines for special issues are indicative, not absolute. An author whose work engages the aporia seriously will not be turned away for arriving a month late. What closes a special issue is editorial judgment that the field of responses has reached a natural pause — not a calendar date.
Proposals for special issues may be submitted to the editorial team. A proposal should name the aporia, indicate why existing literature has not resolved it, and identify at least two potential contributors willing to engage it from different positions.
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