PARADIGM

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The
Anti-
Kritik
Handbook
The Anti-Kritik Handbook
by Roger Solt

Copyright © 2004 by Paradigm Research, Inc. All rights reserved.

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 PARADIGM
Research

The
Anti-
Kritik
Handbook
THE ANTI-KRITIK HANDBOOK

Copyright 2004
 The Anti-Kritik Handbook

INDEX TO THE ESSAYS

I. INTRODUCTION

II. DEFINING THE KRITIK

III. TYPES OF KRITIKS

- language kritiks
- pure philosophical kritiks (metaphysical and epistemological)
- practical philosophical kritiks (moral and political)
- accompanying theoretical arguments

IV. THE KRITIK'S INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND

- characteristic beliefs of the modern world view
- characteristic beliefs of postmodernism
- historical development of modern and postmodern perspectives

V. ANSWERING THE KRITIK

A. The case for the kritik
B. General tactics
C. General arguments against the kritik
- not germane in policy debate
- some assumptions necessary
- no alternative
- conditionality
- indictments of postmodernism and deconstruction
- answers to the case for the kritik
D. Generic answers to language kritiks
E. Generic answers to metaphysical kritiks
F. Generic answers to epistemological kritiks
G. Generic answers to moral and political kritiks
H. Answers to specific kritiks
1. Reason
2. Causality
3. Foucault
4. Heidegger/posthumanism
5. Normativity
6. Statism
7. Critical legal studies
8. Feminism
9. Anthropocentrism
10. Narrative
11. Non-violence
12. Cultural Relativism
13. Nuclearism
14. Threat Construction
15. Pragmatism
16. Terror Talk
I. Kritiks of Environmentalism and International Relations
- Deep Ecology
- Social Ecology
- Ecofeminism
- Heidegger
- Kritiks of International Relations Realism and Liberalism
- Radical Environmentalism
J. Counter-Kritiks

VI. A FINAL NOTE ON THE HANDBOOK'S ORGANIZATION

 The Anti-Kritik Handbook
Countering The Kritik:
An Introductory Essay
INTRODUCTION
The kritik began its controversial career in academic debate at the
University of Northern Iowa inter-collegiate debate tournament in
September 1991. At that tournament, teams from the University of
Texas combined what was essentially a critical legal studies
critique of rights with a theoretical argument concerning the nature
of fiat. The result was a new form of debate argument: the "kritik."
Immediately controversial, the kritik was also almost immediately
successful. Different kritiks (and even kinds of kritiks) proliferated,
and use of the kritik spread rapidly from squad to squad. Quickly
penetrating the high school ranks, the kritik proved even more
popular with some segments of the high school circuit than it had
been in college.
Though successfully argued in many debates, the kritik has
remained tremendously controversial. This is because the kritik
attacks many of the most deeply held assumptions about both the
nature of policy debate and the nature of the contemporary world.
Different kritiks have argued for the rejection of reason, have
denied the validity of causal predictions, have indicted a focus on
human welfare, and have even disputed the value of engaging in
value-laden policy argument at all. Moreover, proponents of the
kritik sometimes seem literally to speak a different language. The
word "kritik" itself is a German term corresponding to the word
"critique" in the English language. The use of the German form by
kritik proponents is not incidental; it is intended to connote the
strangeness and distinctiveness of the argument. But even more
significantly, many of the authors quoted in kritik debates, while
they write in English also seem to be employing another language,
an academic jargon derived largely from recent European
philosophy. So it is no wonder that the kritik has proved
disconcerting: it attacks some deeply held but seldom questioned
assumptions, and it does so in a language which often seems
impenetrable to those outside its inner circle. Many of those who
have lost to the kritik have undoubtedly not known what hit them.
Kritiks sometimes embody powerful arguments, but often their
success rests in important measure on a combination of confusion
and shock, shock that some assumptions which seem so
self-evident are actually being questioned and confusion with
regard to what the particular kritik is actually saying. This
handbook offers numerous arguments against particular kritiks, but
even more importantly it attempts to offer a general framework
within which to approach kritiks. The kritik, after all, is an
extremely fluid form of argument. Virtually any argument in
debate could be presented as a kritik, and there are probably
millions of implicit assumptions made within debates which could
be kritiked. Simply to gather evidence on every kritik which is
relevant to a particular topic and which has actually been run
would be a daunting enterprise. To anticipate all potential kritiks
is impossible. Fortunately, most kritiks embody some characteristic
themes and concerns. They tend to share a common grounding in
what is frequently called "postmodern" thought. They also tend to
fit within recognizable categories to which various kinds of generic
answers are possible. The key to coping with the kritik, I think, is
understanding. Once one understands the intellectual background
to the kritik, then dealing with particular kritiks becomes less
daunting and difficult.
The evidence included in this handbook performs several
functions. You will find many cards answering particular kritiks.
But you will also find many cards indicting the general approach
which the kritik embodies. You will also find plenty of evidence
indicting the method and assumptions of the kritik itself--criticisms
of postmodern philosophy and the process of "deconstruction." The
goal is to provide evidence and arguments which can be adapted to
any kritik and any kind of kritik you may encounter. In addition,
this introduction hopes to further a process of "demystifying" the
kritik. It will attempt to define and to describe the various kritiks
which have been run to date. Most importantly, perhaps, it will
detail some of the real world intellectual background from which
the kritik emerged. The kritik has perhaps its main root in a
tradition of European philosophy which is not easy to comprehend
(nor do I pretend to be an expert on contemporary European
thought), but to deal with the kritik on any but the most superficial
level requires at least some familiarity with this body of thought.
Finally, this introduction will review major arguments both for and
against the kritik.
Neutrality about the kritik is rare, and I do not pretend to be neutral
on the subject myself. I continue to believe that the kritik is on
balance bad for debate, especially high school debate. The major
thinkers from whom the kritik most directly derives--Heidegger,
Foucault and Derrida are difficult and problematic even for
professional philosophers. For those with next to no philosophical
background, such thought must be virtually unintelligible.
Furthermore, this kind of difficult philosophical thought does not
seem to translate well into the format and conventions of
contemporary academic debate. The result is that some extremely
cryptic philosophies are selectively reinterpreted (and probably
often misinterpreted) by self-interested participants in a
competitive activity. These arguments are then presented at a rate
which makes it difficult to understand even the simplest of
arguments. These are not, of course, highly principled objections
to the kritik (some more theoretical objections will come later), but
they do seem to go the heart of how the kritik is employed in
practice. Although I find philosophical argument interesting, I have
yet to hear what I would consider a good kritik debate. In terms
therefore of its ultimate product, the kritik seems extremely
disappointing.
This said, I do not believe that the kritik has been an unadulterated
evil. Many of the issues which the kritik raises are interesting, and
the attempt to introduce a new argument framework into debate has
certainly stimulated thought. From a personal standpoint, the kritik
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 The Anti-Kritik Handbook
has induced me to become more familiar with a body of
contemporary thought that I had largely neglected previously. I
have learned a lot from thinking about and trying to respond to the
kritik. So, while I will probably continue to make occasional satiric
digs against the kritik, this handbook represents in sum an attempt
to take the kritik seriously. It makes no real attempt at a balanced
exposition (though I do not, of course, wish to misrepresent the
views of kritik proponents). This is, after all, the ANTI-kritik
handbook. But it now seems clear that to deal with the kritik
requires a serious and systematic effort. And while I continue to
believe that there are some compelling arguments for why most
kritiks are not germane in conventional policy debate, the main
emphasis of the handbook is to make arguments against particular
kritiks on their merits and against the philosophical assumptions
which they employ. Jon Brody has argued that believers in liberal
humanism and scientific rationalism should welcome the
opportunity to defend their core assumptions. This handbook and
this essay are, in part at least, attempts to do just that.
DEFINING THE KRITIK
Proponents of the kritik are reluctant to ascribe to it a formal
definition. Since they see it as properly a highly fluid argument
form, they see definition as a restraint on its potential evolution.
But for those trying to respond to the kritik, a definition is
useful--it helps to pin it down. So, with the reservation that the
kritik is an evolving theory, I propose the following definition: a
kritik is an argument operating outside the framework of normal,
comparative policy debate, attacking a (usually implicit)
assumption of an opponent's analysis.
I wish to highlight several points about this definition. First, it
suggests that the kritik is a non-policy argument. This is not a
statement which all kritik proponents would accept. Bill Shanahan,
for example, who is probably the leading pro-kritik theoretician,
insists that the kritik can function both within and outside the
policy framework. This corresponds to a distinction found among
some non-debate scholars between internal and external critiques.
The problem here may turn in part on two somewhat distinctive
meanings of "critique." In common usage, a critique is a kind of
systematic criticism of a position. In that sense, debate has always
possessed critiques--every affirmative case is a critique of the
status quo and every lNC a critique of the affirmative. A "kritik,"
however seems distinctive precisely because it steps outside the
normal policy framework. Arguments within the policy framework
may still be "critiques," but they are not necessarily "kritiks" in the
technical debate sense. Or, to put it another way, a kritik which was
seen as functioning within the normal policy framework would be
dealt with essentially like any other policy argument; it is only if
it challenges that framework that it becomes distinctive or acquires
theoretical interest.
Second, the kritik attacks usually unstated assumptions. Again,
were the kritik countering explicit claims made by the affirmative,
it would seem to be functioning in the normal policy framework.
Instead, it generally attempts to move the debate to a higher (or
occasionally a lower) level of abstraction. Whereas the affirmative
may have argued for a specific immigration policy, the kritik will
question whether there should be borders (or even a state) at all.
Or, in response to a rights advantage, the kritik might question
whether the "autonomous subject," that is, the free self-determining
individual, actually exists. Each of us lives our lives making
numerous unexamined assumptions. These assumptions in many
ways structure our world, and according the advocates of the kritik,
it is profoundly liberating to question such assumptions.
Third, the kritik is usually an argument made by the negative. This
is not invariably true. Language kritiks, in particular would seem
to be fair game for either side, and indeed there have been some
affirmative kritiks. The affirmative, however, is generally held to
be responsible for advocating something--ordinarily a plan--and for
upholding the resolution. This tends to force the affirmative into a
comparative mode, opposing what they propose to the status quo.
Most resolutions call for an action, whereas the negative can
conceivably negate the resolution merely by justifying a suspended
judgment or by negating the affirmative case while not defending
a constructive alternative of its own. This view of the negative's
role, it should be added, is not unique to the kritik. For hypothesis
testers, the negative did not need to defend an alternative (though
that usually helped), but merely needed to persuade the judge that
he or she should not endorse the resolution. And even the stock
issues paradigm allowed the negative the option of straight
refutation--to simply indict the affirmative case's internal
coherence without necessarily supporting an alternative. The policy
making paradigm, of course, has generally insisted that both sides
defend well-articulated constructive alternatives.
Fourth, a related point is that the kritik rarely embraces a policy
alternative. The kritik is not totally non-comparative; it necessarily
offers some theory, whether it be about morals or metaphysics,
which it is willing to compare to the affirmative's theory. But the
fact that the kritik may offer an alternative theory does not mean
that it offers an alternative policy. For kritik proponents, an
alternative theory about some aspect of the world seems to bee
enough. Kritik opponents, however, generally argue that the
counter-theories the kritik may raise are irrelevant unless they are
shown to support a specific policy alternative.
Finally, fifth, the kritik is, in at least a broad sense, a conditional
argument. That is it is made with other inconsistent arguments. The
claim is made that the kritik functions like a topicality argument.
For the affirmative to justify some basic assumption is said to be
a threshold test which must be met before the specifics of
affirmative policy analysis become relevant. But, according to this
perspective, the fact that the affirmative assumption has been
proven does not mean that its plan is a good idea, merely that it's
an idea we can now consider on its merits. Some kritiks, however,
seem to function more like conditional counterplans. The kritik of
statism, for example, is often just a way of recasting the old
anarchy counterplan--in a way which avoids normal standards of
negative competitiveness, fiat, and conditionality. More broadly,
the kritik may represent (when combined with other positions) a
kind of waffling between contradictory world views. Whether it is
appropriate to both attack a basic philosophical position and then
to proceed to make negative arguments within the framework
which has been attacked is a question for later discussion. For the
present, descriptive and definitional purpose, it is enough to note
that the kritik frequently operates in just such a way, both attacking
the affirmative's framework and arguing against the affirmative's
plan within that same framework.
TYPES OF KRITIKS
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 The Anti-Kritik Handbook
As with definition, the categorization of kritiks is something which
kritik proponents sometimes resist. The process of categorization
is believed to be part of a process of excessive rationalization
which the kritik and its intellectual mentors often attack. It should
also be noted that some kritiks fit into more than one category, and
that categories in general should be regarded as provisional and can
sometimes become too rigid. All of that said, it should be added
that categorization seems to be a necessary tool of human
understanding. Categories are fluid, and the importance of certain
categories will certainly change with time, but they remain
necessary analytical instruments.
In practice, there seems to be some degree of consensus about the
various types of kritiks, both among proponents and opponents of
the strategy. First, there are language kritiks (sometimes referred
to as kritiks of rhetoric). Second, there are what I would call "pure
philosophical" kritiks. These are sometimes referred to as kritiks of
thought or systems of thought. Third, there are what I will call
"practical philosophical" kritiks. These are sometimes referred to
as kritiks of value or as moral and political kritiks. Finally, there
are arguments pertaining to the framework of the kritik, arguments
about the nature of fiat and of the debate process. These could be
treated as a separate fourth category, as something like "kritiks of
the debate process," but since they generally operate in conjunction
with other kritiks, it seems better to simply think about them as
theory arguments expounding the impact of the other types of
kritik.
There are three main types of language kritiks. First, there are
kritiks of the language embodied in the resolution. Second, there
are kritiks of language found in opponents' evidence. Third, there
are kritiks of the language or rhetoric used by the opposing team
members themselves.
A number of examples should help to clarify these distinctions.
One of the earliest common kritiks centered around the wording of
the 1991-92 college topic concerning development assistance to
South Asia. The argument made was basically that the term
"development," as embodied in the resolution was inherently
ethnocentric. To call one part of the world developed and the other
undeveloped implies concepts of superiority and inferiority and
therefore should be rejected. Another kritik of resolutional
language has centered on the term "and/or." This has been said (by
some overly finicky grammarians, I would suppose) to be a
"grammatical abomination." Since the topic embodies such an
abomination, it therefore should be rejected. A common kritik of
a term often found in evidence is the kritik of "Islamic
fundamentalism." The argument is that this phrase embodies a
derogatory ethnic stereotype, that it conjures up images of
turban-wielding bomb throwers, which is both demeaning to a
group of people and an intellectually stultifying stereotype.
Another such kritik is directed at "nuspeak " This argues that
rhetoric which trivializes the nuclear threat, using, for example, a
dehumanizing jargon such as "nuking" another country, makes
nuclear war more thinkable and therefore more likely. Other kritiks
have been made referring to the language of race, gender, and
sexual orientation.
Why are such language kritiks a voting issue? Basically, the
following argument is made. Language matters; it structures our
world view and thereby our actions. Arguably, it is even more
important than policy. No policy is actually adopted at the end of
the debate, but our linguistic patterns can actually be affected. At
the very least, it is argued, language counts for something and
should be a factor in the decision calculus.
The second major type of kritik is what I have called pure
philosophical kritiks. There are basically two subcategories of this
type of kritik, kritiks which focus on metaphysical questions and
kritiks which focus on epistemological issues. Metaphysics
involves the first principles of philosophy. It is concerned with
questions such as the existence of God, free will, human nature,
and the nature of being. Whereas metaphysics asks questions about
the ultimate nature of reality, epistemology concerns itself with the
nature and possibility of knowledge. Questions of empiricism, the
rational foundations of knowledge, the philosophy of science, and
the logical status of morality are all epistemological issues.
The pure philosophy kritiks question some core philosophical
assumptions of an opponent's analysis. One metaphysical kritik
involves questioning the idea of the "subject." We have
traditionally thought of the subject or self as a unified ego, an
integrated and autonomous individual. This kritik argues that the
integrated self is in fact a myth. Rather than unified wholes, people
are an ever shifting composite of disparate elements. One is not the
same self today that one was yesterday, or the same self in one
setting that one is in another. Going along with the kritik of the
subject is a kritik of free will. This argument, which frequently
forms a part of the kritik of normativity, asserts that freedom is an
illusion, and that autonomous, self-determination is also mythical.
Since affirmative analysis arguably rests on belief in just such an
autonomous individual, its case is fundamentally flawed. Other
metaphysical kritiks are possible to imagine. One might kritik the
existence of an objective, external, material reality. Indeed, radical
empiricism of the type proposed by Bishop George Berkeley, an
eighteenth century British philosopher, suggests just such a kritik.
The famous question which Berkeley asked is whether when a tree
falls in the forest, but no one is there, it makes a sound. He
concluded that we have no basis in our experience for concluding
that it does, that all we directly know are our sense experiences,
and therefore that the external world is cast into doubt. As a
minister, Berkeley had a way out of this dilemma: the
omnipresence of God serves to secure an enduring reality whether
humans are around or not. But the negative in a debate need not
make this final religious retreat from skepticism. A kritik of the
existence of other minds would also be possible. Since we only
directly experience our own existence, we can only infer but never
positively prove that other selves exist. If we don't even know that
other selves exist, then it might be futile to argue about what
potentially unreal public actors should do about some alleged
problem. (Of course, if other minds don't exist, the judge might
well wonder what he or she is doing judging this debate.)
Metaphysical kritiks represent a kind of reductio ad absurdum, and
they are likely to stir the greatest resistance among judges. In fact,
though various kritiks may contain metaphysical elements, purely
metaphysical kritiks are rarely run. Much more common are
various epistemological kritiks. Among these is the kritik of cause.
This kritik derives from another eighteenth century British
philosopher, David Hume. Hume noted that we can never directly
observe causation. All we can do is to observed repeated sequences
of events, that eating alleviates hunger or drinking satisfies thirst,
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 The Anti-Kritik Handbook
for example. Inductive reasoning is based on just such a process of
repeated observation. Nonetheless, causal relations and inductive
reasoning remain logically uncertain. We do not know, as a matter
of logical certainty, that the future will repeat the past.
Furthermore, the observed sequence of events might just be
coincidental and not causally necessary. As applied to debate, the
argument follows that if we cannot logically make causal
predictions, then there is no reason to believe that the affirmative
plan will actually solve the problem to which is it is addressed.
A second epistemological kritik takes issue with the idea of reason
or rationality. In intellectual history, the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries are commonly referred to as the
Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. Though certainly not the only
rationalistic period in human history, the Enlightenment was
definitely an era in which reason was venerated and believed to
hold a solution to many if not all social problems. This faith in
reason has, over time, generated many critics, from religious
conservatives to romantic writers to postmodern philosophers.
There is not, therefore, just one kritik of reason; there are many.
Among the common arguments directed against reason are the
following. Reason is an instrument of domination and oppression.
As French philosopher Michel Foucault argued, in establishing the
category of "reason" we create simultaneously the counter-category
of unreason or madness. And speech which we define as "not
reason", we then feel free to ignore. Another argument is that
reason is impotent when it comes to moral questions. This view,
also associated with Hume, holds that reason is purely
instrumental; values are merely subjective preferences about which
reason ultimately has nothing to say. But the idea that reason is
purely instrumental has also been subject to critique. It is argued
that a narrowly focused, purely instrumental reason undermines
imagination, intuition, and empathy. At its worst, it may lead to
atrocities such as the holocaust in which highly "rational" and
efficient techniques are employed in the pursuit of morally
barbarous ends. Finally, it is argued that reason lacks firm
foundations, that it can not validate its own first principles. It is
often said that modern philosophy begins with Rene Descartes in
the early 1600s. Descartes' philosophical quest was to find some
absolutely certain foundation for knowledge. He thought that he
had found such a foundation in his own intuitive certainty of his
own existence. "I think, therefore I am."
More recent philosophers, however, have found even this
formulation of certainty to be questionable, and have opted instead
for a doctrine commonly called "antifoundationalism." According
to this position:, there are no certain foundations for knowledge,
either in reason or experience; thus, once again the pretensions of
reason need to be deflated. As the kritik of reason goes in debate,
affirmative analysis relies on reason, but reason is inherently
flawed; thus, the basis of affirmative analysis has been undermined
and there is no reason to vote affirmative.
Sometimes the kritik of statism has taken on an epistemological
flavor. It has been argued that the affirmative assumes that the state
is a rational actor, one whose behavior is predictable. But if in fact
as the negative argues, the state's behavior is irrational and
unpredictable, then there is no basis for concluding that the
affirmative plan will make things better rather than worse.
Though I have not yet heard them formally argued in debate, there
are a number of readily accessible kritiks of science which may be
forthcoming at some later date. Among these is the argument that
reality is socially constructed. The way we view the world is
merely a function of social mores, training, and outlook. Science
is therefore wrong in claiming to reveal an objective external
reality. As the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche suggested,
there are no facts, only interpretations. Feminist and
environmentalist kritiks of science are also available. Science is
said to be a masculine way of viewing the world, as opposed to the
more intuitive and empathetic female ways of knowing.
Environmentalists tend to disparage the way in which science
analyzes the holistic natural world into component parts. In an
early nineteenth century critique of the scientific approach to
nature, the romantic poet Wordsworth noted that "We murder to
dissect." And, his more recent followers might add, in the process
of dissecting, we falsify the nature of the whole; our categories
attempt to break apart an indissoluble unity.
Why should these highly abstract philosophical kritiks constitute
voting issues in debate? At least two answers seem to be possible.
First, it might be argued these are the most fundamental of issues,
and the unexamined life is not worth living. A second, more
pragmatic, answer is that policy questions rest ultimately on these
metaphysical and epistemological assumptions. If they are proven
untrue (or least cast into serious doubt), then there is no basis left
for voting affirmative.
The third basic type of kritik is what I have called a practical
philosophical kritik. Rather than dealing with questions of pure
reason, such as metaphysics and epistemology, these kritiks deal
with the questions of practical reasons in particular questions of
ethics and politics. These kritiks are obviously closer to policy
debate in the way in which it has commonly been practiced.
Nonetheless, they still operate at a relatively high level of
philosophical abstraction. A number of essentially ethical or moral
kritiks have proven popular.
One of these is the kritik of anthropocentism. An anthropocentric
view is one which centers on humans, and this is an attitude which,
from the perspective of the so-called deep ecologists, is
fundamentally perverse. Humans are not in fact. uniquely
important, this kritik would argue, and their tendency to
self-aggrandizement is in fact the root of many of the earth's
environmental problems. Rather than being anthropocentric, we
need to become ecocentric or biocentric. The affirmative, however,
by focusing solely on human welfare preserves the anthropocentric
focus.
Another, closely related kritik, has been labeled "posthumanism."
This kritik derives from the work of German philosopher Martin
Heidegger. Heidegger's argument (and his technophobia) in many
ways parallels that of the deep ecologists. Most of the world's
problems are linked to human self--centeredness. Instead of
focusing on human being, attention should be directed to the nature
of Being in general. Were we to do this, we would reject the
narrow self-centered concerns of humans and become post-
humanists.
A third ethical kritik is the popular kritik of normativity. A
normative question asks what should be done. But to raise
normative questions in a policy context, it is said, assumes that
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humans are free, politically efficacious beings. The normativity
kritik questions just this assumption, arguing that people are in fact
determined and that political power is really held not by the people
but by impersonal bureaucratic forces not subject to democratic
control. To ask what should be done, therefore, merely masks the
reality of our political impotence.
Deontological arguments, that is, claims that something should be
done because it is morally right, regardless of its consequences, are
sometimes treated as if they were a species of ethical kritik. I
believe that this is a misunderstanding. While one could certainly
construct and label a deontological argument as a kritik, there is no
real value in doing so. Deontological arguments can function
within the realm of policy discourse. The abortion debate, for
example, centers around questions of moral rights and wrongs
more than it does on the actual consequences of banning abortion.
And if deontology is proven to be the proper moral perspective,
then a deontological argument is almost always by nature absolute.
In other words, it need not be cast into the form of a kritik in order
to be a voting issue.
Essentially political kritiks are also among the most common.
Probably the earliest kritik was a kritik of rights grounded in a
perspective known as critical legal studies. Critical legal studies
became popularized in the 1970s and 1980s. The critique of rights,
however, is far older. The utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham
was a forceful critic of the doctrines of natural rights popular in the
later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Even more
influential was Karl Marx's "kritik" of rights. According to Marx,
the appeal to rights is merely an ideological mask for class
oppression.
The CLS kritik in many ways parallels the Marxist, but it goes
even further. Rights claims, CLS authors such as Georgetown's
Mark Tushnet argue, are inherently indeterminate; that is, one
rights claim can always be countered by another rights claim in a
way which is ultimately irresolvable. Furthermore, the emphasis on
rights leads to a process of "reification." This means that rights
which are merely empty abstractions, are treated as if they were
actually something real. And in the process actual human interests
and experiences are neglected. CLS also provides the basis for
another common kritik, one of the rule of law. The argument here
is similar to the argument against rights. The idea is that the rule of
law, conceived of as a neutral and objective arbiter of differences,
in fact merely masks the ongoing oppressiveness of an
economically racially, and sexually hierarchical society.
Feminist perspectives also have provided the basis for a number of
kritiks of the political order. The relational feminism of Harvard
psychologist Carol Gilligan contrasts the female "ethic of care"
with the essentially masculine "ethic of justice." The argument, at
least in its extreme formulation, is that the ethic of justice is
excessively legalistic and rule-bound, whereas the ethic of care is
empathetic and compassionate. Other kritiks derive from a school
of legal thought known as feminist jurisprudence, of which
University of Michigan law professor Catherine MacKinnon is
probably the most prominent advocate. MacKinnon is especially
critical of the idea of neutral rule of law. Sincere historically
women have been placed at a tremendous disadvantage,
supposedly neutral legal rules merely lock into place preexisting
inequalities. Ostensibly neutral procedures and rights, such as the
first amendment and the right to privacy are in effect used to
preserve male dominance.
Though both CLS and feminist arguments against rights and the
rule of law have been made as kritiks, they have probably been
made more often simply as policy arguments either turning or
neutralizing affirmative value claims. And whether or not they are
presented as kritiks does not really alter their logical force very
much. Given this, it isn't clear that it is worth taking on the added
theoretical baggage to run these arguments as kritiks, though of
course their impact could be articulated both in kritik and
non-kritik terms.
Another popular kritik has been the kritik of statism. This argument
has taken several forms. In its most common incarnation it seems
to be essentially a recasting of the familiar anarchy counterplan.
The affirmative employs the state, but the state is inherently
oppressive and destructive; therefore every policy which employs
the state should be rejected. Another version of the statism kritik
focuses on the effectiveness of state action. It basically argues that
the state never succeeds in what it sets out to accomplish, that its
efforts are as likely to be counterproductive as successful. Thus,
once again, state action should be rejected. Finally, the notion that
the state is neither a rational nor a predictable actor has been
discussed above as an example of an epistemological kritik.
Related to statism is a kritik very popular on the high school
immigration topic, a kritik of borders. Borders inherently limit free
movement of people and generally tend to reinforce inequality; so,
the kritik goes, they need to be rethought. One problem with this
kritik is that it offered no clear alternative to the present system.
Anarchy would be a world without borders, but so perhaps would
be a state of world government. And even within the present nation
state system, a regime of completely open borders would be
possible. The kritik of borders thus seems to have provided a way
for the negative to covertly run three radically utopian conditional
counterplans in the same round.
Another kritik which has gained some currency is one which
indicts the idea of "the national interest," especially in contrast to
"foreign" interests. Focus on the national interest (assuming that
such a concept is even coherent) tends to be xenophobic; that is, it
excludes and marginalizes "other" people.
Finally, there have been a number of kritiks based on Michel
Foucault's theories concerning the nature of social power. Power
has traditionally been conceived of as hierarchical, with the state
seen as the central focus of power. In contrast, Foucault argues that
power is diffused throughout society. Social control is not
produced primarily by the central authority of the state but rather
is supported by a type of disciplinary power spread throughout the
society. The prison is an example of disciplinary power, but so is
the hospital, the asylum, the school, and the workplace
(presumably even the family). The implication of this is that
political action may be futile; attacking power in one form merely
causes it to shift to another manifestation and locale.
Another; related kritik, also based on Foucault, has been labelled
"the panopticon." Historically, the panopticon was a model prison
designed by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Its distinctive
feature was that it provided a central vantage point from which all
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of the prisoners could be observed. For Foucault, the panopticon
serves as a symbol of liberal reformism run amok. Bentham a great
liberal social reformer, ends up designing more efficient ways to
exercise social control. For Foucault this seems to demonstrate the
limits of liberal reformism--that is always ends up reinforcing the
repression it attempts to alleviate. This, however, is only the label
of the argument. In its substance it attacks the time honored
distinction between knowledge and power. According to Foucault,
these two concepts have been wrongly separated. The assumption
has been that power is always oppressive and knowledge always
liberating. In fact, knowledge and power are inextricably tied.
(Foucault, indeed, uses a composite term "knowledge/power" to
indicate this unity.) Rather than embodying a desire for
disinterested truth, Foucault believes that knowledge is merely
another form of power; knowledge is merely the perspective which
those with power succeed in imposing on everyone else.
Affirmative analysis is said to rest on this false distinction between
knowledge and power, which Foucault labels as "the repressive
hypothesis." To reject the repressive hypothesis therefore requires
rejecting the affirmative.
In addition to a specific kritik of one of these three types (or some
hybrid thereof), arguments are frequently made pertaining to the
framework of the kritik, especially in terms of how it relates to the
idea of fiat. The initial "kritik of fiat" argued that fiat is utopian,
that no policy is really enacted at the end of the round. And
because no policy is adopted, the actual effects on the in-round
participants are more important than any policy conclusions which
might be reached. It became clear fairly quickly, however, that the
object of the kritik of fiat was something of a strawman. No one
ever really thought that real policies were put into place at the end
of the debate; all that happens is the judge makes a tentative
endorsement of one side or the other. And, while this tentative
endorsement may not be of earth-shattering significance, it has
some importance because our political judgments do matter--they
constitute forces in process of democratic decision-making and
they structure how we respond to our environment. Over time,
advocates of the kritik have come to recognize at least some of this,
and their arguments concerning the nature of fiat have been
refined. One approach, argued by Jon Brody, is that while policy
arguments may matter, they are not the only thing that matters.
Aspects of the round such as the participants' language also help to
structure their view of the world, and therefore should also count
in the decision calculus. Another alternative framework for
evaluating the kritik has recently been advanced by Bill Shanahan.
His current position is apparently that a vote for the kritik is
essentially a decision to "rethink" the idea or assumption in
question. In effect, this seems to be an attempt to redefine the kritik
as an alternative (such as a plan or a counterplan) which one can
vote for at the end of the round. We will discuss later on whether
or not this approach really disposes of the "no alternative" problem.
THE KRITIK'S INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND
In terms of its immediate genealogy, the kritik is part of the Austin
sound--it was initially developed by coaches and debaters at the
University of Texas. Probably the most influential of the kritik's
developers has been Bill Shanahan, though Joel Rollins, Ryan
Goodman, and others appear to have been important as well in the
kritik's initial development. More recently, Jon Brody, another
University of Texas debater has emerged as one of the kritik's
leading theorists and practitioners. (The two best articles defending
the kritik with which I am familiar are Shanahan's "Kritik of
Thinking," published in the 1993 Debater's Research Guide, and
Brody's essay, "The Praxis of Kritiks," available on Harvex.)
Speaking more broadly, however, the kritik brings together a
number of intellectual tendencies both within and outside of
debate. There is a good deal of intellectual background to be
grasped in order to really understand where the kritik is coming
from. Within debate itself the kritik seems mainly to represent an
extension of the tabula rasa perspective toward judging.
Tabula rasa judging is an attempt to minimize judge intervention;
it basically accepts all claims made in a debate on their face until
they have been answered. One result of a tabula rasa (or blank
slate) approach is that many arguments tend to be labelled as
"voting issues," which would not ordinarily be considered to be so.
Similarly, the kritik takes arguments which would not ordinarily be
absolute within the traditional policy framework and devises a
framework intended to make them into voting issues. the kritik also
has some affinities to hypothesis testing, both because it sometimes
focuses on resolutional rather than specific plan wording and
because it possesses an orientation toward academic scholarship
rather than practical political concerns. The kritik may also
embody vestiges of the old stock issues approach of straight
refutation. But, as noted above, it definitely departs from the
prevailing policy advocacy paradigm.
The kritik also has affinities to trends in contemporary politics,
especially the politics of the university campus. Over the past few
years, one of the hottest topics of academic controversy has been
the idea of "political correctness." One aspect of political
correctness has been a great increase in sensitivity to language
which might be disparaging to some group. Kritiks of language
obviously parallel this political correctness concern.
Most significantly, however, the kritik appears to be an attempt to
introduce some of the traditional problems of philosophy into
debate. Questions of cause and induction, rationality, and the state
are all familiar philosophical concerns. But, more particularly,
many if not most kritiks appear to be grounded in a specific
philosophical perspective, commonly termed "postmodernism."
(Postmodernism, in turn, has had a good deal of influence on the
politics of political correctness.)
"Postmodernism" is on its face a fairly ambiguous term. It is
probably most readily grasped as a historical concept. In the
traditional division, Western civilization has passed through three
stages: antiquity (the classic Greeks and Romans), the Middle
Ages, and the modern age. What postmodernism asserts, in part, is
that the modern age (or modernity) has ended or is coming to an
end. Postmodernity, therefore is the period coming after the
modern age. This is paradoxical, of course, since we commonly
equate the modern with the contemporary--that is, we customarily
think of ourselves as living in modern times. Furthermore, to say
that something comes after the modern age says nothing particular
about what that something is. The postmodern, it therefore seems,
can only be understood in relationship to the modern, and in many
ways as a reaction against the modern. Nor is postmodernism a
completely unified set of beliefs. Post-structuralism and
deconstruction, neopragmatism, radical feminism, and critical legal
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studies, among others, are all considered to be postmodern
philosophies.
In addition to offering a theory about history, postmodernism can
be understood as a criticism of and alternative to the prevailing
philosophy of modernity. To say that there is a single
characteristically modern perspective is a vast oversimplification.
Modern times arguably begin in the Renaissance Italy of the
fourteenth century. Modernity was certainly in full swing by the
seventeenth century, and it continued at least into the twentieth
century. Obviously not all moderns shared a single philosophy any
more (and probably less) than all postmoderns do. Nonetheless,
there are a set of characteristic beliefs which seem to typify the
modern view. Furthermore, it is precisely these characteristic
beliefs which postmodernism tends to attack and the kritik to
indict. So, to understand both postmodernism and the kritik, it
seems necessary to offer some discussion of the general world view
of modernity.
A belief in humanism is the first characteristic of the modern world
view. If the Middle Ages was the age of faith, the Renaissance and
the period which followed it placed far greater emphasis on
secular, human concerns in this world rather than in an afterlife. As
Alexander Pope, the eighteenth century poet put it: "The proper
study of mankind is man."
A second trait of the modern world view is an emphasis on
individualism. If a secular versus a religious focus is what mainly
separates the modern from the medieval, an emphasis on the
individual rather than on the group (the community or the polis, the
city or the state) is what is generally said to separate the modern
age from antiquity. In the typically modern view humans are
understood first as individuals and only secondly as members of
groups. This individualistic emphasis is in part an outgrowth of the
Protestant Reformation, which attacked the central authority of the
Catholic Church. An important expression of this attitude is the
modern emphasis on individual rights.
A third typical attitude of modernity is a belief in universalism.
This is the idea that values and standards should apply to all people
equally (or perhaps even to all rational or sentient beings). The two
major modern moral philosophies, utilitarianism and Kantian
deontology, both express this universalism. Utilitarianism seeks to
promote the greatest good for the greatest number. This might
seem like a rather communitarian approach, but for the utilitarian
overall utility is merely the sum of all individual utilities. And in
making this utilitarian calculation, the interests of everyone are to
count equally. Kant's ethical formula, the categorical imperative,
asserts that it is morally essential to act as if the principle on the
basis of which you are acting would be universalized. That is, if
you do something, you have to be willing to accept that everyone
else would do it too. In another version, Kant argues that the
fulfillment of the categorical imperative requires that one always
treat others as ends in themselves, not merely as means to some
other end. Thus, in effect, Kant unites universalism with
individualism. He universalizes the principle of respect for each
individual.
A fourth hallmark of modernity is the belief in rationality. In
essence, this view states that the world is rationally knowable
through observation and reflection. This belief dominated the
Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Both
of the predominant schools of modern philosophy are rationalistic
in a broad sense. The first school, the continental rationalists
begins with Descartes in the 1630s and continues through Spinoza
and Leibniz. Later descendants of this view include Kant and
Hegel. For the continental rationalists the world was objectively
knowable mainly through reflective thought. Descartes believed
that merely through reflection he could establish various
intellectually foundational truths, beginning with the certainty of
his own existence. The other major school of modern philosophy,
British empiricism, took a very different approach but still arrived
at the conclusion that the world is rationally knowable. For the
empiricists, the world is knowable through sense experience. This
empirical orientation arguably begins with Sir Francis Bacon in the
early 1600s. It was furthered by Hobbes and Locke in the later
seventeenth century and by Berkeley and Hume in the eighteenth
century. The utilitarians, such as Bentham and Mill, follow in this
empiricist tradition, as do such twentieth century analytical
philosophers as Bertrand Russell and A.J. Ayer.
Related especially to empiricism is a fifth characteristically modern
idea: science. Science was not of course invented in the modern
era, but modernity has been the period in which it flourished. The
seventeenth century was in particular a great period of scientific
discovery, with major figures ranging from Galileo to Newton,
Science rests on the belief that the world is knowable through
repeated observation and controlled experiment.
A sixth, related idea is progress. The view that human history is
essentially progressive, that despite its ups and downs things
generally tend to improve, is an old idea, but it is one which was
especially pronounced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Hegel's philosophy is perhaps the most systematic expression of
this idea. Hegel believed that both history and philosophy proceed
dialectically. In terms of intellectual matters, the dialectic occurs
as follows. One begins with an idea (a thesis). That idea, however,
is likely to be incomplete, and its inadequacies are likely to
generate a counter-idea, or antithesis. This antithesis too, however,
is likely to be onesided, so superior understanding is gained if the
two ideas can be combined to form a synthesis. The new synthesis
however, is still likely to leave something out; so in effect it
becomes a new thesis, generating a further antithesis, another
synthesis and so on. (Hegel himself may not have developed the
dialectic in precisely these terms; they are, however, the terms in
which his philosophy has commonly been understood.)
A similar dialectical process occurs in terms of human history. For
Hegel, history is the working out of the idea of rational freedom,
its progressive enlargement and completion. Though Hegel's is
obviously a theory of progress, it is a somewhat ambivalent one
because he believed that as of the early nineteenth century (the
period at which he was writing), the end of history had been
reached. In terms of politics, he saw the early nineteenth century
German state as the perfect embodiment of reason, a view that not
too many would embrace today. Furthermore, he saw his own
philosophy as the capstone of human thought, the final
philosophical synthesis. Not surprisingly, subsequent philosophers
disagreed; indeed, much of subsequent nineteenth philosophy,
from Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard to Marx and Nietzsche
represents a militant reaction against Hegel. Still, despite Hegel's
vagaries, the idea of progress remained extremely influential at
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least until the early twentieth century, when the period of the two
world wars provided it with something of a setback.
A seventh precept of modernity is the idea of freedom or liberty.
Freedom is a term which is used in an incredible variety of ways,
but two are important for present purposes. As a metaphysical
concept, freedom implies the idea of free will as opposed to
determinism. As a political doctrine it is associated with the belief
that people should possess both personal and political liberty.
These beliefs, especially the latter, are associated with the tradition
of natural rights and limited government which extends from
Locke to Jefferson and Madison to Mill.
An eighth and final characteristically modern view is the belief in
democratic problem solving. The Greeks, of course, are commonly
credited with having invented democracy, but the great expansion
of democratic institutions has occurred only over the past several
centuries. The English, American, and French Revolutions were
obviously important in the process of democratization, as was the
gradual extension of the franchise throughout the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. More broadly speaking, the democratic faith
appears to be that humans can collectively and rationally solve
problems. The twentieth century American philosopher John
Dewey has been among the foremost exponents of this view, and
it is certainly one of the most fundamental presuppositions
underlying policy debate--an activity which has been traditionally
conceived of as an adjunct to democratic decision making.
In contrast to the modern world view, the postmodern perspective
seems to reject each of these perspectives in all or in part. (It is of
course important to remember that there is no one postmodern
world view. But to be postmodern implies at least a departure from
the perspectives of modernity in some important particular.)
First, postmodernism tends to reject humanism. This rejection
occurs in part on environmental grounds. Humanism is
anthropocentric, and anthropocentrism is equated with
environmental destruction. The most prominent critic of
humanism, however, is probably the German philosopher, Martin
Heidegger. For Heidegger, the tendency to focus on human being
encourages the forgetfulness of Being in general. (Just what
Heidegger means by Being remains an open question.) The
Heideggerian rejection of humanism is associated with a doctrine
commonly termed "posthumanism," the source for a kritik of the
same name.
Second, postmodern perspectives tend to focus on the group rather
than the individual. Group identity based on class, race, gender,
ethnicity, or sexual orientation is what is seen as key. This attitude
tends to be associated with a kind of cultural determinism, one
which insists that individuals are socially constructed and that the
autonomous individual is a myth. Group orientation seems to be an
important part of "political correctness," and the rejection of the
autonomous individual is an important element of the normativity
kritik.
Third, postmoderns tend to embrace particularism rather than
universalism. In this regard, outlooks such as cultural relativism
and communitarianism appear to be characteristically postmodern.
Both these perspectives would insist that there are no universal
values or standards. Rather, values develop over time within
particular communities and cultures. From this standpoint, the idea
of universal human rights would seem especially misguided.
A fourth attribute of the postmodern view involves radical
skepticism towards the use of reason. Postmodern thinkers are
probably all anti-foundationalists, meaning that they believe that
there are no certain foundations for human knowledge. They thus
are skeptical both towards Cartesian rationalism and scientific
empiricism. According to the French philosopher Lyotard, what
distinguishes the postmodern is its rejection of all "grand
narratives," that is, all comprehensive explanations of human
reality. According to this perspective, great systems such as
Hegel's, Marx's, or Freud's inevitably fail. Any system is simply
one perspective on the world and therefore is bound to leave
something out. Finally, reason is seen in essentially political terms
, as an aspect of power rather than a disinterested instrument of
truth. The kritiks of reason and the Foucault-based kritiks
discussed above are obviously grounded in this outlook.
Fifth, for postmodernists, technophobia tends to replace the respect
for science. On one hand, based on postmodern
anti-foundationalism, the unique truth value of science is cast into
doubt; it is merely seen as another, no longer "privileged"
perspective. On the other hand, science and technology are seen as
profoundly destructive forces, massively increasing the
destructiveness of war and threatening the natural environment.
Sixth, postmodernism also tends to reject progress. One argument
is that all "progress" involves costs. The twentieth century may
have achieved a "higher" standard of living in purely material
terms, but it has been at the cost of a loss of religious faith, what
Max Weber, echoing Friedrich Schiller, called "the disenchantment
of the world." Furthermore, a belief in progress is undermined by
a widespread attitude that non-progressive forces dominate the
world, forces of racism, classism, and sexism. The twin threats of
nuclear war and environmental destruction have also cast a deep
shadow over the idea of progress.
Seventh, postmodernism tends to believe in determinism rather
than freedom. The individual is seen as trapped in a network of
vast impersonal forces. The autonomous self is rejected as a myth,
and the individual is seen as totally socially constructed. Again, the
kritik of normativity is grounded in part in this set of ideas.
Finally, postmodernism tends to replace the idea of constructive,
democratic problem solving with pure critique. Based on the
assumptions discussed above, it is easy to see why this would be
the case. If reason is inherently flawed, if no grand theories can
withstand scrutiny, then arguably all that one can do is to debunk
or deconstruct the theories that other have futilely attempted to
build. Again, the parallel to the kritik in debate seems obvious.
In sum, it seems fair to say that traditional policy debate rests on a
set of assumptions closely associated with the modern world view.
Similarly, the kritik seems to be associated in general with the
characteristic attitudes and assumptions of postmodernism. This is
not to say that all kritiks are grounded in postmodernism. The
kritik of statism is based on anarchist thought which is highly
rationalistic. Even Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism has been
turned into a kritik, and Rand would have embraced all of the
characteristic beliefs of modernity as I've described them and none
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of the beliefs of postmodernism. Still the idea of kritik itself seems
closely related to deconstruction, a primary technique of at least
one branch of postmodern thought. To deconstruct is in effect to
kritik, to indict without an alternative because in a world of
overwhelming uncertainties there really are no compelling
alternatives to embrace.
Unquestionably, postmodernism is a very important and influential
contemporary intellectual perspective. In fields such as sociology
and literary criticism it has been a pervasive presence; its influence
extends from architecture to law to philosophy. In some sections
of academia it has achieved something of the status of an
orthodoxy. Still, it would be a mistake to perceive the postmodern
perspective as intellectually triumphant. Certainly outside of
academia, characteristically modern attitudes continue to reign
supreme, and even within academia postmodernism remains an
embattled outlook, one challenged by many alternative views.
Postmodernism may well prove to be a kind of intellectual fad,
rather like existentialism was in the 1950s and 1960s. Some
authors even claim that in France, where many of its key ideas
originated, postmodernism is already obsolete. At any rate, it is
certainly not my intent to suggest that there is any kind of
historical inevitability at play in the displacement of modern ideas
by postmodern ones. The characteristically modern ideas detailed
above have been challenged but none has been decisively rejected.
Postmodernism enjoys the benefit of relative novelty, but novelty
wears out, as the proponents of communism eventually discovered.
This said, it still seems worthwhile to spend some time discussing
how the postmodern perspective emerged, if not to decisively
displace then certainly to challenge the modern perspective.
The modern period is most commonly said to begin with the Italian
Renaissance of the fourteenth century. Still, it was not until the
seventeenth century that the distinctively modern world view
seems to have been in full flower. The 1600s were a great era of
scientific advance, in astronomy and physics especially. Kepler and
Galileo were the great figures of the early part of the century, and
it climaxed in its later years with the development of the
Newtonian system. Newton, in particular, was seen as the great
unveiler of the mysteries of nature, and his work greatly expanded
the prestige of science.
The 1600s were also the century in which the major schools of
modern philosophy first distinctively emerged. Descartes attempted
to establish certain foundations for knowledge through a process
of systematic doubt and concluded by establishing a philosophical
system based on rationalism and mathematics. Francis Bacon, an
early apostle of the methods of experimental science, and his
followers, especially John Locke, established British empiricism,
the other leading school of modern philosophy. Locke and Thomas
Hobbes also made important contributions to political philosophy
developing early versions of the social contract theory.
Yet even in the seventeenth century, one of the most significant in
terms of modern science and philosophy, the modern view was
subject to extensive criticism. Its main attackers at this point were
Add religious conservatives, such as those members of the
Inquisition who forced Galileo to recant his defense of the
Copernican theory that the earth goes around the sun.
The eighteenth century is commonly seen as the age of reason, a
period of Enlightenment in which reason was virtually deified.
(Indeed, at one point in the French Resolution, reason was literally
deified.) This stereotypical view of the eighteenth century certainly
has some degree of validity. The French philosophers, figures such
as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Diderot, were great believers in
reason both as a means of combating religious prejudice and
hereditary privilege. The philosopher were for the most part
believers in the kind of social engineering of which liberals are still
accused today; they believed profoundly in the abilities of the
human mind to progressively reshape social realities. But even at
the height of the age of reason, there were counter-tendencies. The
radical skepticism of Hume, for example, placed severe limits on
the power of reason. And Jean-Jacques Rousseau, though often
classed among the philosopher, was a fervent critic of the modern
age. In contrast the highly mannered and artificial society of the
period of Louis XV, Rousseau defended the natural world and the
noble savage.
The philosophy of the eighteenth century climaxed in the work of
the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Kant is important for our
purposes for several reasons. First, Kant popularized the term
"kritik" in the world of philosophy. He wrote three famous
critiques: THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON (concerning
metaphysics and epistemology), THE CRITIQUE OF
PRACTICAL REASON (having to do with ethics), and THE
CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT (mainly about esthetics). I have
borrowed Kant's distinction between pure and practical reason in
my own categorization of the various types of kritiks. This
distinction is of more than terminological interest. In terms of pure
reason, that is in terms of what we can ultimately know, Kant
remains predominantly a skeptic (even though he purported to be
answering Hume's skepticism). For Kant, pure reason has the
ability to outline possibilities and alternatives but is largely
powerless to resolves the dilemmas that it creates. Thus, for
example, Kant sees the opposition between free will and
determinism to be one of the antinomies (oppositions) of pure
reason which pure reason itself is powerless to resolve. Practical
reason, however, is concerned with the realm of action, and the
belief in free will is a necessary assumption of all practical activity.
This distinction between what we can in theory doubt and what we
must practically assume in terms of any practical activity such as
politics suggests some limits to the skepticism which the kritik
embodies. Still, despite his critiques, Kant was essentially a
rationalist, especially in his ethical theory, in which he believed he
had established objective and universal standards of morality.
The nineteenth century in many ways continued the rationalism of
the eighteenth century. The utilitarian philosophers, most notably
Bentham and Mill, followed in the philosophical tradition of
British empiricism, and were active proponents of the use of reason
to solve social problems. And Hegel stands as one of the most
ambitious rationalists in the history of philosophy. But throughout
the nineteenth century, Hegel's belief in the supremacy of reason
was attacked in numerous ways. Schopenhauer downplayed the
importance of reason and stressed "the will to life" as the main
motivation. Kierkegaard rejected reason in favor of religious faith.
And Marx, of courser is said to have turned Hegel on his head,
accepting much of the Hegelian dialectic, but insisting that it is
material, economic forces which drive history not ideas.
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In literature, the romanticism of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries was a sustained attack on Enlightenment
rationalism. Wordsworth followed Rousseau in stressing nature
over the artificiality of human society. In his prophetic poems,
William Blake indicted "Urizen" (your reason) as an oppressive
tyrant. Percy Bysshe Shelley argued that the poet is the
unacknowledged legislator of mankind, and his wife, Mary
Shelley, wrote the classic anti-scientific masterpiece,
FRANKENSTEIN. In sum, the romantics tended to downplay
reason in favor of the powers of creative imagination.
This period, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries also
saw influential conservative critiques of the intellectual pretentions
of the Enlightenment. Edmund Burke, the British statesman and
philosopher, is commonly seen as the father of modern
conservatism. In his REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN
FRANCE, he defended an organic view of society and therefore
opposed ideas of mechanistic social engineering. He also opposed
the predominant emphasis on reason by defending decisions based
on the accumulated "prejudices" of a given cultural tradition. A
second conservative critic of the Enlightenment was the Reverend
Thomas Malthus. Malthus' "Essay on Populations was a sustained
attempt to show why the perfectibility of human society was
impossible (population will always outstrip resources). Though
neo-Malthusianism is considered today to be a philosophy of the
left, Malthus' own motives in writing his essay seem clearly
conservative--Enlightenment perspectives left too little room for
God. Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection also
dealt a blow to the power of reason, with its emphasis on blind,
instinctual forces.
As Jon Brody suggests, Karl Marx stands as a kind of transitional
figure, part modern, part anti-modern. He can be seen as in part a
debunker of the power of rational ideas. For him, economic forces,
not ideas, are what make history. He also stands as an early critic
of universalist moral thinking. Marx saw rights (and all other moral
formulations) as rationalizations for class oppression. Furthermore,
Marx's emphasis on the interests of the working class and his
defense of the dictatorship of the prolitariat constitutes a rejection
of the idea that all persons should be treated as ends in themselves.
Still, Marx was in many ways still a modern thinker. He believed
that he was a "scientific" economist, and he certainly saw history
as involving a progressive movement toward a socialist utopia.
Writing toward the end of the nineteenth century, the German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is the first thinker who is
commonly labelled as postmodern. Nietzsche is an extremely
complex thinker (though unlike Kant, Hegel, or Heidegger, he is
also an extremely readable one), and to approach Nietzsche
through the lens of postmodernism is only one of many ways to
understand his work. Nietzsche is also widely seen as an early
existentialist, and efforts have been made, notably by Columbia
philosopher Arthur Danto, to assimilate him to the tradition of
analytical philosophy. Other thinkers have depicted him as
everything from a liberal humanist to a proto-Nazi. My point in all
of this is that one can admire Nietzsche and still not follow him
very far down the postmodern path.
Nonetheless, there are still at least four major themes in Nietzsche
which have been very important for postmodern thought. The first
of these is the idea of cultural crisis. According to Nietzsche, God
is dead, and the loss of religious belief has brought the modern
world to a state of nihilism, a condition without viable moral
standards or beliefs. For Nietzsche, what this situation requires is
a new set of values, values which for Nietzsche would presumably
be both more aristocratic and more life enhancing. What
post-modernism has taken from Nietzsche is the sense of cultural
crisis, while at the same time essentially rejecting his alternative.
Second, Nietzsche has been extremely influential because of his
moral subjectivism. He argued that there are essentially two kinds
of morality, master morality and slave morality. Master morality,
which he obviously prefers, is associated with aristocratic
civilizations such as ancient Greece; slave morality he associates
with Christianity. Despite his obvious personal preferences,
Nietzsche fellows Hume in seeing the choice among basic moral
values as essentially arational. For Nietzsche, the philosopher is
not the discoverer of objective values but rather is a legislator or an
artistic creator of values. Again, the Nietzschean critique has
proven far more influential than the Nietzschean alternative. He
contributed strongly to contemporary doubt about the validity of
moral rationalism; his postmodern followers, however, have been
far less willing to propose a clear set of alternative values.
Third, it is also possible to derive from Nietzsche an extremely
radical epistemological skepticism. His position in this area is
commonly referred to as "perspectivism." Each person views the
world from a particular perspective or angle of vision, and all
perspectives are partial. This means at minimum that a claim such
as Hegel's to have produced the ultimate synthesis should be
treated with extreme skepticism. No philosophical system can be
all-encompassing or ever reveal definitive truth. It is clear that
Nietzsche meant his perspectivism to critique philosophical
systems such as Hegel's. Whether he would have agreed with the
more radical conclusion, drawn by some postmodernists, that all
perspectives are equivalent, none better than any other, is more
doubtful.
A fourth Nietzschean idea of great importance for postmodern
thought is the will to power. Most centrally, this is a theory about
human motivation. On one hand it is anti-utilitarian; whereas the
utilitarians believed that pleasure is the ultimate motive, Nietzsche
claimed that the ultimate motive is power. (Power is, of course, a
multifaceted notion. It can be equated with the sense of vitality in
a biological sense, power over others in a political sense, creative
artistic power, or even power over oneself.) The emphasis on
power also deemphasizes the idea of knowledge. For Nietzsche,
thought is not undertaken out of any will to disinterested truth but
rather is also an expression of the will to power. This idea is the
primary source of Foucault's conflation of knowledge and power.
In many ways, Nietzsche was not postmodern. His affinities for
aristocratic cultures like ancient Greece and his ideal of heroic
individualism (expressed in his concept of "the overman") would
find few fans among the postmodern or the politically correct. Still,
it is arguable that with Nietzsche there is a decisive turn in modern
thought. But it is highly contested just how that turn should be
interpreted.
Moving into the twentieth century, a certain paradox presents
itself. At an institutional level, the modern scientific world view
continues to reign supreme. Science and technology have made
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unprecedented progress, and, through bureaucracy, more and more
of social life has become subject to rationalistic and rationalizing
procedures, But among intellectuals the sense of cultural crisis has
continued to prevail, and even as human life has become more and
more rationalized, the power of reason has been more and more
disparaged.
Clearly one of the most influential thinkers of the century was the
Austrian psychologist, Sigmund Freud. With regard to reason,
Freud's ideas have a dual thrust. On one hand, he stresses the idea
of the unconscious--the forces of id and superego, of sex and
aggression, are seen as the dominant human motives. Yet Freud
considered his own work to be part of the Enlightenment project.
By understanding the irrational forces of the psyche, Freud thought
it was possible, at least in part, to bring them under the control of
the rational ego . He attempted, in sum, to rationally understand
and control human irrationality.
The sociological thought of the early twentieth century, as seen in
figures such as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, also displays an
ambivalence toward rationality. Weber in particular displays a
certain discontent with regard to the modern scientific world view
(a view which he nonetheless embraces). The rationalism of
modern life has led to "the disenchantment of the world," and it has
also led to the ascendancy of impersonal control, a process which
Weber sees as pretty much inevitable. This idea of pervasive
bureaucratic forces is presumably one source Schlag's kritik of
normativity. The rise of sociology has had another important
influence on postmodernism; it has substituted essentially
sociological explanations of human behavior for the primarily
biological explanations of the nineteenth century. Thus, it provides
an important source for the postmodern insistence on the "social
construction" of reality.
Another important cultural force which would strongly influence
postmodernism (as well as the rest of twentieth century) was the
development of "modernism" in literature as well as many other art
forms. The terms "modernism" is sometimes used as a synonym for
the belief system of the modern age. In this usage, its relationship
is to modernity what postmodernism is to postmodernity. But
"modernism" also has a technical meaning within literature and the
fine arts. It connotes a style of intense experimentalism, coupled
with what is often a rather bleak view of the modern world and
(especially} in literature) an attempt to formulate a new set of
myths appropriate to the modern age. Postmodernism is thus
closely related to modernism in its artistic sense; both are highly
critical of modern life. Perhaps the definitive work of modernist
literature was T.S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land," the title of
which serves as an extended metaphor for the modern world. Other
important literary modernists included James Joyce, Ezra Pound,
William Faulkner, and Franz Kafka. (Modernists in various other
art forms include Picasso, Stravinsky, and Frank Lloyd Wright.)
Literature which is commonly described as postmodern, including
the novels of John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Italo Calvino, and
Umberto Eco, continues in many ways the experimental emphasis
of early twentieth century modernism; in fact, the distinction
between modernism and postmodernism in literature is a much
disputed one. (In contrast, in architecture the difference between
modernism---which emphasized a unity of form and function, as
seen for example in skyscrapers and postmodernism--which tends
to be more eclectic and ornate--seems considerably greater. There
is a large literature exclusively devoted to postmodernism in
architecture.)
Modernism in the arts began well before the first world war, but it
was in the period immediately following the war that modernism
may have come into its full ascendancy. The war also, not
surprisingly, turned both literature and the other arts in a far more
pessimistic direction. What remained of the nineteenth century
faith in progress received a decisive shock. Perhaps the single work
which best captured this new cultural pessimism was a two volume
treatise entitled THE DECLINE OF THE WEST, by German
historian Oswald Spengler.
In place of the view that history is in the long run progressive,
Spender argued that civilizations are essentially organic entities,
possessing a period of growth, a time of maturity, and an inevitable
period of decline and death. As his title indicated, Spengler thought
that Western civilization was on the downward path.
It was in the midst of this climate of cultural pessimism that the
second major postmodern philosopher, Martin Heidegger began his
career. Heidegger has been a very influential philosopher, but he
is also a very obscure one. He also had an extremely long
philosophical career, living from 1889 to 1976. Given this, a
summary of his major ideas within this limited a scope seems
impossible, and I will only attempt to outline a few of his themes
especially those which have intersected with debate.
The major kritik which has been derived from Heidegger has been
titled "posthumanism." For Heidegger, most of the world's
problems stem from the narrow, anthropocentric attitude which
makes "man" the measure of all things. He especially sees modern,
technological civilization as shallow and riddled with
inauthenticity.
Heidegger believed that the excessive preoccupation with human
being and human problems results in the neglect of Being. Being
is Heidegger's central philosophical concept, but it remains an
extremely elusive one. We might think of Being as the totality of
what exists, or perhaps as that which exists apart from all particular
beings. But neither of these formulations is highly illuminating.
This obscurity has led many readers of Heidegger to view Being as
a kind of quasi-religious concept. Heidegger appears to take over
from Nietzsche the idea of a cultural crisis based on the death of
Cod. For Heidegger, it seems that the debased, fallen state of the
modern world is closely associated with the loss of faith which the
phrase "death of God" connotes. Even if we do not literally equate
Being with God, it seems that for Heidegger the recovery of Being
entails a revival of faith in something beyond the merely human.
Coupled with this indictment of the humanistic perspective is a
repudiation of the central thrust of the Western philosophical
tradition, at least from Socrates on. One aspect of this tradition
which Heidegger indicts is the distinction between subject and
object (the self-conscious ego versus the external world).
Heidegger seems to feel that this dichotomy obscures the degree to
which humans are immersed in the world. Heidegger coins the
phrase; "being-in-the world" to connote this sense of being situated
in rather than detached from reality. Heidegger also uses the term
"dasein," which means literally "being there" to refer to the human
condition. This appears to suggest that human being does not exist
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abstractly or in isolation but that human being is always being
there, in a particular situation.
Along with his critique of the Western philosophical tradition,
Heidegger is a critic of the technology which Western scientific
rationalism has produced. His indictment is basically that
technology represents a manipulative, instrumental attitude toward
the world, which is, once again, an attitude which tends to alienate
one from Being.
Given these beliefs, Heidegger seeks a fundamental reorientation
of philosophy. Whereas philosophy, especially modern philosophy,
has previously attempted to be like science, Heidegger believes
that philosophy should be more like poetry. Logic and careful
reasoning, therefore, are not central elements of Heidegger's
thought. Instead, his method of philosophy tends to be meditative
and contemplative, a kind of intellectual wandering which waits for
truth to "unveil" itself.
Heidegger has been associated with virtually all of the major
developments in continental European philosophy in the twentieth
century. His early work developed out of a philosophical approach
known as phenomenology. Developed by the German philosopher
Edmund Husserl, under whom Heidegger studied, phenomenology
attempts to arrive at an understanding of "the thing itself " through
a process of introspective psychological inquiry. Later on,
Heidegger would influence and be associated with the
existentialism of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartrean
existentialism, however, is self-avowedly humanistic, and
Heidegger emphatically insisted that he was neither a humanist nor
an existentialist, even though he is commonly categorized as such
and certainly shares some existentialist themes. Finally, of course,
Heidegger has been associated with the postmodernism of the past
twenty years.
For a period of twenty years or so following the Second World
War, the French existentialism of Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and
Albert Camus was the most influential philosophy in the world.
The central thesis of at least Sartrean existentialism is that there is
no pre-set human nature. Rather, existence precedes essence, a
formula which means basically that one becomes the person that
one is through experience rather than innate characteristics. This
anti-essentialism has been taken over by many postmodern
thinkers, but much of the rest of Sartre's philosophy has been
rejected. Sartre remains in many ways within the Cartesian
framework. Sartre's philosophy stresses consciousness and the
responsibility of each individual for the choices he or she makes
and the self that he or she becomes as a result of those choices.
In contrast to existentialism, structuralism, a far ranging
intellectual orientation which became popular in the 1960s and
1970s, views conscious choice as secondary and stresses the degree
to which behavior is determined by underlying structures of
various types. In a very broad sense, one could say that Marx and
Freud were both structuralists. Marx saw underlying economic
structures and Freud saw underlying psychological structures as
decisive, rather than conscious choice. In a narrower sense,
however, structuralism is grounded primarily in the linguistic
theories of Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure stressed the degree to
which thought is governed by the basic structures of language, and
this emphasis on the primacy of language has become a primary
theme of postmodern thought. Structuralism exerted a large
influence in virtually all of the social sciences, especially in
anthropology, where the work of Claude Levi-Strauss is central.
Pierre Schlag's insistence that humans are determined by
institutional structures also reveals a strongly structuralist
orientation.
In France, the intellectual orientation which succeeded
structuralism has been called, appropriately if ambiguously
enough, post-structuralism. Post-structuralism seems to be
simultaneously an extension of the principles of structuralism and
a reaction against some of those principles. Among the things
which leading post-structuralists such as Michel Foucault and
Jacques Derrida seem to have carried over from structuralism is the
emphasis on language. Foucault seems less concerned with
describing reality than with discussing "discourses" ostensibly
about reality. And in Derrida any idea of an objective, trans-human
reality seers to have pretty much disappeared; his emphasis is
solely on the reading, interpreting, and deconstructing of "texts."
(Among Derrida's most famous statements is the assertion that
"there is nothing outside the text.") This emphasis on the text is one
of the hallmarks of postmodern thought; at its extreme it expresses
itself in a tendency to refer to individual people as "texts." One
point of this rather extravagant metaphor seems to be to further
denigrate the idea of the subject (that is, the autonomous,
self-conscious ego). Rather than a self-directing, volitional being,
a text is something which is written (i.e., socially constructed) and
is there to be read and interpreted.
Post-structuralism and post modernism are sometimes used
interchangeably. To be more precise, however, post-structuralism
should be understood as one of a number of "postmodern"
philosophies. (Neo-pragmatism, radical feminism, and critical legal
studies have already been mentioned as other examples of
postmodern thought.) This said, it is also probably the case that
post-structuralism has been the most influential (and the most
radical) of these postmodern theories. When postmodernism is
generically indicted, it is probably the post-structuralist variant
which is being attacked. I've introduced these terminological
distinctions in order to try to clarify prevailing usage, but it should
be noted that all of these terms are ambiguous and used in
somewhat different ways by different authors.
The major ideas of Foucault which have had impact in debate have
already been discussed for the most part in terms of the specific
kritiks which his work has inspired, so I will just briefly summarize
a few of his major themes here. First, Foucault denies the
distinction between knowledge and power. Knowledge isn't
objective but rather is an interpretation which gains power over
others. Second, power is diffused throughout society in the form of
disciplinary controls; it is not simply the top down influence of a
central authority. Third, "reason" is seen as a method of
domination. In setting up the category of reason, we
simultaneously create the category of unreason or madness. This
thereby justifies the repression and institutionalization of the
"insane." Fourth, liberal reformism is generally seen, from a
Foucaultian perspective, as an instrument of social control.
Foucault sees the prison, for example, not as a means of controlling
crime but as a mechanism for branding a certain category of people
as "delinquent." Reforming the prison, however, is seen as merely
a means of extending and enhancing social control.
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The second major thinker whose work has been labelled
post-structuralist is Jacques Derrida. Even more than Heidegger,
Derrida's thought is extremely elusive (even Foucault criticizes him
for his obscurity), so I can only offer a tentative summary of some
of Derrida's themes. Probably Derrida's most influential idea is the
concept of deconstruction. In common usage, deconstruction seems
to have come to mean something very similar to what "kritik"
means in debate; that is, it involves the debunking or dismantling
of an idea or theory. For Derrida himself, deconstruction seems to
have a slightly different meaning. Derrida deconstructs
philosophical texts by revealing their internal contradictions. To
put it in a slightly different way, the central theme or point of
emphasis is displaced or decentered in favor of what had
previously been marginalized or neglected. The process of
deconstruction produces a new interpretation, but not necessarily
the "correct" interpretation, for the new perspective which thereby
emerges is likewise subject to deconstruction. The process of
deconstruction thus does not lead to "truth" or even to a superior
interpretation, but it does serve as a recurrent reminder that all
perspectives are partial, that all exclude or marginalize certain
considerations.
A second key concept for Derrida is the idea of "difference." This
term (which in the original French includes a pun on the words
"differ" and "defer") seems to have both a social and a linguistic
significance. In social terms, the emphasis on difference involves
an attack on the idea of universal standards. The argument would
be that the attempt to universalize or totalize always leaves
something out, always marginalizes some group. In what is
sometimes referred to as the politics of difference, the emphasis is
on what uniquely distinguishes a certain group, rather than what
unites them with others. In terms of language, Derrida sees
meaning as based on difference rather than resemblance. According
to the theory of meaning which Derrida attacks, words stand for or
represent objects in nature, or at least in the world outside of
language.
For Derrida, in contrast, language is essentially self-enclosed.
Words, for him, gain their meaning from their difference from
other words. What this seems to imply is that humans exist totally
within language; if there is an objective, external reality, we seem
to have no access to it . Hence, the emphasis on texts and on the
unending process of interpretation and reinterpretation.
Obviously, within this perspective, reason has limited power to
discover "truth," and indeed it is "logocentrism" (the emphasis on
logic and rationality) which Derrida seeks to displace from the
center of philosophy.
Though Derrida is a philosopher and most of his writing involves
the deconstruction of philosophical texts, his main influence has
not been in philosophy but rather in fields such as literary criticism.
In addition, both Derrida and Foucault have had considerable
influence on groups seeking to construct an "oppositional" politics.
It is relatively easy to see why groups such as radical feminists
would find post-structuralist thought appealing. Both Foucault and
Derrida are concerned with the oppression of marginalized groups,
and the idea of difference has proved appealing for groups seeking
to formulate a distinctive identity. Especially in the American
university, this post-structuralist/postmodernist species of thought
remains highly influential. It is possible, of course, to overstate the
extent of this influence. Postmodernism has had little if any
influence on the natural sciences, and even in important areas of
social science such as economics its influence seems negligible.
The idea, popular among many conservatives, that the whole
university has been taken over by "tenured radicals" is a definite
exaggeration.
Likewise, since this discussion has aimed primarily at explaining
the emergence of postmodern thought, it has tended to exaggerate
the importance of these postmodern tendencies. I therefore wish to
conclude this section by discussing a number of perspectives which
can be opposed to postmodernism. Some of them explicitly attack
the postmodern view, others represent perspectives which clearly
clash with postmodernism. Before doing this, however, I wish to
briefly draw a few conclusions from this description of the
emergence of postmodern thought. First, it should be noted that the
kritik of modernity is not something new; indeed, it is as old as
modernity itself. Religious conservatives have always been critics
of modernity, and the romanticism of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries was essentially opposed to modern scientific rationalism.
Second, the kritik seems grounded in modernity. Postmodern
thought is radically skeptical, but so to a substantial degree was
modern thought. Descartes may have thought that he had found a
foundational truth, but he began by doubting everything. Berkeley,
in the early eighteenth century managed to doubt external reality,
and Hume, only slightly later was questioning cause.
Postmodernism merely carries the critical, skeptical nature of
modern thought one step further.
Third, to some extent postmodern thought beats dead horses.
Bacon and Descartes are favorite targets, but both were writing in
the first half of the seventeenth century. Modern thought developed
a long way after them. Fourth and finally, it seems that many of the
insights of postmodernism can be accounted for within the
framework of the modern world view. Freud, for example,
recognized the profound force of irrational motives, but still
attempted to understand and control those forces within a
rationalistic framework.
One perspective from which postmodern thought can be fruitfully
criticized is pragmatism. Pragmatism is probably the leading
indigenous American philosophical tradition. With roots in the
writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, pragmatism was developed as
an explicit philosophy by Charles Pierce and William James in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The leading
pragmatist philosopher of the first half of the twentieth century was
John Dewey. Pragmatism is useful in this context because it
basically accepts the principle of anti-foundationalism (that no
knowledge is certain) and argues that that really doesn't matter. For
the pragmatist, truth is defined in terms of what works; thus even
if knowledge lacks absolutely certain foundations, we can still base
our actions on the probabilistic truths of our experience. In
particular, pragmatism tends to vindicate the use of science, since
science clearly has great predictive powers. Pragmatists, especially
Dewey, also tend to defend the viability of democratic
decision-making. Although pragmatism is not a new philosophy,
it has experienced a recent revival. The philosopher Richard Rorty
of the University of Virginia is probably the leading figure in this
neo-pragmatism. The problem here is that neo-pragmatism is
commonly classified as a postmodern philosophy. Nonetheless, it
still provides a perspective from which to attack such
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post-structuralist thinkers as Derrida and Foucault. Like
post-structuralism, neo-pragmatism accepts the limits of
knowledge, but, in the face of uncertainty, it seems far more
willing to say that we must still act on the basis of what knowledge
we have rather than simply suspending judgment altogether.
A perspective closely related to pragmatism is articulated by the
leading German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas. Habermas likewise
rejects eternal, external standards of rationality. But he also
believes that functional standards of rationality can be established
based on intersubjective agreement. That is, Habermas believes
that we can arrive at what are for us "good reasons" based on free
and equal dialogue. Habermas also defends the project of
modernity as an essentially valid one, believing that the basic
framework of Enlightenment thought needs to be refined rather
than rejected.
A third critic of postmodernism is the British sociologist Anthony
Giddens. Giddens argues that we are not, in fact, entering the
postmodern era, but that the basic social forces which characterized
modernity are still in play. According to Giddens, what we are now
experiencing is the period of "high modernity," analogous to the
high Middle Ages which followed the dark ages of the early
medieval period.
Among younger French philosophers, Luc Ferry and Alain Renault
have been especially critical of the "60s philosophy" they associate
with Foucault and Derrida. They see Foucault as largely a more
radical version of Nietzsche and Derrida as a radicalization of
Heidegger. They see similar tendencies in other thinkers of this
period to radicalize Freud and Marx. The basic point made by
Ferry and Renault appears to be that while great thinkers such as
Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud invariably have useful insights, that
they almost always overstate their central themes. So, for example,
Freud's emphasis on sex was a useful corrective to the Victorian
repression of sexual issues but still probably went too far in the
other direction. Similarly, Marx has a valid insight in noting the
influence of economics on history but goes too far in suggesting
that history is solely the product of economic forces. Postmodern
thought is characterized by its extremity; and while it may validly
criticize perspectives such as the extreme rationalism of the
eighteenth century, it goes too far if it rejects reason altogether.
Much of postmodern thought is ultimately directed against Hegel,
but Hegel also has his contemporary defenders. Francis Fukuyama,
a former State Department analyst who now works for the Rand
Corporation, offers one such defense. In THE END OF HISTORY
AND THE LAST MAN, Fukuyama argues that Hegel was
essentially right about the evolution of political institutions. What
Hegel glimpsed, and what the history of the twentieth century
confirms, is that liberal democratic institutions are indeed the best
form of government. Thus, arguably, history in terms of the
evolution of political structures is at an end. Kritiks such as
Foucault's gain much of their force from the sense that
contemporary society is intolerably oppressive. A perspective such
as Fukuyama's both restores a progressive movement to history and
denies the essential oppressiveness of contemporary institutions.
Sartre's existentialism provides another viewpoint from which to
attack postmodernism. While postmodernism tends towards social
and linguistic determinism, Sartre insists on the freedom and
responsibility of each individual. For Sartre, humans are free
essentially because they can envision alternative futures; the ability
to hold these different possibilities in consciousness is what gives
humans the power of choice. Because human beings possess the
authentic possibility of choice, they are not completely the
products of their society; humans are also self-creating and
therefore have responsibility for the selves which they have
produced.
Linguistic philosophy has been one of the central themes in
twentieth century Anglo-American thought in the twentieth
century. Associated with figures such as Bertrand Russell, Ludwig
Wittgenstein, and A.J.Ayer, linguistic philosophy offers another
perspective from which a good deal of postmodern thought can be
criticized. The basic insight of linguistic philosophy is that many
of the traditional problems of philosophy are essentially artifacts
of language. Thus, for example, it is argued by Ayer that
Heidegger's idea of "Being" is essentially empty. The idea of Being
is a linguistic confusion resulting from the grammatical structure
of the verb "to be." The verb "to be" is useful in ascribing attributes
to things; for example, the sky is blue. But the idea of being,
divorced as it is in Heidegger from any particular attributes, is
nonsensical; it is a grammatical fiction. One form of linguistic
philosophy is logical positivism. The central theme of logical
positivism is that statements are meaningful only if they are
objectively verifiable. One conclusion which Ayer and others draw
from this is that metaphysical statements (such as statements about
Being) are incapable of being tested and therefore are literally
meaningless.
The politics of difference can be effectively criticized from the
standpoint of liberal egalitarianism. According to Harvard
philosopher John Rawls a diverse society can only function with
a shared value of liberal tolerance. For difference to function
effectively, there must be a universal principle of respect for
difference. Without such a universal norm, the emphasis on
differences tends to pull societies apart, as the former Yugoslavia
all too graphically illustrates.
Ayn Rand's Objectivism is on almost every point diametrically
opposed to postmodernism. She was a particularly strong defender
of the position that the use of reason is key to human survival.
According to her, rationality is the one unique tool humans possess
which enables them to preserve their lives. Among the other
anti-postmodern themes in her thought is the belief that there is an
objective, external reality which is neither linguistically nor
socially conditioned, and her belief in the ethical primacy of the
individual.
While this obviously does not exhaust the list of anti-postmodern
perspectives, it should illustrate the point that there are many
vantage points from which postmodern thought can be critiqued.
For a good many years, debate has been drawn to counter-intuitive
positions--growth is bad, rights are bad, death checks are good,
even nuclear war is good. The appeal of such positions is that they
are so generic. Thus, they are able to turn a wide range of
affirmative advantages. Because of this generic utility, debaters
often invest a great deal of time and energy into researching such
positions, and because so much effort has been invested in them,
they tend to be popular. Nonetheless, when effectively countered
most of these counter-intuitive positions ultimately fail--the
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arguments in favor of the intuitive (life, rights, growth, etc.) prove
stronger. I believe that this is also the case in terms of most if not
all of the themes of postmodern thought.
In the end, there are probably good reasons why humanism,
individualism, universalism, reason, science, progress, freedom,
and democracy are valuable. Of course, this is all debatable, but
once one gets over the initial shock of hearing these intuitive
assumptions challenged, it should not be too difficult to muster a
defense. Furthermore, there are a limited number of core
assumptions which the affirmative needs to be ready to defend.
Many kritiks will, at least implicitly, attack the idea of reason or
the concept of the autonomous individual. Thus, more general
defenses of these concepts will be applicable in responding to
many different kritiks. For someone well prepared to defend the
modern, scientific world view, the various kritiks which are
grounded in postmodernism should not prove too daunting.
ANSWERING THE KRITIK
THE CASE FOR THE KRITIK
At this point I wish to turn from the more abstract consideration of
definition, categorization, and intellectual background to the more
immediately practical issue of arguments against the kritik. In order
to do this effectively, however, it seems useful to briefly indicate
common arguments made in favor of the kritik. It will be helpful
to keep some of these ideas in mind in the process of developing
anti-kritik arguments.
A first argument in favor of the kritik is that contemporary policy
debate is stagnating. An excessively narrow version of the policy
making paradigm has become the prevailing orthodoxy, and it
currently has a stranglehold on the debate process. The result of
this is the exclusion of innovative arguments and a failure to deal
with fundamental issues. Debate remains preoccupied with the
narrowly political (i.e., the Clinton disadvantage) and with the
apocalyptic (contrived scenarios leading to nuclear war or
environmental destruction).
Second, new ideas are good. Creative thought is said to be a key
value of debate, and the kritik is hailed as a central device for
introducing "new thinking" into an activity sadly in need of it.
Third, kritik proponents appeal to what is basically a classic liberal
defense of free enquiry. They argue, correctly I believe, that free
inquiry is a basic assumption of debate. Debate does seem to rest
in part on standard Millean arguments that truth will win out in the
battle of ideas. Given this premise, it is then argued that it
contradicts a basic value of debate to exclude unpopular positions.
Fourth, it is asserted that everything should be debatable. This
argument essentially restates the basic premise of the tabula rasa
judging framework. The standard arguments in favor of tabula rasa
mainly concern fairness. Judge intervention is said to be unfair to
the participants, to take the debating out of their hands and to put
it in the hands of the judge. More sophisticated defenders of tabula
rasa, such as the late Walter Ulrich, also argue for its educational
benefits. Tabula rasa does clearly emphasize one of debate's
primary values--direct clash.
Fifth, the kritik is said to be justified because it reflects and
translates into debate a controversy with which academia is deeply
engaged. The argument here is that the kritik is grounded in
postmodernism and deconstruction. These ideas are major concerns
within the university, and it frustrates debate's educational mission
to ignore such issues.
Sixth, while policy debate may be valuable, policy questions are
not the only ideas worth discussing. Basic philosophical and moral
issues are also worthy of debate, as are issues of language. The
ideas and attitudes we form in debate rounds are said to be more
important than particular policy conclusions.
Seventh, rejection of the kritik is said to be a mechanism of
exclusion. In some cases it excludes unpopular views. At other
times it involves a fairly explicit attempt to exclude certain people
from the activity. Arguments of the "so join LD" or "Go join
CEDA" variety are taken to be the equivalent of "Policy debate,
love it or leave it."
Finally, eighth, the questioning of all assumptions is either said or
implied to be intellectually liberating and empowering Such a
process of questioning offers hope of removing the blinders of our
social conditioning and to open up a brave new world of free
spirited thought.
None of these arguments is totally without merit, and we will
return to them at a later point in this essay. For the moment,
however, they can merely stand as a point of reference as we
consider the basic arguments against the kritik.
GENERAL TACTICS
I wish to begin this discussion of how to answer the kritik with
some tactical considerations. I believe that this will help to
illuminate many of the more specific arguments which will be
discussed subsequently.
First, it is almost always advisable to attack both the theory and
substance of the kritik. That is, one should make arguments both
against the kritik as an argument form and against the particulars
of the specific kritik. While an increasing number of judges are
coming to accept the kritik's theoretical legitimacy, many still do
not. Such judges expect its theoretical framework to be contested
and may even react unfavorably to arguments against the specifics
of the kritik if it is not. This said, it is also important to attack the
actual argument that the kritik is making.
Many judges do accept the kritik's theoretical legitimacy, and these
judges are likely to react unfavorably to what they see as a
mindlessly generic list of anti-kritik answers. Furthermore, most
kritiks should not be that difficult to answer. The more basic or
fundamental the assumption that they question, the more
counter-intuitive they are likely to be. But most kritiks are
persuasive enough that if they are allowed to carry their full
asserted weight, the option of voting affirmative is unlikely to be
very appealing. Finally, the more specific anti-kritik arguments
will often parallel and reinforce the more general ones.
Second, often the best arguments against particular kritiks occur on
what I would call "the middle level." At the highest level of
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generality are the arguments that the kritik is illegitimate as an
argument form. At the lowest level are arguments denying the
substantive claim advanced by the particular kritik. Mid-level
arguments are those which claim that this particular kritik is not a
reason to reject the particular affirmative plan. In effect, they deny
that the kritik is really addressing an essential assumption of
affirmative analysis. Often, in fact, it should be possible to win that
the affirmative doesn't make the assumption being indicted at all.
Or, even if affirmative evidence or analysis rests partly on such an
assumption, it may well be possible that there are other
independent reasons for voting affirmative.
Third, it is extremely important to pin down the kritik as early in
the debate as possible. Many kritiks can be answered on their
merits even without evidence, but to do so requires that you
understand the kritik from the outset. The less clear the kritik is the
more of a tendency there is to rely on generic anti-kritik arguments.
This is understandable, but it is still a counterproductive reaction.
Especially if the kritik is obscure in the lNC, it is important to
undertake a probing cross-ex. What assumption is being indicted?
Why should the affirmative be understood to be making that
assumption? Why is it critical to affirmative analysis? And why is
it false? This sort of series of questions should help in clarifying
initially hazy kritiks--or should serve to demonstrate their complete
lack of substance.
Fourth, be attentive to evolving kritiks. Many, if not most, kritiks
have a habit of mutating as the debate progresses. If the kritik has
been effectively pinned down in the lNC, it may be useful to repeat
the same basic series of questions in the 2NC cross-ex. This should
help to demonstrate if in fact the kritik has changed its fundamental
nature from one speech to the next. If the kritik does radically
mutate, then new answers are both legitimate and probably
necessary. Even if the kritik is not fundamentally transformed, it is
very likely to be significantly expanded and clarified. If the real
import of the kritik only becomes clear in the negative block, new
answers are probably legitimate. (A 2AC argument that the kritik
is vague and underdeveloped will help in justifying these new
responses.)
As a final related point, I believe that standup 1ARs are rarely
advisable if the negative has made a significant investment in a
kritik. Standup 1ARs tend to be highly mechanical speeches. They
work best on issues which are evidence intensive and which the
affirmative debaters clearly understand. Extending kritik answers
usually requires more thought and precision than a standup 1AR is
likely to provide.
Fifth, be willing to indict kritiks as fundamentally incoherent.
Sometimes kritiks, especially as presented in the 1NC, simply
make no sense. If this is the case, then you should say so. And, if
the kritik has been especially abusive either in terms of
underdevelopment or unclear presentation, you may wish not to
devote cross-ex time to having it clarified. Doing so may help the
negative more than it helps you. While there may be a time and
place for this tactic, it is a somewhat dangerous one. It might be
that the judge understood the kritik even if you didn't or that time
tradeoffs will be too unfavorable if you don't get a handle on the
kritik from the outset. In this case, you probably should try to have
the kritik clarified in cross-ex (or at least carefully read the 1NC
shell). Furthermore, even if you seek clarification, you can use the
unintelligibility of the 1NC presentation to bolster arguments
against the kritik's legitimacy. (Unintelligible presentation
especially strengthens the argument that philosophical kritiks can't
be effectively accommodated within the conventions of present
policy debate.) A minimum standard for any argument is
coherence, and highly abstract philosophical argument addressing
core assumptions should be held to especially high standards of
clarity. There are several common incoherences to which many
kritiks are prone. First, they will often make unsupported
assertions, for example, that the kritik renders all affirmative
analysis and evidence moot. If there is no reason given for this
conclusion, you need to say so. Again, good cross-examination can
help here. A second common incoherence is evidence which fails
to really support the argument being made. Of course, the
mistagging and overclaiming of evidence is not unique to kritiks,
but they may be especially prone to this abuse. Most debate
arguments are supported partly by evidence and partly by a story,
but kritiks are sometimes almost all story. The evidence on which
kritiks commonly rely is not produced for or directly related to a
policy context. This increases the likelihood of a gap between the
claim being made and the supporting evidential data. Again, if a
piece of evidence doesn't support the accompanying claim or story,
it is important to point this out. Also, sometimes the evidence read
will support one part of the story but not another; again, such
evidential gaps should be noted. Two final points about the general
issue of the coherence of kritiks are worth noting. First, the specific
practice of the negative team may well support the general claim
that difficult philosophical issues cannot be debated at two hundred
and fifty words per minute. This is not an indictment of a kritik
which is clearly and coherently presented, but it may well be a
powerful indictment of one that is not.
Second, although this should be carefully done, you may in effect
wish to challenge the judge, arguing that if he or she can
coherently explain the kritik after the round, then s/he should
consider voting on it, but that if even s/he can't articulate its logic,
then you can hardly be expected to answer it. This may help to
dramatize the fact that this particular kritik really is incoherent. Of
course, this tactic will only work if it can be carried out in a
non-antagonistic fashion--something difficult for many debaters.
Sixth, you may wish to deny that you are in fact making the
assumption being indicted at all. Often kritiks seem to force
assumptions onto opposing teams which they don't really make.
Kritiks are, after all, generics, so there is no reason to assume that
a generic kritik will link better to a particular affirmative than will
a generic disadvantage.
Seventh, you can often deny that the indicted assumption is crucial
to your analysis. In effect, this is an argument that the kritik is not
absolute. If, for example, the affirmative is claiming both a
rights-based and a non-rights based advantage and the negative
responds with a kritik of rights, the logical force of the kritik is
only to neutralize the rights-related portion of the case. (The
negative might argue that the kritik in fact turns the rights
advantage, but given the ubiquity of rights claims in our culture,
the turn is unlikely to be unique.) A second way in which the kritik
may not be absolute is that its uncertainty makes it less than a
voting issue. For example, the real impact of a kritik of causality
is to undermine reliable predictions of affirmative solvency. But if
there is any chance that causality is valid, then there is likewise a
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chance that the plan can solve. Given no disadvantage, this chance
of solvency would seem to be sufficient reason to vote affirmative.
Sometimes the negative will argue in response that if a key
affirmative assumption is probably false that this in itself justifies
voting negative. This argument seems flawed, however, because it
misunderstands what the affirmative needs to do to justify the
endorsement of its plan. Depending on the nature of the risks
involved, almost all of one team's analysis could be wrong and
their policy option could still be justified. Policies are often
designed not to secure the most likely outcome but to preclude (or
render less likely) some relatively remote possibility. The classic
example of this is nuclear weapons policy. Hopefully, at the
present time the risk of general nuclear war is not very high.
Nonetheless, it would be foolhardy not to do whatever can be done
to further reduce that risk (assuming no offsetting disadvantages).
So, a central premise of an affirmative case might well be that the
world is a very risky place, and the negative might be able to
almost totally undermine that assumption. But even if the
affirmative analysis is almost totally wrong, any chance that they
are right would still justify voting affirmative, absent disadvantage.
Although the idea of risk is most dramatically illustrated in terms
of large impact scenarios, the same logic applies in less extreme
situations. Possible benefits, no matter how remote, are still a
reason to act, as long as there is no risk associated with that action.
Eighth, you should be prepared to defend those assumptions which
you think are likely to be challenged. There are not so many kritiks
in the world that this should prove to be an impossible task (and
many kritiks have commonalities permitting generic response).
Assumptions such as the validity of causation or the necessity of
the state should not prove impossible to defend; there are good
reasons why these assumptions are so commonly taken for granted.
Much of the force of a kritik often stems from its shock value--the
argument it makes will seem so implausible that it may be difficult
to attack. In instances like this, a little reflective thought and a
modicum of common sense can do wonders.
Ninth, kritiks can often be effectively "permuted." This can be
accomplished in at least two ways. First, some kritiks will prove
susceptible to fairly standard policy permutations. This is because
a number of kritiks (such as statism) do, in effect suggest
alternative policies, such as anarchy. If there is an implicit
alternative lurking within the kritik, then you may well want to
make that alternative explicit in order to permute. In the case of
statism, the obvious permutation is to abolish all government
except for the those portions needed to carry out the plan. Second,
in the case of kritiks which do not contain implicit policy
alternatives, it is still possible to employ a kind of conceptual
permutation. For example, even if rationality is rejected, it might
still be possible to justify an affirmative plan on emotive grounds.
The argument is, in effect, that the judge can embrace the kritik and
still have a reason to vote affirmative.
Tenth, it is important to recognize that kritiks do differ. One set of
all purpose anti-kritik blocks will therefore prove less useful than
will blocks geared to specific types of kritiks. Many of the
arguments against language kritiks, for example, apply only to that
type of kritik. Similarly, arguments against highly abstract
philosophical kritiks may not apply well to a fairly narrowly
tailored, topic-specific kritik. Sometimes the answers to one type
of kritik will even feed another, different kritik. For example, a
defense of rationality would probably be useful against a
postmodern kritik, but might tend to support an essentially
rationalist kritik such as statism. What seems best, in light of this,
is to have one general anti-kritik block, including one's most
generic anti-kritik arguments and to have another block answering
each of the major types of kritiks: language, metaphysics,
epistemology, ethics, and politics. Finally, you should have blocks
answering particular kritiks whenever possible. Even kritiks with
common names, such as statism, will differ in terms of their
particular development. Recognizing the distinctiveness of each
particular kritik is essential.
Eleventh, it may sometimes be advisable to argue counter-kritiks.
Counter-kritiks can take at least two forms. First, one could issue
a kritik of some assumption of your opponents' language or
analysis. This would not, of course, relieve you of the
responsibility for answering their kritik but it might help to offset
its impact. A second, and I think preferable, alternative is to attack
some underlying assumption of the kritik.
This might be an assumption generic to all kritiks, such as the
desirability of questioning all assumptions, or it might be an
assumption specific to one type of kritik. Finally, it might be an
assumption specific to one particular kritik. For example, Pierre
Schlag, the main source for the kritik of normativity, explicitly
appeals to deconstruction as one source of his analysis. Thus, it
could be argued that if deconstruction is a bankrupt method, that
the normativity kritik also fails. In fact, arguments against
postmodernism and deconstruction are probably applicable to quite
a few kritiks.
A twelfth suggestion is to try to think about how the kritik would
function as a policy argument. In terms of its policy implications
does the kritik function as a counterplan, a disadvantage, a
solvency argument, or as something else? By thinking about what
the kritik's logical weight would be as a policy argument, you are
likely to be better able to think of how to attack it. If it functions
basically as a disadvantages then questions of link, uniqueness, and
impact are obviously raised. As a solvency argument, the kritik
will raise issues of absoluteness. If it is implicitly a counterplan, a
different set of arguments will come to mind. The negative may of
course argue that the kritik should not be construed in policy terms,
but many judges will be more comfortable in conceptualizing it as
such. Furthermore, most kritiks have policy implications
independent of their kritik impacts and it is important to forestall
their evolution into a policy argument. It might even be suggested
that argument labels are really irrelevant. Like any other argument
by the negative, the kritik involves a claim, a link to the
affirmative, and an impact. If it can be defeated at one of these
three levels, then what the argument is called may not be all that
important. What is most counter-intuitive about many kritiks is the
impact claim--that argument X should be a voting issue. But
debaters made dubious claims that things should be voting issues
long before kritiks emerged. Any claim that something is a voting
issue should serve as a red flag commanding your attention. To
label something a kritik may be in effect nothing more than a
shorthand way of saying, "this is a voter."
My thirteenth and last tactical suggestion is to combine evidential
and analytical arguments against the kritik. This seems rather
obvious advice coming in the introduction to a handbook
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containing over a thousand anti-kritik cards, but its rationale is
worth at least briefly expanding on. Obviously when attacking the
substance of a kritik, evidence will often be useful and sometimes
essential. Even in debating the theory of the kritik, evidence can
help. For better or worse, carded arguments simply receieve more
credibility from ost debate judges. Theory debates often degenerate
into wars of tag lines, and reading evidence may help to keep such
debate on a somehwta higheer intellectual level. But, just as in
answering a disadvantage, analytical arguments have a definite
place, especially at the link level. As I suggested above, sometimes
the strongest arguments against a kritik will challenge its link to
the particular affirmative.
Analytical arguments also help to diversify one's set of 2AC
answers. Still, in the end, many judges are likely to call for the
cards, and for that reason analysis in the evidence is more likely to
be better understood and given more weight than the analysis of
the debaters themselves.
GENERAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE KRITIK
In this section I will consider some arguments which can be made
against almost all kritiks. This is not to say that these arguments
should be made in every kritik round; selectiveness is always
necessary, especially since more specific answers are usually more
powerful. Still, in most kritik rounds you should probably make at
least one of the standard anti-kritik arguments, and against new and
unanticipated kritiks they may be especially important.
I suggested at the outset of this essay that the kritik itself rests on
a number of assumptions. Among these are that the policy
framework is itself subject to kritik, that all assumptions are
appropriate to question, that the negative need not propose an
alternative, and that the kritik can be run with other, apparently
inconsistent, policy arguments. In the discussion of the kritik's
intellectual background, it was also argued that the kritik relies
heavily on the intellectual postulates of postmodernism and that the
kritik closely parallels the process of deconstruction. Each of the
four major theoretical assumptions of the kritik is subject to attack,
as are its philosophical roots.
A first major argument is that to be relevant the kritik must
function within the framework of public policy debate. At one
level, this argument may do limited damage to the kritik. Almost
all kritiks do function, at least to some extent, within the policy
framework; that is, they deny value claims, offer counter-values,
impugn solvency, postulate implicit counterplans, etc. But, at
another level, the insistence on the policy framework obviously
does great damage to the kritik. In effect, it denies that the kritik is
a unique argument form; it functionally transforms "kritik" into
mere "critique"--that is, an everyday argument against some aspect
of the affirmative. And, of course, the reason most kritiks are
presented as such is that they lack some necessary element of a
sound policy argument--uniqueness, impact at the policy level, etc.
Why should "policy debate" be regarded as an exclusively policy
forum? Opponents of the kritik stress the importance of public
policy issues, but kritik proponents can persuasively argue that
other basic moral and philosophical issues, as well as questions of
sensitive language use, are also important. The real issue here,
however, is not whether certain kinds of issues are important (I at
least am perfectly willing to concede that they are) but whether
they are relevant, that is, germane to the subject at hand.
Academic debate is not a soapbox or a radio talk show, that is, an
essentially open forum where opinions on any subject whatsoever
can be expressed. Rather, debate has a subject matter, and that
subject matter determines in large part what arguments are
relevant. What is the subject matter of debate? At the simplest
level, it would seem to be the resolution. The resolution is, after all,
the topic which the debate community has chosen to discuss. In
practice, however, we do not really debate resolutions; rather, we
debate examples of resolutions, that is, particular affirmative plans.
(Plans must of course also pass tests of germaneness; that is, they
must actually be examples of the resolution.) There are a number
of reasons why a focus on specific plans rather than the resolution
as a general statement seems preferable. First, the kinds of
resolution commonly debated tend to be too broad and vague to
meaningfully endorse or reject as a general proposition. Second,
the attempt to treat the resolution as a kind of general statement
entails various theoretical conundrums such as counterwarrants.
(Counterwarrants attempt to disprove the resolution by attacking
a different example from the one proposed by the affirmative.) The
standard answer to the counterwarrants objection is that the
resolution can be proven true by one example. This seems to be a
valid point, but it again brings us back to debating specific plans
rather than the resolution as a whole. Furthermore, this answer
seems, at the same time that it rejects counterwarrants, to embrace
the idea of alternative justification--that the affirmative can offer
multiple examples of the resolution, and that if they win that any
one of them is a good idea, they should win the round. Especially
on bidirectional topics, the acceptance of alternative justification
massively skews debate toward the affirmative. Finally, one can
question whether or not the focus on the resolution really has any
significant truth value. Most debate topics are very broad,
suggesting hundreds, if not thousands of possible plans. The
likelihood that none of those numerous alternatives is in fact a
good idea seems on face to be incredibly remote. Thus, it seems
that the literal "truth" of the resolution is almost a foregone
conclusion, and the real question becomes what examples of the
resolution are valid, not whether there is a valid example of the
resolution. And, if one is focusing on a particular policy, then
minimizing resolutional concerns (for example, with regard to
topicality of counterplans) seems better calculated to help in
finding the best policy.
This brief defense of plan versus resolutional focus may or may not
be persuasive. But even if one accepts resolutional focus, the basic
point remains the same: each individual debate has a subject,
whether the resolution or a particular plan, and to be relevant,
arguments must be germane to that subject. What this means in
practice is that all negative arguments must be reasons to reject the
affirmative plan, or at least the resolution. (As an aside,
resolutional focus does seem to allow more scope for the kritik
than plan focus because it allows debate over the resolution's
specific wording.) The fact that the negative has come up with an
issue which is interesting or worthy of discussion in its own right
does not make it relevant to the debate at hand. Egyptian
archeology is an interesting and worthy subject, but I have never
heard a debate in which its issues were relevant.
The negative, of course, will argue in response that its kritik is a
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reason to reject the specific affirmative plan--if the affirmative plan
rests on a certain assumption and that assumption is fundamentally
flawed, then the affirmative plan should be rejected. Again, though,
this seems to confuse a statement about the relative truth of some
component of affirmative analysis with a statement about the
relative truth of the affirmative's overall position. Under certain
circumstances, remember, the affirmative can lose most of the
arguments it makes and still win. This is because, absent a
disadvantage, the chance that a plan might have an advantage is a
sufficient reason for endorsing it. To simply cast substantial doubt
on even the most basic premise of an affirmative's analysis is not
enough in itself to discredit its policy conclusion. Most policy
decisions are made in the face of considerable doubts. What
matters therefore is not so much the certainty of an advantage but
the overall direction of risk. What the kritik seems to try to do is to
in a sense revert to the old stock issues standard that if the negative
raises lots of doubt about the affirmative's analysis, they should
win. The standard answer to this is that even marginal, comparative
advantages justify an overall policy conclusion, unless there are
equal offsetting risks. This method of policy analysis can be
challenged (for example, based on some theory of presumption),
but to the best of my knowledge no pro-kritik theorist has seriously
attempted to do so.
If fed into a consistent policy framework (even a liberal one which
might allow conditionality or radically counter-intuitive value
arguments), the kritik is likely to fail. It simply will not be
absolute. Since causality might be true, doubts about it are not a
reason to vote negative. (Such doubts would equally implicate any
disadvantage.) If reason has any credibility, then a rationally
justified plan should be accepted, absent an alternative
decision-making process which is shown to lead to the contrary
conclusion. (It should not be enough for the negative to suggest
alternative modes of decision-making; they need to show that they
would lead to rejecting the plan.) If there's any chance of
constructively altering the network of power relations, then it is
worth trying. To put simply, at root, the kritik misunderstands the
nature of the policy calculus.
Another implication of accepting a basic public policy framework
is that not only are most kritiks not absolute, but many kritiks are
absolutely not relevant. The position here is that all arguments
occur within a context, and that context determines what arguments
are relevant. In a discussion over where to go to dinner, an
argument over the logical status of cause would not be considered
relevant. In a debate in Congress over gun control, questions of
fundamental ontology (the nature of being) would not be
considered germane. In a biology class, the question of the
existence of other minds would simply never come up. In terms of
policy debate, the point is very similar. In debating a specific
policy or a specific policy proposition, arguments occur on a
certain level of abstraction.
This is not to say that argument over specific policies never appeals
to higher levels of abstraction. All policy argument is grounded in
certain moral conceptions, so different moral values are often
appropriately discussed. Sometimes general questions of political
theory may be relevant, but it extremely rare that a specific policy
discussion would ever invoke fundamental metaphysical or
epistemological concerns. Within any context in which specific
policies would be debated, standard assumptions about these
philosophical issues would be simply taken for granted.
This basic argument, that specific policy propositions delimit a
sphere of appropriate argumentative response, was made some
years ago in the context of the so-called "utopian" counterplans
such as anarchy and world government. The argument was made
that the topic assumes the existence of an international system of
distinct nation states and that not to make this assumption imagines
away the real world context and concerns which generated the
topic to begin with.The same argument can be made in the context
of kritiks. Distinct nations exist and will continue to exist, and any
topic asking what one nation should do in relation to another
assumes that such an international arrangement prevails (It does
not necessarily assume that it is good, but it does correctly assume
that it does exist.) Given this, it may not be useful to question
whether or not the state system should exist. It does exist, and its
existence provides the context within which the particular topic has
been raised.
How does one determine what arguments are germane, or, to put
it another way, what determines the appropriate realm of
discourse? In the context of counterplans, I have argued that a field
context standard is the most appropriate. If a counterplan is
proposed in the literature surrounding the topic, then it is
presumably germane; otherwise, it probably is not. This standard
has its limits and its ambiguities, but it does parallel a major
standard, field context, used in determining the germaneness (i.e.,
the topicality) of affirmative plans. A similar standard could be
profitably applied to kritiks.
The alternative standard, which the defenders of kritiks would
presumably propose, is that arguments are relevant if they can be
logically related to affirmative analysis. Thus, for example, since
the kritik of causality is logically related to solvency, it would be
relevant. This is, however, a somewhat odd standard for a theory
of argument based in postmodern thought to defend.
Postmodernism, after all, indicts absolute standards of rational
judgment and defends instead the position that truths are always
situational and contextual. To make no concessions to the
contextual limits of argument seems like an odd position for a
postmodern theory to take.
Why should we assume that our basic subject matter is policy
debate? Several considerations converge to support this judgment.
First, the topic being debated is a proposition of policy. Second, a
defining characteristic of one branch of this activity is policy
debate. The selection of policy topics is not incidental but rather
reflects an important part of the activity's self-definition. Finally,
and perhaps most importantly, debate has to began somewhere. It
either begins with the plan or with the resolution. And if either a
policy plan or a policy proposition is the center of the discussion,
then by definition it seems to be a policy discussion which is being
undertaken, with whatever limits are appropriate to policy
discourse taken for granted.
The attempt to displace policy concerns from the center of debate
rested initially on the argument that fiat is utopian because nothing
really happens at the end of the round. Problems with this theory
of fiat have already been discussed. No one ever really thought that
fiat actually put policies into place; it is simply an assumption of
action, made in order to assess desirability. What does happen at
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the end of the round is that a tentative judgment is made
concerning the desirability of the affirmative plan. The judge either
endorses the affirmative plan or withholds his or her endorsement.
Still, a real judgment based on the arguments in the round has been
made (To this extent, arguments that debate is not real world seem
misguided. The issues are real, the arguments are real, the
participants are real, and a real decision is made. ) Furthermore, the
process of arguing for and making decisions about public policy
questions is an important one. Citizens in a democracy have at least
some influence on public decisions and an accompanying
responsibility to be informed. Many debaters do rise to positions
of power and influence, either as actual decision makers or as
opinion leaders. Finally, even for the most apolitical, awareness of
public policy issues can be important if only for self--defense. It's
hard to know how to resist oppression if public policy issues are
being ignored. Indeed, to resist oppression at all (especially in an
intelligent way) requires some sensitivity to the nuances of public
policy.
At this point, probably few kritik proponents would argue that
policy debate has no value (though this is of course what the kritik
of normativity directly asserts). Instead, they will argue that while
policy concerns may have importance, so do other issues, for
example, questions of language. Most of thee arguments against
this position will be discussed under the section on answers to
kritiks of language, but a couple of points are worth mentioning at
this juncture. First, the things that are most important either to us
personally or in the cosmic scheme of things may still not be
relevant to the topic which has been selected for debate. If
immediate relevance to our lives were the ultimate standards then
kritiks of attire or personal hygiene would seem to come into play.
If we rule out kritiks like these as not relevant to whether or not the
plan is a good idea, then it seems that arguments about the rhetoric
of the resolution, evidence, or analysis would not be very relevant
either.
Second, the "other issues should be weighed" standard seems to
completely lack any principled method for weighing arguments.
How does one weigh the risk of a policy impact against a
somewhat prejudicial use of language? It is a classic case of apples
and oranges, that is, of ideas which are completely
incommensurate. One might reasonably claim that one or the other
takes priority, but to try to weigh them against each other seems
completely arbitrary.
The argument is also sometimes made that the suspension of policy
debate in light of other issues is not unique to the kritik; it also
occurs in the case of typicality and evidence falsification. At least
two points can be made in terms of this argument. First, both of
these suspensions of the consideration of policy alternatives
arguably serve as means of safeguarding the policy
decision-making process. Topicality serves to assure that it is a
relevant policy which has been proposed. Voting against teams
who misrepresent evidence is generally seen as necessary to assure
the integrity of the policy discussion process. Finally, even if some
ethical infractions might justify a decision, it seems that these
should be significant violations of shared standards. An infelicitous
word choice hardly seems to justify calling out the heavy moral
artillery.
One final point should be made about the defense of the policy
framework. These arguments need not bee the equivalent to "policy
debate, love it or leave it." They are merely arguments about
whether the negative position is germane to the affirmative. They
no more exclude or marginalize the negative than a topicality
argument marginalizes the affirmative. In both cases, arguments
are dismissed as not relevant to the issues at hand, but there is no
implication that the people making those arguments should quit
policy debate--rather, they should make arguments within its
framework.
The second major premise of the kritik is that it is appropriate to
question all assumptions. But this assumption can itself be
questioned. A first problem with the questioning of all assumptions
is its potential for infinite regression. Every answer given to every
question can itself be questioned. How do we know we exist?
Because we have an immediate intuition of our existence. Why
should we believe our immediate intuitions? Because that's the way
in which our minds are structured. Why are our minds structured
that way? Well, perhaps because of the pressures of natural
selection. How do we know that natural selection is a valid theory?
It seems clear that this questioning process could continued
infinitely. At some point, certain axioms have to be accepted as
self-evident; otherwise no provisional judgments are ever possible.
To ask, as Heidegger did, why is there something rather than
nothing? may be simply meaningless. There is something, and why
there is may well be completely moot.
The problem of infinite regressiveness seems especially acute if
one accepts, as postmodernists typically do, the validity of
anti-foundationalism. If there are no ultimate intellectual
certainties, the questioning of all assumptions will by definition
lead into an infinite loop. One can only act on assumptions which
seem most plausible. Even if this is true, of course, the question
still remains of what assumptions we should question and which
ones we should accept. Again, the best answer seems to be that this
should be determined by the context of the discussion. In the
context of a Malthus debate, the assumption that death checks are
always bad is probably not an appropriate one to make, but for
babysitters it is an excellent assumption.
The infinite regress objection is sometimes dismissed as overly
theoretical, as not a problem that would actually arise in a debate.
There have been debates, however, where the negative has
regressed to the point of questioning whether human life has any
value. At that point there really seems to be not much further to go.
Mill's answer was that things have value because people value
them. If an answer like that is unacceptable, then it is hard to know
how one would go about validating such a fundamental value
question.
The second major objection to the questioning of all assumptions
is that it leads to nihilism, that is, the belief in nothing. To revert to
the above example, to vote negative because the affirmative cannot
"prove" that life has value seems to me, at least, to be profoundly
nihilistic. Is it really good to question whether racism or sexism are
bad? Hitler's questioning of the basic assumptions of liberal
humanism is certainly not a very savory example. Nor, once again,
is this problem academic. Precisely because ultimate values are so
difficult to justify, incessantly questioning them can really lead to
radical skepticism. And, as Dostoevsky put it, if nothing is true,
everything is permitted, from mayhem to mass murder.
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The third major assumption of the kritik is that the negative need
not defend a policy alternative. The basic argument against this
stance is that policy argument is inherently comparative. All policy
alternatives involve costs, and all possess flaws. As Churchill
noted about democracy, it is the worst system of government
except for all the rest. If the negative is allowed to simply kritik the
affirmative proposal they will inevitably find flaws, but unless
there is some better alternative, even a flawed proposal is best. If
imperfect analysis or an imperfect policy is a basis for voting
negative, then the negative should always win.
Sometimes pure kritik is defended on the grounds that critical
thinking is the central skill which debate has to teach. While I
would not deny the value of critical thought, learning to think
constructively is also important. The world's real problems require
real, if imperfect solutions. To encourage an attitude which
promotes pure criticism without any appeal to a constructive
alternative seems fundamentally irresponsible. Nor is the kind of
carping criticism which offers no alternative usually very
persuasive in most argument situations.
In its defense of non-comparative argument, what the kritik seems
to assure is that the focus of the debate is the affirmative's analysis
(including its rhetoric) and not the affirmative plan. The point once
again needs to be made that an affirmative's case might be almost
totally flawed while still justifying at the margin that its plan is a
good idea. Rhetoric and analysis are merely means to the end of
justifying the policy. Affirmative assumptions need not all be
totally true to accomplish this end; even the chance that an
assumption is true gives the plan a net benefit, and a net benefit (or
comparative advantage) is enough, all things equal, to justify a
policy. The end of proving its plan desirable can still be sustained
even if most affirmative arguments are extremely dubious.
The kritik also seems to rest on the flawed assumption that
arguments should be judged in black and white terms, rather than
in terms of probabilities. In fact, the only absolute judgment which
the judge needs to make is for or against the plan. On most other
issues there is likely to be some doubt at the end of the round (at
least if they have been meaningfully contested). Few kritiks (or
critiques) are so devastating that one would conclude that they are
one hundred percent certain. But absent such certainty, and lacking
an alternative, they should rarely amount to more than partial
arguments reducing an affirmative advantage. Again it seems
paradoxical that a debate theory which purports to be based in a
philosophy as relativistic about truth claims as postmodernism
would insist on the judge making absolute judgments rather than
recognizing that choice must be based on inherent uncertainties. Of
course, even if the kritik were, through some strange eventuality,
determined to be absolute, it may only serve to render the debate
a tie. At that point, at minimum, some theory of presumption is
required to serve as a tie-breaker. (Either that or a convenient coin.)
The latest attempt to answer the no alternative objection is a
defense of the idea of "rethinking. The argument here is that the
judge does have an alternative at the end of the round, the
alternative of rethinking. In effect, the kritik is redefined as an
alternative, the option of deferred judgment. In this approach to the
no alternative problem, the kritik again displays close affinities to
hypothesis testing. In the hypothesis testing paradigm, the judge
evaluated the truth of the resolution. To reject the resolution's truth,
it was not considered necessary to have a better alternative, merely
to have sufficient doubt to withhold assent. In the policy
framework, the rethinking option most closely resembles the study
counterplan, which also advocated suspended action while further
study was undertaken.
Despite its roots in these venerable theoretical constructs, I doubt
that rethinking will salvage the kritik from the change of no
alternative First, it might be argued that even rethinking cannot
proceed effectively if there is no explicit policy alternative to
consider. One can rethink forever, but without at least two
alternatives to choose from, no coherent policy decision can really
occur.
Second, one might well raise the question of what level of doubt is
needed to justify rethinking. There is almost always some doubt at
the end of every round. Does this mean that the judge should
always vote to rethink? Presumably not. But when then is there
enough doubt to justify rethought? Third, one can question the
solvency of the rethinking process. If rethinking is to be an
appealing alternative, then there must be some reason to believe
that rethinking a set of issues which has presumably been thought
through once in the course of the debate is likely to come to a
superior conclusion. Especially if what is to be rethought is
something like the Western philosophical tradition, the idea of
humanism, or the nature of power, there is little reason to believe
that more thought will resolve issues such as these which have
been mulled over for millennia. Fourth, rethinking is justified only
if the direction of advantage versus disadvantage is in doubt. If the
logical impact of the kritik is simply to serve as a harm reduction
argument, that is, if there is no risk of a disadvantage, then there is
no point in rethinking in order to determine just how desirable the
affirmative policy is. Fifth, the solvency of rethinking may be
undermined by the kritik itself. Kritiks which challenge the process
of rational thought itself or which fail to distinguish knowledge
from power can hardly defend further thought as an alternative.
Sixth, and perhaps most important, rethinking seems perfectly
consistent with the tentative endorsement of the affirmative plan.
Rethinking, after all, is a life long process. (Heidegger, for
example, spent over fifty years trying to rethink the nature of
being.) Especially while engaged in the process of rethinking some
fundamental philosophical issue, one will customarily continue to
make provisional political judgments. Especially if there is doubt
about the kritik, tentative endorsement of the plan within one
thought system seems justified while that thought system is being
rethought. (For example, I might tentatively endorse a plan as a
good idea within the humanist framework while still rethinking the
general concepts of humanism.) Another point is that the
uncertainty of the rethinking process justifies tentative judgments.
The rethinking process (and the call to rethink) could go on pretty
much forever. We never reach certain knowledge. So, once again,
it seems justified to make a tentative endorsement while rethinking.
Finally, the debate itself should be regarded as part of the process
of rethinking. The judge's vote at the end of the round represents
his or her best thought, based on the debate, of the issue at hand.
Voting one way or another doesn't suspend all future thought (the
next round may be only ten minutes away); rather, it constitutes a
provisional judgment rendered in the ongoing process of
rethinking.
The fourth major assumption of the kritik is that kritiks of the
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policy framework can be made in the same round as other,
conventional policy arguments. The argument, based in part on the
analogy of topicality, is that if the assumption is true, then the
question of policy desirability becomes relevant, but that if the
assumption is flawed, then the policy debate is moot. In effect, they
make an if/then statement: if the affirmative assumption being
challenged is true, then its plan is still a bad idea.
This premise of the kritik is probably less important to challenge
than are the three premises discussed above. (And of those three
the policy framework and the no alternative arguments are
probably the most important.) Still, it may be useful on some
occasions to attack the "conditional" nature of the kritik. First, if
the kritik is implicitly offering one or more policy alternatives, and
if the negative is also defending the status quo or some other
counterplan, then in effect the negative is defending conditional
policy alternatives. At this point, arguments against conditionality
do seem relevant. Second, if the kritik offers a radically different
view of the world, it is arguably inconsistent to then proceed to
make arguments within the framework being attacked. A true
post-humanist wouldn't both militantly indict the legacy of
humanism and make arguments based on the humanist framework.
This kind of inconsistency seem as contrary to common notions of
advocacy as is the advancing of two conditional policy alternatives.
In addition to arguing that the theoretical presuppositions of the
kritik are questionable, have suggested that its philosophical roots
in postmodernism and deconstruction are also subject to attack.
Some of the arguments against these perspectives have already
been discussed in the section on the intellectual background to the
kritik, but there are a number of other points worth making.
Many of the arguments made against postmodernism as a
philosophical perspective are very similar to arguments made
against the kritik as a theory in debate. First, postmodernism is
often said to produce a paralyzing skepticism. In doubting
everything, it undermines respect for reason, science, and even
truth itself. Despite their limits, reason and science can both be
defended as necessary tools of human survival, especially in the
modern age. Second, postmodern thought, though often embraced
by persons on the contemporary political left, is said at root to be
profoundly reactionary. At best, the denial of rational standards is
said to lead to political paralysis; at worst, the postmodern kritik of
modern democratic liberalism has been associated with the various
totalitarianisms of the twentieth century. Third, postmodernism is
indicted as nihilistic. Fourth, the postmodern "theory of history" is
said to be both wrong and self-contradictory. Some would deny
that we have either entered or are on the verge of entering a
postmodern period. Others have argued that the idea of
postmodernism is self-contradictory. Lyotard defined the
postmodern in terms of the rejection of "grand theory." But the idea
of a fundamental transition from modern to postmodern may itself
be a grand theory, an overarching theory of history no less
ambitious than Hegel's or Spengler's. Fifth, the perspective of the
Enlightenment is still defended as fundamentally valid. While the
eighteenth century was certainly somewhat naive about the power
of reason to reshape society, many of its libertarian and egalitarian
ideals have in fact been realized. (Not many of us would trade
places with a French peasant of the age of Louis XVI.) And even
if reason is not a panacea, it may still be necessary to check the
irrational elements of the human makeup.
Similar arguments are directed against deconstruction. It is said to
be nihilistic, politically ineffectual and reactionary, as well as
essentially irrationalist. The argument is made that deconstruction
is infinitely regressive, that it fails to offer alternatives, and that it
is intellectually unintelligible. The argument is even made that we
should both act and deconstruct.
What is the import of these arguments for debate? It does seem that
many of the indictments of deconstruction and of postmodernism
do authentically implicate the theory of the kritik. Proponents of
the kritik explicitly ground their theory in postmodern thought, and
deconstruction seems to closely parallel the kritik. Thus, the
affirmative might well wish to argue that the kritik rests on these
philosophical assumptions and that they are fundamentally flawed.
I make this suggestion with a certain reservation. Not all kritiks
rely on explicitly postmodern premises, even though the process of
kritik may do so implicitly. The negative might easily choose to
answer such arguments by claiming that they are just general
indictments which don't apply to the particular kritik. Still, this
does embroil the negative in something of a paradox. If
assumptions are fair game for attack then the assumptions of the
kritik likewise seem legitimate to indict. And, of course, most
kritiks are also generic and fail to clash very specifically with
affirmative analysis. Finally, if the kritik is claimed to have
intellectual respectability in part because of its academic pedigree
in postmodernism, then surely that pedigree can itself be subjected
to critique.
I want to conclude this section on general arguments against the
kritik by responding to the arguments made in favor of the kritik
which were listed earlier. Some have been touched on in places,
but it seems useful to address this set of concerns in a more
systematic way.
The first argument was that a narrow version of policy debate has
a stranglehold on the activity. Though overstated, I do have some
sympathy for this argument. If there is a theoretical orthodoxy in
debate today, it probably is a rather conservative variant of the
policy paradigm which places primary emphasis on advocacy and
is militantly anti-conditional. In addition, this group of judges and
coaches tends to be conservative on counterplan theory (an
affirmative bias), liberal on topicality (also another affirmative
bias), and is often willing to in effect censor substantive policy
arguments which they find offensive (generally speaking, still
another affirmative bias). It is probably not coincidental that since
this orthodoxy has become solidified, the case versus Clinton has
become pretty much the standard debate. But pet peeves aside, the
"stranglehold" of policy conservatives seems like an exaggerated
concern. First, the kritik has hardly been stifled; indeed, for such
a radically new theory, it has gained remarkably fast acceptance.
(Part of this no doubt stems from negative debaters hard up for a
strategy.) Indeed, the kritik perspective (which I am tempted to
relabel as the "critical gaming" paradigm) has rather rapidly
created its own counter-orthodoxy.
The benefit of orthodoxy is predictability. the relative quiet on the
theory battlefront which prevailed in the late 1980s allowed
substantive policy debate to proceed largely without theoretical
distraction. The kritik introduced a whole new dimension of debate
theory argument into the activity, and argument over debate theory,
while it can be interesting, is ultimately rather trivial. Currently,
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debate seems radically polarized between the forces of policy
advocacy and tabula rasa kritikers. So now, instead of one
orthodoxy we have two, both dogmatic, who only come together
to battle over the strike card. My own view, some of the polemics
of this essay notwithstanding, I believe to be somewhere in the
middle. I would favor a more liberal version of policy debate, one
which would allow the negative more options. This would both
alleviate to some extent the narrowness of the policy advocacy
paradigm and limit the temptation of kritik as a means to gain some
leverage on the negative. (In sum, I would recommend the
replacement, or at least the supplementation, of the policy
advocacy paradigm with a paradigm of policy criticism and
analysis. While the focus would remain on policy, making the
kritik of limited relevance, the perspective from which policy
would be viewed would be definitely broadened. That, however, is
clearly another essay.) All of this said, defenders of the orthodox
policy view have at least one other strong argument to make here.
The topic does change every year, and every topic has innumerable
elements. If debaters were as creative in devising policy arguments
as they have been of late in devising kritiks, policy stagnation
would be much less of a problem. In addition, it can be questioned
whether in the long run the kritik really will be so intellectually
stimulating. The kind of philosophical arguments which the kritik
tends to raise are ultra-generic. It would be possible to debate them
year after year. Some of them even date from the time of
Protagoras (the reputed founder of debate). Nor has the revival of
the anarchy counterplan in the form of the statism kritik brought a
breath of fresh air into the activity.
The second main pro-kritik argument is that the kritik represents
"new thinking." As suggested above, some of the ideas which the
kritik has rejuvenated are not especially new even for debate. It
also seems a bit odd to characterize ideas that Martin Heidegger
formulated in the 1920s and 1930s as "new thinking." I have
already noted that the critique of modernity is probably as old as
modernity itself. Neither Malthus, Wordsworth, Hume, Burke, or
Rousseau would exactly qualify as "new thinkers." (Nor would the
figures of the Inquisition who kritiked Galileo's radically modern
belief that the earth goes around the sun appear to be the
embodiment of "new thought.") According to some scholars, the
thinking of even Derrida and Foucault is already out of date in
France, and others see postmodernism in America as simply a
passing fad. Many of these ideas are, of course, new to debate but
the appeal to newness seems to be a more rhetorical than
substantive one. (It also seems suspiciously grounded in the
preeminently modern belief in progress.)
Obviously not all new ideas are good. Nazism was new once too,
and it derived much of its intellectual force from the kind of
critique of modernity found in Nietzsche and Heidegger. If we
really wanted to revolutionize debate we could speak totally in
German rather than simply adopting one German word. Since
language supposedly structures thought, this should really
revolutionize our thinking. On a more practical note, innovation
has costs as well as benefits. If the kritik has been stimulating for
some, it has been profoundly confusing and alienating for others.
Paradigm transformation probably always entails a period of
intellectual chaos; it isn't clear that it is something to be sought
simply for the sake of intellectual novelty.
The third argument for the kritik is more substantive. It involves
the appeal to free inquiry as a basic value in debate. In effect, it
accuses kritik opponents of hypocrisy, or at least of possessing a
profound split in their thought between freedom and structure. I
take this argument seriously enough that I do not believe that the
kritik should be dismissed out of hand. Kritiks which are
coherently argued should be considered. But this does not mean
that arguments about their germaneness are not relevant. It is not
intellectually intolerant to dismiss arguments about quantum
mechanics in a discussion of HAMLET. Again, the judge should
not do this arbitrarily, but there is no reason why he or she should
not listen to arguments that kritik is not relevant to a policy
framework. Also, if free speech liberals find themselves in a
somewhat paradoxical situation in opposing the kritik, pro-kritik
postmodernists may be in some tension in defending the kritik on
liberal free speech grounds. Much, though not all, of postmodern
thought is profoundly illiberal. (Whatever else Nietzsche,
Heidegger, and Foucault may have been, they were not liberal
democrats; nor does Derrida appear to be.)
This does not justify excluding their ideas--I am willing the let the
Nazis march through debate just as I was willing to let them march
through Skokie. But it is still worth noting that the values of liberal
tolerance which would justify such speech are not shared by many
of the thinkers whose thought is being put forward. (Please note,
the above comment is intended mainly as a dig against
Heidegger--more on that later. I am emphatically not accusing
proponents of the kritik in debate of being Nazis.)
The fourth main argument for the kritik is the tabula rasa position
that everything should be debatable. In terms of the kritik, I am
willing to accept the proposition that any reasonably developed,
coherent, substantive position should be considered on its merits.
But even if the judge should be open to all well-developed
positions, this need not imply the necessity of voting on every blip
tagged as a "voting issue." The problem with the tabula rasa
approach to judging is that it tends to promote a clerical speed and
accuracy attitude toward debate. It places a great premium on
proliferating cheap shots and, I believe, definitely undervalues the
more intellectually substantive goals of debate.
Insofar as tabula rasa is used as a basis for defending the kritik, it
is important to have some arguments against it; otherwise, it is
somewhat peripheral to this discussion.
The fifth argument in favor of the kritik which I want to consider
is the claim that the kritik is justified by the prominence of
postmodern thought in contemporary academia. This argument
does, I think, have some merit. Postmodern thought is more or less
unavoidable today, and it was probably only a matter of time
before it penetrated policy debate. It should be noted that a good
deal of postmodern thought can be accommodated within the
framework of normal, comparative policy debate. Feminism and
CLS, for example, have provided many non-kritik arguments. Even
the Foucauldian power kritik could be run as a disadvantage,
although doing so would probably help dramatize its weaknesses.
(This is also another reason why the free speech argument is less
compelling; most people's objection is to the form not the radical
content of these arguments.) Debate should accommodate some
postmodern themes. Nonetheless, it does not follow from this that
academic policy debate should mindlessly parrot modes of
argument and discourse found in academia simply because debate
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is an academic activity, any more than it follows that we should
mimic all the procedures of Congress because we are debating a
policy proposition. I do not think that the main purpose of debate
is to teach students about trends in academic thought; if it is, then
different topics should certainly be selected. Trends in international
relations scholarship are certainly relevant to debating about China
or the Mid-east; trends in deconstructive, reader response criticism
seem far less germane. Finally, the trends associated with
postmodernism in the academy are far from non-controversial.
Many critics believe that they are making the university ever more
detached from the rest of society. Many regard deconstruction and
associated phenomena was purely ivory tower efforts to escape the
fact that the leftist agenda has failed. The deconstructionists and
other postmoderns withdraw into their enclaves and talk to each
other in a jargon unintelligible to the rest of society. If academic
policy debate best functions, as I think it does, at the intersection
of academic policy scholarship and public policy making, then a
retreat into the more esoteric confines of academic theorizing
seems distinctly counterproductive.
The sixth argument that I want to consider here is that rejecting the
kritik constitutes a mechanism of exclusion. This argument, I think,
gets things almost completely backwards. I doubt that anyone has
been drawn into the activity (for more than a tournament) out of a
desire to debate kritiks. Perhaps if the kritik were banished from
debate tomorrow, a few committed kritikers would leave the
activity, but this is uncertain at best, and besides such an immediate
banishment is not going to occur. What I think is far more likely to
happen is that if the kritik continues to gain in prominence, policy
debate will become attractive to fewer and fewer participants.
Policy debate is already difficult to learn. It involves a mastery of
a broad subject matter, an esoteric body of theory, and a difficult
technique. Introduction of the kritik adds the realms of philosophy
and modern social theory to the purview of debate and it also
introduces a whole new set of theory concerns. Policy debate may
in some ways be simplistic, but it is navigable. In postmodern
debate, there are no clear standards (even defining or categorizing
kritiks is criticized as overly structured), and everything is up for
grabs. I seriously doubt that over time that many people will want
to play a game so difficult or so unstructured. The value of a policy
focus is that most educated people are interested in public policy
issues. There are far fewer philosophy majors. The point of all this
is that the kritik is far more likely to effectively exclude people
from the activity than it is to engage them in it. Of course, this is a
mild venture on my part into speculative doom-saying; I hope I
don't prove prophetic.
A final theme which seems to run, at least implicitly, through
defenses of the kritik is the idea that the process of kritik is
intellectually liberating and empowering. It is liberating to
encounter new perspectives, to challenge ideas that had always
been accepted. This is a value of debate which probably almost
everyone has experienced--both before and since the kritik. the
kritik encompasses some extremely stimulating ideas, and I do not
doubt that it produces intellectual experiences of this sort. But all
this admitted, there are still certain dangers associated with what
Jon Brody has called "kritikgeist." The first danger is one
associated with entering a total system of thought. Deconstruction
appears to be rather like Marxism and Freudianism in that it offers
a complete world view. Within these perspectives there is an
answer to everything, and thought which challenges the
perspective tends to be screened out. Of course, this is true of
almost any world view--it will repel contrary viewpoints. But if
kritikgeist becomes the one way to look at things, then it seems at
least as confining as the viewpoints it rejects.
A second danger is alienation. Not all alienation is necessarily bad;
there are values as well as costs in attaining some degree of
detachment from one's society. But carried too far, doubt can
become debilitating. Proponents of the kritik make the valid point
that our language and our discourse, our ideas and our arguments
have consequences. But given this, it seems likely that too much
kritik, too much skepticism, too much doubt too long sustained can
also have consequences of a less than savory sort. At the risk of
overusing an example, it still seems clear to me that it was in part
the sustained critique of modernity current in Germany in the
1920s which paved the way for Hitler. Of course, World War I, the
Treaty of Versailles, and the Great Depression were critical factors
as well. But it seems unlikely that Germany would have taken the
virulently racist direction it did if the basic framework of Western
values had not been cast so severely in doubt.
Closer to home, it does not seem unreasonable to suspect that the
bombers of the Oklahoma City Federal Building may have taken
the kritik of statism a bit too seriously. Is the kritik intended to turn
debaters into domestic terrorists? Obviously not. Could it have that
effect? Well, hopefully not. But if we take seriously the claim of
the kritik's supporters that the actual effects of the words and ideas
on of those in the round are what matters most, then this does not
seem to be a possibility to dismiss out of hand. Debaters typically
develop a certain callousing in terms of the arguments they make.
Debate is seen fundamentally as a game, so they tend to think that
they can make some fairly horrific arguments without their own
belief systems being strongly implicated. This is a tendency we
sometimes criticized, and perhaps it is an unfortunate one, but if we
tear down the screens between our arguments and "the real world,"
then it is also necessary to consider the real world implications of
trying to persuade a judge (and indirectly yourself and the rounds'
other participants) of propositions like "the state should be
abolished," "humanism should be rejected," "human welfare is
irrelevant in light of the overwhelming importance of the
ecosystem," or "human life has no value." Probably each of these
positions is defensible, but I highly question the desirability of
defending them. The kritik has borrowed a number of things from
hypothesis testing. If indeed it takes seriously its own stated
position that real world effects on participants are what matter
most, then perhaps it should borrow another of hypothesis testing's
precepts: debaters should argue for what they actually believe in.
GENERIC ANSWERS TO LANGUAGE KRITIKS
In addition to the general arguments against kritiks, a number of
arguments can be made specific to language kritiks. First, if the
central focus of the debate is on policy, that is, on the desirability
of the plan, then poorly chosen language isn't a reason to vote
negative (or affirmative, if it is the negative's language which is
being kritiked). Second, in other argument forums, we wouldn't
suspend the process of policy debate over poor word choices.
Congress wouldn't suspend debate to focus exclusively on the
propriety of a phrase such as "Islamic fundamentalism." And while
a policy scholar might dispute the word choice, s/he wouldn't
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abandon the search for the best policy simply because such an
expression had been used. Third, too much preoccupation with
language can distract from substantive policy analysis. This is the
standard argument made against excessive preoccupation with
topicality. Fourth, too much focus on words can lead to the
ignoring of reality. This is a common indictment of deconstruction.
Fifth, language focus can be trivializing. A good example of this is
the debate over the propriety of the "and/or" expression. Sixth, the
affirmative should not be accountable for resolutional language.
Their responsibility is to defend a topical example of the
resolution; they need not defend the felicity of the topic framers'
word choice.
Seventh, language found in evidence also isn't absolute. At most it
indicates a possible reason to distrust that source. Eighth, in most
cases it should be possible to defend your language choices. The
phrase "Islamic fundamentalism," for example, has both a
denotative and a connotative meaning. Denotatively, it simply
refers to persons who believe in the literal truth of the Islamic
religion. It is the negative, not the affirmative, that is suggesting
that the phrase inherently implies an adverse image. Furthermore,
it is a bona fide argument that extremely conservative versions of
Islam are associated with terrorism and anti-Western attitudes. Not
all Muslims are fundamentalist, and not all fundamentalists are
terrorists, but this does not mean that there is not a tenable link
between Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. Ninth, to
immediately suspend debate because some politically incorrect
phrase has been used is anti-intellectual. The point of the debate is
presumably to determine whether fundamentalism is the source of
a significant threat and what can be done about it. To label this as
racial stereotyping and to suspend debate is to beg the question;
whether it is a stereotype grounded in some reality is the key issue.
Furthermore, if one side makes an argument about the nature of
Islamic fundamentalism in good faith and loses that argument, that
should not automatically produce a loss. To do so figures to stifle
the free exchange of ideas, chilling potentially valid arguments.
Tenth, it may be useful to challenge the theory of language which
insist that our words structure our reality. While this is certainly
true to some extent, the reverse is also true: language reflects and
represents non-linguistic reality. Also, language is not a
straightjacket. It contains an infinite number of possible statements
combining different words. Also, language changes; new words
appear and old words are given new senses. Nor does linguistic
change necessarily mean social change. Not every racist uses racial
epithets. A person, under pressure, may hypocritically change his
or her language, while retaining prejudicial attitudes unaffected.
Finally, eleventh, there are a wide range of anti-political
correctness arguments which can be made against language kritiks.
Much of the literature in support of these arguments will come
from the discussion of university speech codes. It is commonly
argued that such codes are a form of censorship, that speech limits
snowball that limiting speech undermines the role of the university,
that they chill free expression, and that they are ineffective and
counterproductive because they produce backlash and/or drive
prejudice underground. Social reform is said to depend vitally on
free speech and learning to confront prejudice is said to be
especially important for minorities.
And many argue that offensive speech is the price of freedom. You
will probably have noticed that when language kritiks are at issue,
the pro- and anti-kritik positions seem to be reversing their sides in
terms of the value of free speech.
In light of this the affirmative may wish to play down some of the
normal arguments about debate not being an open forum for any
and all viewpoints. Probably, though, the affirmative position at
least is reconcilable. The affirmative can consistently defend free
speech. They are not presumably, arguing to punish the negative
with a loss for running a kritik, but merely arguing that the kritik
is an irrelevant argument in this context. Whether the negative can
as easily reconcile its apparent contradiction is less clear. It might
be argued that the kritik is not a code, but it can function the same
way in terms of chilling speech. Indeed, codes might be less
offensive since they at least provide some notice, whereas language
kritiks can apply to everything from grammatical constructions to
ethnic references. And both punish a form of expression rather than
debating it on its merits.
The affirmative should certainly argue that only the most offensive
language expressions should be voting issues. Perhaps there are
some expressions so commonly taken to be offensive that they
should be punished with a loss (statements which are commonly
understood to be bigoted). Perhaps such usages (especially if
applied to one of the participants in the round) do as much to
compromise the activity as falsifying evidence. If so, then the
dramatic sanction of punishment with a loss might be justified.
Generally, though, punishment seems to be a bad idea. It obviously
distracts from policy issues, may well be excessive in light of the
severity of the offense (or arbitrary in its application), chills the
free expression of ideas, and highlights judge prejudice. And if we
punish word choice, why not punish other things? Styles, theories,
even substantive arguments which we dislike would all seem to be
fair candidates. Finally, proliferating claims that your opponents'
language is bigoted hardly figures to promote a friendly and
collegial atmosphere in debate. The punishment theory was
popularized in the middle 1980s but was rather rapidly discredited.
It would be unfortunate to see it revived in the moralistic wrapping
of a language kritik. Finally, punishment with a loss seems grossly
excessive when no offense is intended. The offensiveness of
language is strongly conditioned by the intent of the speaker. If a
speaker's language is inadvertently offensive, then one might bring
that to his or her attention, but a brief apology (or clarification)
should be sufficient to compensate for the miscue.
The language kritik is probably the one instance where claiming
the loss of the kritik as a reverse voting issue is most appropriate.
If one side's language is said to be so offensive, so bigoted or
prejudicial, that they should lose, then this is tantamount to an
ethical challenge. And, just as false (or even unsubstantiated)
accusations of evidence falsification are commonly seen as voting
issues, so should unsustained accusations of bigoted language. The
voting issue impact claimed by the kritik suggests that these
offenses are on a comparable moral plane, and discouraging
frivolous accusations of bigoted language also is a valid goal. Of
course, to sustain this argument, it is necessary to accept the
framework of the kritik; argument about the primacy of policy
argument undercut its impact.
GENERIC ANSWERS TO METAPHYSICAL KRITIKS
Against these kritiks, one branch of the genre of pure philosophical
"kritiks of thought," a number of relatively distinctive arguments
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can be made. First, it can be argued that metaphysical (as well as
epistemological) questions are outside of our realm of discourse.
These questions involve high level abstractions which would
almost never be raised in a policy debate. You don't need to prove
that you exist in order to debate about China policy. A field context
standard proves that these kritiks are invalid. Arguments of this
sort are never raised in the literature surrounding the topic (at least
any topic I've encountered). Thus, they are not germane. Third,
high school debate especially is the wrong forum for this type of
argument. Most high school debaters have never even had an
introductory philosophy course, making it unreasonable to expect
them to deal with arguments of this sort. Fourth, the pure
philosophy kritiks are rarely absolute because metaphysics is so
inherently uncertain. Humans might possess free will; no one has
ever definitively proven that they don't. Given this, the argument
that we should never make normative judgments seems quite
dubious. Fifth, this sort of kritik destroys the discussion directing
function of the topic. A major purpose of the topic is to direct
discussion to new, important, and timely issues each year. The
topic fails in this purpose if the negative can ignore the topic and
debate two thousand year old philosophical quandaries.
From a more philosophical standpoint, logical positivism argues
strenuously that because they are not verifiable, metaphysical
arguments are meaningless. Even if meaningful most contemporary
thinkers probably believe that metaphysical questions are
inherently unanswerable. Both pragmatists and postmodernists
unite in their contempt for metaphysics. Even Nietzsche and
Heidegger (though much of their thought arguably is metaphysical)
join in this condemnation.
GENERIC ANSWERS TO EPISTEMOLOGICAL KRITIKS
Pretty much all of the debate theory derived arguments against
metaphysical kritiks also apply to epistemological kritiks. In
addition, pragmatism can also be used as a perspective from which
to attack epistemology. Cornel West argues that a central theme of
pragmatism is its rejection of epistemological questions as
inherently sterile. (Pragmatists, remember, define truth as whatever
works.) Second, it is important to argue that epistemological doubt
doesn't justify policy paralysis. Especially from an
anti-foundationalist perspective, nothing is certain, implying that
we must always act in the face of doubt. Third, it will often be
useful to be prepared to defend that valid knowledge of the world
is indeed available. Some common means through which reliable
knowledge is said to be gained are sense experience, deductive
logic, history, scholarly sub-disciplines, and perhaps most
importantly, through science. Evidence defending the importance
of reason and science is especially significant because it can apply
to many other kritiks.
Postmodernism in general and many postmodern thinkers,
including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida, are
commonly said to be irrationalist and anti-scientific.
GENERIC ANSWERS TO MORAL AND POLITICAL KRITIKS
Moral and political kritiks (or kritiks of value) are closest in nature
to normal policy arguments; thus, they need to be treated in a
somewhat different way from other kritiks. First, it is generally
desirable to debate them as policy arguments. On one hand, they
probably have policy implications in the round (or will be claimed
to have at a later point). Also, if these arguments are beaten on
their merits as policy positions, they are likely to also fail as
kritiks. Second, it is also important to point out where these
arguments fail conceptually as policy arguments. For example,
rights kritiks don't really function too well as case turns because
they are non-unique. Third, alternative worldview kritiks such as
statism, should be debated basically like counterplans. If the
alternatives to the state, such as anarchy, are bad, then the state is
vindicated by default. Also, in pointing out that these are in effect
non-texted conditional counterplans, a number of other theoretical
arguments become available. Fourth, it may be useful to
generically kritik the idea of utopianism. Utopian thinking is
indicted for distracting attention from real solutions; it also can
produce a willingness to commit present atrocities in the name of
some far off future. (You would need to win, of course, that the
kritik presumes some utopian alternative--or perhaps that the lack
of an alternative makes it utopian.) A fifth argument might be that
if a position is implicitly a counterplan it needs to be presented as
such; if it isn't, it is underspecified in the same way as an
affirmative without a plan.
ANSWERS TO SPECIFIC KRITIKS
Since the carded answers to the specific kritik should be relatively
self-explanatory, my discussion of particular kritiks will be brief.
In a few instances, there are some especially strong analytical
arguments which merit addition. Also, there may be some
particular feature of one of the evidenced arguments which merits
special mention. but most of the relevant analysis will be found in
the tags and cards.
REASON. The "kritik of reason" was among the early kritiks, but
it was rapidly abandoned, probably because it was provoking too
much judge resistance. It is easy to see why this would be the case:
if debate is anything, it is a reason giving activity. But, while the
kritik of reason is rarely run overtly any more, many of its themes
and assumptions intersect with numerous other kritiks. Certainly
a central theme (perhaps the central theme) of postmodernism is a
critique of reason. So, arguments in this section should have fairly
wide applicability against both epistemological and other kritiks.
It should be noted that there are many critiques of reason, so not all
of these arguments will apply especially well to each of them. Still,
in most instances many of these will apply. First, the kritik of
reason assumes too limited a view of the nature of rationality. A
narrowly focused, purely instrumental, rationality might be
destructive, but rationality in a broad sense, encompassing both
means and ends, need not be. Second, reason is a proper part of the
thought process. All thoughts probably begin as intuitions, but to
check our intuitions we need to rationally reflect on them.
Intuitions are sometimes erroneous and often conflict; only rational
reflection can sort them out. Third, there is no effective alternative
to reason, especially on matters of public concern. The basic
alternatives to reason are intuition and emotion. Both may have a
place in decision making, but they are essentially private
experiences. When people disagree, what are they to do, empte or
intuit at each other? Reasons, in contrast, have a public quality
which makes them more directly comparable. As many argue, the
alternative to reason is the rule of force. Fourth, the kritik of reason
is probably not absolute against most affirmatives. Most
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affirmatives employ a process of rational inference, but most also
make emotive value judgments. Even if the rational appeal of a
case is dismissed, its emotive force can remain. Fifth, the
indictment of "reason" is overbroad. "Reason" is a huge
abstraction. What the affirmative might well argue is that they don't
appeal to any abstract, eighteenth century ideal of "right reason",
rather, they give particular reasons designed to reach a particular
conclusion. It is therefore up to the negative to indict the
affirmative's specific reasons, not "reason" in general. Again,
postmodernism, with its emphasis on situationalism and
contextualism, would seem sympathetic to this claim. Sixth,
reason, and its subsidiary science, are necessary tools of human
survival.
Seventh, some idea of "good reasons" is essential for making
choices. Foucault can talk all that he wants about marginalizing the
discourses of the mad--but to give equal weight to schizophrenic
or paranoid thought seems to be a recipe for disaster. Eighth, the
lack of certain foundations for knowledge is irrelevant; it simply
means that we must do the best we can with probabilistic
knowledge. Ninth, through argument we can come to
intersubjective agreement about some things, but this process still
requires the comparison of reasons. Tenth, rejection of reason leads
to nihilist and violence The Nazis were probably the leading
political irrationalists of the twentieth century, and their example
should prove cautionary. Eleventh, reason produces the best policy
results. Even if scientific rationalism is the source of many
problems, in an overpopulated world it is likely that it also offers
the only solution. Finally, it can be argued that rather than
marginalizing, reason in fact empowers disadvantaged groups.
Certainly the alternative of Burkean "prejudices" seems far less
favorable to the marginalized.
CAUSALITY. The kritik of causality is grounded in the
philosophy of David Hume, so it is important to know exactly what
Hume said about it. What he argued is that there is no logical
sanction for a belief in the process of inductive reasoning. We can't
know as a matter of logical certainty that the future will repeat the
past or that one event which always follows another was in fact
caused by the preceding event. Despite this, Hume still believed
that inductive and causal reasoning were psychologically
compelling. Hume as an empiricist, and he believed that humans
always act on the basis of their experience. Thus, the kritik of
causality is really more a demonstration of the limits of logical
proof than it is a refutation of the principles of causation.
Second, Hume draws an explicit line between philosophy and
practical affairs. He certainly would never have recommended
trying to act on the basis of a rejection of causality. In terms of his
psychological theories, in fact, he was essentially a determinist,
and in his later career as a historian he obviously assumed the
validity of cause.
Third, our daily experience confirms causality. Certain acts (absent
intervening causes) invariably produce certain effects. Without a
belief in causality, it is hard to see how human life could proceed.
No one would eat or drink unless they believed that doing so
would cause certain effects. Fourth, if causation is even possibly
valid, it provides a reason to vote affirmative. If valid, the plan
produces an advantage; if it is invalid, there is still no DA. Fifth, as
a kind of reduction to the absurd, you should also argue that if
causality is invalid, that fact should not cause the judge to vote
negative. The idea of trying to produce a distinct effect (a win)
through the argument that there are no distinct effects seems
paradoxical to the point of absurdity.
FOUCAULT. There are two somewhat distinct kritiks based on
Foucault's theories about power. The "disciplinary power" kritik
argues that because power is totally decentralized, any attempt to
reform the system will inevitably fail (and is as likely to be
counterproductive as it is productive). The second kritik, which has
been labelled the "panopticon" argues that affirmative analysis
rests on the repressive hypothesis--the false assumption that
knowledge is always good and power always bad. (At least this is
my understanding of these two kritiks; their ambiguities make them
hard to pin down.)
A first argument which can be made against these kritiks is that the
affirmative doesn't make the assumption that they indict. Even if
power is decentralized and disciplinary, that power still manifests
itself in the form of the affirmative harm. The affirmative simply
attempts to redirect that particular form of disciplinary power.
Foucault to the best of may knowledge never argues that no
manifestations of power can ever be affected, nor that any effort to
redirect power necessarily produces an equally harmful offsetting
counter-effect.
In terms of the panopticon, I cannot recall any affirmative that
claimed that power is always bad or that knowledge is always
good. Some affirmatives may try to enhance knowledge but rarely
if ever is their claim that knowledge is always beneficial. (And who
would ever claim this anyway? Knowledge obviously can be
harmful--witness the knowledge of bomb making that resulted in
the destruction of the Oklahoma City Federal Building.)
Furthermore, most affirmatives employ power, hardly implying
that they regard it as inherently oppressive.
Second, there is no impact to disciplinary power shifting as a result
of the plan. This is a completely unspecified scenario which cannot
be meaningfully weighed against a big affirmative impact. To
accept a war or some other disaster because disciplinary power
might react by doing something worse carries the risk of the
unknown to an absurd point.
Third, Foucault's theory of power has been widely criticized. It
seems to imply that the disciplines of a democratic society are as
oppressive as the manacles of a police state. Furthermore, the
notion that there is no centralized power is silly. When Bush gave
the orders, the troops went to Kuwait; when Truman gave the
order, the bomb fell on Hiroshima.
Fourth, Foucault's theory is said to warrant complete political
passivity. It suggests that nothing constructive can be done, so one
might as well do nothing. Sometimes the power kritik is
accompanied by an argument suggesting the possibility of
consciousness change, but it is hard to see where this idea is
grounded in Foucault's thought.
Fifth, it can be argued that social discipline is necessary.
Disciplines which result from democratic choice and social
convention are not self-evidently oppressive. Rejecting all forms
of social discipline-in the form of the prison, the school, the
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business, even the family--is tantamount to anarchy. (But of course
that is another debate.)
A sixth argument attacks the historical basis of Foucault's theories.
A considerable body of evidence exists to the effect that he
misrepresents historical facts and that his theories are not grounded
in evidence. Indeed, Foucault may not even have intended for his
theories to be taken literally, but rather as enlightening myths.
Again, though, it can be argued that myth is not a good basis for
public policy.
Seventh, if discipline pervades society then small, incremental
changes may be all that is possible. Despite has rather depressing
sociology, Foucault was something of a political activist himself,
implying that he believed in the possibility of incremental change.
Finally, it is argued that Foucault's thought is essentially nihilistic,
that it lacks any consistent moral basis and that it essentially rejects
reason.
In terms of the panopticon kritik specifically, since I have never
heard this argument debated, it is unclear to me exactly how it
would play itself out. I have already suggested that few if any
affirmatives actually make the "repressive hypothesis" on which
the kritik seems to rely. Second, this kritik also seems to rely in
part on the idea of an "indissoluble continuum of forces." Exactly
what this means is a bit unclear. Presumably it means that
everything is connected and that actions in one part of a system can
produce feedbacks in another. Again, this does not seem to be
something that the affirmative needs to deny. (Nor is this a vastly
original insight--general systems theory has been around for some
time.) Feedbacks may, of course, produce disadvantages (or they
might snowball to reinforce the advantage). Or they might interfere
with solvency. But it is presumably the burden of the negative to
prove just what feedbacks are likely to occur--otherwise this is
simply a glorified presumption argument. Nor does the fact that
everything is connected mean that predictable localized effects
cannot be produced. The most immediate effects are almost always
the most pronounced. The pond ripples most dramatically at the
point of contact. And Mike Tyson swinging his fist may affect the
rest of the universe, but it affects the chin with which it connects
the most forcefully. Third, insofar as the kritik rests on Foucault's
equation of knowledge with power, it becomes paradoxical; that is,
the kritik itself becomes just one more exercise in power and has
no logical claim to possess a truth value. Fourth, knowledge isn't
just power. Sometimes theories gain acceptance even though the
powerful oppose them; the Copernican theory was eventually
accepted despite the opposition of the Church. Also, sometimes
people adopt positions simply because they find them compelling.
They may have no particular self-interest either way, or they might
even be compelled by the weight of the evidence to adopt a
conclusion they would prefer to reject. Fifth, equating knowledge
with power undermines science and rationality which, arguably,
would be disastrous. Sixth, this kritik, which seems based
exclusively on a book by English Professor William Spanos called
HEIDEGGER AND CRITICISM, in which he interprets Heidegger
and Foucault, explicitly assumes the overwhelming oppressiveness
of contemporary American society and the "New World Order"
with which it is connected. Thus, if the premise that the new world
order is evil can be defeated, or the assumption that America is a
fundamentally oppressive society denied, then the kritik loses most
of its force. (Evidence under the CLS kritik makes this later
argument.) Finally, the kritik also appears to argue that by
"rethinking" and the "refusal of spontaneous consent" the
repressive forces of the status quo can be "outflanked." Given their
overwhelming power, it is difficult to see how this will be
accomplished. There is no reason to believe that enough people
will refuse "spontaneous consent" to make a difference (this is not
after all a unique disadvantage), nor is it clear why the judge's
single decision to rethink will make any real difference.
Furthermore, acts of assent and policy judgments are taking place
all of the time; it is unclear why this particular decision will be
decisive. In sum, this kritik, in effect, appears to be a super-generic
social movements disadvantage, with the barest hint of uniqueness.
It in effect calls on everyone to reject all policy ideas, no matter
how beneficial on their face, in the hope of obtaining a utopian
mindshift of "galactic" significance. This seems far too vague to be
compelling.
HEIDEGGER/POST-HUMANISM. This kritik, also primarily out
of Spanos, but this time primarily based on Heidegger, is also
extremely vague. It argues essentially that humanism needs to be
rejected in favor of post-humanism, but it is somewhat short on
specifying just what either of these two positions entails. The
essence of Heidegger's post-humanism appears to be the idea that
primary philosophical emphasis should be placed on "Being" rather
than human beings. But it is extremely unclear why one could not
believe this and still support any affirmative plan that has ever been
run. Surely neither Heidegger nor Spanos recommend completely
rejecting any concern with matters of practical politics; to be
post-humanist does not mean to be anti-humanist. To win this
kritik, the negative needs to do two things. First, they need to win
that humanism should be rejected in favor of post-humanism, and
second, they need to establish that from the post-humanist
perspective the plan is a bad idea. This is not really established
even if the negative manages to prove that William Spanos
disagrees with some aspect of affirmative analysis. If the bottom
line impact of an affirmative advantage is to prevent some global
or national catastrophe (or even to simply benefit a few people), it
is hard to see why even a post-humanist would reject it.
In terms of the argument that post-humanism is superior to
humanism, a number of points can be made. First, liberal
humanism can be defended as essentially progressive. This kritik
rests once again on the idea that America and its new world order
are inherently oppressive. Defeating this assumption should defeat
the kritik. Second, the rejection of humanism can be said to lead to
barbarism. Whatever one believes about Heidegger's own
implications in Nazism, the two great political movements which
rejected liberal humanism in this century, Nazism and communism,
both slaughtered millions. Third, post-humanism is based on
Heidegger's philosophy, and his thought has been indicted at
numerous levels. His obscurity has been said to mask intellectual
confusion, his thought has been described as intellectually
authoritarian, he has been branded as a pseudo-theologian and a
nihilist. His central idea of Being has been criticized as
meaninglessly vague. (What does it mean to place central emphasis
on Being?) Finally, there is the issue of Heidegger's Nazism.
In terms of this question, there are really two distinct issues. The
first is the actual degree of Heidegger's involvement with the
Nazis. Two major biographers, Victor Farias and Hugo Ott, have
argued that his involvement was extensive. In 1933, after the Nazi
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ascendance, Heidegger accepted the state's appointment as rector
of the University of Freiburg, an appointment heralded in Nazi
publications. His speeches of this period have a definite pro-Nazi
slant. In one of them he referred to "the inner truth and greatness
of national socialism." What seems clear is that at least in the
middle 1930s, Heidegger admired and was politically involved
with Hitler and Nazism. Nor is it clear that even after his short
tenure as rector, he repudiated Nazi beliefs. He was banned from
teaching from 1945 to 1951 because of his Nazi ties, and to the end
of his life his condemnations of Nazism were relatively faint.
Still, probably the key question is not Heidegger's own degree of
involvement in Nazism, but the degree to which his philosophy
parallels Nazism. This is contentious, but Stanley Rosen (in
NIHILISM) and Richard Wolin (in THE POLITICS OF BEING)
both argue strongly that his philosophy and his Nazism are
integrally related. Clearly Heidggger accepted the prevailing,
mainly Nietzschean, critique of modernity, and therefore rejected
the liberal humanism of universal respect for persons. Heidegger
was also clearly something of a German nationalist. He believed in
the metaphysical mission of Germany to regenerate the decadent
West and saw the German state as the instrument of this mission.
His rejection of humanism seems to have led him in two directions
at once. He moved on one level to the focus on Being, a
perspective from which human lives are certainly not of the
greatest significance, and on another level he moved in the
direction of German nationalism and veneration for the German
"volk." Again, it is hard to see this as unrelated to the Nazi project.
None of this is to imply that Heidegger has no valuable
philosophical insights, but in terms of his central rejection of
humanism, the barbarous inhumanity of the political movement
with which he at least temporarily aligned himself suggests too
striking a parallel to be ignored.
If Heidegger's politics are problematic, so is his ontology, or
philosophy of being. Though Heidegger sometimes criticizes
metaphysics, it is difficult to conceive what could be more
metaphysical than a preoccupation with Being as opposed to
beings. Not only does this raise arguments about the meaningless,
or at least irresolvability, of metaphysical questions, it also seems
irrelevant to decisions about public policy. Even if one accepts that
philosophy should be a meditative rather than analytical process,
the idea that ruminations about Being have relevance (in a positive
sense) for public policy seems remote.
NORMATIVITY. This is among the more common kritiks but also
one of the most radical. Whereas most other kritiks can be
conceived of as functioning as policy arguments, the normativity
kritik explicitly challenges that framework. It argues that
normative, that is, value-laden, thought assumes the existence of
autonomous freely choosing individuals who have the ability to
influence the political institutions around them. Instead, the kritik
argues, individuals are determined by impersonal bureaucratic
forces, making normative thought and argument futile.
Because this kritik makes such a complex set of assumptions, it can
be attacked at a number of levels. First, it is important to note that
the key author behind the kritik, University of Colorado law
professor Pierre Schlag, is writing in the context of normative legal
argument. He does not argue that no one should ever think about
any public policy questions. Second, a widely made argument is
that escape from normative thought is impossible. Schlag himself
is making a normative argument, that we should reject normativity.
In fact, he recognizes this "performative contradiction," and talks
his way around it, but never really seems to solve the problem.
The negative may argue that this merely shows how entrenched
normativity is--that not even its opponents can escape its
terms--but that it still doesn't prove that it is valid. The affirmative
can counter this argument by claiming that instead what it proves
is that human thought is inherently normative. It simply is the case
that we are constantly confronted with choices, and those choices
can only be made on the basis of value judgments. Third, there are
a wide variety of indictments of Schlag himself. One law review
article develops at length the idea that his thought is warped by his
"paranoid intellectual style." Fourth, the affirmative should be
prepared to defend individual autonomy. The normativity kritik
seems to assume a fairly extreme form of hard determinism-that
people are directly determined by their immediate environments.
At least two perspectives are available for countering this
argument. The first, indeterminism, argues that people are free in
an absolute sense. The future is open and determined by individual
choices. The second position, compatiblism, argues that
determinism and free will are in fact compatible. Individuals are
not directly determined by their environment, but rather by the
total sum of their life experiences, including their reflections on
those life experiences, as they interact with innate genetic
predispositions. From this perspective, choice is still meaningful,
even if, there is only one choice which can be arrived at in the end,
the choice dictated by one's preponderant motives, including one's
sense of identity. In choosing among these theories, indeterminism
seems to be in the most accord with our psychological experiences,
but compatiblism still maintains that human behavior is highly
flexible. determined by a whole set of conscious and unconscious
life experiences, and is not the simple product of direct
environmental pressure. Finally, it might be argued that whatever
one thinks about the essentially metaphysical question of free will
versus determinism, free choice is one of the necessary
presuppositions of practical reason. Every action assumes the
power of choice; to reject freedom would seem to result in
complete passivity. The normativity kritik also attacks the idea of
the individual subject. This is part of the more general
postmodernist attack on the subject-object distinction. But while
the subject-object distinction may result in some intellectually
inelegant dualisms (i.e., the mind as free, the body as determined),
to reject the idea of the individual subject seems to completely
violate our experience of the world. Consciousness is individual;
my experiences are my own, not someone else's. (They may
resemble other's, but this is a matter of inference.) Indeed, the mind
is sufficiently private and individual that the existence of other
minds is itself a matter of intellectual doubt. What produces the
individuality of consciousness? Presumably it is based on the fact
that individuals exist in separate bodies. Each body experiences its
own sensations; it may empathize with others, but no one directly
experiences what another body feels. The individual body,
individual consciousness, and individual experience ultimately
produce the sense (and indeed, I think, the reality) of being an
individual self. And because each self is unique, the desire for
autonomy, that is, the desire to be self-determining, is a common
one.
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No one of course is completely self-determining, but to have more
control of one's life and more ability to express one's individuality
still remains a valid goal.
Fifth, the affirmative should also argue that some degree of
freedom clearly exists in the political sphere. Arguments do matter.
One set of arguments led to involvement in Vietnam; another set
reversed the prevailing bureaucratic momentum and led to
withdrawal. Also, bureaucracy is not an impervious, monolithic
block. In 1973, seven judges decided that abortion was a
fundamental right of women. No bureaucratic imperative mandated
that decision, nor does any deterministic force preclude its reversal.
Judges of course are influenced by previously established
convictions, but they still evaluate arguments and articulate reasons
for choices that are in no clear and direct way dictated by outside
forces. To believe that political action has no effect is to deny the
obvious reality that many grassroots movements have been
incredibly influential over the past thirty years, including the civil
rights movement, the anti-war movement, the women's movement,
the pro-life movement, and the gay liberation movement, to name
only a few.
Sixth, history belies the idea of institutional determinism.
Ironically enough, Marxism, which believed in historical
inevitability, may provide the best example of the power of ideas.
With hindsight, it seems fairly clear that the rise of Soviet
communism was not inevitable; rather it resulted in substantial part
anyway from the persuasive power of Marx's ideas on talented
leaders such as Lenin and Trotsky. Similarly, the fall of Soviet
communism hardly seems to have been dictated by bureaucratic
imperatives (the bureaucracy would have wanted to perpetuate
itself through the retention of communism), but rather was the
result of the rejection of the idea of communism in favor of the idea
of liberal democracy.
Seventh, the normativity kritik rests explicitly on postmodern and
deconstructive premises. Of all the major kritiks, therefore,
arguments attacking these perspectives are most directly relevant
here. Also, since the normativity kritik argues for the rejection of
public policy debate, all of the arguments defending the public
policy framework apply well here.
Eighth, the kritik of normativity seems paradoxical and
self-defeating. The kritik obviously rests on the idea that people
should have power but that power is denied them by repressive
institutions. If it were not for normative thought, however, this
condition would not even be noteworthy. The sense of oppression
itself rests on a normative idea. Further, to reject normativity
would seem to entail complete political passivity. It would ensure
tyranny by leading individuals to completely refrain from even
thinking about policy issues, let alone attempting to influence
policy.
At a certain point in his argument, Schlag employs the analogy of
being lost in the forest. If one doesn't know which way to go, he
argues, there is no point in wandering aimlessly. One can deny
certainly that being lost in the forest is an apt metaphor for our
condition when it comes to making normative decisions. But even
if it is, by wandering aimlessly there is at least a chance that one
will find his or her way out. Not going in any direction ensures that
one will remain lost, which seems to be pretty much what the
acceptance of this kritik would ensure in terms of finding political
solutions to actual problems.
One variant of the normativity kritik also needs to be mentioned.
Rather than directly arguing that normativity is meaningless, it
holds that the affirmative to win must still justify its values. This
leads on occasion to an argument that the affirmative cannot prove
that life itself has value. The basic problem with this argument is
that it seems to confuse the realms of fact and value. Value
statements and judgments simply cannot be proven true in the same
way as a factual statement. Values are subjective (at least many
would argue); they are based on emotion and decision, not
primarily on objective fact. Based on this perspective, things have
value because people value them. Thus, the press to "justify your
values" becomes a classic illustration of the problem of infinite
regression. (Similarly, the unwillingness to accept on face that life
has value seems to be a prototypical illustration of the kind of
nihilism which the kritik can engender.) Some values, such as
efficiency, are clearly instrumental; that is they are not ends in
themselves, but rather means to enhance other values. An argument
that instrumental values must be justified in terms of an ultimate
value is coherent, but the argument that one must "justify" ultimate
values is probably not. Though the idea that basic values can be
justified in an ultimate sense is probably wrong, there are still some
arguments which can be made in terms of defending the value of,
say, life. It might be argued that people empirically value life.
Suicide is relatively rare, and most people strive extremely hard to
defend their lives. It might be argued that the will to live, the will
to survive is a basic biological value, built in to our genetic
structures. It might be argued that social consensus validates the
value of life. Finally, it might be argued that life is a prerequisite
to the pursuit of any values at all, so that if anything is of value,
life is. This version of the normativity kritik also contains a
performative contradiction of sorts since the person questioning the
value of life is living and has presumably found reasons to
continue to do so. While I would not challenge your opponents to
commit suicide (because I at least value life), this apparent paradox
is probably still worth noting.
STATISM. As noted in the section describing the types of kritiks,
the statism kritik takes several forms. The one I will be mainly
concerned about here argues that the nation state system is
fundamentally flawed, that it is oppressive and militaristic. The
implicit alternative which this kritik suggests is anarchy, although
the negative sometimes waffles between anarchy and world
government as both being preferable to the nation state system.
In answering this kritik, you should argue first that you do not
assume that the state is necessarily on balance good. The case
merely argues that in a statist world, the plan would be an
improvement. Thus, the kritik is not really competitive. The state
might be bad on balance, but in a world of states the plan might
still be a good idea. Second, the affirmative can permute, arguing
that the best option would be a state system scaled back to that
minimum needed to carry out the plan. Arguably, this would solve
for the real abuses of statism (such as excessive militarism) while
still gaining the affirmative advantage. Third, the statism kritik can
be indicted as utopian. The state is not going to be abolished, so
why question the state as a framework for evaluating policy?
Fourth, the argument can also be made here that this kritik is too
generic. Since it can be run on any topic, it violates the topic's
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discussion directing function. This is reinforced by the lack of a
literature advocating anarchy in the context of the specific topic.
Fifth, there are many arguments which can and should be made
against anarchy. Hobbes argued that we need the state for
self-defense, that life in the state of nature would be "poor, nasty,
brutish, and short." Biologists such as E.O.Wilson and Konrad
Lorenz argue that humans are innately aggressive; thus, it can be
argued the state is needed to check the war of all against all.
Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick has argued that at least the
minimal state is not necessarily unjust because it could naturally
emerge out of a desire for self-defense in a way in which no one's
rights would be violated. Analogously, if the state were abolished,
there is no reason to believe that it would not be immediately
reinvented. People would inevitably band together for self-defense.
Stronger groups would come to dominate weaker ones and a legal
hierarchy would reemerge in order to maintain social control.
Others argue that the state is needed to protect rights which would
be trampled on in the state of nature, that the state is needed to
prevent the exploitation of the weak by the strong (slavery would
arguably reemerge if there was no central authority to suppress its
practice) and that the state is needed to protect the environment.
The later point is confirmed by basic economic theory which
insists that pollution is an economic externality (a cost imposed
upon others) which businesses would never check without
regulation.
The statism kritik is somewhat anomalous because it grows out of
an intellectual tradition, the anarchism of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, which is distinctly rationalist. Its assumption
is that people are basically good and rational, but that they have
been corrupted by evil institutions. Given this argument, the
affirmative may well wish to defend contrary arguments by
modernist and postmodernist thinkers such as Nietzsche and Freud
who stress the importance of unreason and aggressiveness in the
human makeup. Most thought from Darwin tends to deny the
optimistic views of the early anarchists.
A final point about anarchy as an option is that it is a viewpoint
rejected by probably every major figure in the history of Western
philosophy. Plato and Aristotle believed that humans are inherently
political animals. The major political theorists of the modern age,
including Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Rawls, and Nozick, all
conclude that some sort of state, generally said to be based on an
at least implicit social contract, is necessary to public order.
Though anarchy has its defenders t they remain a miniscule
minority, both in their numbers and influence.
It is important to prevent the negative from shifting to a defense of
world government as an alternative to either the state or anarchy.
You should try to pin the negative down as early as possible as to
what alternative they envision to the state. If they indicate multiple
alternatives, you should argue that this is an unacceptable degree
of conditionality, that it is impossible to debate the merits of the
plan, the merits of anarchy, the merits of world government, and
perhaps the merits of open borders all in the same round. In terms
of world government itself, some arguments are that it is absurdly
utopian (the tendency of the present international system is toward
devolution, not concentration), that an effective world government
would be intolerably oppressive, and that world government
probably couldn't sustain itself, any more than the Soviet Union
was able to sustain its empire.
In terms of the version of the kritik that insists that government can
never be effective, the best option is probably to try to find as
many examples of effective government action as you can. Most
government efforts have their defenders, and potential examples
range from anti-poverty efforts to environmental protection to
foreign policy. (America's major foreign policy initiatives in this
century, including World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and
the Gulf War did all end in success, at least in terms of the goals
being sought. Vietnam, of course, was a failure, but it was only a
battle in the Cold War.)
CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES. Critical legal studies was discussed
in some detail in the Introduction to Volume II of THE
HANDBOOK OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, so
I will not repeat the discussion of rights found in that source. CLS
is the source of policy arguments as well as kritiks; indeed, CLS
arguments are probably made less often as kritiks than as case
arguments against the value of rights or of the rule of law.
In response to the rule of law kritik, several points can be made.
First, rule of law is essential to check government tyranny. Law
may be imperfect, but in a world without rule of law, individuals
would be subject to arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention, and
potentially torture and death. It seems relatively clear that states
where the rule of law is not respected, such as the People's
Republic of China, are far more oppressive than those where rule
of law is at least imperfectly upheld. Second, rule of law also
protects minorities. Arbitrary rule is especially likely to fall on
minorities, and again, while the equal protection of law is
imperfect, it seems to be better than nothing. Liberty, democracy,
and prosperity are all also linked to the rule of law.
In terms of critical legal studies positions in general, several points
can be made. The most important, I think, is to deny the central
premise of CLS -- that the present US political and economic
system is intolerably oppressive. It can be argued that America has
made major progress in terms of racial and sexual equality.
America is obviously not the most economically egalitarian of
societies, but disparities in wealth can be defended as a just
reflection of differences in effort and talent. Most of the rest of the
world, at least at present, seems to have concluded that some form
of liberal democracy with a mixed economic system is optimal.
Despite democracy's discontent, I think it is a persuasive argument
that there is no better system available. The CLS authors are
certainly indicted for lacking an alternative. Presumably most of
them favor some form of democratic socialism, but there is no
noticable movement in that direction in contemporary America.
(Even debaters have pretty much given up on running socialism as
a disadvantage.)
FENIMINISM. Feminist perspectives have served as the basis for
kritiks of rights and kritiks of the rule of law. Feminism could also
be used as the basis for a kritik of objective reason as an essentially
male way of looking at the world. Feminism generally, and
feminist rights theories in particular, have been discussed in some
depth in THE HANDBOOKS OF MORAL AND POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY (a 6-volume set also available from Paradigm), so
I will limit my comments here mainly to these latter two kritiks.
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In terms of the feminist kritik of the rule of law, most of the
answers to the CLS rule of law kritik should also apply here.
Second, it is important to realize that even radical feminists don't
reject all law; few if any of them are anarchists. What feminists
such as MacKinnon object to is neutral rule of law which
entrenches gender inequality. They would favor a rule of law
which benefited women. Thus, for their kritik to be applicable, two
conditions would need to hold. First, the plan would have to deal
with a women's issue. And second, it would have to apply legal
neutrality in a way unfavorable to women. It should be noted
finally that "rule of law bad" arguments cannot really function as
disadvantages because they are so non-unique. Neutral legal
standards are pervasive, and one more such standard won't make
any real difference.
It is arguable that rejecting neutral rules would in fact be bad for
women. As long as women are in a disadvantaged position, neutral
principles such as nondiscrimination should work in their favor.
And if women were strong enough politically to pass laws biased
in favor of women, then arguably such laws would no longer be
necessary.
It also seems doubtful that rejecting reason would benefit women.
Women's advance to date has depended heavily on liberal
rationalist appeals. Rejecting reason may make power the only
norm, which would be counterproductive from the feminist
standpoint.
A fundamental issue in terms of all of the feminist kritiks in the
current status of women. If women are making bona fide advances
within the current liberal, rationalist framework, then once again,
much of the force of these kritiks is mitigated. Thus, arguments
that women are advancing rapidly, both socially and economically,
seem useful to make against all of these kritiks.
ANTHROPOCENTRISM. This kritik, arguing that a central focus
on human beings is environmentally destructive, in some ways
parallels the Heideggerian/post-humanist kritik. It also is
commonly made as a environmental ethic, or deep ecology
disadvantage. Since the cards in this section seem especially
self-explanatory, I will only make a few brief comments on this
kritik.
First, an ecocentric or biocentric perspective does not necessarily
mean that human interests become irrelevant. Humans are also part
of the biosphere, that is, they are also part of nature, and all
animals have a natural tendency to seek to advance their own
interests. If helping humans doesn't hurt other species, then even
from a ecocentric or "deep ecological" framework, there is no
reason not to help them. Second, many affirmative advantages will
also help other species and the environment at large. War is bad for
living things other than humans, and nuclear war might be the
ultimate environmental tragedy. Third, if every species mainly
seeks to maximize its own advantage, then rejecting
anthropocentrism might, paradoxically, constitute an effort to place
humans uniquely above nature. Fourth, anthropocentrism is
defensible. Only sentient life can have ultimate value because only
sentient life can experience value. Human consciousness may also
give people a unique capacity to experience value.
Some of the evidence in the anthropocentrism section will apply to
other kritiks. This section includes evidence for example on the
difficulty of paradigm change which might apply to
post-humanism, the panopticon, etc.
NARRATIVE. The most prominent use of critical race theory in
debate to date has been as the primary source for the narrative.
Narratives are not necessarily kritiks (though they have sometimes
been described as post-kritiks), but they have both practical and
theoretical affinities to the kritik and therefore warrant some
attention here.
A narrative is essentially a story. The story can be fictional or true,
but it is intended to support a conclusion or make a didactic point.
Narratives are said to dramatize the actual realities of a situation
more effectively than more coldly rational, analytic argument.
Narratives are also said to more effectively give voice to the
distinctive perspectives of women and minorities.
The first narratives in debate, run by Weber State on the college
criminal procedure topic, drew on the critical race literature. The
Weber 1AC was simply two extended stories, one involving the
return by time travel of a black woman to the Constitutional
Convention of 1787 and the other concerning a proposal by
extra-terrestrials to provide earth with utopian technologies in
exchange for the enslavement of blacks. Another narrative, run by
the University of Texas on the Middle East topic, argued that the
voices of the Palestinians have been largely ignored in American
policy toward the mid-east and concluded with a personal narrative
by a Palestinian woman. In neither case was a plan presented, and
the link between the narratives and the resolution (that criminal
procedure should be changed or security assistance increased) was
left as a matter of inference rather than explicitly articulated.
In legal scholarship, narratives have been criticized on a number of
grounds. One indictment is that narratives are ineffective. The
appeal to personal experience is unlikely to be persuasive unless
the audience has similar experiences on which they can draw. This
means that narrative can be effective for consciousness raising
within a group but is unlikely to be effective when it comes to
persuading those outside the group. Second, narratives are indicted
as counterproductive. Telling stories is, of course, one of the oldest
forms of persuasion, and some stories clearly are persuasive. The
danger is that the story may be overly simplistic, atypical, or even
untruthful. Mark Tushnet makes this indictment of stories about
"political correctness." Ronald Reagan's simplistic stories about the
"evil empire" and the nuclear shield provided ostensibly by
ballistic missile defense may have distorted public policy and
wasted billions of dollars. The Nazi story about the international
Jewish conspiracy was even more pernicious in its results. The
point of all these examples is that narratives can undermine sound
argument at least as easily as they can enhance it. The answer to
this indictment might be that this just means that we need to
critically assess stories to determine their validity. This is difficult,
however, especially where fictional stories are concerned. Stories
like this may be designed to make a point, but a counter-story
making the opposite potent could just as easily be constructed. And
since neither is true, it's next to impossible to choose between
them. Most of these problems with narrative in law carry over to
narrative in debate. In addition, there are a number of problems
with the use of narrative unique to debate. First, the narratives
offered to date haven't included a plan. In this sense, it seems fair
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to say that they have functioned as kritiks of the status quo but
have failed to propose an alternative. Also, since there is no plan,
it is difficult if not impossible to conclude that the affirmative is
topical. This is especially so because the narratives offered often
fail to clearly even support the resolution. The narratives about
time travel and space aliens at most seem to suggest that there is
racism in American society; they offer no direct reason to believe
that criminal procedure should be changed.
And to say that Americans need to be more attentive to Palestinian
voices hardly proves that security assistance should be increased.
(It may prove the opposite--that Israel's security assistance should
be cut.) The standard affirmative answer to the topicality
indictment is to accuse the negative of trying silence the
affirmative and the perspectives it is seeking to advance. To me
this is unpersuasive. No one has interrupted the affirmative
speeches; the negative has simply argued that what the affirmative
has said is irrelevant to the subject of the debate. Also, by this
logic, the affirmative should never lose for being non-topical, an
outcome which would probably destroy debate as we know it.
Another basic problem with the narrative, at least as it has so far
appeared in debate, is that it fails to advocate anything. The
narratives are simply offered and allowed to stand on their own,
letting the audience draw its own conclusions. Debate, I would
argue, is best understood as a process of making competing claims.
The narrative in a sense is irrefutable simply because it never
makes an explicit claim. And since it also fails to offer a policy, it
provides nothing tangible to either endorse or attack.
Stories are clearly a part of persuasion, and there is nothing wrong
with stories in debate. Debaters, indeed, clearly tell stories in every
round. The problem is that to be meaningfully evaluated those
stories need to fit into a broader argumentative framework.
Narrative can be a tool of persuasion, but simply standing alone
narrative should not persuade very much.
In sum, there are several powerful arguments against narrative as
an exclusive form of argument in a debate. First, the lack of a plan
makes the debate too intangible. Plans, especially on broad topics,
provide the specificity needed for intelligent discussion. Second,
the negative should try to argue that the stories offered fail to
support the resolution. Whines about being silenced don't obviate
the affirmative need to be topical. Third, even if the affirmative
argues for the resolution exclusively by means of narrative, the
negative need not rely solely on narrative to deny the resolution. If
the negative can prove with non-narrative evidence the resolution
is untrue, then the inferential impact of the affirmative stories
should be undercut.
NON-VIOLENCE. Non-violence is a kritik which has been run for
several years, mainly on international topics. Because of this, and
because it could conceivably be applied to the juvenile crime topic,
I am treating it here. Non-violence has been conceived both as a
doctrine of systematic opposition to war and as a method of social
reform. Grounded in part in Thoreau's theories of civil
disobedience, it has been applied most successfully in this century
by Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the United
States. The idea of non-violent resistance blurs fairly readily into
the idea of pacifism or total opposition to war. In both its
international and its domestic forms, it argues that violence is
always counterproductive, as well as immoral. Non-violent
methods, in this view, offer the best hope for peace and progress.
The doctrine of pacifism has been indicted at a number of levels.
Some defenses of non-violence are grounded in deontological
considerations of absolute morel right and wrong. But even
approached deontologically, non-violence is not clearly justified.
In Kantian terms, it would be possible to universalize the principle
that violence should be used only in self-defense; thus, at least a
limited use of violence seems consistent with the categorical
imperative. Further, it is argued that non-violence inevitably
involves sacrificing some lives in the short term, an approach
which would seem to violate the Kantian prohibition against using
others solely as means. In consequentialist terms, the case for
absolute non-violence is even more problematic. If avoiding
violence is the primary goal, then it seems acceptable to use
violence if greater violence is thereby avoided. The notion that
military force never succeeds is denied by every successful war
ever fought in history, and the forty-five year history of the cold
war seems to prove that military preparedness can sometimes
prevent war. It is also argued that non-violence can succeed only
under limited circumstances. Gandhian non-violence was effective
against the British because they shared many of Gandhi's values,
but against an adversary like the Nazis, there is little reason to
believe that non-violence would have succeeded. (Jewish
resistance to the Nazis was largely non-violent.) When the Soviet
tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia in 1968, non-violent resistance
proved of no avail.
Beyond the broader question of pacifism, this kritik has additional
problems applied to the question of domestic law enforcement.
Many pacifists probably believe that while war is always wrong
(that it is too destructive, inevitably takes innocent lives, and even
threatens human survival), state coercion against criminals is
acceptable. Even King didn't advocate disbanding the police. If, on
the other hand, non-violence is carried even to the extent of
prohibiting state coercion against criminals, it becomes a version
of anarchy; that is, it effectively rejects all civil authority. This is,
of course, a defensible position, but it goes far beyond the debate
over non-violence as it normally occurs.
CULTURAL RELATIVISM. Cultural relativism argues that there
are no moral values which transcend particular cultures. Values,
instead, emerge out of the particular history and traditions of a
group of people. If this is the case, then to criticize one culture in
terms of the standards of another is seen as ethnocentric and
oppressive. In some versions of relativism it is argued that it is
essential to recognize difference in order to respect "the other" as
a person or group of equal dignity.
Themes associated with cultural relativism have appeared in a
number of debate arguments. They figure prominently in
arguments indicting universal standards of human rights. The
Orientalism kritik, popular on the Middle East topic, made the
relativist claim that Asian cultures cannot be effectively understood
from the standpoint of Western values. Finally, discussion of "the
other" figured in kritiks associated with the China topic.
Cultural relativism can be a persuasive argument, but it also poses
a number of problems. First, an absolute commitment to the idea
of cultural relativism requires one to defend the moral
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acceptability, under some circumstances, of slavery, cannibalism,
human sacrifice, and infanticide, not to mention numerous forms
of racism and sexism. Second, the idea of respecting all cultures is
in effect an appeal to ad universal standard--tolerance--not found
in most cultures. If respecting difference is a universal norm, then
this implies that there are universals which apply across cultures,
but if it is not a universal standard, then it is just another culture
specific convention, without any ethical priority attached to it.
Third, it is easily possible to exaggerate cultural differences. In the
modern world, faced with the conditions of industrial and
post-industrial society, cultures have become much more similar in
many of their values. There is, for example, at least almost
universal lip service paid to the idea of democracy. Finally,
cultures are not unitary. Who, for example, speaks for Chinese
culture--the communist party or the demonstrators in Tianamen
Square? Who better spoke for American culture in the
1950s--pro-segregation Southern whites or Martin Luther King?
Arguments could be made for either side in terms of either of these
examples, but it may be that the best answer is "none of the above."
If there are a plurality of cultures within the world, then it seems
reasonable to believe that their are a plurality of perspectives
within a given culture. If this is the case, then the appeal to cultural
values becomes a good deal less viable.
NUCLEARISM. The term "nuclearism" was apparently coined by
the psychologist, Robert Jay Lifton, an author who has written
extensively about the potential physical and psychological effects
of a nuclear war. By "nuclearism" Lifton means an excessive
reliance upon, to the point of veneration or worship of, nuclear
weapons. The critique of nuclearism often takes the form of an
indictment of the language or discourse of nuclear weapons. An
example would be to refer to a nuclear missile, which is after all a
weapon of mass destruction, as the "peacekeeper." This kind of
language is said to obscure the true dangers of nuclear war and
therefore to increase the risk of the ultimate cataclysm.
There are various ways in which the critique of nuclearism has
been and can be translated into policy debate. The clearest link
would seem to be to affirmatives which expand the nuclear arsenal,
developing some new form of nuclear weapon or nuclear strategy.
The language and assumptions of such an affirmative may well be
nuclearist in Lifton's terms; that is, they may express an
overconfident reliance on nuclear weapons as a savior. Of course,
the number of affirmatives who call for expanding nuclear forces
is quite limited; thus, teams wanting to run the nuclearism kritik
have looked for more generic links. Sometimes it has been argued
that even referring to the threat of nuclear war (for example, by
claiming it as a case or disadvantage impact) is self-fulfilling.
Thus, by this logic, we shouldn't even discuss the nuclear threat.
Alternatively, it has sometimes been argued that to focus on
smaller nuclear risks leads to the neglect of more substantial ones.
Thus, there are several actual and potential "nuclearism" kritiks.
How should one respond?
First, the idea that we should simply ignore the risks of nuclear war
seems untenable. Considerable evidence (much of it from members
of the peace movement, including Lifton himself) insists that the
nuclear threat can be checked only by constant vigilance and
unceasing inquiry. A contemplation of the possibility of human
extinction, such as that conducted by Jonathan Schell in his book,
THE FATE OF THE EARTH, is said to be particularly salutary in
this regard. According to one author, this process can create a
"rupture" in nuclear discourse, leading to potential salvation.
Second, you should remember the definition of "nuclearism":
veneration or worship of nuclear weapons. Based on this
definition, most teams, I think, can plausibly deny that they are
nuclearist. Certainly, to claim nuclear war as an impact is hardly to
worship nuclear weapons--it labels them as the ultimate threat.
Even reliance on nuclear deterrence may not be "nuclearism."
Deterrence can be regarded as a tragic necessity but one which is
unavoidable. (As is often argued, the nuclear genie, once let loose,
can never again be bottled up.)
The argument that focusing on small risks leads to neglect of larger
ones has several problems. First is the question of uniqueness
(which seems relevant here since this form of the kritik is basically
a policy argument). For there to be a unique "turn" impact, it is
necessary to show that we are now addressing the greater nuclear
risk which the smaller risk is said to distract from. Second, the link
seems suspect. Nuclear strategists consider all kinds of nuclear
risks--and properly so. Where millions of lives and potential
human extinction are at stake even remote scenarios should be
considered. Third, it might be that focus on smaller risks can in fact
heighten concern about the greater ones. Consciousness concerning
the risk of nuclear war is a general kind of thing. Nuclear activists
tend not to be worried about only one kind of nuclear threat; they
are concerned with the whole gamut of risks. Raising
consciousness about one risk thus might well heighten
consciousness about others.
The kritik has its most valid application against teams who really
do increase reliance on nuclear weapons by expanding their use,
developing new technologies, and devising new strategies. And
there is some plausibility to the claim that devising elaborate
scenarios for nuclear war fighting (as defense planners do) tends to
desensitize by glossing over the true horrors of a nuclear exchange.
But even here there are a number of potential responses. First, it is
arguable that nuclear weapons have kept the general peace for over
fifty years. It has not been a particularly comfortable peace, lived
under the nuclear sword, but the central war in Europe which
seemed so threatening in the 1940s and 1950s has been avoided,
largely, many think, because of nuclear deterrence. Second, if
nuclear weapons are a fact of life, as they certainly are currently,
then it is also a fact of life that there is going to be some nuclear
strategy--and better a sound, thoughtful strategy than one adopted
by indifference or default. Third, if the affirmative wins its case,
then it wins that the approach it employs is likely to enhance peace.
And there is a good likelihood that the detailed specifics of
affirmative analysis will be more compelling than the highly
generic (and largely non-unique) indictment provided by the
nuclearism kritik.
THREAT CONSTRUCTION. The threat construction kritik was
developed and popularized in 1995-96 on the college Middle East
debate topic. One main source of this kritik is political scientist
Ronnie Lipschutz, editor of a 1995 book titled, ON SECURITY.
What this kritik argues is that military threats are subjective rather
than objective entities. Rather than objectively existing in the
natural world, threats are constructed in the minds of those who
feel threatened. This is not to deny that an objective, physical
world exists; subjective threat perception doesn't change the
number of tanks, planes, and nuclear warheads in various countries'
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arsenals. But military hardware, the weapons themselves, is not
what constitutes a threat. Rather, threats are construals or
constructions of the significance of those weapons, based on a
certain reading of opposing intentions. The arms exist "out there"
in the world, but the threat exists only in the mind. Unfortunately,
the subjective construction of threats can be self-fulfilling. In
perceiving some nation as a threat, a state of mind is created which
leads to certain potentially belligerent responses. If one nation
perceives a threat, it is likely to become threatening in response.
This can lead to an escalatory process of action and reaction. (This
is the essential process of an arms race.) The end result is that
constructed threats become real.
This argument, concerning the creation of enemies through a
process of misperception, is a common one in foreign policy
literature. Such mainstream, "realist" foreign policy experts as
George F. Kennan and Hans Morgenthau discuss this as a major
problem in foreign policy assessment. And treated as a foreign
policy argument, the issue here seems relatively straightforward.
Yes, there are dangers associated with exaggerating threats--doing
so can lead to mythical "missile gaps," arms races, unneeded
interventions, and nuclear brinkmanship. Much of the history of
the Cold War is an illustration of these perils. But there are also
dangers associated with under-assessing threats. The second world
war is, of course, the classic case in point. Hitler developed into a
major world menace, it is often argued, because the threat he posed
was ignored or at least under-valued. It seems, then, that there are
two dangers which foreign policy must avoid: "constructing"
unreal threats and ignoring real ones. Which of these concerns
should be greater? Clearly a case can be made for either side, and
the answer will hinge on what one thinks generally motivates
nations to go to war. If wars mainly start reactively, out of fear,
then the threat construction side seems to have a compelling case.
(During the Cold War, this argument took the form of the claim
that the United States needed to avoid "encircling" the Soviet
Union. The Soviets were said to be essentially defensive, but the
wounded bear was deemed capable of striking back.) But, if wars
are mainly offensive, designed to secure some policy objective,
then the pro-deterrence, anti-appeasement side seems strong. (This,
of course, led in the Cold War to the policy of containment.)
From the anti-kritik side, one strong argument is that most wars in
this century have been started by aggressor or "imperialistic"
nations who wish to restructure the international status quo. And,
according to this argument, such aggressor nations have almost
always underestimated the strength (either the military capabilities
or the will to fight) of their opponents. The invasion of Kuwait in
1991 is offered as a classic example of this process. If this theory
of war initiation is true, then faulty threat construction seems less
of a problem. Countries which perceive threats are likely to be
deterred; those which don't see threats are more likely to become
expansionist and actually threaten peace.
Another argument which can be made against this kritik is that
since both under-valuing and over-valuing threats is a danger, it is
necessary to decide the question of what really is a threat on a case
by case basis. To say that there are no real threats (until we
construct them) seems patently false. Hitler really was a threat to
the jews. Saddam really was a threat to Kuwait. The perception of
threats is, of course, subjective; it is a mental construct. But that
mental construct either corresponds or fails to correspond to
reality. And "objective" reality includes the doctrines and
intentions of potential adversaries, not only their military hardware.
A third argument is that if constructed threats become real, then the
threats which we have constructed in the past are now real threats
which need to be countered. It might be that initially the Arabs and
Israelis constructed each other as threats, but the result has been a
history of hatred and warfare which is not "deconstructed" simply
by recognizing its origins. (Of course, there also seem to be real
conflicts of interest here--who controls what lands. It isn't just "a
failure to communicate.")
Taken, as I have so far, as a relatively straightforward foreign
"policy" argument, the threat construction kritik has both strengths
and weaknesses. Its strength is that mainstream foreign policy
experts recognize that the false construction of threats is a real
problem, a real danger. The weakness is that this hardly seems to
be an absolute argument. Since it is offset, in the abstract, by the
danger of failing to sufficiently appreciate a threat, the relative
weight to be given to the kritik can only be resolved on a case by
case basis--which means by actually debating the case (or
disadvantage) scenario.
There is, however, an epistemological dimension to this kritik
which makes it more complicated. The kritik is often defended in
terms of a particular postmodern epistemological perspective
commonly referred to as "social constructivism." This argues, in
essence, that "reality" is socially constructed. There is no
"objective" reality "out there." "Reality" is simply our
interpretation of reality--and there are many equally valid
interpretations. This isn't the place for a detailed discussion of
social constructivism, but I do want to make a few comments
concerning how this idea functions in terms of this particular kritik.
First, the kritik claims to avoid "radical relativism" because it
doesn't question the existence of actual physical objects (i.e.,
military hardware). Instead, it makes the less radical claim that
social reality is socially constructed. In some sense, this statement
is unexceptionable. Many aspects of the world (including the
intentions of foreign leaders) are relatively opaque and do have to
be interpreted. Thus, our view of the international scene is, in some
sense, a "construct." But what an epistemological and metaphysical
realist would insist is that it can be a better or worse construct--one
which is closer to or further from reality. And again, it seems
important to insist that motives and intentions do actually exist in
the minds of other people. Those motives and intentions are, in
part, influenced by how they perceive others. But they also have an
objective dimension. Hitler and Saddam, Stalin and the Kaiser had
real aims, and hard as Chamberlain tried to "construct" Hitler as a
peace-lover, that attempted construction didn't change the reality
of Nazi racism and aggression. There is a hard and a soft version
of social constructivism. The soft version admits that we do have
to interpret the world but insists that there is still an objective
world which we are interpreting-so it's important for us to get it
right. Hard constructivism seems to claim that reality is nothing but
our interpretations -- that those interpretations are, in effect,
constitutive of reality. There are a number of problems with this
"perspective." If reality is just a construction, then we seem to have
done a relatively bad job of constructing it. But the pain in the
belly of a starving person doesn't seem to be just an interpretation.
The world has a hard, recalcitrant reality which seems independent
of our wishes. The person falling from a fifty story building can't
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simply reinterpret the pavement into something softer. Finally, the
distinction between a "real" physical world and an interpreted
social world is also problematic. It implies an extreme dualism;
that is, it suggests that humans are somehow separate from actual
physical nature rather than a part of it.
Two final comments. First, it is not clear to me that Lipschutz
himself embraces anything like hard (or even semi-hard)
constructivism. In a number of places, he seems to suggest that
there are some real threats or at least that the evaluation of threats
is unavoidable. Second, while this kritik works reasonably well
against teams who focus on particular threatening agents in the
international environment (i.e., we need to be strong to counter
"rogue" nations like Iran and Iraq), it works far less well against
impacts which focus on more systemic causes of war. To say, for
example, that depression could lead to another world war doesn't
seem to construct a threat (at least in any pernicious way). No one
will fear us and arm against us because we think prosperity is
important for peace. Rather than constructing an enemy, the peace
through prosperity argument is a reading of history, and even if
history is an ambiguous text, it is not one which we can escape
attempting to read. Thus, the threat construction kritik should not
be seen as an all-purpose response to all war impacts. It has
argumentative force under certain circumstances (where specific
threats are isolated), but it is not a universal indictment against
teams who try to promote peace.
PRAGMATISM. Though not a counter-kritik per se, pragmatism
is a counterperspective which can be quite useful in answering
kritiks. In fact, the final round of the 1998 National Debate
Tournament was won by a team from Northwestern University
who defended a pragmatist perspective in opposition to the
Heidegger/Spanos kritik run (quite successfully) by Emory
University.
Pragmatism is considered to be the major philosophical tradition
to originate in the United States. Pragmatism is generally said to be
grounded in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who flourished
during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, but as a
formal philosophy, pragmatism was first articulated around the turn
of the century in the writings of authors such as C.S. Pierce and
William James. The most influential figure in the pragmatist
tradition was probably John Dewey, a philosopher whose work
profoundly affected progressive education. Among contemporary
"neopragmatists," probably the most noteworthy is Richard Rorty,
a philosopher who teaches at the University of Virginia.
Pragmatism, as its name suggests, attempts to focus its attention on
the practical, rather than the purely theoretical, problems of
mankind. In doing so, it tends to reject most of the traditional
problems of philosophy (especially those of a metaphysical or
epistemological nature) as pseudoproblems, that is, as either
meaningless or moot. Especially noteworthy is the pragmatist
theory of truth. Rather than searching for epistemological
foundations, pragmatism equates "truth" with whatever works. Our
senses and understanding, the pragmatists argue, developed in
order for us to function in the world, not to discover pure truth.
Thus, truth becomes a functional rather than an absolute concept.
The value of pragmatism in terms of answering kritiks is that the
pragmatists accept many of the premises of the (primarily
postmodern) authors from whom kritiks generally derive. (In fact,
neopragmatism is sometimes itself classified as a postmodern
philosophy.) But whereas the leading European philosophers who
are associated with postmoderism, such as Nietzsche, Heidegger,
and Foucault, tend to derive from their anti-foundationalism
extremely radical ethical and political positions, pragmatism sees
anti-foundationalism as compatible with the tenets of liberal
morality and politics.
Many kritiks stress our inherent inability to establish certain things,
from the basis of science to the value of life. The pragmatist would
agree that we can never establish things with complete certainty.
But lacking certainty, this simply means that we are forced to act
on the basis of our admittedly incomplete, relative, and ultimately
foundationless knowledge. The fact that there are no certainties
shouldn't lead to paralysis, but to doing the best we can with our
limited means.
Like the postmodernists, pragmatists see humans as socially
constructed, but rather than leading to inevitable conflict,
pragmatism sees this as the basis for democratic social cooperation.
In the pragmatist perspective, such mainstream values as humanism
and human welfare, social reform and political problem solving,
scientific and technological progress are all vindicated. In contrast,
pragmatism questions the usefulness of radical critique (especially
critique located at the highly abstract levels of ontology or
epistemology). Pragmatists see abstract philosophizing as disabling
rather than liberating. Rorty, in fact, argues that the American
political left has been undermined by the postmodern "cultural"
left.
Thus, pragmatism is critical of many of the practices associated
with kritiks: an ideological or paradigmatic focus, an emphasis on
language or discourse, the failure to offer alternatives, and so on.
Pragmatism also provided the basis for indicting many of the
leading philosophers associated with postmodernism and the kritik,
including Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, and Spanos.
The pragmatic perspective can also be applied in a number of
specific areas. "Environmental pragmatism" is a very useful
perspective from which to indict kritiks such as deep ecology,
social ecology, and ecofeminism. Pragmatism is also defended in
the foreign policy field. A pragmatic approach to foreign policy
implies at least two things. First, it suggests skepticism toward
"grand strategies" such as the containment policy of the cold war
years. What foreign policy pragmatists suggest is that in the
post-cold war world there are simply too many uncertainties to
make reliable long range predictions and to make dependable long
range plans. What foreign policy pragmatism suggests is support
for the logic of incrementalism, cautious, step by step reform,
rather than radical redirection. Second, foreign policy pragmatism
implies that we should be cautious with regard to general foreign
policy paradigms such as realism, liberalism, or constructivism.
The pragmatic view would seem to be that we need not be
exclusively wedded to any of these perspectives. Each probably
captures part of the truth (that is, it works some of the time), but no
theory is likely to work all the time. Thus, the best foreign policy
is likely to be flexible, adaptive, and eclectic. In terms of kritiks,
this means that teams defending pragmatism may well wish to
answer the paradigmatic foreign policy kritiks by suggesting that
they endorse no single foreign policy framework. They may draw
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on elements of each in arguing for a particular policy conclusion.
TERROR TALK. Terror talk is the discourse surrounding the issue
of terrorism. This is a kritik which has been in existence for some
time. It will definitely be run on the weapons of mass destruction
topic, and in fact is likely to appear on any topic in which terrorism
is an impact. The kritik argues that the language/discourse of
terrorism is fundamentally misguided. "Terrorism" is an
amorphous idea, without any clear definition, one man's terrorist
maybe another man's freedom fighter.
Also, the threat of terrorism is significantly exaggerated. In fact,
lightening kills more each year than do terrorists, and incidents of
terrorism have declined over time. Terrorism as a term is used
inconsistently; our enemies are terrorists; our friends, once again,
are freedom fighters. The danger of exaggerating terrorism is that
it may be self-fulfilling. Terrorism is uniquely a discursive issue.
It exists in order to communicate a political message, so talk about
terrorism tends to fuel its occurrence. Also, terror talk may justify
limits on civil liberties in order to ensure "security."
In answering the terror talk kritik, you should be able to defend
that it can be adequately defined. Though definitions do vary,
almost all definitions would agree that certain core acts involving
the indiscriminate killing of innocent people in order to make a
political statement and/or to secure political ends are terroristic.
Also, perfect definition is unnecessary. Like most general terms,
terrorism may not be subject to absolutely unambiguous definition,
but it can be defined clearly enough to be a useful term.
Terrorists, however defined, do really kill people. The citizens of
Oklahoma City, for example, would undoubtedly be surprised to
learn that the impact of terrorism is mainly discursive. Left
unchecked, terrorism may threaten democracy and the
constitutional order. The worst case predictions of the impact of
terrorism may not have proven correct, but there may also be a new
breed of terrorist more willing to inflict mass casualties. At any
rate, the fact that a disastrous occurrence has not a occurred is not
a reason not to be concerned. There has never been an all out
nuclear war either. The term terrorist may be used somewhat
inconsistently, but the equation of terrorists with freedom fighters
is unfounded. It confuses means and ends. Terrorists may be
pursuing freedom (though in most cases this is doubtful), but the
problem is the means they are employing, which inherently violate
just war principles regarding attacks on noncombatants. Media
attention may further terrorist aims, but there's no way to stop
media coverage of terrorism. Scholarly and policy talk, however,
is not what terrorists aim at, and such discussions are necessary to
devise strategies to contain terrorism.
KRITIKS OF ENVIRONMENTALISM AND INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
DEEP ECOLOGY. Deep ecology is the most prominent of current
radical environmental philosophies. Like all radical environmental
views, it begins with the perception that there is an environmental
crisis and that the survival of humanity (and many other species)
is threatened. According to deep ecologists, the root cause of the
environmental crisis is "anthropocentrism" (human-centeredness).
The preoccupation with things human leads to the devaluation and
neglect of the non-human. Humans view themselves as distinct
from "nature' and therefore feel justified in exploiting and
degrading it. Thus, a true solution to the environmental crisis
requires a shift away from anthropocentrism and a move to an
ecocentric (eco-system centered) or biocentric (life-centered) ethic.
This deep ecology is said to uniquely offer.
The term "deep ecology" was coined in the early 1970s by the
Norwegian philosopher, Arne Naess, who remains among the most
prominent of deep ecological thinkers. Naess contrasted the
position of deep ecology, with its rejection of anthropocentrism
and its commitment to radical social and individual life style
reform, with what he called "shallow" environmentalism. Shallow
environmentalism remains anthropocentric, and though it seeks
environmental improvement, it does so mainly to make things
better for human beings. These distinctions, between deep and
shallow, anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric, provide the
basis for most links to the kritik.
Perhaps the most obvious and straightforward link is the appeal by
the affirmative to human interests. Protecting the environment in
order to benefit humans is the hallmark of anthropocentrism and
shallow ecology. The reliance on reformist strategies is another
link to most affirmatives. Piecemeal reform, as opposed to radical
consciousness shift, is another defining trait of shallow
environmentalism. Avoiding an environmental crisis is another
link; some deep ecologists argue that only through crisis can the
necessary paradigm shift to deep ecology be accomplished. A
fourth link, especially relevant to the oceans topic, is the focus on
natural resources. The idea that some objects in nature are
"resources" for human consumption is clearly anthropocentric, and
it is again described as one of the defining features of shallow
environmentalism. There are, of course, many other possible links;
these are only the most generic.
Deep ecology has been subject to widespread criticism, most
fiercely perhaps from proponents of the rival environmental
philosophies of social ecology and ecofeminism. Both of these
perspectives agree that anthropocentrism is NOT the root cause of
the environmental crisis. Social ecologists, such as Murray
Bookchin, believe that it has its roots in social hierarchies like
those embedded in capitalism and the state. Ecofeminism sees
environmental problems as grounded in sexism. Thus, exponents
of these rival positions believe that deep ecology fails both
practically and analytically because it misidentifies the true cause
of the problem. And, indeed, deep ecology may even make things
worse, by entrenching capitalism or patriarchy.
Another common criticism of deep ecology is that it is
misanthropic, that is, that it hates humans. Some deep ecologists
have flirted with Malthusian population policies, and probably all
deep ecologists would like to see a significant, if gradual, decline
in human numbers. The misanthropy charge is often linked to the
claim that deep ecology is eco-fascist. That is, it is willing to
engage in extreme acts of coercion (or even extermination) in order
to achieve its ends. Critics note affinities between the veneration of
nature associated with deep ecology and similar appeals to nature
made by the Nazis. Another common criticism is that deep ecology
would abandon the poor of the world to their destitution. Only
economic growth (which deep ecology militantly opposes) can free
them from their poverty.
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Deep ecologists, of course, contest all of these claims, making for
a good debate. The literature on deep ecology is a mature one,
widespread and relatively accessible. Its links to most
environmental policies are relatively clear, and its impacts are also
strong. The kritik "alternative" is relatively well defined. All of
these factors mean that this kritik is likely to be one of the most
popular ones on the oceans topic.
SOCIAL ECOLOGY. Social ecology is another of the three major
environmental philosophies, along with deep ecology and
ecofeminism. Whereas deep ecology argues that it is
anthropocentrism (human-centeredness) that is at the root of the
environmental crisis, social ecology argues that the true cause of
environmental degradation is social hierarchy. Hierarchical social
relations involve the domination of one group by another. It is this
ideology of domination which justifies the human domination of
nature. Hierarchy takes a variety of forms. Social ecologists
(including most notably Murray Bookchin, the leading social
ecological thinker) point especially to capitalism and the state as
forms of hierarchy which must be transcended in order for
environmental problems to be adequately addressed. Unless such
hierarchies are dismantled, the environmental crisis threatens
human survival.
To overcome hierarchy, social ecology calls for the radical
decentralization of society. Instead of nation-states, society should
be organized into ecocommunities, existing in harmony with local
bioregions. These communities would be characterized by direct
democracy and lives of voluntary simplicity. Within such
communities, ecologically benign technologies should be able to
provide a humane standard of living for all, while offering their
inhabitants true freedom and community.
There are two major issues which arise concerning the viability of
the social ecological alternative. First is the question of whether
such communities could be effective. Critics argue that they would
be too small scale to deal with global environmental problems
(such as oceans). Decentralization might even involve greater
environmental impacts. More dispersed populations might absorb
more hitherto unoccupied parts of nature. The second issue
concerns, assuming social ecological communities are desirable,
just how to get there. Here there are also a number of indictments
of Bookchin and his colleagues. It is argued that social ecology is
simply too radical, too at odds with prevailing cultural norms to be
effective. People living in advanced consumer cultures simply don't
want to adopt lives of voluntary simplicity. And capitalism and the
state are too powerful, too entrenched, for grassroots
environmental movements to overcome.
Social ecology can be characterized as a form of communitarian,
anarcho-socialism. This characterization suggests some other
obvious lines of affirmative attack. Communitarianism can be
attacked as intolerant and oppressive of individual differences, as
well as inclined towards inter-group conflict and war. Anarchy is
widely indicted as unable to provide for personal and collective
security, and it may also be impossible, absent the protective
apparatus of the state, to effectively protect the environment.
Socialism also has a poor empirical track record with regard to the
environment, and it may not be able to sustain acceptable standards
of living. Defenders of capitalism argue that by promoting
prosperity it ultimately serves the interests of the poor and provides
the material basis for environmental protection.
In response to charges of this sort, social ecologists maintain that
their ideal avoids the negative features of previous forms of
anarchy, socialism, and communitarianism. Social ecology, it is
said, defends radically decentralized direct democracy, not pure
anarchy. As a libertarian socialism, it hopes to avoid the abuses of
both state socialism and coercive community. Whether such
distinctions are viable makes for a good debate.
Another set of criticisms is leveled against social ecology from the
standpoint of the rival positions of deep ecology and ecofeminism.
Deep ecologists argue that social ecology remains anthropocentric.
Its focus on social problems means that it neglects ecological
problems at the deepest, most fundamental level. What
ecofeminists object to most is the relative neglect of gender in
social ecological analyses. Since ecofeminists see patriarchy as the
root cause of environmental crisis, social ecology's failure to focus
on feminist concerns dooms it to ineffectiveness.
In response to the deep ecological indictment, social ecologists
maintain that it is not all humans who despoil the environment but
rather those wealthy and powerful persons at the top of the social
hierarchy. To the ecofeminists, they respond that patriarchy is a
form of hierarchy that needs to be dismantled, but it is not the only
such form. Ecofeminism, it argues, is likely to fail because it
focuses too much on just this one form of hierarchy.
Reform policies may buy off the radical reform truly needed to
dismantle hierarchy; thus, reformism may be the most generic link
to the kritik. Policies which protect the oceans and ocean resources
may also tend to protect capitalism. Finally, all affirmative plans
employ the nation-state and may even call for forms of global
governance. This seems to be antithetical to the eco-anarchist
desire for radically decentralized decision-making.
ECOFEMINISM. Ecofeminism is one of the three major
environmental philosophies, the other two being deep ecology and
social ecology. All three of these perspectives share a common
belief in the reality of an environmental crisis, but each has a
unique slant on just what root cause underlies this condition. Deep
ecology argues that ultimately environmental destruction is linked
to anthropocentrism -- human-centeredness. Ecofeminism, in
contrasts, focuses on androcentrism -- male-centeredness -- as the
ultimate source of the problem. Social ecology is similar to
ecofeminism in tracing environmental problems to social causes,
but while social ecology points to hierarchy in general as the root
cause, ecofeminism stresses patriarchy in particular.
Ecofeminism believes that all forms of domination are linked, and
it points to a principle of domination underlying sexism, racism,
militarism, environmental degradation, and so forth. In particular,
Western culture tends to associate women with nature, with the
body as opposed to the mind, instinct as opposed to reason. In
contrast, male rationality is seen as transcending nature, which it
is therefore licensed to dominate. The result of this kind of
dualistic thinking is the system of domination which ecofeminism
indicts.
There are many links to this kritik. One of the most generic is
reformism. Reformist environmentalism ultimately fails because it
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doesn't address the underlying gender-related causes of ecological
destruction. Only a feminist ecology can truly succeed because
only it properly discerns the systematic logic of domination.
Similarly, a non-ecological feminism fails because it doesn't see
how patriarchy is linked to the domination of nature. Another
generic link is "instrumentalism." An instrumental approach to
protecting nature (including the oceans) is one which does so for
the benefits this accrues to human beings as opposed to protecting
the environment because of its intrinsic worth. The focus on marine
"natural resources" grounds this instrumentalist logic in the
wording of the oceans resolution.
The basic ecofeminist argument that all forms of domination are
linked is attacked in a variety of ways. Some cultures, such as the
Chinese, seem to be pro-environmental without being feminist.
Likewise, Nazi Germany displayed pro-environmental attitudes
without rejecting other forms of domination. Conversely, we can
easily imagine a pro-feminist culture which still exploited nature.
Affluent women are not notably less consumer-oriented than
affluent men. As deep ecologists observe, a gender-neutral culture
could still place humans in a position of dominance over nature.
For social ecologists, ecofeminists error in giving so much weight
to one form of domination -- patriarchy -- while relatively
neglecting other forms of hierarchy such as capitalism and the
state. If all forms of domination are linked, why ecofeminism as
opposed to eco-antiracism, eco-socialism, eco-queer theory, or
what have you?
Its emphasis on patriarchy may make ecofeminism less truly
ecological than deep ecology. Likewise, its emphasis on ecology
may make it less than truly feminist. Some ecofeminists seem to
essentialize women -- to view them as pro-environmental because
they truly are closer to nature. This may simply reverse the
traditional male sexist stereotype. Because of this, many critics
argue that ecofeminism actually reinforces sexism.
Finally, one can argue that ecofeminism rejects vital parts of the
Western tradition. Various ecofeminists; indict capitalism, science
and technology, justice and rights, global trade and economic
development, objectivity and rationality. It may be that most if not
all of these ideas and institutions are vital for human welfare,
which includes of course the welfare of women.
HEIDEGGER. Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher who
lived from 1889 to 1976. One measure of his philosophical stature
is the influence he has exerted over virtually every major
movement in continental philosophy from the 1920s to the present.
These include phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, and
postmodernism. Heidegger has also had an important influence on
recent environmental thought, and it is the environmental
implications of his philosophy which are central to this kritik.
Heidegger's thought is notoriously difficult, and he is probably best
approached, at least initially, through secondary sources. His
environmentalist interpreters tend to emphasize his criticism of the
modern, technological world. The technological worldview leads
us to regard nature as a "standing reserve," that is, as an object (or
natural resource) to be manipulated for human ends. The result of
this is that we no longer experience the world as it is; its true being
is hidden from us. This leads to an alienated and inauthentic
existence, a "fallen" and fundamentally dehumanized condition. It
may also threaten our survival. Treating nature as an object
inevitably leads to its degradation and neglect.
The "natural resources" wording in the topic is probably the
clearest link to this kritik. Focus on natural resources is part of the
mindset of management and manipulation of nature. Science and
technology also are important parts of this mindset, and they
therefore provide additional links. Political activism and political
reform may be still further ways in which humans willfully attempt
to control their environments rather than allowing the process of
releasement (or "letting be") to take place.
To let things be means to allow them to manifest themselves as
bona fide beings, not just as objects of manipulation. It also means
to let nature and natural beings unfold according to their own
nature, as opposed to reshaping them for human ends. Humanity
has real hope of survival only if it can recover this process of
non-manipulative appreciation.
A starting point for many answers to the kritik is Heidegger's
membership in the Nazi Party. There has been an ongoing (and
very heated) debate in the Heidegger literature concerning the
significance of this biographical fact. His defenders argue that
though it was a profound political misjudgment, it does not
fundamentally impugn his thought. There are good reasons to
believe that Heidegger did not embrace the entire Nazi worldview;
for example, he does not personally appear to have been
anti-Semitic. (A number of his most famous students, including
Hanna Arendt and Herbert Marcuse, were Jewish.) Nor does one
need to be a Nazi to embrace Heidegger's criticism of the modern,
manipulative, technological worldview.
On the other hand, Heidegger's radical antagonism towards the
modern world may well have disposed him to favor the Nazis.
Certainly, he was no friend of liberal democracy. His critics charge
that an authoritarian and even totalitarian bent is inherent in his
thought. In one of their aspects, the Nazis were quite
pro-environmental (at least in their rhetoric), lending further
credence to charges that radical environmentalism could become
ecofascist.
According to one view, Heidegger's work underwent a fundamental
turn or transition, and it is the latter work, with its emphasis on
releasement and the rejection of willful striving and manipulation
which many environmentalists embrace. This too, however, poses
problems. One answer to the charge of Nazism is that the later
Heidegger withdrew from active political engagement. But saving
the environment may require activism, rather than simply "letting
things be."
Heidegger's philosophy focuses on the ontological, that is, on the
way that things fundamentally ARE. This ontological focus is said
to be essential for humans to transcend their debased modern lives
and to recover an authentic existence. But there are several
problems with this stance. First, ontological issues may be
ultimately irresolvable. The basic nature of existence is something
that has been debated for thousands of years without being
resolved. Second, we might question why we should embrace
Heidegger's view of authenticity. If people prefer more
materialistic and manipulative lives, why are they wrong and
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Heidegger right? Finally, there is the problem that an ontological
focus may lead to the neglect of ethical concerns. A focus on
nature and the appreciation of being can lead to estrangement from
human concerns and can create an indifference to human suffering.
KRITIKS OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS REALISM AND
LIBERALISM. Realism is still widely regarded as the leading
paradigm of international relations. As a general theory of
international politics and the international system, realism takes a
number of forms: the classical realism of Morgenthau and Kennan,
the neorealism (or structural realism) of Waltz, neoclassical
realism, offensive realism, defensive realism, motivational realism,
and so on. Some think that the range of "dueling realisms" has
become so wide that the term is no longer meaningful. There are,
however, certain perspectives common to most realists, and maybe
more important realism is still treated as a unitary theory. This is
especially true among those who critique realism. On almost all
foreign policy topics, kritiks of realism are common, and the
Oceans topic will prove no exception.
As the name suggests, "realism" stands in oppositions to "idealism"
as a way of understanding foreign policy. This means that realism
is "tough minded.." It tends to emphasize material forces, rather
than ideas or institutions. It also tends to center on nation-states
and to see them as the central actors in the international system.
Realism also sees the international system as generally prone to
conflict and war. For many realists, this is because of the anarchic
structure of the global system -- a world of nation states not subject
to an overarching authority. Realists also tend to emphasize
national security. They generally believe that national security is
best achieved by means of deterrence or military strength, rather
than through interdependence, democratization, or international
law. All of these traits can be isolated as links to this kritik.
The kritik argues that realism fails as a theory of international
politics. It exaggerates the state, it exaggerates conflict, and it
neglects opportunities for cooperation. It fails to effectively explain
the continuing vitality of international institutions like NATO. It
has a hard time explaining events like the end of the Cold War and
the demise of the Soviet Union -- neither event seems compatible
with traditional power politics assessments. In general, realism is
said to be outdated, to no longer apply effectively in the post-Cold
War world.
One impact to the kritik is to turn solvency. Policies based on
realist assumptions are likely to be misguided because of the flaws
in those assumptions. By exaggerating conflict, realist threat
perceptions are said to be self-fulfilling. By seeing enemies
everyone, realism may actually create such enemies. Realism is
also said to reinforce statism and international hierarchy in general.
Its security focus leads it to neglect environmental issues. Finally,
a number of authors (especially of a constructivist bent) explicitly
the language or discourse of realism as evil (conflict-enhancing) in
itself.
Kritik of realism are launched from a number of perspectives,
which implies that there are a number of alternatives to realism that
you may wish to defend. These include liberalism, constructivism
or critical international relations theory, and international relations
feminism.
Along with realism, liberalism remains one of the two major
paradigms of international relations. While there are many
disagreements among liberals, the following are tenets which many
liberals share. First, liberalism tends to be highly internationalist.
It seeks wide and deep international engagements, including aid,
trade, and collective security ties. Second, liberalism, unlike
realism, sees considerable opportunities for international
cooperation. Third, liberalism tends to favor international arms
control regimes as well as other international institutions. Fourth,
liberalism is cosmopolitan, meaning liberals are more likely than
realists to give equal weight to the interests of non-Americans.
Fifth, contemporary liberalism embraces democratic peace theory,
the idea that democracies are very unlikely to fight with each other,
and because of this liberalism tends to support democracy
promotion. Sixth, following Kant, many liberals lean toward
deontological ethical positions. This is sometimes expressed in
their strong human rights advocacy. Seventh, liberalism tends to
stress the values of economic interdependence and therefore to
advocate globalization. Eighth, whereas realists tend to favor
strong deterrence policies, liberalism is more disposed toward
minimal deterrence postures. And whereas some leading realists
even support nuclear proliferation, liberals tend to be proliferation
pessimists and to favor limits on other forms of WMD. All of these
traits of liberalism can be used as links to the kritik.
I believe that this kritik has wide application. Negative debaters
often attempt to label affirmative policies as realist, but in fact most
affirmatives on this topic will be more liberal than realist, as the
above links suggest. This also suggests an important potential use
for the affirmative answer side of this volume. If, on the
affirmative, you are charged with realism, you may wish to counter
that you are actually liberal and that liberalism is good. This may
also be an effective answer to threat construction kritiks, since
realists are more prone to threat construction than liberals.
Similarly, you might counter feminist or critical/constructivist
kritiks by defending liberalism. In sum, this volume has many
potential uses in response to a wide variety of kritiks.
Liberalism is attacked both from the right and the left. The right
often argues that liberalism leads to military weakness. Liberalism
is too prone to see potential for cooperation and insufficiently wary
about potential threats. Liberal Wilsonianism is often castigated as
a recipe for myopic foreign policy. Critics from the left offer a
somewhat different set of indictments. Environmentalists dislike
the free trade/globalization emphasis of liberalism. Other critics
from the left think that liberalism is imperialistic and even prone to
genocide. Critics from both the left and right argue on occasion
that liberalism is overly interventionist and may even be prone to
moralistic global crusades based on liberal ideology. (The Vietnam
War is often cited as an example of this.)
Defenders of liberalism, of course, counter both sets of claims.
Liberals claim that free trade, globalization, human rights and
democracy promotion all encourage peace. Liberal theorists claim
that there theory is sensitive to security issues and that it is better
able to deal with contemporary conditions than are rival theories.
Its defender claim that liberalism is not excessively interventionist
but that it is still willing to intervene (for example, against
genocide) when intervention is truly needed.
RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM. With regard to the kritik of
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radical environmentalism proper, I want to highlight a few of its
features. There are three basic link stories. The first focuses on
radical environmentalism and argues that it attacks capitalism. To
win this link, you need to be able to successfully characterize the
affirmative as "radical" environmentalism. The other two links
discussed below should help you in doing this. Also, you should
point to elements in the affirmative case analysis which suggest
radical environmentalist themes (for example, ecocentrism, animal
rights, intrinsic value to nature, and so forth). The kritik should
work especially well against "critical" affirmatives because they
will wear their radicalism up front. You may also wish to argue
that even mainstream environmentalism is radical -- that is, that it
shares anti-growth and anti-free market attitudes. The second main
link story focuses on oceans. The key source here is probably
Philip Steinberg's book, THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF
THE OCEANS. Steinberg argues that the oceans are a social as
well as a physical space. The oceans can be constructed in various
ways -- as a void, a neutral space between nations, as an extension
of national territory, or as something in the middle, a site of strong
political influence but not sovereign control. Various ways of
constructing this ocean space seem to support, while other
constructions impede what Steinberg terms "postmodern
capitalism." (Thus, his book provides evidence supporting both
links and link turns.) In general, though, he seems to believe that
disputes over the uses of the oceans offer one arena in which
capitalism can be challenged and it "contradictions" exposed. The
third link focuses on environmental doomsaying. The exaggeration
of environmental impacts is used to fuel radical environmentalism.
Here you would probably need to win that affirmative harm claims
really are much exaggerated; a robust case attack should help in
doing this.
The impact debate is more straightforward. As this shell is written,
it is argued that capitalism is key to both prosperity and
democracy, each of which in turn is strongly linked to peace and
environmental protection. You can also argue that capitalism itself
promotes peace and a clean environment directly. If you wish to
avoid the capitalism good and bad debate, there are a number of
other reasons included here for why radical environmentalism is
bad. These include ecofascism, anti-Americanism, anti-modernism,
and irrationalism. These arguments can also be deployed as a series
of impact turns against other kritiks grounded in the various radical
environmental philosophies.
On the affirmative, you can try to deny the link in various ways.
You might argue that your plan is shallow, rather than radical,
environmentalism. You might also argue that capitalism is too
deeply entrenched to be dislodged. Evidence is available which
will allow the affirmative to argue that many plans can and will be
constructed in ways favorable to capitalism. If you win all or most
of your case harm debate, this should offset most of the
doomsaying link. Also, the long history of environmental
doomsaying doesn't appear to have done too much damage to
capitalism. The capitalism bad turn strategy is, of course, also
available.
COUNTER-KRITIKS
A counter-kritik can be defined loosely as any argument used in
answering a kritik which makes the kritik a reason to vote
affirmative. It is an offensive rather than a defensive answer to the
kritik--a kind of "turn." A defensive argument against a kritik (a
takeout) only renders the kritik moot, i.e., not a reason to vote
negative. For a counter-kritik to work effectively, it may be
necessary to assume much of the theoretical framework of kritiks.
A counter-kritik can work in several ways. It can demonstrate that
the negative is relying on faulty discourse. Or it can prove that they
employ erroneous assumptions. Finally, it can simply show that the
thought process employed by the kritik is harmful rather than
beneficial. Counter-kritiks seem especially valuable when debating
in front of judges who are favorably disposed towards the kritik.
The counter-kritik functions within the framework which these
judges prefer; hence they are likely to give it more weight than
more standard arguments for why the kritik is not a voting issue.
Of course, like a turn against a disadvantage, a counter-kritik does
not necessarily take out the initial negative indictment of the
affirmative discourse or assumptions. In the remainder of this
introduction, I want to discuss several examples of counter-kritiks.
Utopianism. An argument made against many kritiks is that the
perspective they assume is utopian--that is, based on a wildly
unrealistic and ultimately unrealizable ideal. The utopianism
argument can be a powerful one, but it is usually underdeveloped.
It strengthens the argument considerably if the affirmative explains
(and documents) just why utopianism is so pernicious. (Common
arguments are that the utopian perspective can never be realized,
or that if it is it will only be in a distorted, potentially totalitarian,
form. Willingness to sacrifice millions of lives in order to reach
some utopian future was a characteristic of both fascism and
communism.) It is frequently argued that utopianism must fail
because it attempts to totally restructure society based on some
comprehensive theory. But society is too complex for any theory
to grasp or any blueprint to alter. It is better, according to this
argument, to engage in piecemeal reform, in incremental
adjustment, rather than attempting to wipe the slate clean and start
over.
The indictment of utopianism also applies with some force to the
idea of comprehensive "rethinking." As authors such as Yale
political scientist Charles Lindblom have argued, human cognitive
capabilities are simply insufficient to engage in comprehensive,
rationalistic rethinking. It's better, by this logic, to make
adjustments at the margin, rather than trying to revamp the whole
system. Since "rethinking" is often said to be the "alternative"
which the kritik embraces, this argument should be of frequent
value.
There are authors who defend the position that "utopianism" is
good. It may be that they think the system is so flawed that it does
need to be totally made over. Or, they may argue that utopian
thinking is needed in order to establish a regulative ideal in order
to guide future thought.
This kind of thinking is often used to defend so-called "utopian"
counterplans, such as anarchy and world government. (These
counterplans are in many ways the direct ancestors of the kritik.)
These arguments are not without merit, and my point is not to
dismiss them out of hand. But the countercase against utopianism
is also strong, and it is important to be prepared to make it.
Nihilism. Another common argument, made especially against
postmodern kritiks such as Heidegger and Foucault, is that they are
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"nihilist." Nihilism means literally believing in nothing. This is an
allegation which has been made against numerous forms of
extreme skepticism, and it was one of the early charges directed
against the kritik. This argument tends to suffer, however, from the
familiar "familiarity breeds contempt" problem. Thus, to be
powerful, the argument needs to be enhanced, and I believe that
this can best be done by articulating reason for why nihilism is so
especially dangerous. One common argument is that nihilism
produces political paralysis. Lacking some kind of affirmative faith
and rigorously doubting everything, the nihilist is said to lack the
grounds needed for commitment to political reform. This kind of
reasoning, it should be noted, applies particularly well to certain
kritiks--especially those which call for ongoing inaction because
of the lack of a foundational certainty about some aspect of
affirmative analysis.
In contrast to the quiescence argument is the claim that nihilism
can produce vast destruction. "If nothing is true, then everything is
permitted." The French existentialist, Albert Camus, wrote a long
essay, THE REBEL, in which he outlined the history of European
nihilism over the past two hundred years and concluded that
nihilism ultimately led to the mass bloodlettings of the twentieth
century.
Language games. The idea of language games was developed by
the Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. He argued that
there are numerous different kinds of language activity and that
each different language activity, or "game," has its own distinctive
rules and assumptions. These rules and assumptions, he goes on to
argue, cannot be meaningfully challenged from a perspective
outside the particular language game. An example is religion and
science. The two positions a built upon such different, and
incommensurate, assumptions that they really have nothing
meaningful to say to each other. Philosopher of science Thomas
Kuhn made a similar point about those organizing belief systems
which he referred to as "paradigms."
The significance of all this for debate is that the kritik can be
indicted for operating within the wrong language game. The
language game we are playing, it can be argued, is policy debate.
(This is demonstrated by the fact that we are debating and always
choose to debate policy topics.) The kritik attempts to challenge the
basic assumptions of policy argument, but this cannot be
meaningfully accomplished because these are intrinsic to the
language game of policy debate. The policy debate language game
assumes comparative marginal analysis, while the kritik tends to
make absolute judgments (of right or wrong, correct or incorrect)
in a non-comparative mode. It is simply not playing the same
language game. The kritik is like dribbling a football or punting a
basketball.
If this argument has a familiar ring, that is probably because it
restates, in a somewhat more sophisticated way, the familiar
argument that the kritik is operating in the wrong forum. Since this
argument, in its traditional form, no longer seems to carry much
weight, perhaps the "language game" reformulation of the position
will make it more salable. This argument is probably not a
"counter-kritik" according to the definition which I gave above--it
justifies rejecting the kritik, but isn't a reason, independently to
vote affirmative (unless, of course, the kritik is the only negative
argument in the round). But it is, I think, an interesting and
potentially effective way to express a common anti-kritik
perspective.
Postmodernism. Many kritiks rely on postmodern perspectives.
Heidegger and Foucault are both part of the pantheon of preferred
postmodern thinkers. The normativity kritik draws heavily on the
postmodern thought process of deconstruction. The threat
construction kritik employs basically a postmodern perspective on
international relations. Postmodern thought is currently popular,
but it is also widely indicted. Thus, if you can successfully identify
a position as resting on postmodern assumptions, you have the
basis for a potentially powerful counter-kritik.
Common arguments against postmodernism are that it is overly
relativistic, nihilistically skeptical, and politically paralyzing. Since
postmodernism has been discussed in depth above, I will not repeat
all of these arguments here. My point is simply that these can serve
as offensive arguments for the affirmative in a kritik debate.
Cultural crisis. The last counter-kritik I wish to discuss is one
which attacks an underlying assumption of many kritiks, which is
that we exist in a period of cultural crisis. The attitude of historical
and cultural pessimism has a long history, but it began to be
especially pronounced during the late nineteenth century (a
reaction perhaps to Enlightenment and Victorian ideas of progress).
The cultural crisis view is seen in works like Nietzsche's
TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS, Spengler's THE DECLINE OF THE
WEST, Eliot's "The Waste Land," and Yeats' "The Second
Coming." And, to update the story, such postmodern figures as
Heidegger and Foucault draw heavily on the same sense of cultural
crisis and decline.
This perspective can be indicted as both harmful and untrue. As far
as its truth goes, Spengler announced "the decline of the West"
approximately eighty years ago. (Marx's prediction of the downfall
of capitalism is, of course, of even more ancient vintage.)
Nietzsche announced the crisis of the Western World in the 1870s
and 1880s. It may well be that in part Nietzsche was right--the
twentieth century has been an era of conflict and crisis, of the great
wars and "great politics" that Nietzsche foresaw. But crises rarely
last over a hundred years. And the West, having weathered two
world wars and the challenges of both fascism and communism
seems to have settled into a period of considerable, prosperity and
relative calm.
Numerous indicators, from affluence to life expectancy, suggest
that the present is a period of progress, not of decadence. This is,
of course, a very large debate and not one which can be very
meaningfully addressed in a paragraph. But you should at least be
aware that there is a powerful counter-position opposed to the
fashionable doom and gloom.
Beyond being empirically suspect, the reason that the cultural crisis
perspective is dangerous is that it can be self-fulfilling. The
example of Heidegger provides a telling case in point. Heidegger
was convinced (in part by Nietzsche and Spengler) of the
decadence of modernity. Accepting such a cultural critique, he was
predisposed toward radical alternatives. Unfortunately, the
alternative which presented itself to Germany in the 1920s and
1930s was Nazism, a position and party which Heidegger, to his
considerable notoriety, embraced. A similar indictment is made of
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the radical wing of the environmental movement. Being convinced

that ecological apocalypse is at hand, radical environmentalists are
willing to contemplate such "solutions" as starving millions in the
less developed world in order to reduce pressures on natural
eco-systems. They also seek to limit technological development
and economic growth, both of which are arguably key to
environmental protection.

Other counter-kritiks. I have highlighted these five positions as

counter-kritiks, but the evidence is available in this volume for
many other counter-kritiks. The section on metaphysical kritiks
provides evidence which could be used to produce a counter-kritik
of metaphysical thought; the section on epistemology offers
evidence which indicts epistemology. Cards in the section on
language kritiks provide the basis for a counter-kritik of political
correctness and excessive language focus. Many other possibilities
exist. The kritik is an imaginative form of argument, and it calls for
an imaginative response.

A FINAL NOTE ON THE BOOK'S ORGANIZATION

As should be clear by now, many of the arguments in this book

interact. Thus, for example, there will be links to arguments found
in one section with impacts found in another. Many kritiks are
indicted as having irrationalist roots and tending to destroy science.
The impacts to science are found mainly in the section on general
answers to epistemological kritiks; impacts to rationality are found
in the "kritik of reason" answer section.

Against any kritik, you might choose to argue that the kritik relies
on postmodernism, and then proceed to indict postmodern thought.
You would find evidence to do this in the answers to the kritik of
modernity section. In indicting postmodernism, you might decide
to indict Derrida as the typical postmodern thinker. To find
evidence indicting Derrida, you would need to go to the section on
deconstruction. As part of your indictment of Derrida, you might
argue that he relies heavily on Heidegger and is thereby corrupted
by Heidegger's intellectual authoritarianism.

Evidence for this impact would be found in the post-humanism

section. Even a casual perusal of this volume should reveal
numerous other interactions. Careful reflection on the evidence
should reveal many uses for cards beyond the use to which they are
assigned in the book's current structure.

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INDEX TO THE RESEARCH

I. GENERAL KRITIK ANSWERS

A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-9
B. EXTENSION BLOCKS
1. DEBATE SHOULD ASSUME A POLICY CONTEXT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10-16
2. MEANINGFUL DEBATE REQUIRES AN ALTERNATIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17-25
3. LACK OF ALTERNATIVE ENSURES POLITICAL FAILURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26-28
4. LACK OF ALTERNATIVE PRODUCES INEFFECTIVE CRITICISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29-31
5. KRITIK LEADS TO NIHILISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32-33
6. MEANINGFUL INQUIRY REQUIRES ASSUMPTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34-35
7. NOT ALL ASSUMPTIONS SHOULD BE QUESTIONED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36-40
8. POLICY DEBATE ESSENTIAL TO THE PUBLIC GOOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41-50
9. THE KRITIK THREATENS SCIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
10. SPEECH LIMITS ARE JUSTIFIED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52-61
11. THE APPEAL TO "NEW IDEAS" DOESN'T JUSTIFY THE KRITIK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62-65
12. RADICAL SKEPTICISM IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66-68
13. KRITIK IS BASED ON POSTMODERN AND DECONSTRUCTIONIST THOUGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69-72
II. GENERAL ANSWERS TO LANGUAGE/RHETORIC KRITIKS
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73-78
B. EXTENSION BLOCKS
1. CHANGING SPEECH WON'T SOLVE SOCIAL PROBLEMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79-80
2. "POLITICALLY CORRECT" CODES OF LANGUAGE ARE CENSORSHIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81-83
3. SPEECH LIMITS SNOWBALL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84-95
4. SPEECH LIMITS UNDERMINE THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96-100
5. SPEECH LIMITS CHILL EXPRESSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101-02
6. CENSORSHIP OF SPEECH IS INEFFECTIVE AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103-08
7. FREE SPEECH IS KEY TO REFORM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109-13
8. CENSORING SPEECH HURTS MINORITIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114-18
III. GENERAL ANSWERS TO METAPHYSICAL/SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT KRITIKS
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119-25
B. EXTENSION BLOCKS
1. METAPHYSICAL STATEMENTS ARE MEANINGLESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126-34
2. METAPHYSICAL QUESTIONS ARE UNANSWERABLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
3. METAPHYSICAL SPECULATION IS USELESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136-39
4. MODERN PHILOSOPHY REJECTS METAPHYSICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140-41
5. PHILOSOPHY SHOULDN'T REJECT COMMON SENSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
6. WE MUST ASSUME OBJECTIVE EXTERNAL REALITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143-44
7. SEPARATE SELVES EXIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145-50
IV. GENERAL ANSWERS TO EPISTEMOLOGICAL KRITIKS
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151-61
B. EXTENSION BLOCKS
1. FOCUS ON EPISTEMOLOGY IS BAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162-64
2. EPISTEMOLOGICAL DOUBT DOESN'T JUSTIFY INACTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
3. RELIABLE KNOWLEDGE IS POSSIBLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
4. THE WORLD IS KNOWABLE THROUGH SENSE EXPERIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167-73
5. LOGIC PROVIDES VALID KNOWLEDGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174-80
6. HISTORY PROVIDES VALID KNOWLEDGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181-84
7. FIELD SPECIFIC SCHOLARSHIP PROVIDES VALID KNOWLEDGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
8. SCIENCE PROVIDES VALID KNOWLEDGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186-90
9. SCIENCE IS OBJECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191-96
10. SCIENCE OFFERS THE MOST RELIABLE KNOWLEDGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197-200
11. SUCCESSFUL PREDICTIONS VALIDATE SCIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201-06
12. RELATIVISM DOESN'T UNDERMINE SCIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207-12
13. SCIENCE COMPATIBLE WITH CREATIVE IMAGINATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213-16
14. REJECTING SCIENCE IS DISASTROUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217-20
15. SCIENCE IS POLITICALLY PROGRESSIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221-24
16. THE KRITIK OF SCIENCE FAILS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225-27
V. ANSWERS TO THE KRITIK OF REASON
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228-38
B. EXTENSION BLOCKS
1. REASON PRODUCES THE BEST RESULTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239-42
2. REASON KEY TO DIGNITY, LIBERTY, DEMOCRACY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
3. REJECTING REASON LEADS TO FASCISM AND TYRANNY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244-57
4. REJECTING REASON LEADS TO NIHILISM AND INHUMANITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258-60
5. REJECTION OF REASON IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261-66
6. REASON HAS VALUE DESPITE ITS LIMITS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267-70
7. CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE IS IMPOSSIBLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271-72
8. ACTION MUST BE BASED ON PARTIAL KNOWLEDGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273-76
9. ANTI-FOUNDATIONALISM DOESN'T UNDERMINE REASON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277-78
10. REASON CORRECTS ITS OWN ABUSES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
11. LIMITED PERSPECTIVES STILL ALLOW KNOWLEDGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280-82
12. REASON COMPATIBLE WITH INTUITION/CREATIVITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283-84
13. REASON NEEDED TO CHECK INTUITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285-91

1
 14. REASON KEY TO BENEVOLENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
15. REASON KEY TO HUMAN SURVIVAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293-97
16. REASON KEY TO MORALITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298-99
17. REASON NECESSARY FOR MEANINGFUL KRITIK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300-02
18. TRUTH REQUIRES REASON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303-04
19. HISTORY VALIDATES REASON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
20. REASON IS GROUNDED IN INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306-09
21. REASON IS PRAGMATICALLY JUSTIFIED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
VI. ANSWERS TO THE KRITIK OF CAUSALITY
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311-14
B. EXTENSION BLOCKS
1. CAUSALITY IS VALID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315-16
2. CAUSE IS A NECESSARY ASSUMPTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317-21
3. HUME DIDN'T DENY CAUSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322-24
4. THE INDUCTION PROBLEM DOESN'T DISPROVE SCIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
VII. ANSWERS TO THE KRITIK OF MODERNITY/ARGUMENTS AGAINST POSTMODERNISM
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326-34
B. EXTENSION BLOCKS
1. POSTMODERN THOUGHT IS NIHILISTIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335-36
2. POSTMODERNISM IS POLITICALLY REACTIONARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337-43
3. POSTMODERNISM UNDERMINES RATIONALITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344-50
4. POSTMODERNISM UNDERMINES SCIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351-53
5. POSTMODERN KRITIK OF SCIENCE FAILS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354-56
6. POSTMODERN THOUGHT SELF-CONTRADICTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357-61
7. POSTMODERN THOUGHT INCOHERENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362-65
8. REALITY ISN'T JUST SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366-68
9. STRESSING "DIFFERENCE" IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369-75
10. POSTMODERNISM JUST AN OBSOLETE FAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376-79
11. POSTMODERNISM RESTS ON INTELLECTUAL PARANOIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380-81
12. INDICTMENTS OF NIETZSCHE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382-83
13. POSTMODERNISM FAILS AS A THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
14. WE AREN'T ENTERING A POSTMODERN PERIOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385-90
15. MODERNITY HASN'T FAILED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391-98
16. MODERN VIEW KEY TO PEACE, DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399-401
17. ENLIGHTENMENT PRINCIPLES VALID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402-12
18. POSTSTRUCTURALISM FLAWED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413-20
19. PRAGMATISM SUPERIOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
VIII. ARGUMENTS AGAINST DERRIDA AND DECONSTRUCTION
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422-35
B. EXTENSION BLOCKS
1. DECONSTRUCTION IS NIHILISTIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436-41
2. DECONSTRUCTION LACKS CREATIVE INSIGHTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442-44
3. DECONSTRUCTION DESTROYS DEBATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445-47
4. DECONSTRUCTION LACKS POLITICAL VALUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448-56
5. DECONSTRUCTION POLITICALLY REACTIONARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457-60
6. SHOULD BOTH ACT AND DECONSTRUCT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461-62
7. DECONSTRUCTION DOESN'T OFFER USEFUL ALTERNATIVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
8. DECONSTRUCTION IS INFINITELY REGRESSIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464-68
9. DECONSTRUCTION RESTS ON FLAWED ASSUMPTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469-71
10. DECONSTRUCTION OVERSIMPLIFIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472-77
11. DECONSTRUCTION UNDERMINES RATIONALITY AND TRUTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478-85
12. DECONSTRUCTION CAN BE RATIONALLY ATTACKED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
13. DERRIDA'S THOUGHT MYSTICAL AND METAPHYSICAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487-90
14. DECONSTRUCTION IS INTELLECTUAL ANARCHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
15. DECONSTRUCTION CAUSES DEBILITATING SKEPTICISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492
16. DECONSTRUCTION JUST DISAPPOINTED ABSOLUTISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493-94
17. DECONSTRUCTION LACKS REAL WORLD UTILITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495-96
18. EVEN DECONSTRUCTION RESTS ON UNCHALLENGED ASSUMPTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497-98
19. DECONSTRUCTION IS AN INTELLECTUAL FAKE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499-502
20. DECONSTRUCTION JUST AN EXERCISE IN SELF-DRAMATIZATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503-04
21. DECONSTRUCTION IS JUST WORDPLAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505-09
22. DECONSTRUCTIONIST WRITINGS FATALLY OBSCURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510-11
23. DERRIDA SELF-CONTRADICTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512-13
24. DECONSTRUCTION LACKS LOGICAL FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514-15
25. DERRIDA'S THEORY OF MEANING FAILS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516-20
26. DERRIDA'S SOCIAL THEORY FAILS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521-24
27. ANTI-FOUNDATIONALISM IS IRRELEVANT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525-27
IX. ARGUMENTS AGAINST FOUCAULT-BASED KRITIKS
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528-35
B. EXTENSION BLOCKS
1. FOUCAULT ANTI-DEMOCRATIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536
2. FOUCAULT NIHILISTIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537-41
3. FOUCAULT'S THEORY OF POWER FLAWED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542-58
4. FOUCAULT'S METHOD BANKRUPT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559-61
5. FOUCAULT'S THEORY POLITICALLY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562-91
6. FOUCAULT'S VIEW PRESERVES PATRIARCHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592
7. FOUCAULT'S KRITIK OF MODERNITY FAILS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593-94
8. FOUCAULT'S THEORIES UNDERMINE SCIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595

2
 9. LOCALIZED PREDICTION POSSIBLE--THE CONTINUUM OF FORCES
ISN'T "INDISSOLUBLE" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596
10. CRIMINAL SANCTIONS ARE GOOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597-602
11. FOUCAULT'S CRITIQUE OF REASON FLAWED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603-14
12. FOUCAULT'S THEORY UTOPIAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615-16
13. FOUCAULT OFFERS NO ALTERNATIVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617-20
14. LATE FOUCAULT RECANTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621-24
15. FOUCAULT OVERLY RELATIVISTIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 625
16. FOUCAULT MISUNDERSTANDS INSTITUTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 626-28
17. FOUCAULT'S PERSPECTIVE WON'T LIBERATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 629-30
X. ANSWERS TO HEIDEGGER AND THE POSTHUMANIST KRITIK
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 631-36
B. EXTENSION BLOCKS
1. GENERAL INDICTMENTS OF HEIDEGGER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 637-42
2. HEIDEGGER AN INTELLECTUAL AUTHORITARIAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643-44
3. HEIDEGGER JUST A PSEUDO-THEOLOGIAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645
4. HEIDEGGER'S THOUGHT INVITES FANATICISM/NIHILISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 646-48
5. HEIDEGGER'S CONCEPT OF AUTHENTICITY FLAWED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 649-51
6. HEIDEGGER'S CONCEPT OF BEING INCOHERENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652-64
7. HEIDEGGER WAS A NAZI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 665-69
8. HUMANISM IS GOOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 670-73
C. HEIDEGGER AND NAZISM
1. HEIDEGGER'S WRITINGS/SPEECHES REVEAL HIS NAZISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 674-77
2. HEIDEGGER VENERATED HITLER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 678-82
3. HEIDEGGER REJECTED DEMOCRACY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683-88
4. HEIDEGGER GLORIFIED POWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 689-91
5. HEIDEGGER'S NAZISM WASN'T INCIDENTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 692-705
6. HEIDEGGER RETAINED NAZI SYMPATHIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 706-10
D. HEIDEGGER BASIC CONCEPTS WRONG
1. HIS CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY FAILS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 711-13
2. HIS CRITIQUE OF RATIONALITY FAILS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 714-18
3. HIS FOCUS ON BEING IS DESTRUCTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 719-22
4. HIS POLITICS ENCOURAGE NATIONALISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 723-25
5. HIS POLITICS ENCOURAGE STATISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 726-27
6. HIS POLITICS ENCOURAGE TOTALITARIANISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 728-31
7. HIS CONCEPT OF TRUTH IS WRONG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 732-35
8. HIS RETHINKING FAILS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 736
9. HIS CONCEPT OF AUTHENTICITY FAILS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 737-38
10. HIS CRITIQUE OF TECHNOLOGY IS MISGUIDED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 739-42
11. HIS PHILOSOPHY CAN LEAD TO POLITICAL PASSIVITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 743-45
12. HIS LANGUAGE IS AUTHORITARIAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 746
13. HE IGNORES REALITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 747
14. HE WAS A COVERT THEOLOGIAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 748
E. REJECTION OF HUMANISM IS TERRIBLE
1. DESTROYS FREEDOM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 749-50
2. LEADS TO TOTALITARIAN OPPRESSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 751-57
F. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION CONSISTENT WITH RELEASEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 758-59
XI. ANSWERS TO THE KRITIK OF NORMATIVITY
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 760-70
B. EXTENSION BLOCKS
1. NORMATIVITY IS INESCAPABLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 771-76
2. EVEN SCHLAG CAN'T ESCAPE NORMATIVITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 777-81
3. SCHLAG'S VIEW IS PARANOID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 782-85
4. EXPERIENCE DENIES THE KRITIK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 786
5. THE KRITIK OF NORMATIVITY IS INCOHERENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 787
6. SCHLAG OVERSIMPLIFIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 788-90
7. SCHLAG CAN'T TRANSCEND THE CARTESIAN FRAMEWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 791-92
8. REJECTING NORMATIVITY REACTIONARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 793
9. REJECTING NORMATIVITY SCREENS OUT OTHER VIEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 794
10. NORMATIVITY IS ESSENTIAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 795-98
11. NORMATIVE THOUGHT CAN SUCCEED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 799-803
12. FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE IS NORMATIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 804
13. HISTORICAL INSTITUTIONAL DETERMINISM WRONG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 805-13
14. HUMAN AGENCY IS MEANINGFUL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 814-15
15. REJECTING THE SUBJECT DEHUMANIZES AND DESTROYS REASON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 816-17
16. DETERMINISM DESTROYS HUMAN VALUES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 818-20
17. FREE WILL EXISTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 821-23
18. FREE WILL A FUNCTIONAL REALITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 824-25
19. DETERMINISM LACKS PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 826-30
20. DETERMINISM IS UNPROVEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 831-33
21. WE SHOULD ACT AS IF FREE WILL EXISTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 834-35
22. ARGUMENT AGAINST FREE WILL SELF-CONTRADICTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 836
23. MEANINGFUL PERSUASION AND DELIBERATION ARE COMPATIBLE WITH
DETERMINISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 837-42
24. STRONG DETERMINISTISM IS WRONG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 843-45
25. SKINNER'S BEHAVIORISM IS WRONG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 846-53
26. THE FREE WILL QUESTION IS MEANINGLESSLY METAPHYSICAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 854-55
27. AUTONOMY IS POSSIBLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 856-62
28. AUTONOMY IS GOOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 863-72
29. VALUES CAN'T BE OBJECTIVELY PROVEN--THEY MUST BE ASSUMED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 873-82

3
 30. NIHILISM IS SELF-REFUTING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 883-84
31. VALUES REQUIRE PERSONAL CHOICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 885-87
32. VALUE OF LIFE CAN'T BE ESTIMATED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 888-89
33. LIFE IS VALUABLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 890
34. NORMATIVE STATEMENTS ARE MEANINGFUL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 891
35. NORMATIVITY KRITIK RESTS ON POSTMODERNISM AND DECONSTRUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 892-93
XII. ANSWERS TO THE KRITIK OF STATISM
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 894-903
B. EXTENSION BLOCKS
1. ANARCHY INCREASES VIOLENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 904-05
2. ANARCHY CAN'T PERSIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 906
3. CLASSICAL POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY REJECTS ANARCHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 907
4. HUMAN RATIONALITY LIMITED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 908-13
5. HUMANS INNATELY AGGRESSIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 914-25
6. SOCIAL ORDER REQUIRES GOVERNMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 926
7. THE STATE IS LEGITIMATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 927-29
8. THE STATE CAN LIMIT WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 930
9. UTOPIANISM IS BAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 931-35
10. ANARCHIST THOUGHT UTOPIAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 936-38
11. PRIVATE ARMIES/PROTECTION AGENCIES DESTROY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 939-41
12. EXTERNAL AGGRESSION DESTROYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 942-46
13. ANARCHY CAN'T ENDURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 947-49
14. FAILURE LEADS TO FASCISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 950
15. FAILS UNDER CURRENT CONDITIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 951-54
16. HISTORICAL EXAMPLES DON'T SUPPORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 955-59
17. ANARCHY PRODUCES CRIME AND DISORDER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 960-64
18. ANARCHY NOT ECONOMICALLY VIABLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 965-69
19. ANARCHY UNDERMINES FREEDOM/INDIVIDUALITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 970-84
20. ANARCHY DESTROYS JUSTICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 985-86
21. ANARCHY DESTROYS PERSONAL IDENTITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 987-88
22. ANARCHY PRODUCES SELF-DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 989
23. ANTI-GOVERNMENT RHETORIC CAUSES TERRORISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 990
24. GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS ARE SUCCESSFUL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 991-92
25. GOVERNMENT LOWERS POVERTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 993-99
26. GOVERNMENT MORE EFFECTIVE THAN THE MARKET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1000-06
27. GOVERNMENT MEDICAL CARE EFFECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1007-10
28. FOOD AND HOUSING PROGRAMS EFFECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1011-12
29. JOBS PROGRAMS EFFECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1013-16
30. HEAD START EFFECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1017-18
31. POLLUTION CONTROL EFFECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1019-21
32. GOVERNMENT NOT INEFFICIENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1022-24
33. GOVERNMENT DOESN'T PRODUCE DEPENDENCY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1025-28
XIII. ANSWERS TO THE CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES KRITIK
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1029-36
B. EXTENSION BLOCKS
1. LIBERAL DEMOCRACY IS BEST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1037-38
2. AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS RESPONSIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1039
3. AMERICA NOT OPPRESSIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1040-45
4. AMERICA RELATIVELY EGALITARIAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1046-49
5. AMERICA NOT RACIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1050-57
6. ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS IMPROVING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1058-61
7. GLOBAL DEMOCRACY EXPANDING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1062
8. RADICAL REFORM WON'T OCCUR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1063
9. KRITIK OF LAW FLAWED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1064-66
10. RULE OF LAW GOOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1067-70
11. RULE OF LAW KEY TO LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1071-75
12. RULE OF LAW KEY TO JUSTICE AND EQUALITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1076-78
13. RULE OF LAW KEY TO GROWTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1079
14. FORMAL PROCEDURE GOOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1080-85
15. MORAL RULES NECESSARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1086-93
C. THE CRITICAL RACE THEORY DEFENSE OF RIGHTS
1. CRT GENERALLY UPHOLDS RIGHTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1094-95
2. CRT ANSWERS CLS CRITIQUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1096-97
3. CRT ANSWERS FEMINIST CRITIQUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1098
4. RIGHTS PRODUCE PROGRESS - THEY DON'T MASK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1099-106
5. RIGHTS AREN'T REIFIED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1107-10
6. NEEDS TALK NO BETTER THAN RIGHTS TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1111
7. RIGHTS SHOULD BE EXTENDED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1112
XIV. ANSWERS TO FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE KRITIK
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1113-19
B. EXTENSION BLOCKS
1. WOMEN PROGRESSING POLITICALLY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1120-24
2. FEMINISM IS IRREVERSIBLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1125-26
3. REASON HELPS WOMEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1127-31
4. OBJECTIVITY NOT BAD FOR WOMEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1132-34
5. REJECTING REASON AND OBJECTIVITY HURTS WOMEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1135-37
6. OBJECTIVITY AND UNIVERSALISM HELP WOMEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1138-40
7. ANSWERS TO FEMINIST KRITIK OF RIGHTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1141-43
8. NO UNIQUELY FEMALE EPISTEMOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1144

4
 9. ETHIC OF CARE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1145
10. RADICAL FEMINISM TOTALIZES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1146-47
11. ANSWERS TO FEMINIST KRITIK OF SCIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1148-54
XV. ANSWERS TO NARRATIVE
A. NARRATIVE INEFFECTIVE
1. GENERALLY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1155-59
2. DOESN'T EMPOWER MINORITIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1160-67
3. DOESN'T EMPOWER WOMEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1168-69
B. NARRATIVE IS HARMFUL
1. ANTI-RATIONAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1170
2. UNDERMINES ARGUMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1171-75
3. STORIES DISTORT DECISION MAKING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1176-83
4. STORIES ARE ATYPICAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1184-89
5. STORIES UNDERMINE LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1190-92
C. CRITERIA FOR NARRATIVES
1. STORIES REQUIRE ANALYTICAL INTERPRETATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1193-202
2. STORIES MUST BE VALID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1203
3. STORIES MUST BE CLEARLY RELEVANT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1204
D. REJECTING NARRATIVE DOESN'T SILENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1205
XVI. ANSWERS TO NON-VIOLENCE
A. NON-VIOLENCE MORALLY FLAWED
1. GENERALLY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1206-11
2. KANTIAN PRINCIPLES JUSTIFY REJECTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1212-14
3. CONSEQUENTIALIST PRINCIPLES JUSTIFY REJECTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1215
4. NATURAL RIGHTS THEORY JUSTIFIES REJECTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1216
5. CONSENSUS REJECTS COMPLETE PACIFISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1217
B. NON-VIOLENCE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE
1. CRIMINAL JUSTICE CONSISTENT WITH PACIFISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1218-19
2. PURE PACIFISM UNDERMINES THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1220
3. CRIMINAL JUSTICE IS NEEDED AND JUSTIFIED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1221-25
4. POLICE POWER JUSTIFIES MILITARY POWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1226
C. PACIFISM HARMFUL
1. GENERALLY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1227
2. INCREASES VIOLENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1228-32
3. LEADS TO WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1233-36
4. UNDERMINES LIMITED WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1237-39
5. UNDERMINES REFORM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1240
6. LEADS TO TOTALITARIAN RULE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1241-42
D. NON-VIOLENCE INEFFECTIVE
1. GENERALLY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1243-49
2. GANDHIAN NON-VIOLENCE FAILS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1250-54
E. NON-VIOLENCE UTOPIAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1255-58
XVII. ANSWERS TO CULTURAL RELATIVISM
A. RELATIVISM IS INCORRECT
1. HISTORY AND REASON DENY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1259-60
2. NON-WESTERN WORLD ACCEPTS MODERN VALUES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1261
3. SOME CULTURES ARE SUPERIOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1262-70
4. NO RIGHT TO CULTURAL SURVIVAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1271-72
B. RELATIVISM IS WRONG
1. JUSTIFIES MORAL ATROCITIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1273-74
2. RELATIVISM IS ETHNOCENTRIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1275-76
C. ANSWERS TO ORIENTALISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1277-80
D. EMPHASIS ON DIFFERENCE/"OTHER" COUNTERPRODUCTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1281-91
XVIII. ANSWERS TO THE KRITIK OF NUCLEARISM
A. NUCLEARISM DEFINED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1292
B. NUCLEAR EXTINCTION STILL A THREAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1293-95
C. IGNORING THE NUCLEAR THREAT HEIGHTENS THE RISK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1296-98
D. CONFRONTING THE NUCLEAR THREAT LOWERS THE RISK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1299-308
E. DISCOURSE ABOUT THE NUCLEAR THREAT NECESSARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1309-11
F. SCHELL'S NUCLEAR DISCOURSE UNIQUELY FERTILE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1312-14
G. THE SLIGHTEST NUCLEAR RISK MUST BE AVOIDED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1315
H. NUCLEAR SCENARIOS MUST BE CONFRONTED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1316-19
I. MILITARY DETERRENCE EFFECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1320-21
J. NUCLEARISM THREAT EXAGGERATED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1322
XIX. ANSWERS TO THE THREAT CONSTRUCTION KRITIK
A. THREAT ASSESSMENT IS UNAVOIDABLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1323-28
B. NOT COUNTERING REAL THREATS LEADS TO WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1329-31
C. UNDERASSESSING THREATS IS A GREATER RISK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1332-41
D. DETERRENCE IS NECESSARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1342-44
E. POSTMODERN APPROACHES TO FOREIGN POLICY FAIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1345
F. THREAT CONSTRUCTION KRITIK NOT ABSOLUTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1346-50
G. SOME ENEMIES ARE REAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1351
H. NEGLECTING SECURITY CONCERNS IS A MAJOR CAUSE OF WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1352
I. A WEALTH OF INFORMATION PERMITS INFORMED CONCLUSIONS ABOUT OTHER
COUNTRIES' INTENTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1353
J. REAL THREATS EXIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1354-7
K. MOTIVES NOT HARD TO ASSESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1358-60
L. ANSWERS TO TERRORIST THREAT CONSTRUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1361-4

5
XX. ANSWERS TO THE KRITIK OF TERROR TALK
A. TERRORISM CAN BE ADEQUATELY DEFINED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1365-7
B. TERRORISTS KILL MANY - THEIR IMPACT IS REAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1368-9
C. TERRORISM RISKS ESCALATION TO WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1370
D. STATE VIOLENCE DOESN'T JUSTIFY TERRORISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1371
E. TERRORISM REINFORCES THE POWER OF THE STATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1372
F. RESPONSES TO TERRORISM ARE NEEDED TO PRESERVE CONSTITUTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1373
G. VALID DEFINITIONS OF TERRORISM EXIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1374-9
H. PERFECT DEFINITION UNNECESSARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1380
I. EVALUATIVE DEFINITIONS OF TERRORISM ACCEPTABLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1381
J. TERRORISM IS IMMORAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1382-9
K. CURRENT TERRORISM NOT JUSTIFIED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1390
L. TERRORISTS NOT FREEDOM FIGHTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1391-3
M. TERRORISM IS INEFFECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1394
N. STATE VIOLENCE DOESN'T EXCUSE TERRORISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1395-6
O. STATE TERRORISM NOT IGNORED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1397
P. TERRORISM THREATENS DEMOCRACY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1398
Q. TERRORISM NOT JUST DISCURSIVE - REAL PEOPLE DIE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1399
R. PAST IS A POOR GUIDE TO FUTURE TERRORISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1400-2
S. WMD TERRORISM IS A REAL THREAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1403
XXI. ANSWERS TO THE DEEP ECOLOGY KRITIK
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1404-20
B. ANTHROPOCENTRISM DOESN'T CAUSE ECO-CRISIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1421-2
C. DEEP ECOLOGICAL DISCOURSE ISN'T USEFUL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1423-4
D. DEEP ECOLOGY POLITICALLY IMPOTENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1425
E. DEEP ECOLOGY PRONE TO CONSERVATIVE COOPTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1426-7
F. DEEP ECOLOGY ENCOURAGES AUTHORITARIANISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1428-9
G. DEEP ECOLOGY IS GENOCIDAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1430-1
H. DEEP ECOLOGY HURTS THE POOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1432-3
XXII. ANSWERS TO THE SOCIAL ECOLOGY KRITIK
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1434-45
B. SOCIAL ECOLOGY MISUNDERSTANDS HIERARCHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1446-7
C. CAPITALISM DOESN'T CAUSE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1448-9
D. REJECTION OF THE STATE NOT NECESSARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1450
E. REFORMISM LEGITIMATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1451-2
F. ANARCHY FAILS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1453-4
G. SOCIAL ECOLOGY POLITICALLY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1455
H. SOCIAL ECOLOGY UNDERMINES COALITIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1456
I. SOCIAL ECOLOGY LACKS WIDE APPEAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1457
J. SOCIAL ECOLOGY CAN'T MAKE NEEDED TRANSITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1458
K. ATTACKING CAPITALISM ECOLOGICALLY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1459
L. DECENTRALIZATION IS DISASTROUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1460
M. DECENTRALIZATION CAUSES CONFLICT AND WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1461
N. SOCIAL ECOLOGY HURTS THE POOR AND VIOLATES JUSTICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1462
O. SOCIAL ECOLOGY CAUSES ECONOMIC COLLAPSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1463
XXIII. ANSWERS TO THE ECOFEMINISM KRITIK
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1464-71
B. ECOFEMINIST THEORY OF DOMINATION IS WRONG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1472-3
C. ALL FORMS OF DOMINATION NOT LINKED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1474-5
D. PATRIARCHY NOT LINKED TO DOMINATION OF NATURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1476-7
E. WOMEN NOT INNATELY PRO-ENVIRONMENTALIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1478-9
F. FEMINISM SCAPEGOATS MEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1480
G. ECOFEMINISM IS INTELLECTUALLY UNSOUND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1481-2
H. ECOFEMINISM DOESN'T SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1483
I. ECOFEMINISM HURTS THE ENVIRONMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1484
J. ECOFEMINISM HURTS THE STATUS OF WOMEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1485-6
K. ECOFEMINISM REINFORCES STEREOTYPES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1487-8
L. ECOFEMINISM IS POLITICALLY REACTIONARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1489-90
M. ECOFEMINISM ANTI-DEMOCRATIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1491
N. ECOFEMINISM ESSENTIALIZES WOMEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1492-3
XXIV. ANSWERS TO HEIDEGGER-BASED ENVIRONMENTALIST KRITIKS
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1494-8
B. HEIDEGGER'S THOUGHT NOT ENVIRONMENTALLY BENIGN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1499-1500
C. ONTOLOGICAL FOCUS UNDESIRABLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1501-2
D. HEIDEGGER ANTI-DEMOCRATIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1503
E. HEIDEGGER'S THOUGHT POLITICALLY REACTIONARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1504
F. HEIDEGGER'S THOUGHT DESTROYS FREEDOM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1505-6
G. PERMUTATION: KRITIK AND ACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1507-8
XXV. ANSWERS TO THE KRITIK OF REALISM
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1509-21
B. REALISM PRODUCES EFFECTIVE POLICIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1522-3
C. REALISM PROMOTES PEACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1524-5
D. DISCURSIVE CHANGE FAILS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1526
E. CONSTRUCTIVIST CRITIQUE OF REALISM WRONG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1527
F. REALISM SUPERIOR TO CONSTRUCTIVISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1528-9

6
XXVI. ANSWERS TO THE KRITIK OF LIBERALISM
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1530-7
B. LIBERAL HEGEMONY BENIGN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1538-9
C. INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS EFFECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1540
D. LIBERALISM NOT OVERLY INTERVENTIONIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1541
E. LIBERALISM NOT PRONE TO IDEOLOGICAL CRUSADES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1542-3
F. LIBERALISM GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1544
G. LIBERALISM ENCOURAGES PEACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1545-6
H. LIBERALISM BETTER THAN ITS ALTERNATIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1547-8
XXVII. THE COUNTER-KRITIK OF RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM
A. FRONTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1549-54
B. RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM REJECTS CAPITALISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1555
C. DEEP ECOLOGY REJECTS CAPITALISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1556
D. ECOFEMINISM REJECTS CAPITALISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1557
E. SOCIAL ECOLOGY REJECTS CAPITALISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1558
F. ECO-RADICALISM REPUDIATES GROWTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1559-60
G. CAPITALISM KEY TO PROSPERITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1561-2
H. CAPITALISM KEY TO DEMOCRACY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1563-4
I. CAPITALISM PROMOTES PEACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1565-6
J. GROWTH PROMOTES PEACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1567-8
K. GROWTH AIDS THE ENVIRONMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1569-70
L. GROWTH IS KEY TO ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1571-2
M. DEMOCRACY CAUSES PEACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1573-4
N. CAPITALISM INCREASES LENGTH AND QUALITY OF LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1575-6
O. RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM THREATENS THE ENVIRONMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1577-8
P. RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM IS ECOFASCIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1579-80
Q. LOGIC OF ECOFASCISM JUSTIFIES MASS KILLING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1581
R. RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM ATTACKS DEMOCRACY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1582-3
S. ECO-RADICALISM THREATENS CIVILIZATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1584
T. ECO-RADICALISM REJECTS TECHNOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1585-6
U. RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM EMBRACES ANARCHISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1587
V. STATE ESSENTIAL FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1588
XXVIII. COUNTER-KRITIKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1589-1689
XXIX. PRAGMATISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1690-1750

7

AKH0001 ARGUMENTS ARE MEANINGFUL ONLY WITHIN A REALM OF
DISCOURSE
Stanley Fish, Duke English and Law prof, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE
SPEECH, 1994, p.129.
The ordinary situation is one in which what you can say is limited by the decorums you are
required to internalize before entering. Regulation of free speech is a defining feature of
everyday life, not because the landscape is polluted by censors, but because the very
condition of purposeful activity (as opposed to activity that is random and inconsequential)
is that some actions (both physical and verbal) be excluded so that some others can go
forward. In the very few contexts in which the idea of "free expression" is really taken
seriously- call-in talk shows and major league baseball games (and even these have their
limits)-it is understood that the speech freely produced is tolerated because it doesn't
matter. When speech does matter, when it is produced in the service of some truth or
preferred agenda, the sign of its mattering is the fact that only some forms of it will be
welcome. If we keep in mind that regulation of speech is constitutive of meaningful
discourse, we will not regard proposals for regulation as anomalous but receive them as
suggested modifications of a condition-the condition of productive constraint--that has
always obtained.
AKH0002 REJECTING WITHOUT AN ALTERNATIVE LEADS TO NIHILISM
Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, French philosophers, FRENCH PHILOSOPHY OF THE
SIXTIES, 1990, p.62.
From the disintegration of norms to the rise of neo-nihilism was but a single step, which,
when taken, rather easily undermined the fragile order of existing society: "to reject one
social order without having any notion of which order might be erected in its place"
demonstrates "one of the reasons for the decomposition we saw in May."[1968]
AKH0003 THE CRITIQUE OF ASSUMPTIONS IS INFINITELY REGRESSIVE
Stanley Fish, Duke English and Law prof, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE
SPEECH, 1994, p.18.
Why not, then, one might ask, go deeper (in the wonderful world of rationality accidents
are always being peeled away in order that essences might be revealed) and put those
underlying assumptions on the table so that they could be scrutinized and assessed? To this
suggestion I would pose a simple question: if you propose to examine and assess
assumptions, what will you examine and assess them with? And the answer is that you will
examine and assess them with forms of thought that themselves rest on underlying
assumptions. At any level, the tools of rational analysis will be vulnerable to the very
deconstruction they claim to perform. You can never go deep enough, for no matter how
deep you go, you will find reasons whose perspicuity is a function of just those
factors-institutional history, personal education, political and religious affiliation--from
which Reason supposedly stands apart.
AKH0004 CERTAIN ASSUMPTIONS SHOULD NOT BE QUESTIONED
Amitai Etzioni, GW govt prof, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p.24.
We need to return to a society in which certain actions are viewed as beyond the pale,
things that upright people would not do or even consider: to walk out on their children, file
false insurance claims, cheat on tests, empty the savings accounts of others, or force sexual
advances on unwilling employees. We also need to return to a state in which there are a
fair number of positive compelling commitments-the dos rather than the don'ts-that are
beyond debate and dispute. When a sick child cries at night, a parent rushes to help. There
is no need to consult clergy or a book by Kant to determine what one's duty is under such
clear, elementary conditions. This is what Tocqueville and Communitarian sociologist
Robert Bellah mean by "habits of the heart": values that command our support because
they are morally compelling.
AKH0005 DEMOCRACY REQUIRES EFFECTIVE DEBATE
Christopher Lasch, Professor of History, University of Rochester, THE REVOLT OF THE
ELITES, 1995, p.162-3.
What democracy requires is vigorous public debate, not information. Of course, it needs
information too, but the kind of information it needs can be generated only by debate. We
do not know what we need to know until we ask the right questions, and we can identify
the right questions only by subjecting our own ideas about the world to the test of public
controversy. Information, usually seen as the precondition of debate, is better understood
as its byproduct. When we get into arguments that focus and fully engage our attention,
we become avid seekers of relevant information. Otherwise we take in information
passively- if we take it in at all.
AKH0006 THE KRITIK THREATENS PRODUCTIVE RELATIONS OF SCIENCE
AND SOCIETY
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.4.
The danger for the moment at least, is not to science itself. What is threatened is the
capability of the larger culture, which embraces the mass media as well as the more serious
processes of education, to interact fruitfully with the sciences, to draw insight from
scientific advances, and, above all, to evaluate science intelligently. To the extent that the
academic left's critique becomes the dominant mode of thinking about science on the part
of nonscientists, that thinking will be distorted and dangerously irrelevant.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 1
AKH0007 THE KRITIK LEADS TO UNINTELLIGIBLE DEBATE
Paul Berman, fellow, New York University Institute for the Humanities, DEBATING P.C.
1992, p.6.
No three people agree about the meaning of central terms like "deconstruction,"
"difference," "multiculturalism," or "poststructuralism." Every participant carries around
his own definitions, the way that on certain American streets every person packs his own
gun. And when you take these numberless definitions into consideration, the entire
argument begins to look like . . . what? I would say it looks like the Battle of Waterloo as
described by Stendhal. A murky fog hangs over the field. Now and then a line of soldiers
marches past. Who are they? Which army do they represent? They may be Belgian
deconstructionists from Yale, or perhaps the followers of Lionel Trilling in exile from
Columbia. Perhaps they are French mercenaries. It is impossible to tell. The fog thickens.
Shots go off. The debate is unintelligible. But it is noisy!
AKH0008 THE KRITIK FALSELY ASSUMES A CRISIS OF MODERN CULTURE
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.260.
By stating that Foucault's anti-Enlightenment philosophical history, as well as Derrida's
brand of irrationalism, are not only instances of a literarization of thought but also a
surrender of thought to modernist ideology, that is, to the pious countercultural worldview
of most modern art, I meant to stress how questionable are the assumptions that gave birth
to the radical tradition within Kulturkritik. Do the many failures and shortcomings of
modern culture actually warrant such a massive indictment of modernity's achievements?
Can we really say that the historicist appraisal and approval of an industrial order, where
knowledge, art and morals work as separate though obviously not wholly unrelated
spheres, has been convincingly shown to be erroneous? Are there not sufficient grounds
to present a case for what Hans Blumenberg has called 'die Legitimitat der Neuzeit'? That
a deep cultural crisis is endemic to historical modernity seems to have been much more
eagerly assumed than properly demonstrated, no doubt because, more often than not, those
who generally do the assuming-humanist intellectuals-have every interest in being
perceived as soul doctors to a sick civilization. Yet is the medicine that necessary, or the
sickness that real? Perhaps we should be entertaining second thoughts about it all.
AKH0009 NEGLECTING POLICY SPECIFICS IS DEBILITATING AND
ESSENTIALIST
Michael Wickham. Professor at Murdoch University in Australia, TOWARD A
CRITIQUE OF FOUCAULT, 1986, p.149.
A non-essentialist analysis treats its objects in terms of its specificity, its particular
conditions of existence, without reference to an eternal external essence. In this way a
non-essentialist analysis allows a far more thorough understanding of its object as it is not
restricted to considerations in terms of an essence. An essentialist analysis. on the other
hand, is bound by such restrictions-it must ignore or marginalize those aspects of the object
being maintained But an essentialist analysis is not only analytically debilitating, it is also
politically debilitating. Essentialism means that strategies and tactics developed to achieve
policy objectives must be limited to considerations only in terms of the essence maintained
and not in terms of the specific conditions of existence of the policy concerned.
AKH0010 MEANINGFUL DISCOURSE CAN ONLY OCCUR WITHIN THE
LANGUAGE OF A PARTICULAR ACTIVITY
Stanley Fish, Duke English and Law prof, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FREE
SPEECH, 1994, p.23.
Since the features of the legal (or any other) landscape come into view by virtue of the
descriptive terms certified practitioners unreflectively employ, the removal of those terms
will not clean up that landscape but depopulate it, or repopulate it with the terms, and
therefore with the entities, of some other enterprise. Insofar as you value the job being
done by a particular enterprise-be it law, literary criticism, or anything else-it behooves
you to retain and strengthen the vocabulary that marks its distinctiveness; for you can not
get rid of the vocabulary without depriving yourself of the resources (including resources
of action) it makes available.
AKH0011 MEANINGFUL ARGUMENT REQUIRES A SHARED DISCURSIVE
SYSTEM
Stanley Fish, Duke English and Law prof, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE
SPEECH, 1994, p.136.
It follows then that persons embedded within different discursive systems will not be able
to hear the other's reasons as reasons, but only as errors or even delusions. This, I think,
is Carter's point when he observes that "to the devout fundamentalist . . . evolutionary
theory is not simply contrary to religious teachings; . . . it is demonstrably false." I take the
stress on the word demonstrably to mean that Carter understands fully that the clash
between liberals and fundamentalists is a clash between two faiths, or if you prefer (and
it is my thesis that these two formulations are interchangeable) between two ways of
thinking undergirded by incompatible first principles, empirical verification and biblical
inerrancy.

AKH0012 PERSUASIVE ARGUMENT REQUIRES A DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE
Stanley Fish, Duke English and Law prof, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE
SPEECH, 1994, p.27.
Although the New Historicist polemic emphasizes the virtue of hard archival work, New
Historicist assumptions permit interpreters to get away with doing almost no work at all
of the kind that would result in persuasive arguments as opposed to discrete, ad hoc
speculations. Persuasive arguments are arguments that can be seen as advancing a project
whose goals are clearly articulated. Persuasive arguments are disciplinary arguments.
AKH0013 MEANINGFUL CRITIQUE CAN ONLY FUNCTION WITHIN A FORM OF
DISCOURSE
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1043.
Concepts are distinguishable by us only relative to discourses in which we participate (and
which participate in us); there is no discourse we can deconstruct except our own discourse
in use at the moment. But there is no discourse in use except colloquially, by people
sharing some particular form of life So the poststructuralist critic is limited to detailed
observation, from within a form of life, of practices embedded in that form of life.
AKH0014 ARGUMENTS HAVE RELEVANCE ONLY WITHIN SPECIFIC SPHERES
OF DISCOURSE
YALE LAW JOURNAL, 1986, p.979.
Habems posits that the objective, social, and subjective spheres which constitute our
worlds all consist of understandings negotiated according to "communicative rationality,"
a process procedurally similar in each case Yet each sphere has a specific rationality that
is substantively distinct, because the standard according to which clams in each sphere are
evaluated varies. In the objective realm, where subject confronts object (e.g., scientific or
empirical investigation), Claims are made to truth or success. In the subjective realm,
where subject expresses experiences (e.g., aesthetic expression), Claims are to sincerity.
And in the social realm, where subject interacts with subject (e.g., moral theory, law),
claims are to rightness.
AKH0015 COMMON LANGUAGE IS NECESSARY FOR DIALOGUE
Diane Michelfelder and Richard Palmer, MacMurray College, DIALOGUE AND
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.6.
In Truth and Method Gadamer asserts that without this common language, partners in a
conversation would talk at cross purposes and fail to make any headway toward mutual
understanding (WM 360/341). His remark in "Destruktion and Deconstuction"-that when
a dialogue starts out in two different languages, there comes a time when those speaking
have to switch to one language for the conversation to advance echoes this point.
AKH0016 REJECTING THE LANGUAGE OF A CERTAIN FIELD PRODUCES
MISUNDERSTANDING AND BACKLASH
YALE LAW JOURNAL, 1986, p.988.
Whether the judge wants to change or to conserve the language of power spoken by a
society, he or she will use it to communicate. It is a common tongue that evokes agreement
and produces effect, while alien approaches provoke misunderstanding, ridicule, reversal,
official censure, widespread noncompliance, or lack of support from other branches.
Indeed the judge is not chosen, in either a hierarchical polity or an egalitarian one, unless
he or she has demonstrated a "know-how" of the current legal medium and a level of
commitment to it.
AKH0017 RADICAL CRITIQUES END IN SUPPORT FOR TOTALITARIANISM
Berman, NYU Institute for the Humanities, DEBATING P.C., 1992, p.9-10.
The many dazzlements of '68 Philosophy were never any use in addressing mundane
questions like these. The great god of the Paris thinkers was Heidegger, who was second
to none in holding Western rationalism and humanism responsible for all the unhappiness
of modern life and for hinting at millenarian alternatives. But the alternative he ended up
embracing was the Nazism of Adolf Hitler. Of course, the Paris ultra-radicals who imbibed
the theories of '68 Philosophy were anything but right wing. Yet there was nothing in their
leftism to prevent a substantial number of them from tilting to an opposite extreme and
celebrating dictators like Mao Zedong, so long as the horrors of liberal civilization were
being opposed. For the whole point of postmodern theorizing was, after all, to adopt
positions that were so far out, so wild, as to blow your mind.
AKH0018 DECONSTRUCTION LEADS TO NIHILISM
Irving Howe, literary and social critic, DEBATING P.C., Paul Berman ed, 1992, p.157-8.
As for the French theorizing-metacritical, quasi-philosophical, and at times of a stupefying
verbal opacity-it has provided a buttress for the academic insurgents. We are living at a
time when all the once-regnant world systems that have sustained (also distorted) Western
intellectual life, from theologies to ideologies, are taken to be in severe collapse. This leads
to a mood of skepticism, an agnosticism of judgment, sometimes a world-weary nihilism
in which even the most conventional minds begin to question both distinctions of value
and the value of distinctions.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 2
AKH0019 KRITIK WITHOUT ALTERNATIVE PRODUCES SOCIAL ANARCHY
Amitai Etzioni, GW govt prof, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p.24.
The problem is that the waning of traditional values was not followed by a solid
affirmation of new values; often nothing filled the empty spaces that were left when we
razed existing institutions. The result is rampant moral confusion and social anarchy.
AKH0020 WE NOW NEED MORAL RECONSTRUCTION, NOT JUST
DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM
Amitai Etzioni, GW govt prof, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p.12.
Since the early sixties many of our moral traditions, social values, and institutions have
been challenged, often for valid reasons. The end result is that we live in a state of
increasing moral confusion and social anarchy. Once we were quite clear about what
young couples were supposed to do-and refrain from doing-even if many of them did not
fully live up to these expectations. The trouble now is not that the traditional family was
undermined; it did deserve a critical going-over. The trouble is that no new concept of the
family-of responsibility to children, of intimacy, and of commitment to one another-has
emerged to replace the traditional form. (The fate of two books by Betty Friedan illustrates
the difference: The Feminine Mystique, which was critical of the traditional family, was
all the rage in the 1960s and early 1970s. Her second book, The Second Stage, published
in 1981, which advocated the restructuring of the family, fell on deaf ears.) Moral
transitions often work this way: destruction comes quickly. A vacuum prevails.
Reconstruction is slow. This is where we are now: it is time to reconstruct, in the full sense
of the term-not to return to the traditional, but to return to a moral affirmation,
reconstructed but firmly held.
AKH0021 KRITIK ISN'T ENOUGH EVEN IN THEORY
Ken Kress, University of Iowa Professor of Law, CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, 1989,
p.320.
But critique is not enough. All legal systems and all legal theories are flawed. We are, after
all, humans, not gods. Legal argument is comparative, and so is theory, We decide which
theory to believe by provisionally accepting that theory which has the best overall
combination of virtues and vices. It is therefore incumbent on critical scholars to present
not only critiques. but also alternatives preferable to the doctrine and theories they critique.
(Some critical scholars are now vigorously making that attempt). Otherwise, critical
scholars give us no cause to change our beliefs or our actions.
AKH0022 CRITIQUE DOESN'T RECOGNIZE THE IMPERFECTION OF ALL
SOLUTIONS
Congressman Barney Frank, THE NEED FOR U.S. HEALTH REFORM: UNINSURED
AND CHRONICALLY ILL AMERICANS, SuDoc#Y4.AG4/2:Un3/5 Feb 6, 1992, p.16.
What we have to understand, however, when we design a solution is, and its a rule that is
too often ignored, when you are dealing with a very difficult problem that is going to leave
its earmarks on the solution No solution can be by some order of magnitude more elegant
than the problem at which it is aimed, and it will be a mistake to critique every solution
because it is not going to be perfect. We have let the situation go on too long.
AKH0023 SIMPLE REJECTION IS INTELLECTUALLY VACUOUS
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.82.
Ultimately, then, the position that the traditional and obvious must be systematically
opposed and deconstructed is vacuous; it is not really a position in critical theory at all, for
it tells us nothing about original thinking in criticism and where it may lead us. Logically,
it seems to me on a par with the slogan of the younger generation in the 1960S: "Don't trust
anyone over thirty!" Both advocate an indiscriminate response to authority that lacks
reflectiveness or discrimination. (To be fair, the younger generation of the sixties never
thought of this as a positive program in its own right, and it was busy thinking up
alternative views of war and society that had their own logic.)
AKH0024 MERE CRITICISM IS TRIVIAL)ALTERNATIVES ARE WHAT MATTER
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.105.
No one will object to the view that all traditional, conventional views should be given
close scrutiny-though, to be sure, one might object to the assertion that an interpretation
can be dismissed or declared incomplete simply because it is traditional. The real objection
here is surely that it is just too easy to express a generalized scorn for all received opinion:
much more valuable is the hard work of finding out what is wrong with a particular
received view and thinking up a better one.

AKH0025 SIMPLE QUESTIONING IS INTELLECTUALLY WORTHLESS
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.95-6.
Imagine a conference on cancer research at which the general sense is that recent research
is going nowhere. A deconstructionist rises to tell the conference that it must look at
hitherto marginalized, thus neglected, ideas. A researcher, intrigued by the possibility of
a new idea, asks what specific suggestion or suggestions the deconstructionist has in mind.
But the deconstructionist replies only that the field must question its concept of what is
central to cancer research. Evidently, replies the researcher, but just what aspect of the
current consensus on centrality is the problem, and which of the thousands of currently
neglected chemical possibilities is the one that the deconstructionist is recommending? If
now the deconstructionist replies that he is recommending a general strategy not a concrete
proposal, the audience will conclude, correctly, that he has nothing to say after all. For
what he has just said is rather like saying, "Have a good new idea." That is not even a
strategy for finding new ideas, much less a new idea in itself.
AKH0026 KRITIK WITHOUT ALTERNATIVES PRODUCES POLITICAL
OPPRESSION
Louis Schwartz, UC-Hastings Law Prof, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, 1984, p.414.
The pieces exhibited that species of irresponsibility that denounces the political status quo
without considering available alternatives; Churchill's aphorism that "[d]emocracy is the
worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to
time" apparently left no impression on these writers. Moreover, these writers were
contemptuous of "compromise" and "balancing,"-- and often explicitly advocated violent
solutions to political differences. They were receptive to paternalistic coercion to override
the stated preferences of real human beings on the ground that those tastes had been
corrupted by the 'system." Grotesque proposals were frequently advanced without
pragmatic basis or sensitivity to institutional issues.
AKH0027 NOT MOVING BEYOND CRITICISM MEANS POLITICAL FAILURE
Catharine MacKinnon, Professor of Law, University of Michigan, TOWARD A
FEMINIST THEORY OF THE STATE, 1989, p.241.
Failure to move beyond criticism, a failure of determinism and radical paralysis, is failure
of feminism in its left forms.
AKH0028 CRITICISM WITHOUT ALTERNATIVE UNDERMINES REAL PROGRESS
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.91-2.
As a program for criticism, then, this version of deconstructive criticism is vacuous in
theory and counterproductive in practice. To oppose a particular tradition or viewpoint
with a particular alternative program is to set out a real position; but to announce simply
an indiscriminate and unspecified opposition to any tradition in general and none in
particular, with no particular alternative in mind in any given case, is not to take a position
at all but only to gain rather too easily acquired feelings of iconoclastic superiority.
Thinking about real problems is thus circumvented.
AKH0029 THE PROPER METHOD OF CRITIQUE INVOLVES COMPARISON
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE ABDICATION OF
PHILOSOPHY, Eugene Freeman, ed., 1976, p.46.
We thus can logically distinguish between a mistaken method of criticizing and a correct
method of criticizing. The mistaken method starts from the question: how can we establish
or justify our thesis or our theory? It thereby leads either to dogmatism; or to an infinite
regress; or to the relativistic doctrine of rationally incommensurable frameworks. By
contrast, the correct method of critical discussion starts from the question: what are the
consequences of our thesis or our theory? Are they all acceptable to us? Thus it consists
in comparing the consequences of different theories (or, if you like, of different
frameworks) and tries to find out which of the competing theories or frameworks has
consequences that seem preferable to us. It is thus conscious of the fallibility of all our
methods, and it tries to replace all our theories by better ones. This is, admittedly, a
difficult task, but by no means an impossible one.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 3
AKH0030 EFFECTIVE CRITICISM REQUIRES AN ALTERNATIVE
Brian Barry, Professor of Political Science, London School of Economics, PHILOSOPHY
AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Fall 1990, p.363-4.
All criticism)as opposed to lamentation)presupposes that it is possible for things to be
better than they are now as a result of human action(CC pp.17-18). I think that Walzer
skews his analysis by taking as his paradigmatic social critic the prophet Amos. (He is the
major figure in the last third of ISC, and reappears at key points in CC.) For the burden of
Amos's complaint is that the Jews (and in particular the rich) are failing to live up to the
precepts of the Covenant-failing, for example, to return to their owners each night clothes
given in pledge (ISC, pp.81-82). Charles Dickens was a critic of this kind: avarice was for
him, too, the root of evil. As George Orwell observed, Dickens's solution was that
businessmen should model themselves on (post-spirit) Scrooge and the Cheeryble brothers.
This is no doubt to be counted as social criticism of a sort, but typical social critics of the
left in this century (including those on Walzer's list) have rejected as naive the formula of
social reform constituted by individual reform. A critic of institutions as distinct from a
critic of conduct, must surely have a social theory in order to explain why the reforms that
he proposes will deal with the complaints that he articulates. Thus, for example, Orwell
had a theory (at any rate from, say, the late 1930s to the mid-1940s) to the effect that a
capitalist economy was hopelessly inefficient compared with a socialist economy, and that
the abolition of private education would have beneficial effects on the class system. This
theory may have been a good one or a bad one, but it was, I suggest, the belief that he
knew of a better way that made Orwell a critic rather than a mere grouser.
AKH0031 CONTEMPORARY "THEORY" UNDERMINES TRUE SOCIAL CRITICISM
Christopher Lasch, Professor of History, University of Rochester, THE REVOLT OF THE
ELITES, 1995, p.193.
"Theory" is no substitute for social criticism, the one form of intellectual activity that
would seriously threaten the status quo and the one form that has no academic cachet at all.
Social criticism that addressed the real issue in higher education today-the university's
assimilation into the corporate order and the emergence of a knowledge class whose
''subversive" activities do not seriously threaten any vested interest-would be a welcome
addition to contemporary discourse. For obvious reasons, however, this kind of discourse
is unlikely to get much encouragement either from the academic left or from its critics on
the right.
AKH0032 THE KRITIK EMBODIES DEBILITATING SKEPTICISM
David Caudill, University of Texas Adjunct Law Professor, IOWA LAW REVIEW, 1987,
p.287.
Yet the prospect of CLS ending in skepticism is nevertheless at hand. "By arguing that
decisionmaking is not grounded on objective criteria and denying the impossibility of
'liberal' theory's capacity to formulate objective criteria, democratic radicals have produced
a critique that cannot be distinguished from that of the complete skeptic...Once skeptics
finish announcing the impossibility of making rational choices or of finding truth about
anything, they recognize that they themselves must make choices and must proceed upon
assumptions of reality...Skepticism is a philosophy of talk and not of life. Skeptics are
walking contradictions: they have to be...[Further, if] no human process can avoid
subjective decisionmaking, it seems absurd to indict a process as illegitimate merely
because it does not avoid subjectivity.
AKH0033 NIHILISTIC KRITIK IS A WORSE CURE THAN ANY CULTURE ILLNESS
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.242.
But although Megill is shrewd enough to realize that 'the problem with the crisis notion is
that it can only speak in vague generalities'-which is music to our ears-he actually
swallows a great deal of the Kulturkrisis myth and does not see that Derrida's nihilistic
equivocations, including his underrating of crisis theory itself, are a cure still worse than
the illness. Briefly, Megill's able characterization of crisis thinking as aestheticism falls
short of the crucial critical step: it balks before the acknowledgement that the
Kulturkritik-be it 'prophetic' (Heidegger), rebel-like (Foucault) or cynical-ironic (Derrida)
-is not a mimetic but a productive concept, a theory that begets its own object and then lays
it in a humanist mind only too eager to hatch it, as an insignia of its self-important wisdom.
Post-structuralist thought marks the ultimate intellectual decay of this vacuous ideological
posturing; and within it, deconstruction, the tame pseudo-Nietzscheanism of academe, is
a gloomy histrionics passing for theoretical insight.
AKH0034 ALL INQUIRY MUST MAKE ASSUMPTIONS
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956, p.135.
It is a truism that every inquiry, whether in history or the natural sciences, must proceed
by taking something for granted. But this does not mean that in every inquiry we take the
same assumption for granted. What we leave unquestioned in one context we can very well
question in another.

AKH0035 TO BE MEANINGFUL, A CRITIQUE MUST BE POSSIBLE TO LIVE BY
Frederich Nietzsche, German philosopher, UNTIMELY MEDIATIONS, (Cambridge U.
Press),1873, p.187.
The only critique of a philosophy that is possible and that proves something, namely trying
to see whether one can live in accordance with it, has never been taught at universities: all
that has ever been taught is a critique of words by means of other words.
AKH0036 A GOOD LIFE REQUIRES AN UNCRITICAL SET OF BELIEFS
Francis Fukuyama, Rand, THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN, 1992, p.306.
For according to Nietzsche, a living thing cannot be healthy, strong, or productive except
by living within a certain horizon, that is, a set of values and beliefs that are accepted
absolutely and uncritically. "No artist will paint his picture, no general win his victory, no
nation gain its freedom," without such a horizon, without loving the work that they do
"infinitely more than it deserves to be loved."
AKH0037 INTELLECTUAL INQUIRY LEGITIMATELY MAKES UNSTATED
ASSUMPTIONS
Isaiah Berlin, Professor of Social and Political Theory, Oxford, FOUR ESSAYS ON
LIBERTY, 1969, p.92.
If I am an historian and wish to explain the causes of the great French Revolution, I
naturally assume or take for granted certain general propositions. Thus I assume that all
the ordinarily accepted physical laws of the external world apply. I also assume that all or
most men need and consciously seek food, clothing, shelter, some degree of protection for
their persons, and facilities for getting their grievances listened to or redressed.
AKH0038 ALL KNOWLEDGE MUST BEGIN WITH ASSUMPTIONS
Bertrand Russell, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, THE PROBLEMS OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1912, p.150.
When, however, we speak of philosophy as a criticism of knowledge, it is necessary to
impose a certain limitation. If we adopt the attitude of the complete skeptic, placing
ourselves wholly outside all knowledge, and asking, from this outside position, to be
compelled to return within the circle of knowledge, we are demanding what is impossible,
and our skepticism can never be refuted. For all refutation must begin with some piece of
knowledge which the disputants share; from blank doubt, no argument can begin. Hence
the criticism of knowledge which philosophy employs must not be of this destructive kind,
if any result is to be achieved. Against this absolute skepticism, no logical argument can
be advanced. But it is not difficult to see that skepticism of this kind is unreasonable.
AKH0039 NOT ALL ASSUMPTIONS NEED TO BE JUSTIFIED; SOME ARE
AXIOMATIC
Ronald Dworkin, Oxford professor of Jurisprudence, MORALITY AND THE LAW,
Richard Wasserstrom, ed.,1971, p.65.
But do I really have to have a reason to make my position a matter of moral conviction?
Most men think that acts which cause unnecessary suffering, or break a serious promise
with no excuse, are immoral, and yet they could give no reason for these beliefs. They feel
that no reason is necessary because they take it as axiomatic or self-evident that these are
immoral acts. It seems contrary to common sense to deny that a position held in this way
can be a moral position.
AKH0040 THE PHILOSOPHICAL KRITIK OF ASSUMPTIONS IS IRRELEVANT TO
PRACTICAL AFFAIRS
Louis Schwartz, UC-Hastings Law Professor. STANFORD LAW REVIEW, 1984, p.413.
It is we that jurisprudential scholars are under no moral obligation to pass for practical
politicians. A philosopher may legitimately restrict his inquiry to questions such as those
concerning the assumptions that underlie particular systems of thought or the
inconsistencies or logical flaws in the systems put forward on the basis of those
assumptions, The philosopher certainly may also develop a system of thought and indicate
the anticipated practical consequence of adopting that system, without proffering a draft
of a statute to carry out these views, which in any event have up to this point solely the
merit of consistency with postulated premises. The philosopher becomes vulnerable only
when he leaves the self-contained and assumption-bounded world of theory and assumes
the role of leader in practical affairs.
AKH0041 DEMOCRACY REQUIRES DEBATE
Christopher Lasch, Professor of History, University of Rochester, THE REVOLT OF THE
ELITES, 1995, p.171.
If we insist on argument as the essence of education, we will defend democracy not as the
most efficient but as the most educational form of government, one that extends the circle
of debate as widely as possible and thus forces all citizens to articulate their views, to put
their views at risk, and to cultivate the virtues of eloquence, clarity of thought and
expression, and sound judgment. As Lippmann noted, small communities are the classic
locus of democracy-not because they are "self-contained, " however, but simply because
they allow everyone to take part in public debates. Instead of dismissing direct democracy
as irrelevant to modern conditions, we need to recreate it on a large scale. From this point
of view the press serves as the equivalent of the town meeting.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 4
AKH0042 PUBLIC IGNORANCE IS DUE TO THE DECLINE OF PUBLIC DEBATE
Christopher Lasch, Professor of History, University of Rochester, THE REVOLT OF THE
ELITES, 1995, p.162.
As for the claim that the information revolution would raise the level of public intelligence,
it is no secret that the public knows less about public affairs than it used to know. Millions
of Americans cannot begin to tell you what is in the Bill of Rights, what Congress does,
what the Constitution says about the powers of the presidency, how the party system
emerged or how it operates. A sizable majority, according to a recent survey, believe that
Israel is an Arab nation. Instead of blaming the schools for this disheartening ignorance
of public affairs, as is the custom, we should look elsewhere for a fuller explanation,
bearing in mind that people readily acquire such knowledge as they can put to good use.
Since the public no longer participates in debates on national issues, it has no reason to
inform itself about civic affairs. It is the decay of public debate, not the school system (bad
as it is), that makes the public ill informed, notwithstanding the wonders of the age of
information. When debate becomes a lost art, information, even though it may be readily
available, makes no impression.
AKH0043 REASONED DEBATE IS NEEDED TO FORM KNOWLEDGE
Christopher Lasch, Professor of History, University of Rochester, THE REVOLT OF THE
ELITES, 1995, p.170.
Arguments were what took place in the absence of reliable information. Lippmann had
forgotten what he learned (or should have learned) from William James and John Dewey:
that our search for reliable information is itself guided by the questions that arise during
arguments about a given course of action. It is only by subjecting our preferences and
projects to the test of debate that we come to understand what we know and what we still
need to learn. Until we have to defend our opinions in public, they remain opinions in
Lippmann's pejorative sense-half-formed convictions based on random impressions and
unexamined assumptions. It is the act of articulating and defending our views that lifts
them out of the category of "opinions," gives them shape and definition, and makes it
possible for others to recognize them as a description of their own experience as well. In
short, we come to know our own minds only by explaining ourselves to others.
AKH0044 DEBATE ENHANCES DEMOCRACY
Jerry Anderson and Paul Dovre, Michigan State and Concordia College, READINGS IN
ARGUMENTATION, 1968, p.55.
Whereas Lippmann relates debate to freedom of speech in a democracy and Ehninger
speaks of the ideal objectives and method of debate, Mills attempts to relate debate to the
broad spectrum of political ideals and forces. He develops the view that debate reinforces
democratic values and mitigates the forces which naturally tend to erode those values.
Professor Mills begins by identifying the ideals of democracy, then enumerates some of
the forces which may undermine these ideals, and finally indicates the role of
argumentation in securing the ideals.
AKH0045 DEMOCRACY DEPENDS ON PUBLIC ADVOCACY SKILLS
Jerry Anderson and Paul Dovre, Michigan State and Concordia College, READINGS IN
ARGUMENTATION, 1968, p.xiii.
The continuing strength of a democratic society depends on a public forum of competing
arguments by informed, responsible, and skilled citizen-advocates. This is especially true
today in an era when our world and nation are challenged by a greater number, complexity,
and scope of social issues; when we are bombarded from all sides by a smoke screen of
mass persuasion; and when the amount of knowledge and information accessible to us
burgeons daily. The study of argumentation is based on the premises that thoughtful
deliberation, intensive research, rational analysis, and the testing of ideas through reasoned
discourse provides a vital means of conflict resolution and decision making; and that the
student who firmly grasps principles of argumentation theory is best equipped to become
a responsible and competent practitioner of argumentative discourse.
AKH0046 POLICY DEBATE IS INTEGRAL TO FREE SOCIETY
Jerry Anderson and Paul Dovre, Michigan State and Concordia College, READINGS IN
ARGUMENTATION, 1968, p.53.
"Give the people the facts and freedom to discuss and all will go well" was a favorite
aphorism of the late Wisconsin Senator and leader of the Progressive Party, Robert M.
LaFollette, Sr. Political practitioners and theorists long before and after LaFollette have
maintained that applied argumentation, debate, is integral to a free society.
AKH0047 PUBLIC OPINION SUCCESSFULLY INFLUENCES GOVERNMENT
Russell Windes and Arthur Hastings, Professors of Speech, Queens College and Stanford,
ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY, 1965, p.8.
Lord Bryce termed public opinion "the great source of power, the master of servants who
tremble before it." Government by public opinion exists, Bryce wrote, "where the wishes
and views of the people prevail, even before they have been conveyed through the regular
law-appointed organs. . . ." Through public opinion the "national will shall be most fully
expressed, most quickly known, most unresistingly and cheerfully obeyed." What is the
power that makes public opinion such a potent force? Why do public officials obey the
dictates of public opinion so eagerly once they have learned its meaning? Public opinion
has influence because it has behind it both the authority of the vote and the so-called
voting threat.

AKH0048 INFORMED KNOWLEDGE IS KEY TO BENEFICIAL EXERCISE OF
PUBLIC OPINION
Russell Windes and Arthur Hastings, Professors of Speech, Queens College and Stanford,
ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY, 1965, p.17.
Even if people should concern themselves over a public controversy, that concern alone
is not sufficient. Along with concern goes the responsibility of making oneself
knowledgeable, of making oneself qualified to examine various alternatives to the solution
of a problem in order to arrive at positions on those alternatives. If public opinion is not
based on thorough analysis of an issue and the support of a resulting position through
evidence and reasoning, then that opinion may be not only worthless but pernicious
Witch-hunting in the seventeenth century represented a certain public opinion, opinion
based on false information and indefensible analysis. Witch-hunting still exists.
AKH0049 INFORMED PUBLIC DEBATE IS KEY TO FREE INSTITUTIONS
Christopher Lasch, Professor of History, University of Rochester, THE REVOLT OF THE
ELITES, 1995, p.21.
We have already seen that the survival of free institutions depends on the opportunity and
the ability of sovereign people to make responsible decisions in social matters. We have
observed that opportunity and ability depend on the constitutional guarantees of a free
marketplace, as well as the concern free people demonstrate in public affairs and their
willingness to knowledgeably participate in the decision-making process.
AKH0050 INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS IS POSSIBLE THROUGH ARGUMENT
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.128.
In the real world in which we live, progress in all fields occurs through the clash of
different views and of conflicting opinions. In that clash, views do not simply persevere
unaltered; the world does not consist of individuals stubbornly clinging to their first
thoughts and not talking to others. On the contrary, individuals present their views for
discussion by others, and there is modification, alteration, even abandonment of ideas in
the process of discussion. Some views are persuasive and grow in influence; others do not
persuade and are forgotten. The development of knowledge is a social process argument
between differing individuals counts for a great deal in this process.
AKH0051 ANY KRITIK OF WESTERN VALUES ULTIMATELY ATTACKS
SCIENCE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.5-6.
On the other hand, science, together with its immediate realization as technology, is-as
much as anything can be-the single aspect of Western thought and social practice that
defines the Western outlook and accounts for its special position in the world.
Non-Western societies-Japan, to take the obvious example-can simultaneously succeed and
maintain their identities only to the degree that they naturalize the science and technology
of Western culture. Consequently, if one is predisposed to regard that Western position of
privilege as wicked, for its prejudices and for its history of conquest, then one will
inevitably regard Western science with suspicion and perhaps with contempt. Sooner or
later any critique of Western values aspiring to be comprehensive must offer an analysis
of natural science, preferably scathing.
AKH0052 FREE SPEECH ONLY HAS VALUE AGAINST BACKGROUND OF
UNPERMITTED SPEECH
Stanley Fish, Professor of Law and English at Duke University, THERE'S NO SUCH
THING AS FREE SPEECH, 1994, p.103-4.
I want to say that all affirmations of freedom of expression are like Milton's, dependent for
their force of an exception that literally carves out the space in which expression can then
emerge. I do not mean that expression (saying something) is a realm whose integrity is
sometimes compromised by certain restrictions but that restriction in the form of an
underlying articulation of the world that necessarily (if silently) negates alternatively
possible articulations, is constitutive of expression. Without restrictions, without an inbuilt
sense of what it would be meaningless to say or wrong to say, there could be no assertion
and no reason for asserting it. The exception to unregulated expression is not a negative
restriction but a positive hollowing out of value--we are for this, which means we are
against that--in relation to which meaningful assertion can then occur. It is in reference to
that value-- constituted as all values are by an act of exclusion--that some forms of speech
will be heard as (quite literally) intolerable.
AKH0053 WE SHOULD SUPPRESS SPEECH COUNTER TO CONSTITUTIONAL
VALUES
Stanley Fish, Professor of Law and English at Duke University, THERE'S NO SUCH
THING AS FREE SPEECH, 1994, p.123-4.
It may sound paradoxical but the First Amendment has a positive claim on us only if we
understand it to be self-qualifying; you will not abridge speech that is supportive of the
values in the name of which we have joined together. Regulation of other forms of
speech-- speech either irrelevant to the maintenance of those values of subversive of
them--should not be regarded as an exception to the amendment but as a fulfillment of its
mandate.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 5
AKH0054 MEANINGFUL DISCOURSE REQUIRES REGULATION OF SPEECH
Stanley Fish, Professor of Law and English at Duke University, THERE'S NO SUCH
THING AS FREE SPEECH, 1994, p.129-30.
If we keep in mind that regulation of speech is constitutive of meaningful discourse, we
will not regard proposals for regulation as anomalous but receive them as suggested
modifications of a condition --the condition of productive restraint--that has always
obtained. In this light the question: 'Should hate speech be regulated?' will lose much of
its sexiness, for it will no longer be heard as an extraordinary question provoked by
extraordinary circumstances, as a limit case that tests the resources of philosophy; rather
it will be heard as a perfectly ordinary question, no more or less difficult that the question
of whether spectators at a trial can applaud or boo the statements of opposing counsels.
And how would I answer the question? I would say, 'It depends,' an answer that may be
philosophically unsatisfying but one that is responsive to the messy contingency of a world
that defies the neatness of philosophical formulations.
AKH0055 MOST FREE SPEECH DEFENSES ARE UNREFLECTIVE IDEOLOGY
Stanley Fish, Professor of Law and English at Duke University, THERE'S NO SUCH
THING AS FREE SPEECH, 1994, p.13.
Recently Frederick Schauer, a noted First Amendment scholar, said the unsayable when
he suggested that standard free-speech arguments have all the earmarks of an ideology
because it is assumed in the society that counterarguments are dangerous and must be
rejected by all right thinking persons. There is, observes, Schauer, 'little free inquiry about
free inquiry and little free speech about free speech' in the current climate. It is a paradox
that an orthodox of tolerance is intolerant of those 'who have less protective rather than
more protective views about freedom of speech.'
AKH0056 APPEALS TO FREE SPEECH ARE ESSENTIALLY RHETORICAL PLOYS
Stanley Fish, Professor of Law and English at Duke University, THERE'S NO SUCH
THING AS FREE SPEECH, 1994, p.16.
The First Amendment is not a self-declaring statement and will assume the form given to
it by powerful and authoritative interpreters. And the moral that follows from that one is
that the First Amendment does not in and of itself (finally a meaningless phrase) direct a
politics but will display the political 'spin' of whatever group has its hand on the
interpretive machinery. 'Free speech' is thus just like 'fairness' and 'merit'--rather than a
concept that sits above the fray, monitoring its progress and keeping the combatants
honest, it is right there in the middle of the fray, an object of contest that will enable those
who capture it to parade their virtue at the easy expense of their opponents: we're for
fairness and you are for biased judgment; we're heir opponents: we're for fairness and you
are for biased judgment; we're for merit and you are for special interests; we're for
objectivity and you are playing politics; we're for free speech and you are for censorship
and ideological tyranny. It is a wonderful (not here a word of approbation) strategy, and
if it is pursued as successfully as it has been in recent years by the neoconservatives, the
result is to place the opposition in the difficult position of having not only to respond to
arguments but to dispute the very vocabulary in which the issues have come to be framed,
a vocabulary which, because it occupies the rhetorical high ground, stigmatizes
counterarguments...
AKH0057 WHETHER SPEECH SHOULD BE REGULATED DEPENDS ON THE
SITUATION
Stanley Fish, Professor of Law and English at Duke University, THERE'S NO SUCH
THING AS FREE SPEECH, 1994, p.111.
In saying this, I would not be heard as arguing either for or against regulation and speech
codes as a matter of general principle. Instead my argument turns away from general
principle to the pragmatic (anti)principle of considering each situation as it emerges. The
question of whether or not to regulate will be a local one, and we can not rely on
abstractions that are either empty of content or filled with the content of some partisan
courses of action. In the course of this consideration many things will be of help, but
among them will not be phrases like 'freedom of speech' or 'the right of individual
expression,' because, as they are used now, these phrases tend to obscure rather than clarify
our dilemmas. Once they are deprived of their talismanic force, once it is no longer
strategically effective simply to invoke them in the act of walking away from a problem,
the conversation could continue in directions that are now blocked by a First Amendment
absolutism that has only been honored in the breach anyway.
AKH0058 THE VALUE OF THE FREE SPEECH INTEREST VARIES WITH THE
SITUATION
Stanley Fish, Professor of Law and English at Duke University, THERE'S NO SUCH
THING AS FREE SPEECH, 1994, p.129.
The Florida case allows us to see exactly what balancing means. It means that the value of
the 'free-speech' interest, which is a real interest, will vary with the underlying purpose for
which some social space has been organized. It is only in the most peculiar and eccentric
of social spaces, like a Hyde Park corner, where the production of speech has no purpose
other than itself that absolute toleration will make sense, and it is one of the oddities of
'official' First Amendment rhetoric that such peculiar spaces are put forward as the norm.

AKH0059 THE SLIPPERY SLOPE IS TOTALLY NON-UNIQUE
Stanley Fish, Professor of Law and English at Duke University, THERE'S NO SUCH
THING AS FREE SPEECH, 1994, p.111.
And when someone warns about the slippery slope and predicts mournfully that if you
restrict one form of speech, you never know what will be restricted next, one could reply,
'Some form of speech is always being restricted, else there could be no meaningful
assertion; we have always and already slid down the slippery slope someone is always
going to be restricted next, and it is your job to make sure that they someone is not you.'
AKH0060 SLIDES DOWN SLIPPERY SLOPES ARE ALWAYS HALTED
Stanley Fish, Professor of Law and English at Duke University, THERE'S NO SUCH
THING AS FREE SPEECH, 1994, p.130.
But the slippery slope argument is another one of those exercises in abstract reasoning that
imagines a worse-case scenario every time because nothing fills up its landscape but its
own assumptions. That is, the slippery slope argument assumes that there is nothing in
place, no underbrush, to stop the slide; but in any complexly organized society there will
always be countervalues to invoke and invested persons to invoke them. Slippery slope
trajectories are inevitable only in the head, where you can slide from A to B to Z with
nothing to retard the acceleration of the logic. In the real world, however the step even
from A to B will always meet with resistance of all kinds from persons differently
positioned, and, as a line will be drawn beyond which regulators will be prevented from
going, at least for a time, until new pressures and new resistances provoke a new round of
debates, at the end of which still another line will be provisionally drawn.
AKH0061 COMMUNITY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN FREE EXPRESSION
Stanley Fish, Professor of Law and English at Duke University, THERE'S NO SUCH
THING AS FREE SPEECH, 1994, p.108.
The objection to this line of reasoning is well known and has recently been reformulated
by Benno Schmidt, former president of Yale University. According to Schmidt, speech
codes on campuses constitute 'well intentioned but misguided efforts to give values of
community and harmony a higher place than freedom' (WALL STREET JOURNAL, May
6, 1991). 'When the goals of harmony collide with freedom of expression,' he continues,
'freedom must be the paramount obligation of an academic community.' The flaw in this
logic is on display in the phrase 'academic community,' for the phrase recognizes what
Schmidt would deny, that expression only occurs in communities- -if not in an academic
community, then in a shopping mall community or a dinner party community or an
airplane ride community or an office community. In these communities and in any others
that could be imagined (with the possible exception of a community of major league
baseball fans), limitations on speech in relation to a defining and deeply assumed purpose
are inseparable from community membership.
AKH0062 THE KRITIK ISN'T NEW
Hans Reiss, Professor of German, University of Bristol, KANT'S POLITICAL
WRITINGS, 1970, p.8.
It must not be forgotten that the Enlightenment was only one body of thought in the
eighteenth century, even if it was the dominant one. There were other strands. Criticism
of the Enlightenment arose not merely in its decline, but accompanied its rise and
predominance. In Germany, and not only in Germany, the eighteenth century saw the
spread of scientific ideas through the thinkers of the Enlightenment, but it was also
characterized by a religious way of life centered on the emotions and inward experience.
In Germany, Pietism stressed the cultivation of the inner life and fostered an emotional
approach to religion. (It was not without its counterparts elsewhere-- e.g. Methodism and
Quietism.) Kant's fervent conviction of man's inward sense of morality may well have been
rooted in that particular soil. Furthermore, persistent criticism of the Enlightenment came
not only from the orthodoxy of established religion and from privileged or traditional
political interests, but also, as the century progressed, from various new irrationalists. It
came from those who preferred intuition to reason, the perception of genius to common
sense, and spontaneity to calculated reflection. They tended to base their understanding on
the individual instance and example rather than on the universal rule, and even on poetry
rather than on science.
AKH0063 REJECTION OF ABSOLUTE TRUTH ISN'T AN INTELLECTUAL
INNOVATION
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.100-1.
Charles Sanders Peirce, more than a century ago, saw already that all knowledge was in
the nature of a hypothesis, subject to modification and critical reformulation by future
experience. And these opinions and many like them have become an entrenched part of the
thinking of the learned world. Viewed against this broader background, a reasonable
judgment of the value of the recent debate over the meaning and usefulness of "all
interpretation is misinterpretation" will be obvious enough: it is not very well informed and
not really very interesting. On the one hand, proponents cannot really be allowed to get
away with the claim that they deserve the credit for having gotten rid of absolute truth and
objective knowledge. That was really done a very long time ago, and the resulting
epistemological position is not a new and provocative one but instead a commonplace.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 6
AKH0064 TOO MUCH SUSCEPTIBILITY TO "NEW IDEAS" LEADS TO
ABSURDITIES
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.224.
We put it forward as a general rule that the indulgence of one kind of heterodoxy betokens
a further susceptibility to eccentric or highly speculative ideas. In the eighteenth century,
for instance, the nascent political radicalism of groups such as the Freemasons was often
associated with esoteric magical doctrine; historical figures like Cagliostro and the
Illuminati attest to this. Earlier in this century, radical intellectuals, their patrons and
sympathizers, mingled with theosophists, spiritualists, Jungians, and the like. A
predilection for the unconventional almost always reigns among rebellious spirits.
AKH0065 THE KRITIK IS RADICALISM WITHOUT RISK
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.74.
The idea that close attention to the words, tropes, and rhetorical postures of a culture gives
one transmutative power over that culture finds acceptance for a number of reasons. First
of all, it shifts the game of politics to the home turf of those who by inclination and
training are clever with words, disposed to read texts with minute attention and to attend
to the higher-order resonances of language. At the same time, it allows scholars of a certain
stamp to construe the pursuit of their most arcane interests as a defiantly political act
against the repressive strictures of society. This is exhilarating: it is radicalism without
risk. It does not endanger careers but rather advances them. It is a radicalism that university
administrators and even boards of governors have found easy to tolerate, since its calls to
arms generally result in nothing more menacing than aphorisms lodged in obscure
periodicals. It is, finally, a politics upon which the wear-and-tear of ordinary political life
can have little effect. If something bad happens, one's doctrine is confirmed: if something
good happens, it is vindicated.
AKH0066 RADICAL SKEPTICISM IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkley, English prof, SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.xviii.
But the Poststructuralist Two-Step is not as novel as it looks. In one form or another, it
characterizes the whole "School of Suspicion"-the line of radically anti-consensual
philosophy that runs from Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche through Heidegger to Derrida and
Foucault. All of those thinkers described a general human state of epistemic occlusion-of
inevitable subjection to the warping effects of class membership or species-wide cowardice
or the repressed unconscious or the hermeneutic circle or the prisonhouse of language; yet
each, in the act of making his claims, implied that a superior mind, his own, was unaffected
by those forces. Marxism and Freudianism became the modern movements par excellence
that induced fervid belief by holding out this double promise: enlightenment for you and
me, darkness for the others.
AKH0067 REJECTING OBJECTIVE JUDGEMENTS ENTRENCHES THE STATUS
QUO
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkley, English prof, SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.118.
As we ought to have learned by now from the larger political realm, a scorn for
independent criteria of judgment is ultimately a means, not of fostering spontaneity and
liberation, but of guaranteeing that entrenched leaders will not be contradicted by upstarts
possessing uncongenial ideas.
AKH0068 RADICAL SKEPTICISM CAN PRODUCE FASCIST
ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM
H. Stuart Hughes, Stanford historian, CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIETY, 1977, p.17.
In nearly every case, it was to a greater or lesser extent self-defeating. The new
self-consciousness could readily slip into a radical skepticism: from an awareness of the
subjective character of social thought it was an easy step to denying the validity of all such
thought-or, alternatively, to a desperate resolve to "think with the blood." In evaluating the
permanent significance of the generation of the 1890's, we need constantly to bear in mind
the central paradox of their achievement: more often than not, their work encouraged an
anti-intellectualism to which the vast majority of them were intensely hostile.
AKH0069 POSTMODERNISM INTELLECTUALLY PARALLELS THE KRITIK
Jon Brody, University Of Texas Debater, THE PRAXIS OF KRITIKS, 1994, Harvex.
The parallel between postmodernism and kritiks is obvious: both criticize attempts to
control the objects and methods of thinking. Since the decline of the system counterplans,
debate has begun to settle into a comfortable equilibrium. Although we all hear about
paradigms, we rarely debate them. To be sure, we have preserved their implications as they
relate to topicality or counterplan burdens, but their extended presence as counter-warrants,
justification arguments, minor repairs, plan amendments, among other forms, has faded.
Just as philosophy triumphed in the ancient battle against rhetoric and capitalism emerged
victorious in the war against communism, policymaking has defeated the hypothesis-
testing, games-playing, and the tabula rasa paradigms. But just as postmodern thinkers
such as Derrida have renewed the challenge to philosophy's privileged status and the
market system has come under criticism for its failure to protect the homeless, the
uninsured, and other marginalized groups, kritiks contest the dominance of "traditional"
policymaking analysis.

AKH0070 THE KRITIK RESTS ON IDEAS OF POSTMODERNISM
Jon Brody, University Of Texas Debater, THE PRAXIS OF KRITIKS, 1994, Harvex.
If we believe that debate, being an academic activity, should reflect and educate us about
developments in Academy, debate should clear a space for postmodern thinking. Docherty
notes that postmodern "leaves its traces on every cultural discipline from architecture to
zoology, taking on its way biology, forestry, geography, history, law, literature, and the
arts in general, medicine, politics, philosophy, sexuality, and so on. Those who oppose
postmodern thinking should welcome the opportunity, based on their own standards, to
defend their beliefs.
AKH0071 THE KRITIK EMBODIES POSTMODERN THOUGHT
Jon Brody, University Of Texas Debater, THE PRAXIS OF KRITIKS, 1994, Harvex.
Since postmodernism and kritiks challenge the accuracy and desirability of modernist
processes of understanding, processes that categorize things by dividing them into distinct
boxes, it is only by fitting that kritiks be difficult to divide and describe according to those
processes. Language kritiks, in their understanding of the power of discourse, contain the
elements of thinking kritiks.
AKH0072 THE KRITIK RELIES ON DECONSTRUCTION
Jon Brody, University Of Texas Debater, THE PRAXIS OF KRITIKS, 1994, Harvex.
Briefly, deconstruction seeks to destabilize the enlightenment project in order to uncover
what modernist practices hide from us. Deconstruction seeks to overturn the dominant
order in order to resurrect what has been subordinated, to think what remains unthought.
Deconstruction observes the Western thought operates through binary oppositions,
hierarchies where one element is subordinated to the other. Examples include:
Rationality/Mysticism, Speech/Writing, Man/Woman, and Man/Nature. Deconstruction
temporarily inverts these hierarchies in order to think about the subordinated element in
such a way that it is not defined by the dominant one. Although the reversal is temporary,
after the hierarchy reverts to its original form we leave with a different understanding of
the elements, and their respective roles, in the hierarchy. In the debate, the negative could
argue that voting negative signifies a temporary inversion or overturning of the dominant
element (normative practice) and represents an attempt to think what the dominant order
prevents us from thinking. In this case, the dominant order wants to deflect questions away
from the subject.
AKH0073 CHANGING SPEECH WON'T SOLVE SOCIAL PROBLEMS
Christopher Lasch, Professor of History, University of Rochester, THE REVOLT OF THE
ELITES, 1995, p.7.
The current catchwords--diversity, compassion, empowerment, entitlement--express the
wistful hope that deep divisions in American society can be bridged by goodwill and
sanitized speech. We are called on to recognize that all minorities are entitled to respect
not by virtue of their achievements but by virtue of their sufferings in the past.
Compassionate attention, we are told, will somehow raise their opinion of themselves;
banning racial epithets and other forms of hateful speech will do wonders for their morale.
In our preoccupation with words, we have lost sight of the tough realities that cannot be
softened simply by flattering people's self-image What does it profit the residents of the
South Bronx to enforce speech codes at elite universities?
AKH0074 POLITICAL CORRECTNESS HAS PRODUCED ORWELLIAN
CONDITIONS
Roger Kimball, author of TENURED RADICALS, DEBATING P.C, ed. Paul Berman,
1992, p.64-5.
This celebration of 'difference' may sound like a prescription for tolerance and genuine
pluralism. But in fact it has fostered a positively Orwellian situation in which 'diversity'
really means strict intellectual conformity, and 'tolerance' is reserved exclusively for those
who subscribe to one's own perspective. As has been widely reported in the press recently,
attempts to endorse the ethic of 'difference' have led to egregious violations of academic
freedom and have poisoned the atmosphere for honest intellectual exchange at campuses
across the country. Deviation from the multiculturalist orthodoxy on any number of issues
is punished by social ostracism, mandatory 'consciousness raising' classes, or even
suspension or expulsion. It is precisely this cluster of phenomena that is summed up in the
phrase 'political correctness.'
AKH0075 OFFENSIVE SPEECH IS THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
Benno Schmidt, former President of Yale University, quoted in: FREE SPEECH FOR ME,
BUT NOT FOR THEE, 1992, p.134.
Thus, on many campuses around the country, perhaps most, these is little resistance to
growing pressure to suppress and to punish rather than to answer, speech that offends
notions of civility and community. These campuses are heedless of the oldest lesson in the
history of freedom of expression, which is that offensive, erroneous and obnoxious speech
is the price of freedom. Offensive speech cannot be suppressed under open-ended
standards without letting loose an engine of censorship that cannot be controlled. Vague
and unpredictable possibilities of punishment for expression on campus not only fly in the
face of the lessons of freedom, but are in addition antithetical to the idea of the university..
If fear, ignorance and bigotry exist on our campuses, it is far better than they be exposed
and answered than that they be bottled up.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 7
AKH0076 REPRESSING EXPRESSION OF PREJUDICES LEAVES THEM
UNEXAMINED
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.168-9.
Steven Rhode. a constitutional lawyer, who was co-chairman of the Los Angeles Bar
Association Bill of Rights Bicentennial Committee. points out: 'A university campus,
whether public or private, must be a place for robust wide-open and free discussion
Students bring to college all their prejudices, their fears, their doubts, their misconceptions.
If they spend four years cooped up under repressive regulations, they might well dutifully
obey the rules, offend no one, and leave with all their prejudices, fears, doubts, and
misconceptions firmly intact. Punishing bigoted speech only treats the symptoms, not the
disease. It often creates martyrs and drives them underground where they attract new,
impressionable followers on the pretext that they themselves [the bigots] are an oppressed
minority whose truths are so powerful they are banned by the Establishment.'
AKH0077 FREE SPEECH IS KEY TO ADVANCING CIVIL RIGHTS
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.164
A number of blacks on the CLUM board are in agreement with Hagler, but there is also
Byron Rushing, a forthright member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
'Bigotry thrives underground,' Rushing told me. Rather than curb speech on campus, he
added, 'we need to train people in how to deal with free speech.' Without hesitation, he
calls himself 'a First Amendment Absolutist,' having learned the crucial importance of free
speech, he points out, during his work in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and since.
And Rushing notes how effective Martin Luther King Jr, and Malcolm X were by
vigorously exercising their freedom of speech.
AKH0078 MINORITIES NEED TO BE EXPOSED TO WOUNDING LANGUAGE TO
COUNTER IT
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.167
There is also the damaging effect of these 'protective' regulations on the very people who
are insisting they be safeguarded. Malcolm X used to talk about the need to learn how
language works, how to dissect it, how to use it as both a shield and sword. Above all, he
felt, blacks should not be fearful of language. They should not let language intimidate them
but rather fight back--when words are used against them--with more powerful words of
their own. If you read Malcolm X's collected speeches and listen to his recordings, it's clear
he was an extraordinarily resilient, resourceful, probing master of language. How did he
get that way? Not by being protected as he grew up from wounding language.
AKH0079 WORDS AREN'T KEY
Barbara Ehrenreich, social critic, DEBATING P.C., ed. Paul Berman, 1992, p.336.
Now, I'm all for verbal uplift. I like being called Ms. I don't want people saying "man"
when they mean me, too. I'm willing to make an issue of these things. But I know that even
when all women are Ms., we'll still get sixty-five cents for every dollar earned by a man.
Minorities by any other name-people of color, or whatever-will still bear a huge burden
of poverty, discrimination, and racial harassment. Verbal uplift is not the revolution.
AKH0080 SOCIAL REFORM THROUGH LINGUISTIC CHANGE IS ABSURD
Paul Berman, fellow, New York University Institute for the Humanities, DEBATING P.C.
1992, p.23-4.
And there is the idea that, sparkling like jewels here and there, a millenarian alternative is
somewhere lurking, that we can turn the world upside down-if we, the anti-bigot reformers,
can only get hold of the dominating verbal structures. For if we can only command the
school curriculum, or dictate the literary canon, or get everyone to abandon certain
previously unanalyzed phrases that contain the entire structure of oppressive social
domination, and replace these phrases with other phrases that contain a new, better
society-if we can only do that, great results will occur, and the radiant new day will be at
hand. That is a wild notion, which consciously no one believes, at least not in full. Yet bits
and pieces of that idea peek out from within the academic vocabulary.
AKH0081 CAMPUS CENSORSHIP IS CREATING ILLIBERAL EDUCATION
Dinesh D'Souza, author of Illiberal Education, DEBATING, P.C., ed. Paul Berman, 1992,
p.30.
And finally, liberal education should be about high standards and about free speech, free
and open debate. Instead, many campuses are witnessing attack on academic standards as
being the sole property of white males and, further, many campuses, more than a hundred,
now have censorship regulations outlawing racially and sexually offensive speech. So we
have gone from liberal education to its antithetical opposite, to illiberal education.

AKH0082 POLITICAL CORRECTNESS LEADS TO SELF-CENSORSHIP
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST columnist, DEBATING, P.C., ed. Paul Berman, 1992,
p.218-9
Students at New York University Law School have also told me that they censor
themselves in class. The kind of chilling atmosphere they describe was exemplified last
year as a case assigned for a moot court competition became subject to denunciation when
a sizable number of law students said it was too 'offensive' and would hurt the feelings of
gay and lesbian students. The case concerned a divorced father's attempt to gain custody
of his children on the grounds that their mother had become a lesbian. It was against PC
to represent the father. Although some of the faculty responded by insisting that you learn
to be a lawyer by dealing with all kinds of cases, including those you personally find
offensive, other faculty members supported the rebellious students, praising them for their
sensitivity. There was little public opposition from the other students to the attempt to
suppress the case.
AKH0083 CODES REPRESS MODERATES--NOT CONSERVATIVES
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST columnist, DEBATING, P.C., ed. Paul Berman, 1992,
p.217-8
One of the myths about the rise of PC (politically correct) is that, coming from the left, it
is primarily intimidating conservatives on campus. Quite the contrary. At almost every
college I've been, conservative students have their own newspaper, usually quite lively and
fired by a muckraking glee at exposing 'politically correct' follies on campus. By and large,
those most intimidated--not so much by the speech codes themselves but by the Madame
Defarge-like spirit behind them--are liberal students and those who can be called politically
moderate. I've talked to many of them, and they no longer get involved in class discussions
where their views would go against the grain of PC righteousness. Many, for instance,
have questions about certain kinds of affirmative action. They are not partisans of Jesse
Helms or David Duke, but they wonder whether progeny of middle-class black families
should get scholarship preference. Others have a question about abortion. Most are not
pro-life, but they believe that fathers should have a say in whether the fetus should be sent
off into eternity.
AKH0084 SLIPPERY SLOPE ARGUMENTS UNIQUELY APPLY TO SPEECH
Frederick Schauer, College of William & Mary Law professor, FREE SPEECH: A
PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRY, 1982, p.83
The hypothesis here is that 'slippery slope' and 'where do you draw the line?' arguments
may have special relevance with respect to regulating speech. This suggestion is hardly
novel. Lord Chesterfield, speaking against the Theatres Act of 1737, remarked that: There
is such a connection between licentiousness and Liberty, that it is not easy to correct the
one, without dangerously wounding the other. It is extremely hard to distinguish the true
limit between them; like a changeable silk, we can easily see there are two different colors,
but we cannot easily discover where one ends, or where the other begins. Censorship is a
double futility. It cannot prevent any single intended criticism; and it is bound to suspect
a theoretically infinite number of unintended ones.
AKH0085 SPEECH LIMITS ARE ESPECIALLY PRONE TO BE OVER-INCLUSIVE
Frederick Schauer, College of William & Mary Law professor, FREE SPEECH: A
PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRY, 1982, p.84
If our descriptive language about speech is less refined or less precise than our descriptive
language about other forms of conduct-- and this seems by no means an implausible
hypothesis--then any regulating rule may be particularly vulnerable to the vice of linguistic
over-inclusiveness. And if this is so, then there is some validity to the claim that slippery
slope fears are more well- founded in reference to regulation of speech than in reference
to other forms of conduct. Such a conclusion would support recognition of a Free Speech
Principle solely to counteract the special slipperiness of this particular slope.
AKH0086 THE EROSION OF FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS COULD SNOWBALL TO
SOCIETY
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992,, p.132-3
Under Benno Schmidt, Yale became the leading university in the country in the defense
of free speech. Schmidt, along with Donald Kagan and others, continued the spirit of the
Woodward Report. In March 1991, Schmidt, speaking at the 92nd Street Y in New York
said: 'The most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today exist on our
campuses. On many...including some of the finest universities...freedom of thought is in
danger from well-intentioned but misguided efforts to give values of community and
harmony a higher place in the university than freedom. The assumption seems to be that
the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and
to liberate the mind. The issue of freedom in our universities is not only of critical
importance to the quality and integrity of higher education. Attitudes on campus often
presage tendencies in the larger society. If that is so with respect to freedom of expression,
the erosion of principle we have seen throughout our society in recent years may be only
the beginning.'
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 8
AKH0087 FREE EXPRESSION IS KEY TO ALL OUR LIBERTIES
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.133-4
'The problem of freedom of expression on our campuses lies at the intersection of two
extremely disturbing tendencies. One is a general anxiety in our society that is eroding our
commitment to enduring principles in our national life, an unsteadiness that especially
threatens freedom of expression, the freedom that is the indispensable condition, as
Benjamin Cardozo reminded us, of all our liberties. What the near-miss of amending the
First Amendment to deal with flag burning, the political agitation over indecency in the
arts, and the steady march toward an official-secrets-act regime of national-security secrecy
all have in common in a pervasive doubt about the capacity of our society to live and
flourish in conditions of freedom.
AKH0088 SUPPRESSING DISSENT SNOWBALLS TO EXTERMINATING
DISSENTERS
Justice Jackson, quoted in, FREE SPEECH FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE, 1992, p.247
Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating
dissenters...Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would
be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that
touch the heart of the existing order.'
AKH0089 SUPPRESSING INTOLERANT SPEECH IS SELF-DEFEATING
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.254
Holmes' logic is inescapable. If speech is to be free, there is always the risk that those who
would destroy free speech may be sufficiently eloquent to use that constitutional freedom
to end it. But if speech is to be limited to prevent that possibility, then the enemies of free
expression have already won a significant victory-- even as they are silenced. And once
the concept of curbing speech is established, those enemies, each time the state suppresses
speech, will have moved closer to their goal of destroying free speech.
AKH0090 LIMITS ON THE FIRST AMENDMENT SNOWBALL
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.259
Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Tribe pointed out in THE NEW YORK TIMES,
that this case came before the Court at a time when the First Amendment is under siege
throughout the country, and not only from the political religious Right: '...people in so
many contexts-- hate speech on campus, feminists against pornography, political
correctness--are making the argument that you can suppress certain kinds of speech just
because it does so much harm. The First Amendment is almost always tested with speech
that is profoundly divisive or painful. But if you start making exceptions, and suppressing
speech that is hurtful, these exceptions will swallow free speech, and the only speech that
will be left protected will be abstracted, emotionally lightweight speech that doesn't pack
any wallop.'
AKH0091 CARVING OUT EXCEPTIONS TO THE FIRST AMENDMENT KILLS IT
Leslie Williams, American Civil Liberties Union, quoted in: FREE SPEECH FOR ME,
BUT NOT FOR THEE, 1992, p.388
We all believe in free speech for us, but not for them. Holocaust survivors think
anti-Semitic speech should be outlawed; Senator Jesse H elms thinks whatever he
considers indecent should not be protected by the First Amendment; George Bush and a
lot of others think flag-burning is an unacceptable form of expression; some women's
rights advocates think any speech that degrades women ought to be outlawed; anti-choice
groups think it's okay to impose their religious principles and moral values on everyone
else; indulging in 'hate speech' can get you thrown out of some colleges. If all these people
and others are able to make exceptions to the First Amendment, we might as well kiss free
expression good-bye.
AKH0092 THOUGHT POLICING SNOWBALLS
George Will, Columnist, DEBATING, P.C., Editor- Paul Berman, 1992,, p.260.
This orthodoxy is reinforced--and enforced--by codes of conduct called 'anti-harassment'
codes, under which designated groups of victims are protected from whatever they decide
offends them. To cure the offensiveness of others, therapists, and thought police are
proliferating on campuses, conducting 'racial awareness seminars' and other 'sensitivity
training.' These moral tutors have a professional interest in the exacerbation of group
tensions, to which university administrations contribute by allowing, even encouraging,
the Balkanization of campus life. This is done by encouraging group identities--black
dorms, women's centers, gay studies, etc. The status of victim is coveted as a source of
moral dignity and political power, so nerves are rubbed raw by the competitive cultivation
of grievances. The more brittle campus relations become, the more aggressive moral
therapy becomes, making matters worse.
AKH0093 SITUATIONAL LIMITS ON SPEECH SNOWBALL
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST columnist, DEBATING, P.C., ed. Paul Berman, 1992,
p.222
A precedent has been set at, of all places, colleges and universities that the principle of free
speech is merely situational. As college administrators change, so will the extent of free
speech on campus. And invariably, permissible speech will become more and more
narrowly defined. Once speech can be limited in such subjective ways, more and more
expression will be included in what is forbidden.

AKH0094 SPEECH CODES PERSUADE FUTURE LEADERS OF LEGITIMACY OF
CENSORSHIP
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.158
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz--among the boldest and bravest of First
Amendment defenders--writes: 'I feel this problem quite personally, since I happen to
agree as a matter of substance with most politically correct positions. But I am appalled at
the intolerance of many who share by substantive views. And I worry about the impact of
politically correct intolerance on the generation of leaders we are currently educating.'
Leaders will emerge from the ranks of these college and university graduates. Among them
will be the lawyers, judges, educators, legislators, and Supreme Court Justices of the
future. And the mind-set with which some leave the campus in these years is: some
censorship is okay--provided that the motivations are okay.
AKH0095 SPEECH CODES ARE INHERENTLY OVERBROAD
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.169
Stanford prides itself on being one of the elite universities, and yet the majority of its
faculty and students have yet to learn so basic a historical truth as this--stated by Eleanor
Holmes Norton, former chairwoman of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission: 'It is technically impossible to write an anti-speech code that cannot be
twisted against speech nobody means to bar. It has been tried and tried and tried.'
AKH0096 THE UNIVERSITY'S BASIC MISSION IS TRUTH, NOT COMMUNITY
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.152
On Fred Friendly's Public Broadcasting System program, Schmidt said: 'I take a
completely different view of what a university is..I don't think the university is first and
foremost a community. It's not a place, first and foremost, that is about the inculcation of
thought [and] habits of mind that I might agree are correct and constructive. The university
has a fundamental mission which is to search for the truth. And a university is a place
where people have to have the right to speak the unspeakable and think the unthinkable
and challenge the unchallengeable. Now it's not a place of violence. It's not a place for
threats...There's no place for violence, or threats of it, in a regime of freedom. But beyond
that, I think that these [speech] codes make a terrible mistake...Students think that they are
codes about building communities that are based on correct thoughts, and that's
antithetical, I think, to the idea of a university.'
AKH0097 CENSORSHIP VIOLATES THE ESSENCE OF THE UNIVERSITY
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST columnist, DEBATING, P.C., ed. Paul Berman, 1992,
p.223
One of the exceedingly few college presidents who speaks out on the consequences of the
anti-free speech movement is Yale University's Benno Schmidt: Freedom of thought must
be Yale's central commitment. It is not easy to embrace. It is, indeed, the effort of a
lifetime...Much expression that is free may deserve our contempt. We may well be moved
to exercise our own freedom to counter it or to ignore it. But universities cannot censor or
suppress speech, no matter how obnoxious in content, without violating their justification
for existence...On some other campuses in this country, values of civility and community
have been offered by some as paramount values of the university, even to the extent of
superseding freedom of expression. Such a view is wrong in principle and, if extended, is
disastrous to freedom of thought...The chilling effects on speech of the vagueness and
open-ended nature of many universities' prohibitions...are compounded by the fact that
these codes are typically enforced by faculty and students who commonly assert that vague
notions of community are more important to the academy than freedom of thought and
expression...
AKH0098 IN A UNIVERSITY, FREE SPEECH VALUES OUTWEIGHS VALUES OF
CIVILITY
Woodward Commission-Yale University, quoted in FREE SPEECH FOR ME, BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.115
If a university is a place for knowledge, it is also a special kind of small society. Yet it is
not primarily a fellowship, a club, a circle of friends, a replica of the civil society outside
it. Without sacrificing its central purpose, it cannot make its primary and dominant value
the fostering of friendship, solidarity, harmony, civility, or mutual respect. To be sure,
these are important values other institutions may properly assign them the highest, and not
merely a subordinate priority; and a good university will seek and may in some significant
measure attain these ends. But it will never let these values, important as they are, override
its central purpose. We value freedom of expression precisely because it provides a forum
for the new, the provocative, the disturbing, and the unorthodox. Free speech is a barrier
to thy tyranny of authoritarian or even majority opinion as to the rightness or wrongness
or particular doctrines or thoughts...
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 9
AKH0099 PROTECTING FREE EXPRESSION IS THE UNIVERSITY'S PARAMOUNT
GOAL
Woodward Commission-Yale University, quoted in FREE SPEECH FOR ME, BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.116
The conclusions we draw, then, are these: even when some members of the university
community fail to meet their social and ethical responsibilities, the paramount obligation
of the university is to protect their right to free expression. This obligation can and should
be enforced by appropriate formal sanctions. If the university's overriding commitment to
free expression is to be sustained, secondary social and ethical responsibilities must be left
to the informal processes of suasion, example, and argument.
AKH0100 DIVERSE SOCIETIES ESPECIALLY NEED FREE SPEECH
Benno Schmidt, Yale University, quoted in: FREE SPEECH FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR
THEE 1992, p.136
I have often heard the argument...that unhibited freedom of speech was somehow more
appropriate in the days when our universities were more homogeneous, while current
conditions of far greater racial, religious, and cultural diversity call for controls in the
interest of harmony and community. That so many people of goodwill would make such
an argument shows how far we have drifted from our confidence in and commitment to
freedom. I can only imagine what James Madison or Holmes would have thought of this
complete inversion of the theory of free expression. It is precisely societies that are diverse,
pluralistic, and contentious that most urgently need freedom of speech and freedom of
religion...
AKH0101 SPEECH CODES CHILL THE EXPRESSION OF MODERATES
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.152-3
Conservative students are enjoying their role as champions of free speech, taking great
sardonic pleasure in depicting the righteous left as neo-McCarthyites. On many campuses,
conservatives--usually with the help of funds from highly conservative foundations--are
publishing alternative papers. They tend to be quite lively and witty (humor being in
exceedingly short supply among the Jacobins.) And these papers take much muckraking
pleasure in exposing the surrenders, small and large, of university administrators to the
demands of the ultra-orthodox. Those most stifled by the pall of orthodoxy on campus are
students who are liberals but of an independent mind--and moderates. On campus after
campus, from Brown to Stanford, I have talked to students who say there are some views
that hold--or questions they want to ask--that they no longer bring up in class or in most
places outside of class. It's not worth the hassle--or being placed in Coventry. Questions,
for example, about affirmative action. How far should it go? Should the progeny of the
black middle class get preference? And questions about abortion. Should the father have
any say at all in what happens to the fetus?
AKH0102 SPEECH CODES CHILL ARTISTIC EXPRESSION
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.168
Also overlooked by students especially concerned with artistic expression is that a 'hostile
atmosphere' can be created by a painting or a piece of sculpture because obviously,
'expression' can be graphic as well as verbal. When the University of Wisconsin's speech
code was being debated before the state's Board of Regents, E. David Cronon, dean of the
university's Madison College of Letters and Sciences, testified that the code would indeed
chill student's rights to artistic expression.
AKH0103 SPEECH CODES DON'T REDUCE RACIST ATTITUDES
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.168
Furthermore--and this is a poignant dimension of the rush to virtuous censorship--it won't
do a bit of good. Let us suppose these codes were in place on every campus in the country.
Would racism go away? Racism would go underground, in the dark, where it's most
comfortable. The language on campus could become as pure as country water, but racist
attitudes would still fester. The only way to begin to deal with racism is to bring it out in
the open--not pretend it has been scared away.
AKH0104 SPEECH CODES COULD BE USED TO SUPPRESS BLACKS AND
WOMEN
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.168
In my view, I said, Farrakhan ought to be able to speak anywhere he chooses, and certainly
on a college campus. So long as the students have the right to question him and argue with
him, they'll have something to gain from the experience. But under some of the speech
codes at more and more colleges. Farrakhan--having created a 'hostile atmosphere'--would
quite likely not be permitted on campus again. Is that what the black students pressing for
speech codes want? To have black speakers they invite on campus rejected because of what
they say and how they say it? Do women students want radical feminist Andrea Dworkin
barred because of possible charges that she creates a 'hostile environment' for nearly all
men?

AKH0105 SPEECH CODES UNDERCUT THE VALUE OF DIVERSITY
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.181-2
But what about a claim by the university made by its chancellor, Donna Shalala, many
minority students, black state legislators, members of the Board of Regents, and a good
many members of the faculty? Judge Warren addressed that claim directly: 'The Board [of
Regents] first asserted compelling interest in increasing minority representation to add to
the diversity of the University of Wisconsin System campuses. Increasing diversity is
clearly a constitutionally permissible goal for an institution of higher education.' However,
the UW rule does as much to hurt diversity on Wisconsin campuses as it does to help it.
By establishing content-based restrictions on speech, the rule limits the diversity of ideas
among students and thereby prevents the robust exchange of ideas which intellectually
diverse campuses provide.'
AKH0106 CODES ARE BEING USED TO REPRESS PERSONAL LIBERTIES
Dinesh D'Souza, author of Illiberal Education, in DEBATING, P.C., ed. Paul Berman,
1992, p.34-5
The problem is that students are beginning to talk among themselves about the taboo topics
surrounding racial preference, surrounding racial separatism, surrounding activism,
homosexuality, homosexual rights activism and so one, and the university is seeking to
regulate the students' discussion of these topics so as not to give offense. To take a fairly
typical example, the University of Michigan, a student was hauled before a disciplinary
committee and accused of making the statement that homosexuality was immoral. The
student pleaded guilty. This, in fact, was his view, based, I suppose, on religious or
aesthetic preference, and the university administrators told him your punishment is that
you will have to write a forced apology titled 'Learned My Lesson' to be published in the
campus newspaper, and we to enroll you in sensitivity education to raise your
consciousness on this issue. So a subject that is a matter of legitimate discussion is,
instead, settled not by reference to persuasion but by reference to force.
AKH0107 SPEECH CODES FAIL
Barbara Ehrenreich, TIME magazine Columnist, DEBATING, P.C., ed. Paul Berman,
1992, p.335
First, there's a tendency to rely on administration-enforced rules to stop offensive speech
and to enforce a new, and quite admirable, kind of civility. Quite aside from the free
speech issue, the problem is: Rules don't work. If you outlaw the use of the term 'girl'
instead of 'woman' you're not going to do a thing about the sexist attitudes underneath.
Changing sexist, racist, and homophobic attitudes is a challenge for those of us who
believe in a multicultural, just, and equal world. It is not a problem you turn over to the
police, to the administration, or anybody else. The only route is through persuasion,
education, and organizing.
AKH0108 SPEECH CODES HAVEN'T LIMITED OFFENSIVE SPEECH
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.390
To Francis Lawrence, president of Rutgers University, the need for censoring insulting
speech on campus is so obvious that, he says, 'it is difficult to credit the seriousness of
those who assail [speech codes] as evidence of...censorship.' Accordingly, Rutgers has a
stiff speech code which hauls into the dock students whose words offend on the basis of
race, religion, color, ancestry, sex, handicap, marital status, and sexual orientation. The
blanket of protection would seem to omit no one, and yet there is a veritable plague of
racist graffiti and other rawly offensive expression on campus.
AKH0109 EVEN HIGHLY OFFENSIVE SPEECH STRENGTHENS THE POLITICAL
COMMUNITY
Jan Naverson, University of Waterloo Philosopher, THE LIBERTARIAN IDEA, 1988,
p.291
We may agree that some speech activities may plausibly be singled out as requiring special
protection, for example, the dissemination of weird political ideas at London's famed Hyde
Park Corner. Thus Dworkin again: 'In the case of free political speech, we might well
concede...that each person has an important interest in developing his own independent
political convictions, because that is an essential part of his personality...also...that political
activity in a community is made more vigorous by variety, even by the entry, that is, of
wholly despicable points of view. These are decent arguments why individuals and the
community as a whole are at least in certain respects better off when the Nazi has spoken
his piece.'
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 10
AKH0110 OFFENSIVE SPEECH IS BEST COUNTERED WITH MORE SPEECH
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.159
The leader of the opposition at Stanford was law Professor Gerald Gunther, arguably the
nation's leading authority on constitutional law. But Gunther did not have much support
among other faculty members, conservative or liberal. Gunther pointed out during the
campus debate that he received his elementary school education in a very small town in
Nazi Germany. There his teacher, classmates, and other townspeople would address him
as 'Judensau' (Jew pig). That, he recalls, was one of the milder ways in which they used to
make his day. Professor Gunther, knowing what constant harassment by vilification feels
like, learned, he says, in Nazi Germany and his life here that it's necessary to denounce 'the
bigots' hateful ideas with all my power yet at the same time challenge...any community's
attempt to suppress hateful ideas by force of law.' The way to deal with bad speech,
Gunther emphasized, is 'with more speech, with better speech, with repudiation and
contempt.'
AKH0111 FREE EXPRESSION BEST DISPELS PREJUDICE
Benno Schmidt, Former President- Yale University, quoted in, FREE SPEECH FOR ME,
BUT NOT FOR THEE, 1992, p.136
It does not follow that because the university is committed to nondiscrimination, it should
suppress any speech that can plausibly be though to be racist. What is racial prejudice,
after all, but a particularly vicious form of ignorance and fear? It is precisely the function
of free expression to dispel ignorance and fear with the light of truth. A university ought
to be the last place where people are inhibited by fear of punishment from expressing
ignorance or even hate, so long as others are left free to answer.
AKH0112 FREE SPEECH IS EFFECTIVE DESPITE UNEQUAL RESOURCES
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.183
The MILWAUKEE JOURNAL interviewed Svovata Edari, president of the Black Student
Union. 'Minority students,' Edari said, 'don't need to hear views such as Belling's spoken
again. Free speech to us is just a joke anyways,' Edari said. 'We don't own any major
newspapers or radio stations. How can you have free speech when you can't be heard?' By
continuing to speak. As Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass and William Du Bois and
Martin Luther King had. They were heard. Obviously, there is an enormous imbalance in
institutional resources, but no change in the laws would have been accomplished without
free speech and assembly--including speech by those who did not own any major
newspapers or television stations.
AKH0113 FREE SPEECH WORKED TO END MCCARTHYISM
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.306
Beginning with James Madison and including, in our time, Justice Hugo Black, the idea
was that so long as there is room and time to reply to bad speech, counterspeech would
provide the punishment that was needed. Not money damages, not imprisonment, but the
shining of a pitiless verbal light on the lies and distortions and sheer meanness of the awful
speech in question. Joe McCarthy, for instance received his terrible punishment not in his
eventual censure by the Senate, but before that, from devastating counterspeech: Ed
Murrow on television and Boston lawyer Joe Welch during the Army-McCarthy hearings.
AKH0114 MINORITIES ULTIMATELY LOSE FROM SUPPRESSION OF SPEECH
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, FREE SPEECH FOR ME--BUT NOT
FOR THEE, 1992, p.213
And more fundamentally, if more law professors do not join the law students supporting
free inquiry, Anthony Amsterdam's prophecy will come true: 'More basically, once you
begin to exclude ideas from the discourse of a community on the ground that they are
wrong or offensive, you start in motion a process that inevitably ends up justifying
suppression of the unpopular ideas of unpopular minorities. It is fanciful to think that
bigots cannot beat you at the game you have begun. They always have and they always
will.'
AKH0115 LEARNING TO COUNTER OFFENSIVE SPEECH IS A KEY SKILL FOR
MINORITIES
Nat Hentoff, WASHINGTON POST Columnist, DEBATING, P.C., ed. Paul Berman,
1992, p.224
In the national board debate at the ACLU on college speech codes, the first speaker and
I think she had a lot to do with making the final vote against codes unanimous--was Gwen
Thomas. A black community college administrator from Colorado, she is a fiercely
persistent exposer of racial discrimination. She started by saying, 'I have always felt as a
minority person that we have to protect the rights of all because if we infringe on the rights
of any persons, we'll be next.' 'As for providing a nonintimidating educational
environment, our young people have to learn to grow up on college campuses. We have
to teach them how to deal with adversarial situations. They have to learn how to survive
offensive speech they find wounding and hurtful.'

AKH0116 POLITICAL CORRECTNESS ULTIMATELY LEADS TO RACIAL
HOSTILITY
Dinesh D'Souza, author of Illiberal Education, in DEBATING, P.C., ed. Paul Berman,
1992, p.35
I think that America is becoming a multiracial society and the whole issue is transcending
black and white. We are going to have four or more groups, whites, blacks, Hispanics, and
Asians in this diverse culture. It's very important to have a fair set of rules to arbitrate the
differences among these groups. And the problem is that universities and to some extent
society at large are moving away from a fair or neutral set of principles and are engaging
in a politics of expediency, or racial rationing, of racial preference. I think this is a formula
for division, for Balkanization, and ultimately for racial hostility.
AKH0117 REJECTING POLITICAL CORRECTNESS KEY TO DEALING WITH
RACIAL PROBLEMS
Dinesh D'Souza, author of Illiberal Education, in DEBATING, P.C., ed. Paul Berman,
1992, p.38
Well, the central paradox is that affirmative action or racial preference policies that are not
routinely practices by colleges are saying to students that the best way to fight
discrimination in America is to practice discrimination. This is to say the least a
paradoxical assertion, one that at the very least needs to be publicly stated and defended.
Maybe there are good arguments for affirmative action, but they need to be named. Look
at the case of Georgetown University, where the kid released partial data about the subject
and the university responded not by releasing full information, not by debating the issue,
but by punishing the student. Critics of political correctness are not saying get rid of
affirmative action, but (a) let's talk about it and (b) let's discuss some possible alternatives.
AKH0118 CONTROLLING RACIAL SLURS ISN'T THE REAL POINT OF SPEECH
CODES
Dinesh D'Souza, author of Illiberal Education, in DEBATING, P.C., ed. Paul Berman,
1992, p.35
I'm not a free speech absolutist. I might part company here with the ACLU. I don't believe
that people should be able to say anything they want, whenever they want. But you could
have a code on campus that simply had one line in it: A student shall not yell racial epithets
at each other. None of the codes say this because, as I said, that's not the problem. The
universities are trying to outlaw and suppress a different kind of discussion.
AKH0119 METAPHYSICAL STATEMENTS ARE MEANINGLESS
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.31.
To test whether a sentence expresses a genuine empirical hypothesis, I adopt what may be
called a modified verification principle. For I require of an empirical hypothesis, not
indeed that it should be conclusively verifiable, but that some possible senses-experience
should be relevant to the determination of its truth or falsehood. If a putative proposition
fails to satisfy this principle, and is not a tautology, then I hold that it is metaphysical, and
that, being metaphysical, it is neither true nor false but literally senseless.
AKH0120 QUESTIONS OF GOD, BEING, HUMAN NATURE AND THE NATURE OF
THE WORLD ARE METAPHYSICAL
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.42-3.
By the broadest definition, metaphysics is the study of the basic structure of existence and
of the nature of being. It can also be defined as the study of those things which transcend
experience, or as a theory of the first principles or ultimate truths of the universe. In
general, any philosophy which purports to "get down to fundamentals" and to describe the
nature of life and the world as a whole, or which speculates about the aim of existence,
may be called metaphysical. The questions considered by this department of philosophy
fall into three big groups: i questions about the nature of God and being, ii questions about
the nature of mankind, iii questions about the nature of the world.
AKH0121 METAPHYSICAL QUESTIONS ARE RATIONALLY UNANSWERABLE
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.92-3.
Philosophers have shown us that on a cognitive level there are few, if any, aspects of our
personal existence about which we can be certain. This is perhaps part of the reflexivity
of modernity, but is certainly not limited in its application only to a specific historical
period. Certain questions-"Do I really exist?" "Am I the same person today as I was
yesterday?" "Do other people really exist?" "Does what I see in front of me continue to be
there when I turn my back on it?"-cannot be answered in an indubitable way by rational
argument.
AKH0122 METAPHYSICAL SPECULATION IS USELESS
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.152.
The proposition which unites all philosophers who can be called positivist is that all
genuine knowledge is based on sense experience, and that metaphysical speculation can
produce no genuine knowledge and must be abandoned in favour of the methods of
science.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 11
AKH0123 TRUE METAPHYSICAL DOUBT IS MENTAL ILLNESS
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.93.
The same is not true of a minority of people who treat our inability to be certain about such
matters not just as an intellectual worry, but as a deep disquiet that feeds into many of the
things that they do. A person who is existentially unsure about whether he or she is several
selves, or whether others really exist, or whether what is perceived really exists, may be
entirely incapable of inhabiting the same social universe as other human beings. Certain
categories of individuals regarded by others as mentally ill, particularly schizophrenics,
do think and act in this way.
AKH0124 PRAGMATISM JUSTIFIES REJECTING METAPHYSICS
Roger Trigg, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, RATIONALITY AND
SCIENCE, 1993, p.36.
For the pragmatists, as for Wittgenstein, metaphysical speculation should be ruled out
Instead of reasoning about the nature of reality, or searching for firm foundations of
knowledge, the pragmatist typically believes that we should start from where we are and
build up our conception of knowledge out of our present practices. Because metaphysics
tends to point to a reality beyond our knowledge, it can open up the possibility of
skepticism. If something is beyond our grasp, it might appear that we have no very great
reason for believing it is there, and it is easy for anyone to deny its existence. Pragmatism
begins with our actions and our actual purposes, and so avoids this.
AKH0125 PHILOSOPHY SHOULDN'T REJECT COMMON SENSE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.51.
It follows that the philosopher has no right to despise the beliefs of common sense. If he
does so, he merely displays his ignorance of the true purpose of his enquiries. What he is
entitled to despise is the unreflecting analysis of those beliefs, which takes the grammatical
structure of the sentence as a trustworthy guide to its meaning.
AKH0126 METAPHYSICS IS MEANINGLESS BECAUSE IT ISN'T BASED ON
SENSE EXPERIENCE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.34.
Consequently one cannot overthrow a system of transcendent metaphysics merely by
criticizing the way in which it comes into being. What is required is rather a criticism of
the nature of the actual statements which comprise it. And this is the line of argument
which we shall, in fact, pursue. For we shall maintain that no statement which refers to a
"reality" transcending the limits of all possible sense-experience can possibly have any
literal significance; from which it must follow that the labours of those who have striven
to describe such a reality have all been devoted to the production of nonsense.
AKH0127 METAPHYSICAL STATEMENTS DON'T MEET THE CRITERIA FOR A
MEANINGFUL SENTENCE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.35.
Our charge against the metaphysician is not that he attempts to employ the understanding
in a field where it cannot profitably venture, but that he produces sentences which fail to
conform to the conditions under which alone a sentence can be literally significant. Nor
are we ourselves obliged to talk nonsense in order to show that all sentences of a certain
type are necessarily devoid of literal significance. We need only formulate the criterion
which enables us to test whether a sentence expresses a genuine proposition about a matter
of fact, and then point out that the sentences under consideration fail to satisfy it.
AKH0128 METAPHYSICAL STATEMENTS ARE MEANINGLESS BECAUSE THEY
ARE NOT JUSTIFIABLE IN PRINCIPLE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.36.
On the other hand, such a metaphysical pseudo-proposition as "the Absolute enters into,
but is Itself incapable of, evolution and progress," is not even in principle verifiable. For
one cannot conceive of an observation which would enable one to determine whether the
Absolute did, or did not, enter into evolution and progress.
AKH0129 METAPHYSICAL PROPOSITIONS ARE MEANINGLESS BECAUSE
THEY ARE NEITHER EMPIRICAL NOR TAUTOLOGICAL
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.41.
It should be mentioned here that the fact that the utterances of the metaphysician are
nonsensical does not follow simply from the fact that they are devoid of factual content.
It follows from that fact, together with the fact that they are not a priori propositions. And
in assuming that they are not a priori propositions, we are once again anticipating the
conclusions of a later chapter in this book. For it will be shown there that a priori
propositions, which have always been attractive to philosophers on account of their
certainty, owe this certainty to the fact that they are tautologies. We may accordingly
define a metaphysical sentence as a sentence which purports to express a genuine
proposition, but does, in fact, express neither a tautology nor an empirical hypothesis. And
as tautologies and empirical hypotheses form the entire class of significant propositions,
we are justified in concluding that all metaphysical assertions are nonsensical.

AKH0130 STATEMENTS NOT LOGICAL OR EMPIRICAL ARE MEANINGLESS
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.54.
Of Hume we may say not merely that he was not in practice a metaphysician, but that he
explicitly rejected metaphysics. We find the strongest evidence of this in the passage with
which he concludes his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. ''If," he says, "we take
in our hand any volume; of divinity, or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does
it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any
experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the
flames. For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." What is this but a rhetorical
version of our own thesis that a sentence which does not express either a formally true
proposition or an empirical hypothesis is devoid of literal significance?
AKH0131 STATEMENTS WHICH AREN'T LOGICAL OR EMPIRICAL ARE
MEANINGLESS
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.153-4.
Extremely dissatisfied with every philosophical position ever adopted, logical positivists
maintained that the task of philosophy was not to produce propositions about the world but
only to clarify the meaning of statements made by others. According to this outlook, there
are three possible kinds of statement: logical (including mathematics), scientific (including
statements of empirical observation) and nonsensical (including almost all philosophy
hitherto). The object of classifying statements into one of these three kinds is to determine
which discipline is appropriate For dealing with questions arising from it. Nonsensical
propositions are held to be those which are not propositions of formal logic nor capable
of being the subject of some scientific discipline: such propositions are not true or false,
but literally without meaning, as a sentence of gibberish is without meaning.
AKH0132 NON-VERIFIABLE QUESTIONS ARE MEANINGLESS
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.154.
The criterion for distinguishing between a scientific proposition and a nonsensical one is
called the principle of verifiability: a statement can be considered significant if one knows
what observations would have to be made in order to verify or refute it; if no conceivable
observation could either verify or refute a statement, it is without meaning. Thus the
statement "All men have free will" is declared, not true or false, but meaningless, since no
observation can be imagined which would verify or refute it.
AKH0133 METAPHYSICAL IDEAS ARE MEANINGLESS WHEN APPLIED TO
EXPERIENCED REALITY
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.141.
The Ideas of the soul, of the world as a totality, and of God-which are the three forms of
absolute unity demanded by the three forms of logical inference-can never be objects of
experience, but pure reason demands them as concepts. But if these concepts are applied
to supposed objects of experience-- as if they were a posteriori concepts or categories then
error and illusion results. The propositions of metaphysics are without meaning if they
involve either the application of the categories to things-in-themselves or the application
of the Ideas to experienced reality. The foregoing is expounded in the Critique of Pure
Reason, Kant's masterpiece.
AKH0134 METAPHYSICAL PROPOSITIONS ARE NEITHER ANALYTICAL NOR
EMPIRICAL, HENCE THEY ARE MEANINGLESS
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.43.
The argument that metaphysical propositions are not meaningful can be stated as follows:
only empirical or analytic propositions are meaningful; but metaphysical propositions are
neither empirical nor analytic; therefore they are not meaningful.
AKH0135 METAPHYSICS CAN'T REVEAL THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE
Bertrand Russell, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, THE PROBLEMS OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1912, p.141.
Most philosophers--or at any rate, very many- profess to be able to prove, by a priori
metaphysical reasoning, such things as the fundamental dogmas of religion, the essential
rationality of the universe, the illusoriness of matter, the unreality of all evil, and so on.
There can be no doubt that the hope of finding reason to believe such theses as these has
been the chief inspiration of many life-long students of philosophy. This hope, I believe,
is vain. It would seem that knowledge concerning the universe as a whole is not to be
obtained by metaphysics, and that the proposed proofs that, in virtue of the laws of logic
such and such things must exist and such and such others cannot, are not capable of
surviving a critical scrutiny.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 12
AKH0136 METAPHYSICS FAILS TO GUIDE ACTUAL PRACTICE
Roger Trigg, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, RATIONALITY AND
SCIENCE, 1993, p.37.
Pragmatists object to metaphysics because it fails to guide our actual practices. Instead of
starting with the conception of some reality which may not even be attainable, we must,
they believe, begin with the concrete things around us in our every day world William
James put the matter succinctly (1907, p.45) when he said that the pragmatist method
aimed to settle metaphysical disputes that might otherwise never end. It appeals to what,
if any, would be the practical consequences of the truth of one theory rather than another.
In a famous image he said that 'you must bring out of each word its practical cash value'
(1907, p.53).
AKH0137 METAPHYSICS ISN'T EVEN POETICALLY VALUABLE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.44-5.
The view that the metaphysician is to be reckoned among the poets appears to rest on the
assumption that both talk nonsense. But this assumption is false. In the vast majority of
cases the sentences which are produced by poets do have literal meaning. The difference
between the man who uses language scientifically and the man who uses it emotively is
not that the one produces sentences which are incapable of arousing emotion, and the other
sentences which have no sense, but that the one is primarily concerned with the expression
of true propositions, the other with the creation of a work of art. Thus, if a work of science
contains true and important propositions, its value as a work of science will hardly be
diminished by the fact that they are inelegantly expressed. And similarly, a work of art is
not necessarily the worse for the fact that all the propositions comprising it are literally
false. But to say that many literary works are largely composed of falsehoods, is not to say
that they are composed of pseudo-propositions. It is, in fact, very rare for a literary artist
to produce sentences which have no literal meaning. And where this does occur, the
sentences are carefully chosen for their rhythm and balance. If the author writes nonsense,
it is because he considers it most suitable for bringing about the effects for which his
writing is designed.
AKH0138 METAPHYSICAL STATEMENTS ARE INHERENTLY PARTIAL, HENCE
UNTRUE
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.157.
To Nietzsche, all truth except scientific truth had been "unmasked" as error: a
metaphysical, religious, moral or rational "truth" was true only from a certain
perspective--considered absolutely it was false.
AKH0139 METAPHYSICS IS BASED ON GRAMMATICAL AND LOGICAL
ERRORS
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.45.
The metaphysician, on the other hand, does not intend to write nonsense. He lapses into
it through being deceived by grammar, or through committing errors of reasoning, such
as that which leads to the view that the sensible world is unreal. But it is not the mark of
a poet simply to make mistakes of this sort. There are some, indeed, who would see in the
fact that the metaphysician's utterance are senseless a reason against the view that they
have aesthetic value. And, without going so far as this, we may safely say that it does not
constitute a reason for it.
AKH0140 NIETZSCHE DEMONSTRATED THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF METAPHYSICS
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.159.
Martin Heidegger, the third of the most famous "existentialists", objected to that term to
characterize his own philosophy on the ground that, while Sartre's definition was certainly
correct, to say that "existence precedes essence" is still to speak the language of
metaphysics, and he, Heidegger, believed metaphysics to be impossible. To Heidegger,
Nietzsche was the "last metaphysician of the West" who had demonstrated the
impossibility of metaphysics: Heidegger's study is ontology- the nature of being-and
human existence he regards as a "window" through which being can be observed.
AKH0141 LINGUISTIC PHILOSOPHY DEMONSTRATES THE FUTILITY OF
METAPHYSICS
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.154.
In the view of ordinary language philosophers, it is still possible to make positive
discoveries in philosophy, but not of the metaphysical kind. The philosopher's task is to
understand the world through understanding the correct use of words. The analysis of
language in terms of the use of words leads, it is claimed, to the correction of many
misleading ideas. To understand how such words as "know", "believe", "promise" are
actually used is to come nearer to a knowledge of the mind and of the nature of man.
Philosophical perplexity is shown to arise in many cases not from any inherent difficulty
in the subject-matter but in a subtle misuse of language, which suggests entities which
have no real existence. For example, in his well-known book The Concept of Mind, Gilbert
Ryle shows that many untenable ideas concerning the nature of the mind have arisen
directly from the misunderstanding of how such words as "know, "believe" and "infer" are
actually used.

AKH0142 IT'S NOT THE PURPOSE OF PHILOSOPHY TO DENY COMMON SENSE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.52.
Locke is generally regarded as being one who, like G. E. Moore at the present time, puts
forward a philosophy of common sense.' But he does not, any more than Moore, attempt
to give an a priori justification of our common-sense beliefs. Rather does he appear to have
seen that it was not his business as a philosopher to affirm or deny the validity of any
empirical propositions, but only to analyze them. For he is content, in his own words, "to
be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the
rubbish that lies in the way of knowledge"; and so devotes himself to the purely analytic
tasks of defining knowledge, and classifying propositions, and displaying the nature of
material things.
AKH0143 COMMUNICATION ASSUMES OBJECTIVE EXTERNAL REALITY
John Searle, Berkeley philosopher, DEBATING P.C., ed. Paul Berman, 1992, p.114.
The person who denies metaphysical realism presupposes the existence of a public
language, a language in which he or she communicates with other people. But what are the
conditions of possibility of communication in a public language? What do I have to
assume when I ask a question or make a claim that is supposed to be understood by others?
At least this much: If we are using words to talk about something, in a way that we expect
to be understood by others, then there must be at least the possibility of something those
words can be used to talk about. Consider any claim, from particular statements such as
"my dog has fleas," to theoretical claims such as "water is made of hydrogen and oxygen,"
to grand theories such as evolution or relativity, and you will see that they presuppose for
their intelligibility that we are taking metaphysical realism for granted.
AKH0144 OUR BASIC LINGUISTIC PROCESSES PRESUPPOSE METAPHYSICAL
REALISM
John Searle, Berkeley philosopher, DEBATING P.C., ed. Paul Berman, 1992, p.114.
I am not claiming that one can prove metaphysical realism to be true from some standpoint
that exists apart from our human linguistic practices. What I am arguing, rather, is that
those practices themselves presuppose metaphysical realism. So one cannot within those
practices intelligibly deny metaphysical realism, because the meaningfulness of our public
utterances already presupposes an independently existing reality to which expressions in
those utterances can refer. Metaphysical realism is thus not a thesis or a theory; it is rather
the condition of having theses or theories or even of denying theses or theories. This is not
an epistemic point about how we come to know truth as opposed to falsehood, rather it is
a point about the conditions of possibility of communicating intelligibly. Falsehood stands
as much in need of the real world as does truth.
AKH0145 SEPARATE BODIES AND SENSE EXPERIENCES CREATE SEPARATE
SELVES
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.125.
But, as it is logically impossible for any organic sense-content to be an element of more
than one body, the relation of "belonging to the sense-history of the same self" turns out
to be a symmetrical and transitive relation. And, from the fact that the relation of belonging
to the sense-history of the same self is symmetrical and transitive, it follows necessarily
that the series of sense-experiences which constitute the sense-histories of different selves
cannot have any members in common. And this is tantamount to saying that it is logically
impossible for a sense-experience to belong to the sense-history of more than a single self.
AKH0146 PERSONAL IDENTITY IS GROUNDED IN BODILY IDENTITY
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.127.
For we have solved Hume's problem by defining personal identity in terms of bodily
identity, and bodily identity is to be defined in terms of the resemblance and continuity of
sense-contents. And this procedure is justified by the fact that whereas it is permissible,
in our language, to speak of a man as surviving a complete loss of memory, or a complete
change of character, it is self-contradictory to speak of a man as surviving the annihilation
of his body. For that which is supposed to survive by those who look forward to a "life
after death' is not the empirical self, but a metaphysical entity-the soul. And this
metaphysical entity, concerning which no genuine hypothesis can be formulated, has no
logical connection whatsoever with the self.
AKH0147 THE STATEMENT OF HOLISM IS LOGICALLY NONSENSICAL
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.146.
We have, indeed, already remarked that the assertion that Reality is One, which it is
characteristic of a monist to make and a pluralist to controvert, is nonsensical, since no
empirical situation could have any bearing on its truth.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 13
AKH0148 SENSE EXPERIENCE JUSTIFIES BELIEF IN OTHERS
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.130.
And just as I must define material things and my own self in terms of their empirical
manifestations, so I must define other people in terms of their empirical manifestations-that
is, in terms of the behaviour of their bodies, and ultimately in terms of sense-contents. The
assumption that "behind" these sense-contents there are entities which are not even in
principle accessible to my observation can have no more significance for me than the
admittedly metaphysical assumption that such entities "underlie" the sense-contents which
constitute material things for me, or my own self. And thus I find that I have as good a
reason to believe in the existence of other people as I have to believe in the existence of
material things. For in each case my hypothesis is verified by the occurrence in my
sense-history of the appropriate series of sense-content.
AKH0149 COMMUNICATION JUSTIFIES BELIEF IN THE EXISTENCE OF OTHERS
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.132-3.
In the same way, each of us has good reason to suppose that other people understand him,
and that he understands them, because he observes that his utterances have the effect on
their actions which he regards as appropriate, and that they also regard as appropriate the
effect which their utterances have on his actions; and mutual understanding is defined in
terms of such harmony of behaviour. And, since to assert that two people inhabit a
common world is to assert that they are capable, at least in principle, of understanding one
another, it follows that each of us, although his sense-experiences are private to himself,
has good reason to believe that he and other conscious beings inhabit a common world. For
each of us observes the behaviour, on the part of himself and others, which constitutes the
requisite understanding. And there is nothing in our epistemology which involves a denial
of this fact.
AKH0150 THE KNOWLEDGE OF OTHER PEOPLE IS A FICTITIOUS PROBLEM
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.130-1.
It appears, then, that the fact that a man's sense-experiences are private to himself,
inasmuch as each of them contains an organic sense-content which belongs to his body and
to no other, is perfectly compatible with his having good reason to believe in the existence
of other men. For, if he is to avoid metaphysics, he must define the existence of other men
in terms of the actual and hypothetical occurrence of certain sense-contents, and then the
fact that the requisite sense-contents do occur in his sense-history gives him a good reason
for believing that there are other conscious beings besides himself. And thus we see that
the philosophical problem of "our knowledge of other people" is not the insoluble, and,
indeed, fictitious, problem of establishing by argument the existence of entities which are
altogether unobservable, but is simply the problem of indicating the way in which a certain
type of hypothesis is empirically verified.
AKH0151 EPISTEMOLOGICAL EMPHASIS IMPEDES PROGRESS
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, THE AMERICAN EVASION OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1989, p.93.
The epistemological problematic of modern philosophy now, in Dewey's view, stands in
the way of American and world progress. Like religion, for him, it misdirects human
powers and misleads human energies. Similar to the opiates of old, this problematic lingers
on owing to cultural lethargy, academic entrenchment, and existential quests for certainty.
To go beyond the epistemological problematic is to be a twentieth-century pioneer
"wandering in a wilderness" (his self-description in his only autobiographical account)
ready to reflect critically upon and realize new possibilities for a better future.
AKH0152 EPISTEMOLOGICAL CRITIQUES DON'T JUSTIFY ABANDONING
NORMAL POLICY ARGUMENTS
Stanley Fish, Duke English and law prof, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE
SPEECH, 1994, p.20.
This is the hardest of lessons for the cultural and intellectual left, whose members want
very much to think that what they take to be their epistemological sophistication gives
them an advantage over their adversaries and makes their reasons different in kind from
the reasons of those who retain a faith in objectivity. But this is a flat-out misreading of the
lesson anti-foundationalism preaches, for if all arguments are inevitably intermixed with
policy and therefore challengeable, no argument, even the argument that all arguments are
inevitably intermixed with policy, can claim an epistemological superiority that would give
its proponents an advantage independent of the hard work of presenting evidence,
elaborating analogies, marshaling authorities, and so on. It is because all arguments owe
their force to contingent historical factors that no meta-argument can make contingency
a matter either of suspicion or of celebration; contingency is a given and can count neither
for nor against an argument; any argument must still make its way by the same routes that
were available before contingency was recognized as a general condition.

AKH0153 THE SUM OF ARGUMENTS CAN PRODUCE RELIABLE KNOWLEDGE
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, THE AMERICAN EVASION OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1989, p.44.
Fourth, the Cartesian philosophical method of inference overlooks the relatedness of ideas
to other ideas, propositions to other propositions. Indubitable foundations and absolute
certainty are beyond human attainment, but warranted claims and reasonable conclusions
result from a"multitude and variety" of forms and styles of argumentation that "form an
integral unbroken part of the great body of truth." Peirce's image here is not that of "a chain
which is no stronger than its weakest link, but a cable whose fibers may be ever so slender,
provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected."
AKH0154 EXTERNAL REALITY IS JUSTIFIED BY SENSE EXPERIENCE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.50.
Thus it is common for writers on the subject of perception to assume that, unless one can
give a satisfactory analysis of perceptual situations, one is not entitled to believe in the
existence of material things. But this is a complete mistake. What gives one the right to
believe in the existence of a certain material thing is simply the fact that one has certain
sensations: for, whether one realises it or not, to say that the thing exists is equivalent to
saying that such sensations are obtainable.
AKH0155 DEDUCTIVE LOGIC PROVIDES CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.40.
A form of knowledge apparently free from these limitations is deductive logic and
mathematical knowledge. In this case, certain knowledge seems to be attainable: the
conclusion of a valid syllogism is true, beyond any doubt.
AKH0156 IT'S POSSIBLE TO LEARN FROM THE PAST
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt prof, THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.38.
And least of all can we afford to explain away our own shortcomings as historic
necessities. Although the irresponsibility of America after the First World War was quite
understandable and predictable, it was not strictly inevitable. It was a moral and intellectual
failure, for which Americans were responsible. They have learned something from it, and
must continue to learn; for in all history no nation has faced such staggering
responsibilities as face America today.
AKH0157 GOOD REASONS DERIVED FROM SUB-DISCIPLINES OFFER VALID
KNOWLEDGE
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkeley, English prof., SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.174.
We now know that individual sub-disciplines, not the sciences en masse, become coherent
and progressive when their practitioners have developed solutions to major problems and
acquired a feeling for what Thomas Kuhn calls the "good reasons" that tacitly inhabit those
solutions: "accuracy, scope, simplicity, fruitfulness, and the like" (Kuhn 1974b, 261). Each
of the human studies contains comparable specialties-research traditions that generate
well-focused debate, high standards of reasoning, and even a degree of consensus. I
suggest, not that we stop theorizing and expressing our sociopolitical views, but that we
notice where our most substantial theories always originate: in concrete disciplinary
engagement.
AKH0158 THE RELIABILITY OF SCIENCE IS BEYOND IS BEYOND SERIOUS
QUESTION
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.256.
At this point in history, for anyone who has read it honestly, the status of science as a
reliable, profound, and productive source of knowledge ought to be beyond serious
question.
AKH0159 MODERN LIFE DEPENDS ON SCIENCE
Roger Trigg, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, RATIONALITY AND
SCIENCE, 1993, p.35.
Any discussion about the possible justification of science is likely to be met by the
conviction that whatever its rational foundations, it certainly works. Scientists seem
progressively more able to control the physical world. It has made more difference to the.
lives of ordinary people than any other human activity. Modern life is dominated, even
cocooned, by the products of this century's physical science. Every time we turn a switch
to obtain light or heat, every time we watch television or get a cool drink out of the
refrigerator, we affirm the obvious success of science. Our transport by road, rail, air or sea
depends on modern inventions. Life, in short, would be unimaginable without the benefits
of modern science.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 14
AKH0160 SCIENCE IS THE MAIN ALLY OF THE POLITICALLY PROGRESSIVE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.23-4.
There are many reasonably well read people to whom the growing antagonism toward
science on the part of a large number of left-wing intellectuals will come as something of
a surprise. There is a tendency, mostly justified, as we have seen, to think of political
"progessivism" as naturally linked to a struggle against obscurantism, superstition, and the
dead weight of religious and social dogma. In this effort, the obvious ally and chief
resource is scientific knowledge of the world and the systematic methodology that supports
it, as these have developed over the past few centuries, chiefly in Western culture.
AKH0161 THE CRITIQUE OF SCIENCE CAN'T EXPLAIN ITS SUCCESSES
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.58-9.
Latour's picture of science is bleak and ominous: a war of all against all! Science is
presented as a savage brawl in which, from day to day, the dominant chieftain is he who
assembles, by dint of wealth, prestige, and warrior cunning, the biggest and nastiest gang
of henchmen (i.e., a "network," in Latour's parlance). We must remind ourselves-with a
pinch if necessary- that this process is alleged to account for the emergence of celestial
mechanics, Maxwell's equations, the periodic table of the elements, plate tectonics, the
genetic code, algebraic topology, quantum mechanics, massive parallel processing, and a
million other insights and advances, modest as well as exalted. Empirical verification is
dismissed as a species of bluster, or as a kind of collective hallucination of the
power-crazed.
AKH0162 EMPHASIS ON EPISTEMOLOGY IS INTELLECTUALLY
IMPOVERISHING
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, THE AMERICAN EVASION OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1989, p.89.
Dewey's metaphilosophy is essentially an act of intellectual regicide; he wants to behead
modern philosophy by dethroning epistemology. For too long, modern philosophy has
deferred to the authority of knowledge" in the name of science, without questioning this
authority and demystifying science, i.e., bringing it down to earth, as it were. Therefore,
the diversity, complexity, and plurality of experience have been "assimilated to a
nonempirical concept of knowledge." This impoverished empiricism "has said Lord, Lord,
Experience, Experience, but in practice it has served ideas forced into experience, not
gathered from it."
AKH0163 FOCUS ON EPISTEMOLOGY PRODUCES AN ARID SCHOLASTICISM
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, THE AMERICAN EVASION OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1989, p.78.
Dewey's aim is to evade the epistemological problematic of modern philosophy and
thereby emancipate philosophy from its arid scholasticism and cultural conservatism. Just
as Peirce evaded Cartesianism, so Dewey calls into question the most fundamental project
of modern philosophy: the bridging of the gulf between subject and object by means of
epistemological mechanisms. Unlike Peirce--and similar to James--Dewey embarks on his
critique by interrogating the notion of experience deployed by modern philosophers and
suggests a deeper and richer conception of experience. His basic claim is that the marginal
significance of modern philosophy in North Atlantic cultures results from paltry notions
of experience derived from a ''spectator theory of knowledge" and the ''idea of invidiously
real reality." Dewey's goal is to show just how poverty-ridden (and wrong!) these notions
of experience are; to reveal the concomitant spectator theory of knowledge as a blinding
philosophic fiction; and to blame the idea that philosophy somehow knows Reality more
ultimately than other science for the cultural isolation and irrelevance of philosophy In this
way, Dewey's metaphilosophy is a kind of counterepistemology that is, a creative revision
of Emerson's evasion of epistemology-centered modern philosophy.
AKH0164 REJECTING EPISTEMOLOGY FREES PHILOSOPHY TO DEAL WITH
REAL PROBLEMS
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, THE AMERICAN EVASION OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1989, p.93.
Dewey echoes these metaphilosophical sentiments in his 1919 lectures at the Imperial
University in Tokyo, Japan, published as Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920). Modern
philosophic thought has been so preoccupied with these puzzles of epistemology . . . that
many students are at a loss to know what would be left for philosophy if there were
removed both the metaphysical task of distinguishing between the noumenal and
phenomenal worlds and the epistemological task of telling how a separate subject can
know an independent object. But would not the elimination of these traditional problems
permit philosophy to devote itself to a more fruitful and more needed task? Would it not
encourage philosophy to face the great social and moral defects and troubles from which
humanity suffers, to concentrate its attention upon clearing up the causes and exact nature
of these evils and upon developing a clear idea of better social possibilities . . . ?

AKH0165 EPISTEMOLOGICAL DOUBT ISN'T A REASON NOT TO ACT
Stanley Fish, Duke English and Law prof, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE
SPEECH, 1994, p.113.
That reasoning, as I understand it, goes as follows: although we ourselves are certain that
the Holocaust was a fact, facts are notoriously interpretable and disputable; therefore
nothing is ever really settled, and we have no right to reject something just because we
regard it as pernicious and false. But the fact-if I can use that word-that settled truths can
always be upset, at least theoretically, does not mean that we cannot affirm and rely on
truths that according to our present lights seem indisputable; rather, it means exactly the
opposite: in the absence of absolute certainty of the kind that can only be provided by
revelation (something I do not rule out but have not yet experienced), we must act on the
basis of the certainty we have so far achieved. Truth may, as Milton said, always be in the
course of emerging, and we must always be on guard against being so beguiled by its
present shape that we ignore contrary evidence; but, by the same token, when it happens
that the present shape of truth is compelling beyond a reasonable doubt, it is our moral
obligation to act on it and not defer action in the name of an interpretative future that may
never arrive. By running the First Amendment up the nearest flagpole and rushing to salute
it, the student editors defaulted on that obligation and gave over their responsibility to a
so-called principle that was not even to the point.
AKH0166 REJECTING THE POSSIBILITY OF SYSTEMATIC KNOWLEDGE IS
ABSURD
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.46-7.
Let us first of all dismiss as unworthy of serious intellectual consideration the idea that no
systematic knowledge of human action or trends of social development is possible. Were
anyone to hold such a view (and if indeed it is not inchoate in the first place), they could
scarcely write a book about it. The only possibility would be to repudiate intellectual
activity altogether-even "playful deconstruction" -in favour, say, of healthy physical
exercise. Whatever the absence of foundationalism in epistemology implies, it is not this.
AKH0167 THE EXTERNAL WORLD IS KNOWABLE THROUGH DIRECT
OBSERVATION
Hazel Barnes, Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado, AN EXISTENTIALIST
ETHICS, 1967, p.132.
If one is speaking about physical objects, I see no objection here. If one identifies a table
as a table, knows its typical function and the molecular structure of its material, one does
indeed know what a table is. Even if Sartre is right in insisting on a certain
transphenomenality of Being, claiming that after one has performed a host of examinations
of an object, there is still something left over-even so one knows what a table is. It is those
things I have discovered about it even if it is something more too. Stating that one never
knows absolutely is not to deny all knowledge as such. Rand is right in insisting that we
have certainty about many specific things even if absolute certainty is lacking.
AKH0168 THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE TO LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE
Roger Trigg, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, RATIONALITY AND
SCIENCE, 1993, p.235.
With his doctrines about scientific revolutions and the incommensurability of scientific
theories, no one has done more to challenge the place of rationality in science than T. S.
Kuhn. Yet it is intriguing that even he feels an urge for a rational grounding for induction.
He notes that the whole problem arises from the recognition that we have no rational
alternative to simply learning from experience.
AKH0169 WE SHOULD ASSUME THE VALIDITY OF SENSE DATA
Bertrand Russell, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, THE PROBLEMS OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1912, p.151.
Some knowledge, such as knowledge of the existence of our sense-data, appears quite
indubitable, however calmly and thoroughly we reflect upon it. In regard to such
knowledge, philosophical criticism does not require that we should abstain from belief. But
there are beliefs--such, for example, as the belief that physical objects exactly resemble our
sense-data- which are entertained until we begin to reflect, but are found to melt away
when subjected to a close inquiry. Such beliefs philosophy will bid us reject, unless some
new line of argument is found to support them. But to reject the beliefs which do not
appear open to any objections, however closely we examine them, is not reasonable, and
not what philosophy advocates.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 15
AKH0170 REJECTING THE WORLD OF SENSE EXPERIENCE IS NONSENSICAL
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.39.
A good example of the kind of utterance that is condemned by our criterion as being not
even false but nonsensical would be the assertion that the world of sense-experience was
altogether unreal. If must, of course, be admitted that our senses do sometimes deceive us.
We may, as the result of having certain sensations, expect certain other sensations to be
obtainable which are, in fact, not obtainable. But, in all such cases, it is further
sense-experience that informs us of the mistakes that arise out of sense-experience. We say
that the senses sometimes deceive us, just because the expectations to which our
sense-experiences give rise do not always accord with what we subsequently experience.
That is, we rely on our senses to substantiate or confute the judgements which are based
on our sensations. And therefore the fact that our perceptual judgements are sometimes
found to be erroneous has not the slightest tendency to show that the world of
sense-experience is unreal.
AKH0171 NO OBSERVATION CAN PROVE THE WORLD OF SENSE EXPERIENCE
UNREAL
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.39.
And, indeed, it is plain that no conceivable observation, or series of observations, could
have any tendency to show that the world revealed to us by sense-experience was unreal.
Consequently, anyone who condemns the sensible world as a world of mere appearance,
as opposed to reality, is saying something which, according to our criterion of significance,
is literally nonsensical. . . .
AKH0172 ALL KNOWLEDGE COMES THROUGH EXPERIENCE
Bertrand Russell, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, THE PROBLEMS OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1912, p.148-9.
Thus knowledge as to what exists becomes limited to what we can learn from experience -
not to what we can actually experience, for, as we have seen, there is much knowledge by
description concerning things of which we have no direct experience. But in all cases of
knowledge by description, we need some connexion of universals, enabling us, from such
and such a datum. Thus in regard to physical objects, for example, the principle that sense-
data are signs of physical objects is itself a connexion of universals; and it is only in virtue
of this principle that experience enables us to acquire knowledge concerning physical
objects. The same applies to the law of causality, or, to descend to what is less general, to
such principles as the law of gravitation.
AKH0173 ALL FACTUAL PROPOSITIONS ARE EMPIRICAL, SO THEY SHOULD
BE VERIFIABLE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.41.
As to the validity of the verification principle, in the form in which we have stated it, a
demonstration will be given in the course of this book. For it will be shown that all
propositions which have factual content are empirical hypotheses; and that the function of
an empirical hypothesis is to provide a rule for the anticipation of experience. And this
means that every empirical hypothesis must be relevant to some actual, or possible,
experience, so that a statement which is not relevant to any experience is not an empirical
hypothesis, and accordingly has no factual content. But this is precisely what the principle
of verifiability asserts.
AKH0174 LOGIC IS AN EFFECTIVE TOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY ARGUMENT
Irving Copi, Professor of Philosophy, University of Hawaii, INTRODUCTION TO
LOGIC, 1972, p.vii.
There are obvious benefits to be gained from the study of logic: heightened ability to
express ideas clearly and concisely; increased skill in defining one's terms; enlarged
capacity to formulate arguments rigorously and to scrutinize them critically. But the
greatest benefit, in my judgment, is the recognition that reason can be applied in every
aspect of human affairs. Democratic institutions are under attack today from all directions.
They can best be defended by being made to work. And this can be accomplished only by
each citizen thinking for himself, discussing issues freely with his fellows, deliberating,
weighing evidence, and acknowledging that with effort we can tell the difference between
good and bad arguments. If we are to govern ourselves well and responsibly, we must he
reasonable. The study of logic can give us not only practice in reasoning but respect for
reason.
AKH0175 LOGIC ILLUMINATES THE WORLD
Morris Cohen, Professor of Philosophy, City College of New York, A PREFACE TO
LOGIC, 1944, p.10.
Reflection shows that logic cannot be isolated from any realm of being, cannot, for
example, be confined to the analysis or description of thought or of symbolism, even
assuming it were possible to have thought without objects, or symbols without things
symbolized. Indeed, logic could not possibly illumine thoughts and symbols if it did not
illumine that which is the object of thought and symbolism. If logic were indeed only a
manipulation of symbols it would be as devoid of philosophical significance and scientific
utility as chess or tic-tac-toe.

AKH0176 ALL LOGICAL PROPOSITIONS ARE VALID
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.81.
A point which is not sufficiently brought out by Russell, if indeed it is recognised by him
at all, is that every logical proposition is valid in its own right. Its validity does not depend
on its being incorporated in a system, and deduced from certain propositions which are
taken as self-evident. The construction of systems of logic is useful as a means of
discovering and certifying analytic propositions, but it is not in principle essential even for
this purpose. For it is possible to conceive of a symbolism in which every analytic
proposition could be seen to be analytic in virtue of its form alone.
AKH0177 LOGIC AND MATH ARE TRUE BY DEFINITION
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.77.
The principles of logic and mathematics are true universally simply because we never
allow them to be anything else. And the reason for this is that we cannot abandon them
without contradicting ourselves, without sinning against the rules which govern the use of
language, and so making our utterance self-stultifying. In other words, the truths of logic
and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.
AKH0178 PURE LOGIC CAN RESOLVE ALL AUTHENTICALLY PHILOSOPHICAL
QUESTIONS
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.133.
That is to say, the questions with which philosophy is concerned are purely logical
questions; and although people do in fact dispute about logical questions, such disputes are
always unwarranted. For they involve either the denial of a proposition which is
necessarily true, or the assertion of a proposition which is necessarily false. In all such
cases, therefore, we may be sure that one party to the dispute has been guilty of a
miscalculation which a sufficiently close scrutiny of the reasoning will enable us to detect.
So that if the dispute is not immediately resolved, it is because the logical error of which
one party is guilty is too subtle to be easily detected, and not because the question at issue
is irresoluble on the available evidence.
AKH0179 ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC HAS BEEN SUPPLEMENTED BUT HASN'T
BEEN DISPROVEN
Morris Cohen, Professor of Philosophy, City College of New York, A PREFACE TO
LOGIC, 1944, p.9.
In the history of ideas the past century is one marked by an extraordinary development of
logic. A discipline which had remained for more than 20 centuries in approximately the
state to which the mind of Aristotle reduced it, suddenly entered upon a period of rapid
growth and systematic development. While the essential elements of the Aristotelian logic
have not been overthrown or shaken, the labors of Boole, Peirce, Schroder, Frege, Russell,
Whitehead, and a host of fellow workers have produced a calculus of classes and a calculus
of propositions in which the Aristotelian theory of the syllogism is seen to occupy only a
tiny corner.
AKH0180 MODERN LOGIC CAN DEAL WITH PROBABILITIES
Morris Cohen, Professor of Philosophy, City College of New York, A PREFACE TO
LOGIC, 1944, p.11.
Again, the traditional logic has seemed to assume a world of hard and fast concepts, a
world in which everything is black or white and where there are no gradations or twilight
zones. But modern logic is a more flexible instrument than the Aristotelian syllogism, and
it is fully capable of dealing with the world of probabilities and uncertainties which is the
true object of science and the material of daily life.
AKH0181 UNCERTAINTY DOESN'T NEGATE THE VALUE OF HISTORICAL
KNOWLEDGE
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt. Prof., THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.41-2.
History itself is the deadliest enemy of the Eternal and Absolute. The whole history of
thought is a refutation of the finality to which thinkers have endlessly aspired. I conclude,
accordingly, that in first and last matters we cannot conclude with absolute certainty. But
I should at once add that the admission of ultimate uncertainty does not mean complete
uncertainty. The absolutist tradition of Christendom leads men to assume that if we don't
have absolute standards we can't have any standards, and that if we are not standing on the
Rock of Ages we are standing on nothing. Actually, we can and do know plenty of
objective truths without knowing the whole or final Truth. Beneath the manifold diversity
of human history, more specifically, we can discern the basic uniformities and continuities
that make it an intelligible history, not a chaos.
AKH0182 HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDING IS KEY TO COPING WITH THE
FUTURE
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, THE AMERICAN EVASION OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1989, p.91.
Dewey's prospective instrumentalist viewpoint here is deeply indebted to Emerson, yet his
pervasive historical consciousness leads him to take with more seriousness than Emerson
the role of the past in the present and its use for the future. Imaginative recovery of the
bygone is indispensable to successful invasion of the future, but its status is that of an
instrument the movement of the agent-patient to meet the future is partial and passionate,
yet detached and impartial study of the past is the only alternative to luck in assuring
success to passion.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 16
AKH0183 HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE HAS MADE MAJOR ADVANCES
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt. Prof., THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.31-2.
It is always easy to be cynical about history, as 'a pack of tricks we play on the dead.' Yet
it is impossible to deny the impressive advance that has been made in the last hundred
years. Historians have built up an immense body of factual knowledge, knowledge that is
no less genuine because it is subject to different theoretical interpretations. They have
systematically widened, deepened, and clarified the sources of knowledge by philological,
paleographical, archaeological, and ethnological research. They have come to realize the
importance of commonplace, everyday events, in particular the economic activities that
had been neglected in favor of the political and military. They have learned a great deal
about the influence of both the physical and the cultural environment, what lies below
factual history and above it. They have become aware of evolutions of origins and growths,
of the history of history itself. Their very ignorance is suffused with knowledge, which at
least keeps them from being ignorant of their ignorance.
AKH0184 OUR SOCIAL COMPLEXITY ENHANCES OUR HISTORICAL
UNDERSTANDING
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt. Prof., THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.33-4.
Our distinctive interests and beliefs make it possible for history to be relatively
disinterested and impartial. Through Marx, Freud, Sumner, Pareto, Boas, Spengler, and
many others, we have become more aware of the inveterate habit of rationalization and the
sources of bias--the class interests, the mores, the conditioned reflexes of culture, the
unconscious assumptions, the 'climate of opinion.' Although we can never entirely escape
or control our climate, never attain a God's-eye view, we can more freely discount and
supplement-at least when we read the other fellow's history. The very crisis of our
civilization is in this aspect an aid to understanding. In a stabler society we might expect
to have a simpler, stabler past, whose primary meaning was the wisdom of the ancestors.
We are not naturally wiser than our ancestors; but the revolutionary conditions of our
thought and life have forced a realization of relativity and complexity, the uncertainties of
all history, and the ambiguities of the good old days that somehow led to these very bad
days.
AKH0185 SCHOLARLY CONSENSUS PROVIDES SUFFICIENTLY RELIABLE
KNOWLEDGE
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkeley English Prof., SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.viii.
My reply to the School of Suspicion is that its Romantic, individualistic model of the
search for knowledge has been erroneous from the start. The turn toward nihilism is
unavoidable if we begin by picturing the single mind alone with the enigmatic universe on
one side and a meager stock of metaphors on the other. My own starting point is an
acknowledgment that we do, by now, know a great many things with enough assurance to
profit from their consequences. We know them, not because the isolated mind is a reliable
instrument or because some magus has bequeathed us his vision, but because our
disciplinary communities have evolved ways of choosing shrewdly between an array of
(mostly poor, often foolish) cognitive opportunities.
AKH0186 SCIENCE IS CONTINUALLY CHECKED BY REALITY
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.234.
Science is, above all else, a reality-driven enterprise. Every active investigator is
inescapably aware of this. It creates the pain as well as much of the delight of research.
Reality is the overseer at one's shoulder, ready to rap one's knuckles or to spring the trap
into which one has been led by overconfidence, or by a too-complacent reliance on mere
surmise. Science succeeds precisely because it has accepted a bargain in which even the
boldest imagination stands hostage to reality. Reality is the unrelenting angel with whom
scientists have agreed to wrestle.
AKH0187 SCIENCE GIVES POWER BECAUSE IT'S ACCURATE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.220.
The natural view-that science gives power to those who understand and underwrite it
precisely because it sees accurately into the workings of nature-is, of course correct; but
it sorts ill with the temperament of the would-be exorcist.
AKH0188 ENDURING SCIENTIFIC RESULTS CAPTURE OBJECTIVE REALITY
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.139.
No serious thinker about science, least of all scientists themselves, doubts that personal and
social factors influence problem choice and the acceptance of results by the scientific
community. Few serious thinkers about science, however, outside the camps of feminists
and social constructivists, argue that the stable results of science, those that have been
subject to empirical test over time and have survived, are not written in nature! Most know
that whatever the underlying calligraphy, self correcting science is the best translation of
it we have.

AKH0189 TWENTIETH CENTURY SCIENCE PROVES RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE
IS POSSIBLE
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkeley English Prof., SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.xvii.
The undoubted achievements of twentieth-century science are sufficient testimony against
the envious proposal that scientists possess no evidential basis for choosing between rival
ideas. The truism that all facts are theory-laden is irrelevant; what counts is whether a
given piece of evidence, when judged by an expert community possessing common values
and rules, is sufficiently independent of the particular theories in conflict.
AKH0190 SCIENCE ALLOWS THE PROGRESSIVE DISCOVERY OF TRUTH
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956, p.143.
In the simplest terms, the only effective world community that now exists is the
community of science. In this respect, if in no other, the vision of eighteenth-century
liberal philosophers has been achieved. For the progress of science, as they saw, is not the
progress of some one creed at the expense of others. It is the progress of a set of rules and
procedures which allow men to co-ordinate their thinking and to co-operate in the search
for truth.
AKH0191 SCIENCE'S IMPERSONAL STANDARDS MAKE IT OBJECTIVE
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956, p.139.
Individual scientists, accordingly, are likely to be just as jealous of their reputations,
attached to their own ideas, and incapable of taking the ideas of others seriously, as the rest
of the human race. But the ideas that come to be accepted by the scientific community are
objective; and they are objective in the precise sense that they meet impersonal standards
which are independent of the peculiar perspective of any individual.
AKH0192 SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE CAN BE OBJECTIVE
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956,
p.138-9.
There are two principal reasons why scientific ideas are objective, and neither has anything
to do with the personal merits or social status of individual scientists. The first is that these
ideas are the products of a co-operative process in which the individual has to submit his
results to the test of public observations which others can perform. The second is that these
ideas are the results of a process in which no ideas or assumptions are regarded as
sacrosanct, and all inherited ideas are subject to the continuing correction of experience.
AKH0193 SCIENCE OFFERS A UNIQUE SOURCE OF OBJECTIVE INSIGHT
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956, p.143.
The achievement of such an institutional technique for achieving objective beliefs is,
indeed, the signal intellectual achievement of modern liberal society. It is the one point at
which that society differs most fundamentally from other societies. There are techniques
in all societies for fixing men's beliefs, and for bringing them into some sort of agreement
on the facts. All of these methods involve accepting something without question--custom,
a revelation, the superior judgment of selected individuals; most of them also contain an
element of coercion; none of them are self-corrective in a steady and deliberate way. The
institutions of modern science, in contrast, represent a radically new technique for
coordinating men's ideas without coercion, and for bringing unquestioned assumptions or
"ideologies" under criticism. The emergence of such a revolutionary institution in the
modern world represents a turning point in the way in which human society achieves its
beliefs.
AKH0194 SCIENCE IS NOT DETERMINED BY SOCIAL CONDITIONS
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.55.
The notion that such work as that of Newton and Einstein was "needed" by the
technological infrastructures of their respective societies is plain nonsense.
Seventeenth-century merchants and navigators needed innovation in the form of an
accurate chronometer, not an explanation of Keplerian ellipses in terms of the inverse
square law. Turn-of-the-century industrialists were not sending out desperate requests for
a more subtle understanding of the invariance of physical law under change of inertial
frame. To offer this sort of "explanation" as an account of profound intellectual
developments is to show unlimited contempt for the very notion of explanation, as well as
a boundless ignorance of the phenomena one is trying to explain. Aronowitz's thesis is no
more than an unsupported dictum that declares, in effect, that by some mystifying process,
the Zeitgeist Fairy of 1665 contrived to tickle Newton's brain cells with her magic wand,
while her counterpart of 1905 did the same for Einstein! This is not intellectual history,
sociology, philosophy, or anything else worth a scholar's serious attention.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 17
AKH0195 THE ETHNICITY OF SCIENTISTS DOESN'T INFLUENCE THEIR
RESULTS
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.131.
We share with enthusiasm the hope that the ethnic and sexual demography of the sciences
will come to resemble that of the human species as a whole. But the idea that physics is in
for a major conceptual upgrade because multiethnic perspectives will be brought to bear
upon it is sheer fantasy. Recall that since the end of the eighteenth century various groups
at one or another time regarded by European Christians as lesser breeds have come
increasingly to be represented in science. These groups include, inter alia, Jews, Indians,
Arabs, Pakistanis, Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. As individuals, many of them have
made contributions of the first rank and of enormous influence, and many have been
honored appropriately. To claim that their ethnicity left a particular stamp on the content
of their achievement is to revert to the odious ethnic essentialism of Professor Lenard.
AKH0196 SCIENTIFIC METHOD OFFERS OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE OF SOCIETY
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt. Prof., THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.32.
In spite of all their disagreement, moreover, historians are now generally agreed in
discounting the most obvious explanation, that Rome succumbed to barbarian invasions;
they have a deeper insight than the great Gibbon had, and perceive the dry rot that had set
in during the Golden Age he celebrated. For they now have the advantage of a vast,
international, cooperative enterprise, conducted in a scientific spirit. Although every
historian remains fallible and subject to bias, his work remains subject to correction and
criticism by his fellows, in professional journals and congresses. The relative objectivity
of contemporary social science, as Karl Popper points out, is due not to the impartiality of
all the social scientists, but to the publicity and community of the scientific method.
AKH0197 SCIENCE IS THE MOST RELIABLE ROUTE TO KNOWLEDGE
Roger Trigg, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, RATIONALITY AND
SCIENCE, 1993, p.40.
Rescher's pragmatism, however, means that he goes further than Wittgenstein. He does
believe that science, by any test, provides the most reliable route to knowledge: The
mechanisms of scientific reasoning clearly represent the most developed and sophisticated
of our probative methods. No elaborate argumentation is necessary to establish the all-too
evident fact that science has come out on top. (1992, p.178).
AKH0198 SCIENCE IS OUR BEST TOOL FOR DEALING WITH THE WORLD
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, THE AMERICAN EVASION OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1989, p.97-8.
The cultural implication here is that Dewey's acceptance of the authority of science is itself
instrumental-science is simply the best tool we conscious organisms have to cope with our
environment. The metaphysical implication is that although science has no monopoly on
what is true and real, its predictive and explanatory powers help us deal more effectively
with the world than anything else available to us.
AKH0199 THOUGH UNCERTAIN, SCIENCE OFFERS THE MOST RELIABLE
KNOWLEDGE POSSIBLE
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.39.
Even philosophers who most staunchly defend the claims of science to certitude, such as
Karl Popper, acknowledge that, as he expresses it, "all science rests upon shifting sand."
In science, nothing is certain, and nothing can be proved, even if scientific endeavour
provides us with the most dependable information about the world to which we can aspire.
AKH0200 SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE IS USEFUL EVEN IF ULTIMATELY
UNCERTAIN
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt. Prof., THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.362.
Scientific knowledge is no less useful because of ultimate uncertainty; it serves the quite
sufficient purpose of enabling us to go about our business in a world whose metaphysical
'reality' we do not absolutely need to know. Reliable knowledge is not enough by itself but
nothing can take its place no arbitrary assertion of higher truths and goods.
AKH0201 SCIENCE IS VALIDATED BY ITS HIGH DEGREE OF PREDICTIVE
SUCCESS
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.128
Does physics, then, have an explanation for the history of physics? In one very strong
sense it does: the history of physics as a collection of ideas is largely explained by the
objective nature of the phenomena it describes and schematizes. Thus Kepler's laws of
motion are explained by the fact that, to a high degree of precision, the planets move as
predicted by those laws This seeming tautology will leave relativists and cultural
constructivists feeling quite out of sorts; but, as explanations go, it is supremely solid and
convincing.

AKH0202 SCIENTIFIC THEORIES ARE VALIDATED BY SUCCESSFUL
PREDICTIONS
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.50.
The task of defining rationality is precisely the sort of task that it is the business of
philosophy to undertake. But in achieving this it does not justify scientific procedure. What
justifies scientific procedure, to the extent to which it is capable of being justified, is the
success of the predictions to which it gives rise: and this can be determined only in actual
experience. By itself, the analysis of a synthetic principle tells us nothing whatsoever about
its truth.
AKH0203 SUCCESSFUL PREDICTIONS ARE NECESSARY FOR SURVIVAL
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.97.
The function of a system of hypotheses is to warn us beforehand what will be our
experience in a certain field-to enable us to make accurate predictions. The hypotheses may
therefore be described as rules which govern our expectation of future experience. There
is no need to say why we require such rules. It is plain that on our ability to make
successful predictions depends the satisfaction of even our simplest desires, including the
desire to survive.
AKH0204 NATURAL SCIENCE SUCCESSFULLY PREDICTS
Isaiah Berlin, Professor of Social and Political Theory, Oxford, FOUR ESSAYS ON
LIBERTY, 1969, p.43.
The notion that one can discover large patterns or regularities in the procession of
historical events is naturally attractive to those who are impressed by the success of the
natural sciences in classifying, correlating, and above all predicting.
AKH0205 SUCCESS IN PRACTICE IS THE ONLY TEST OF A SCIENTIFIC THEORY
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.50.
Actually, we shall see that the only test to which a form of scientific procedure which
satisfies the necessary condition of self-consistency is subject, is the test of its success in
practice. We are entitled to have faith in our procedure just so long as it does the work
which it is designed to do- that is, enables us to predict future experience, and so to control
our environment.
AKH0206 MODERN KNOWLEDGE PROVIDES BONA FIDE CUMULATIVE
KNOWLEDGE
Francis Fukuyama, Rand, THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN, 1992, p.72.
For if we look around at the entire range of human social endeavor, the only one that is by
common consensus unequivocally cumulative and directional is modern natural science.
The same cannot be said for activities like painting, poetry, music, or architecture: it is not
clear that Rauschenberg is a better painter than Michelangelo or Schoenberg superior to
Bach, simply because they lived in the twentieth century; Shakespeare and the Parthenon
represent a certain kind of perfection and it makes no sense to speak of ''advancing"
beyond them. Natural science, on the other hand, builds upon itself: there are certain
"facts" about nature that were hidden from the great Sir Isaac Newton, that are accessible
to any undergraduate physics student today simply because he or she was born later. The
scientific understanding of nature is neither cyclical nor random; mankind does not return
periodically to the same state of ignorance, nor are the results of modern natural science
subject to human caprice. Human beings are free to pursue certain branches of science
rather than others, and they can obviously apply the results as they please, but neither
dictators nor parliaments can repeal the laws of nature, much as they are tempted to do so.
Scientific knowledge has been accumulating for a very long period, and has had a
consistent if frequently unperceived effect in shaping the fundamental character of human
societies. Those that possess ferrous metallurgy and agriculture were quite different from
ones that only knew stone tools or hunting and gathering. But a qualitative change
occurred in the relationship of scientific knowledge to the historical process with the rise
of modern natural science, that is, from the discovery of the scientific method by men like
Descartes, Bacon, and Spinoza in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
AKH0207 KUHN DOESN'T UNDERMINE SCIENTIFIC RATIONALITY
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkeley, English Prof., SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.168.
Kuhn happens to be a fervent believer in scientific rationality and progress, which, he
argues, can occur only after a given specialty has gotten past the stage of "theory
proliferation" and "incessant criticism and continual striving for a fresh start" (Kuhn
1974b, 246, 244). By incommensurability Kuhn never meant that competing theories are
incomparable but only that the choice between them cannot be entirely consigned to the
verdict of theory-neutral rules and data. (What looks like a "mistake" in one theory's terms
may be a legitimate inference in the terms of its rival.) Transitions between
paradigms-which in any case are mere problem solutions, not broad theories or
methodologies-must indeed be made globally, through "gestalt switches," but the
rationality of science is not thereby impaired. As Kuhn asked, and as he has continued to
insist with mounting astonishment at his irrationalist fan club, "What better criterion than
the decision of the scientific group could there be?" (Kuhn 1970,169).
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 18
AKH0208 SCIENCE IS NOT AN IDEOLOGY
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956,
p.142-3.
But all of these soft impeachments of science rest on the view that science, like any other
body of belief, depends on certain "ultimate" or unquestioned assumptions that it is, in a
word, another ideology. And this involves a fundamental misconception. For science is not
a single, unified creed, and it does not rest on any wholesale presuppositions. It makes no
advance commitments which it is unprepared to discard under any circumstances. The
so-called "metaphysical foundations of science," about which we hear so much, are at best
a misnomer for the historical origins of scientific ideas, and have nothing to do with the
content or truth of these ideas. For science, quite simply, is not a creed in competition with
other creeds; it is not the view of a sect. It is a way of bringing all creeds to the test of
certain common techniques and methods. And when we reject it for being provincial, we
reject the one language which has been able effectively to cross boundaries and to draw
men together.
AKH0209 EVEN KUHN IS NOT A STRONG SCIENTIFIC RELATIVIST
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.139.
Those "recent developments" turn out to be not so recent. Chief among them is--of
course-the work of Thomas Kuhn, whose studies of theory choice led him to conclude that
major upheavals of scientific theory-- "paradigm shifts"-are conditioned not only by the
officially recognized cognitive processes of textbook science, but by various social factors
as well as personal whim and aesthetic considerations. Only the most superficial reading
of this work and of subsequent commentary by Kuhn on his critics can lend support to
strong forms of relativism, a position that Kuhn is at pains most energetically to deny. He
is a firm believer in scientific progress and in the power of science to "solve puzzles,"
while harboring doubts only about the permanent representational value of any regnant
paradigm. Moreover, he clearly believes that the dominant factors in theory choice are,
indeed, the ones traditionally celebrated by scientists: logical economy, explanatory
parsimony, and the capacity to synthesize once-disparate theories into a conceptual unity.
AKH0210 KUHN'S PERSPECTIVE IS NOT GENERALLY ACCEPTED
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.139.
Even that clarification of Kuhn's position, an epistemological progenitor of the more
iconoclastic social-constructivist critiques, is hardly a recent development, and it hardly
justifies Keller's hopes for epistemic reform, especially when one considers that Kuhn's
work, well known as it is, is regarded with considerable skepticism by a majority of
contemporary philosophers of science.
AKH0211 SCIENCE IS PROGRESSIVE, NOT JUST A SUCCESSION OF
PARADIGMS
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.180.
The story of AIDS, more so perhaps than any other in contemporary science, refutes,
simply as it is recounted, the notion that science is not so much a matter of expanding
knowledge as it is of competing, culturally constructed paradigms. To be sure, paradigms
compete; and they contribute at any moment to the formulation of questions and the choice
of "puzzles" (Thomas Kuhn's word); but the succession of paradigms does not involve
starting each time from scratch. Theory choice is not just a matter of politics and style, as
Kuhn himself insisted in defending his work against its critics.
AKH0212 PERSPECTIVISM DOESN'T EFFECTIVELY INDICT SCIENCE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.40.
So far as we are concerned, perspectivism, in its soberest and most prudent form, has
interesting things to say about the history of science, the shape of modern science as a
social institution, the rhetoric of scientific debates. When it comes to the core of scientific
substance, however, and the deep methodological and epistemological questions-above all,
the incredibly difficult ontological questions-that arise in scientific contexts, perspectivism
can make at best a trivial contribution. The attempts to read scientific knowledge as the
mere transcription of Western male capitalist social perspectives, or as the deformed
handicraft of the prisonhouse of language, are hopelessly naive and reductionistic. They
take no account of the specific logic of the sciences and they are far too coarse to deal with
the conceptual texture of any category of important scientific thought.
AKH0213 SCIENCE IS COMPATIBLE WITH IMAGINATION
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956, p.157.
A scientific theory thus makes a positive contribution to human experience. When men
approach their world within the framework of a theory, their experience has a dimension
which simple observation alone cannot give it. The primary function of theory is to lead
to new experiences, to be an instrument by which men can deliberately and intentionally
expand their horizons. Scientific theory is not the opposite of imagination. It is a product
of imagination, and an instrument for emancipating it from enslavement to the familiar, the
routine, and the here-and-now.

AKH0214 SCIENCE HELPS OVERCOME THE LIMITS OF IMAGINATION
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956,
p.157-8.
And it is an instrument, as well, for stabilizing and disciplining the human imagination.
The mathematical side of modern science is probably responsible for the popular
impression that science is cold, mechanical, and remote, But the mathematical side of
modern science is in fact a remarkable example of how the human imagination can be at
once liberated and disciplined. Mathematical methods are ways of overcoming at least four
weaknesses to which our ordinary everyday experience is liable-its grossness, its
instability, its idleness and disorder, and its idiosyncrasy. Far from being less refined than
the qualitative judgments we usually make, quantitative techniques permit us to make more
minute and precise distinctions; they allow us to render the same verdict on things at
different times and independently of how we feel; they enable us to put our perceptions in
a definite order so that we can reason from them with more assurance and to more
far-reaching consequences; and, perhaps most important, they provide a way of
transcending the idiosyncrasy of different perspectives and of bringing the experience of
different men together: Mathematical methods thus represent not merely professional
techniques, but social inventions, man's own instruments against his obtuseness,
waywardness, and egoism. Their emergence constitutes a sociological phenomenon of
first-rate importance-the emergence of a new technique for co-ordinating human
experience and for bringing men into uncoerced agreement.
AKH0215 SUBSTITUTION OF INTUITION FOR ANALYSIS UNDERMINES
SCIENCE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.138.
Closeness to, identification with, the object, the substitution of ideals for logic and
abstraction, of unfettered intuition for analysis, was a transcendent characteristic of
romantic natural philosophy. Taken as principle, that characteristic was a root cause of its
failure to produce useful science.
AKH0216 SCIENCE LIBERATES HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956, p.158.
Theoretical science, in short, is an example par excellence of a liberal art-a deliberate,
selective reordering of experience, which releases men from the narrowness and urgency
of their routine affairs, carries them beyond the limitations and accidents of their lives, and
makes it possible for their commerce with the world to have scope, order, and systematic
consequences. It has been used as an instrument of industry and of war, but its primary
function is more humane and, as it were, aesthetic-to cause human experience to be fruitful
and to multiply. And its relation to practice is the relation of any fine and liberating art-it
carries men beyond the foreground of their experience, and enlarges the dimensions of
human choice by acquainting men with the alternative possibilities of things. Quite apart
from its technological applications, it represents, to use an old philosophical expression,
a "final good" something which has its own inner dynamism, goes its own way, and can
give stability and direction to the rest of our lives.
AKH0217 SCIENCE IS KEY TO GLOBAL SURVIVAL
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.178.
And here's to Baconian science-if that misattribution is to persist in our
universities-Baconian in the sense of a rigorous adherence to the empirical, and a faith that
what we learn that way can improve the prospects for human life. The more Baconian
science we get, the easier it will be to believe that we have a fighting chance, if no more
than that, on this lovely planet that spins its way through an unimaginably violent-and
indifferent-space.
AKH0218 SCIENCE IS THE ONLY HOPE FOR DEALING WITH AIDS
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.179.
Chiefly, we shall be concerned with the abiding problem of racial justice, and with the
AIDS epidemic that has reawakened slumbering fears of plague and fatal contagion.
Science, obviously, has a great deal to do with the latter problem. In fact it is our only
defense, and our only source of hope.
AKH0219 REJECTING SCIENCE LEADS TO DISASTROUS POLICY ERRORS
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.159.
To the extent that science-the only reliable source of numbers for environmental
cost/benefit analysis-is battered in the course of a primarily ideological crusade, so much
greater will be the chance of making disastrous errors of policy.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 19
AKH0220 SCIENCE IS NEEDED TO DEAL WITH THE PROBLEMS SCIENCE
CREATED
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt. Prof., THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.362.
Science has had very little to do, indeed, with the administration of our economic and
political life. It remains the author of our major problem, in its gift of tremendous power
that has been terribly abused; but for the wise use of this power we need more, not less, of
the objective, dispassionate scientific spirit.
AKH0221 REPUDIATING SCIENCE MAINTAINS OPPRESSION
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.81-2.
Moreover, those whose politics inclined toward the left were all too happy to have a
rationale for reconstituting their discipline as part of a social movement to champion the
oppressed races, castes, genders, and sexual outcasts of the earth, freed of any need to
analyze their situation "objectively." In Fox's view, however, many of the peoples whom
this strategy is designed to help are, in the end, poorly served: "Science, with its objectivity
. . . remains the one international language capable of providing objective knowledge of
the world. And it is a language that all can use and share and learn . . . The wretched of the
earth want science and the benefits of science. To deny them this is another kind of
racism."
AKH0222 SCIENCE EFFECTIVELY COUNTERS SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL
AUTHORITARIANISM
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.24.
The dissecting blade of scientific skepticism, with its insistence that theories are worthy
of respect only to the extent that their assertions pass the twin tests of internal logical
consistency and empirical verification, has been an invaluable weapon against intellectual
authoritarianisms of all sorts, not least those that sustain social systems based on
exploitation, domination, and absolutism. The notion that human liberation ought to be the
chief project of the intellectual community is, it seems to us, coeval with the idea that
superstition and credulity are among the most powerful foes of liberation, and that science,
in particular, holds out the best hope for cutting through their fogs of error and confusion.
Towering figures of political and ethical thought over the last three or four centuries make
this point; one thinks, in this regard, of Galileo, Spinoza, Locke, Voltaire, Diderot,
Lessing, Hume, Kant, Mill, Herzen, Turgenev, Russell, Einstein-the list could be extended
endlessly.
AKH0223 SCIENCE HAS AIDED OPPOSITIONAL MOVEMENTS
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.229.
On the other hand, science has been in some crucial respects a positive source of support
to oppositional movements. It has dispelled much of the nonsense that sustained sexual and
racial discrimination, in spite of early attempts to ally it with the forces of repression. It has
given powerful evidence of the ineluctable importance of environmental consciousness in
the application of technology.
AKH0224 SCIENCE HAS BEEN POLITICALLY PROGRESSIVE HISTORICALLY
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.23.
In the final analysis, a real if grossly imperfect alignment persisted between the scientific
outlook and the great emancipatory sentiments-abolitionism, women's rights, social reform,
socialism itself-that drove the most idealistic souls of the era. To put it another way, the
"science" that sustained the most ferociously antiegalitarian ideas-racist eugenics, "social
Darwinism," and the like-has long since been effaced, while the claims put forth to bolster
the egalitarian view have endured, on the whole, rather well. At any rate, if we are to judge
a body of ideas by its worst enemies, it is simply absurd to impugn science as the tool of
the most embittered reactionaries. Those forces, represented by Maistre and by Pius IX,
the pope who denounced socialism, modernism, and the scientific outlook in a single
breath, were convinced that their quarrel with science was a struggle to the death. Martin
Heidegger was their recent offspring. To the extent that the liberatory and democratic
ideals that roiled the nineteenth century and persist to our day with amplified force face the
adamant resistance of dogmatic religions of one sort or another (hardly a dead issue in a
world beset by a swarm of angry fundamentalists), science, it would seem, has been and
will be their strongest and least dispensable ally.

AKH0225 THE KRITIK OF SCIENCE IS BASED ON IGNORANCE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.6.
A curious fact about the recent left critique of science is the degree to which its instigators
have overcome their former timidity or indifference toward the subject not by studying it
in detail but rather by creating a repertoire of rationalizations for avoiding such study.
Buoyed by a "stance" on science, they feel justified in bypassing the grubby necessities of
actual scientific knowledge. This is not because any great number of science apostates has
flocked to their banner, although a handful of figures with scientific credentials, as well
as the occasional refugee from an unsatisfactory scientific career, can be found on the
movement's fringes. The assumption that makes specific knowledge of science dispensable
is that certain new-forged intellectual tools-feminist theory, postmodern philosophy,
deconstruction, deep ecology-and, above all, the moral authority with which the academic
left emphatically credits itself are in themselves sufficient to guarantee the validity of the
critique.
AKH0226 THE HARMFUL EFFECTS OF SCIENCE DON'T DISPROVE ITS TRUTH
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.224-5.
The industrial world's catalysis of population growth and its consequent need for resources
attacks the forest and pollutes the ocean; its drive for profits adds toxins to the air long
after it has become clear that this is in the end a stupid thing to do. It is disheartening to
note, however, that such well-founded criticism often leads further to bizarre and shoddy
theorizing about the epistemic status of science, as if allegiance to such doctrines could
somehow magically generate the power to halt the technological misuse of scientific
knowledge. Even more discouraging is the fact that among the thinkers who most clearly
and accurately emphasize the dangers into which technocratic society falls, there are quite
a few who lose perspective and begin to expound dubious positions concerning modern
science, excoriating it for nonexistent philosophical flaws.
AKH0227 THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE IS AN OBJECTIVE TRUTH, NOT AN
INDICTMENT OF KNOWLEDGE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.51-2.
Once obscurantism has been stripped away, we recognize that the uncertainty principle is
a tenet of physics, a predictive law about the behavior of concrete phenomena that can he
tested and confirmed like other physical principles. It is not some brooding metaphysical
dictum about the Knower versus the Known, but rather a straightforward statement,
mathematically quite simple, concerning the way in which the statistical outcomes of
repeated observations of various phenomena must be interrelated. And, indeed, it has been
triumphantly confirmed. It has been verified as fully and irrefutably as is possible for an
empirical proposition. In other words, when viewed as a law of physics, the uncertainty
principle is a very certain item indeed. It is an objective truth about the world. (If that were
not so, there would never have been so much fuss about it!)
AKH0228 RATIONAL POLITICAL CHOICES ARE MORE LIKELY TO SUCCEED
Walter Kaufman, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973, p.192.
Given a large sample and a long period of time, responsibility succeeds much more often
than irresponsibility. That is why we want physicians to act responsibly. That is why
scientists and engineers are trained to check and double-check their hunches. It is no
different in politics. Occasionally, reckless gambles will succeed, but those who continue
to place their trust in them generally come to grief before long; and the great statesmen of
the past have been thoughtful men who weighed alternatives with care.
AKH0229 NAZISM EPITOMIZED IRRATIONALISM
Leonard Peikoff, Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College, THE OMINOUS
PARALLELS, 1982, p.47.
The politics of Nazism-with its racist obsessions, its anti-Semitic demonology, its
gesticulating Fuhrer transmitting directives from Providence, and its all-obliterating appeal
to the power of brute force is unprecedented in the West, not for its collectivism but for its
undisguised irrationality. The brazenness of this revelation is matched (and made possible)
only by the brazenness of the Nazi epistemology. Its distinctive feature is self-proclaimed
barbarianism, i.e., undisguised, boastfully trumpeted defiance of reason.
AKH0230 REJECTION OF REASON LEADS TO NIHILISM
Stanley Rosen, Penn State philosopher, NIHILISM, 1969, p.xiv.
Since my book is a defense of reason, it must necessarily be an attack upon what I regard
as the enemies of reason. My claim is that, although the danger of nihilism is a permanent
human possibility, the actual pervasive presence of nihilism today is due to a series of
specific philosophical decisions in the past. The net effect of these decisions has been to
produce a radical deterioration in our conception of what it means to be reasonable.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 20
AKH0231 THE ATTACK ON REASON IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY
Roger Trigg, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, RATIONALITY AND
SCIENCE, 1993, p.230.
The human ability to reason must be the starting-point for all our thinking. Once we try to
deny it, or explain it away, we merely use the very ability we attack. Such an exercise in
self-contradiction is worse than being involved in an infinite regress.
AKH0232 THE LIMITS OF REASON DON'T JUSTIFY ITS ABANDONMENT
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, FROM SHAKESPEARE TO
EXISTENTIALISM, 1980, p.368.
If there is one thing above all that we have learned since their time--and especially in our
time it is this: although reason has its limitations, those who would abandon it on that
account might as well pluck out their eyes because they are not able to see everything, or
perhaps do not see things as they "really" are. They are like men protected from the ocean
by a dike who tear it down because it does not reach the heavens.
AKH0233 REASON IS CREATIVE
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, CRITIQUE OF RELIGION AND
PHILOSOPHY, 1958, p.429.
Reason is not the great adversary of inclination and passion: it is allied with man's
profoundest passion, the aspiration to be as God. Reason is creative: it fashions general
concepts--so-called-- universals-which permit criticism of the given, of being, and
especially of our own being.
AKH0234 REASON IS THE KEY TO SURVIVAL
Ayn Rand, philosopher and novelist, THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS, 1964, p.24-5.
Man cannot survive as anything but man. He can abandon his means of survival, his mind,
he can turn himself into a subhuman creature and he can turn his life into a brief span of
agony)just as his body can exist for a while in the process of disintegration by disease. But
he cannot succeed, as a subhuman,in achieving anything but the subhuman)as the ugly
horror of the antirational periods of mankind's history can demonstrate. Man has to be man
by choice)and it is the task of ethics to teach him how to live like man. The Objectivist
ethics holds man's life as the standard of value)and his own life as the ethical purpose of
every individual man.
AKH0235 REJECTING RATIONALISM LEADS TO ECOLOGICAL DISASTER
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.176.
"What is involved here is a reconceptualization of the human side of the human/nature
dualism to free it from the legacy of rationalism," proclaims the feminist philosopher Val
Plumwood, in an ecofeminist version of the credo. With minor variations, the theme
recurs, insistently, throughout the entire range of ecoradical literature. It is a staple in
Jeremy Rifkin's books. And: it is a recipe for disaster in ecological matters-and in human
affairs generally! It is the substitution of moonbeams and fairy-dust for thought, a frequent
human practice, but one that has taught grim lessons in the course of history.
AKH0236 RECENT HISTORY VALIDATES THE CLAIMS OF REASON
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.223.
For Habermas, we cannot avoid the question, critique "in the name of what?" His quarrel
with many so-called "postmodern" thinkers is that they either fail to confront this question,
obscure it, or get caught in performative contradictions. One reason why Habermas
"speaks" to so many of "us" and is so relevant to the "modern/postmodern" condition is
because however feeble and fragile this aspect of the Enlightenment legacy has become,
and despite the attacks on this legacy, it nevertheless will not die-the demand for freedom
and claim to dialogical reasonableness does have a "stubbornly transcending power," as
recent events from South Africa to Eastern Europe so vividly demonstrate.
AKH0237 REASON RESPECTS MINORITY VIEWS
Russell Windes and Arthur Hastings, Professors of Speech, Queens College and Stanford,
ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY, 1965, p.23.
Rational decision-making respects the rights and dignity of all citizens, the minority no
less than the majority; it insists that no problem of public policy should be resolved until
all that should be heard about it has been heard and weighed carefully. Such processes may
be painfully slow, but that very slowness insures against injurious and dangerous
alternatives.
AKH0238 REJECTING RATIONALITY MEANS REJECTING SCIENCE
Roger Trigg, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, RATIONALITY AND
SCIENCE, 1993, p.12.
Attacks on rationality put in jeopardy the very activities that are often being taken for
granted. Without an ability to see what is true and to separate it from what is false, we
cannot continue to practice the physical sciences as they have been traditionally
understood. Our reasoning has to be rooted in the character of the world, whatever it may
be. Otherwise the idea that science can explain anything, let alone everything, is sheer
illusion.

AKH0239 REASON PROTECTS US AGAINST CLEARLY FALLACIOUS CHOICES
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973,
p.190.
Typically, it is assumed that because reason alone cannot prove that we should choose this
project rather than that, reason is irrelevant when it comes to fateful decisions. Once that
is granted, the way is clear for one or another of the strategies of decidophobia; one may
choose a religion or a movement, for example. But what reason and the new integrity can
do is crucial: safeguard us against decisions and commitments that anyone who asked the
seven questions would not make.
AKH0240 MORAL ARGUMENT REQUIRES AN OBJECTIVE AND PUBLIC BASIS
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956, p.67.
The mistake in the notion that a relativistic philosophy is narrowly this-worldly or
materialistic is a simple one. It assumes that a philosophy which says that an appeal to
human interests is the indispensable feature of moral or political thinking is espousing a
particular set of moral values. But it is not. It is merely trying to put the discussion of
morals and politics on an objective and public basis. It points out that if men are going to
negotiate their disagreements over values rationally, they have to appeal to evidence that
is equally available to all; it suggests that the impact of our values on human interests
provide just such a publicly observable kind of test; and it points out, on the other side, that
the appeal to absolutes is intellectually stultifying and socially disruptive because it
introduces considerations for which there is no common evidence.
AKH0241 IRRATIONAL DECISION PROCESSES LEAD TO DISASTER
Russell Windes and Arthur Hastings, Professors of Speech, Queens College and Stanford,
ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY, 1965, p.21-2.
There are basically two approaches to the resolution of conflict, the irrational and the
rational approaches. People often reach decisions irrationally. Matters of personal concern
may be privately resolved through the uncontrolled influence of emotion, the influence of
an authority, the influence of group pressures, and so forth. Matters of public concern are
too frequently resolved in similar ways. A mob may irrationally reach a decision which
results in lawless violence; a frightened public may react to a problem in such an emotional
manner that hurried decisions may strike at the roots of free government; social pressures
of conformity may force the acceptance of an alternative to a problem by people who have
reason to doubt the wisdom of the alternative. Social groups may attempt to solve a
problem by avoiding the problem altogether, rationalizing various reasons for such an
avoidance. These irrational approaches to conflict resolution often lead to errors, mistakes,
even blunders and tragedies. History abounds with decisions made irrationally: the war
with Mexico, 1848; the Spanish-American War, 1898; the rejection of the League of
Nations, 1919-20; the failure to react to the menace of dictators, 1935-38; general
disarmament following World War II; the suppression of minority thought during the
McCarthy era; 1950-54. In these cases, and in thousands of others, decisions were made
irrationally, through reliance on fear, desire, pride, influence of authority, intuition,
ignorance, rationalizations, and so forth.
AKH0242 REASON AVOIDS OVER HASTY DECISIONS
Russell Windes and Arthur Hastings, Professors of Speech, Queens College and Stanford,
ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY, 1965, p.22-3.
Why does the use of rational processes guarantee better decision making? Precisely for the
many reasons we have already examined in this chapter, and because through the use of
rational means the possible use of irrational approaches is excluded. Rational decision-
making emphasizes the fact that wise decisions ordinarily require time and patience, time
to investigate problems thoroughly, the time to analyze alternatives carefully, and the time
to prepare cogent arguments for and against each alternative; the patience to listen to
opposing points of view, the patience to suspend judgement until all pertinent arguments
have been heard, and the patience to let public opinion gradually inform itself and make
itself known to representatives.
AKH0243 RATIONALITY IS KEY TO HUMAN DIGNITY
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt. Prof., THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.363.
To live intelligently, in short, we must recognize that man is not simply a 'rational animal.'
To live decently we must also recognize that this definition of him is more adequate than
such popular definitions as a beast of prey, an illusioned robot, or an imprisoned soul. He
shares his basic drives and reflexes with other animals, and he may or may not have an
immortal soul; what most plainly and positively distinguishes him from other animals is
the power of conscious thought and responsible behavior. If we respect him at all we must
treat him as if he were rational, and enlist his free consent in joint enterprises. The whole
argument for liberty and democracy ultimately rests on Pascal's dictum that thought makes
the whole dignity of man, and that the endeavor to think well is the basic morality.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 21
AKH0244 REJECTION OF CRITICAL REASON PROMOTES FASCISM
Walter Kaufman, Princeton philosopher, FROM SHAKESPEARE TO
EXISTENTIALISM, 1980, p.269.
In the light of recent history and of the use to which Plato was put by Nazi educators, we
cannot shut our eyes to the great danger of philosophies that thus address themselves to
man's irrationality while paralyzing his critical spirit, half mockingly, half playfully. If
mockery is needed now it is Socratic mockery: irony at the expense of unreason and
uncritical thinking.
AKH0245 TOTALITARIANISM REQUIRES THE REJECTION OF RATIONALITY
Walter Kaufman, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973, p.182.
Of course, one could be sincere and a Nazi or a Stalinist. But nobody who applied the
canon could have accepted Hitler's or Stalin's irrational views, and teaching the canon in
one's classes or openly asking the seven questions would have been a recipe for death. Few
people have ever lived by the canon. Only those who suppose that most people do could
possibly suppose that some of Hitler's or Stalin's followers did. Under Stalin, the party line
kept changing, and his followers were required to change their views overnight, again and
again and again.
AKH0246 REJECTING REASON LEADS TO AUTHORITARIAN CATASTROPHE
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt. Prof., THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.362.
Many men now take a strange pleasure in emphasizing the limits of scientific knowledge,
as if the validity of poetic, metaphysical, or religious claims to higher truth were thereby
automatically proved, and ignorance were not merely bliss but wisdom. Many are attacking
the claims of reason itself in the name of faith, intuition, instinct, the heart, the voice of the
blood. In the world of affairs such attitudes are translated into the kind of common sense
that scorns all 'theory,' ridicules 'brain-trusts,' and identifies learning with
absent-mindedness. The way is thus cleared for the positive irrationalism of the dictators
the brutal contempt of mind exhibited in their policy when not their creed. We may then
realize that a denial of the claims of reason naturally leads to a denial of the claims of the
heart too, and that if its powers are as inadequate as many seem pleased to think, there can
be no hope of avoiding catastrophe.
AKH0247 IRRATIONALISM RISKS NEO-FASCISM
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.213.
Iris Murdoch once shrewdly remarked "it is always a significant question to ask of any
philosopher: what is he afraid of?" The answer for Habermas is clear. It is "irrationalism"
whatever guise it takes-whether ugly fascists forms, disguised neo-conservative variations,
or the playful antics of those who seek to domesticate Nietzsche. In a time when it has
become so fashionable to attack, mock, ridicule the claim to Reason, Habermas is not
afraid to appear "old-fashioned"-to insist on "the stubbornness with which philosophy
clings to the role of the 'guardian of reason' "-a role that "can hardly be dismissed as an
idiosyncrasy of self-absorbed intellectuals, especially in a period in which basic
irrationalist undercurrents, are transmuted once again into a dubious form of politics."
AKH0248 IRRATIONALISM LED TO NAZISM
Hans Reiss, Professor of German, University of Bristol, KANT'S POLITICAL
WRITINGS, 1970, p.13.
For the Romantic mode of thought introduced into German political thought a note of
irrationalism which permeated almost all areas of German thinking for a century and a half
between the Napoleonic wars and the end of the Second World War. The Romantics'
rejection of Kant's cosmopolitanism in politics meant that, with his death-followed a year
later by that of Schiller-(most of von Humboldt's political writings were only published
many decades later)-the climate of opinion changed drastically. It no longer mattered much
whether the individual was politically free. The organic theory of the state, which
subordinated the individual to the community, prevailed.
AKH0249 REJECTING OBJECTIVE REALITY LEADS TO TYRANNY
Christina Sommers, Professor of Philosophy, Clark University, WHO STOLE
FEMINISM?, 1994, p.97.
If one believes that all knowledge is socially constructed to serve the powers that be, or,
more specifically, if one holds that the science and culture we teach are basically a
"patriarchal construction" designed to support a "male hegemony," then one denies, as a
matter of principle, any important difference between knowledge and ideology, between
truth and dogma, between reality and propaganda, between objective teaching and
inculcating a set of beliefs. Many campus feminists do, in fact, reject these distinctions,
and that is pedagogically and politically irresponsible and dangerous. For when the Big
Brothers in an Orwellian world justify their cynical manipulation of the many by the
tyrannical few, they, too, argue that reality is "socially constructed" by those in power and
that indoctrination is all we can expect. In 1984, George Orwell's tragic hero, Winston
Smith, tries to defy the torturer, O'Brien, by holding fast to the belief in an objective
reality. O'Brien reminds Winston Smith that he will be paying the price for that
old-fashioned belief "You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in
its own right.... But I tell you, Winston, reality is not external . . It is impossible to see
reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party."

AKH0250 THE REJECTION OF REASON IS THE PRECONDITION OF
TOTALITARIANISM
Leonard Piekoff, Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College, THE OMINOUS
PARALLELS, 1982, p.302.
Obedience is the precondition of totalitarianism. The preconditions of obedience are fear
and guilt; not merely the existential fear created by terroristic policies, but the deeper,
metaphysical fear created by inner helplessness, the fear of a living creature deprived of
any means to deal with reality; not merely the guilt of committing some specific crime, but
the deeper, metaphysical guilt of feeling that one is innately unworthy and immoral.
Reason destroys fear; egoism destroys guilt. More precisely: reason does not permit man
to feel metaphysically helpless; egoism does not permit him to feel metaphysically
helpless; egoism does not permit him to accept unearned guilt or to regard himself as a
sacrificial animal. But a man indoctrinated with the notion that reason is impotent and self-
sacrifice is his moral duty, will obey anyone and anything.
AKH0251 REASON IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH TOTALITARIANISM
Leonard Piekoff, Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College, THE OMINOUS
PARALLELS, 1982, p.302.
What fundamental truths did the Nazis and the American collectivists and all their sources
in the history of philosophy struggle to evade and annihilate? The answer is contained in
two concepts, with everything they include, lead to, and presuppose: reason and egoism.
These two, properly understood and accepted, are the immovable barrier to any attempt to
establish totalitarian rule.
AKH0252 REJECTING REASON LED TO NAZISM
Leonard Piekoff, Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College, THE OMINOUS
PARALLELS, 1982, p.46.
There is a nazi epistemology, in the sense of an unequivocal, consistent, and passionately
urged position on the subject's fundamental issue. "We are now at the end of the Age of
Reason," Hitler declared to Hermann Rauschning[,] "[t]he intellect has grown autocratic,
and has become a disease of life." "The life of a race and of people is . . . a mystical
synthesis," writes Rosenburg, "a manifestation of the soul, which cannot be explained by
the logic nor by causal analysis." "Even the most profound, the most learned of intellects
touches the surface of things only," writes Gottfried Neese, a young Nazi intellectual.
AKH0253 TYRANNY IS GROUNDED IN THE REJECTION OF REASON
Leonard Piekoff, Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College, THE OMINOUS
PARALLELS, 1982, p.45.
It is not an accident that Plato, Kant, Hegel, Marx, and the whole tradition of German
nationalism from Luther on, advocated a variety of anti-senses, anti-logic, anti-intellect
doctrines. The statism all these figures upheld or fostered is a result; the root lies in their
view of knowledge, i.e., of man's mind. The aspiring dictator may not be able to identify
in philosophic terms the clash between reason and his particular schemes. But he, too, is
aware of it. In some (usually unverbalized) form, he knows that he cannot demand
unthinking obedience from men, or gain their consent to the permanent rule of brutality,
until he has first persuaded his future subjects to ditch their brains and their independent,
self-assertive judgement. He knows that he can succeed only with a populace conditioned
to seek neither evidence nor argument, a populace which, having shrugged aside the
demands of logic, will agree with, and then endure, anything.
AKH0254 REJECTING REASON LEADS TO RELIANCE ON PHYSICAL FORCES
Leonard Piekoff, Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College, THE OMINOUS
PARALLELS, 1982, p.45.
If men uphold reason, they will be led, ultimately, to conclude that men should deal with
one another as free agents, settling their disputes by an appeal to the mind, i.e., by a
process of voluntary, rational persuasion. If men reject reason, they will be led, ultimately,
to conclude to conclude the opposite: that men have no way to deal with one another at all
- no way except physical force, wielded by an elite endowed with an allegedly superior,
mystic means of cognition.
AKH0255 NEGLECTING REASON IN PERSUASION PRODUCES PROPAGANDA
Glen Mills, Professor of Speech, Northwestern, READINGS IN ARGUMENTATION,
Jerry Anderson and Paul Dovre, eds., 1968, p.73.
Even if it is deemed necessary, in the interest of persuasion, to motivate the acceptance of
a decision, it is better to begin with a logically adequate case and then to add the so-called
emotional appeals. This is the meaning of the fourth assumption, which is that affective
appeals work best when they supplement the logical ones which were discussed under the
third assumption. To omit the rational element of persuasion is to violate the ethical
principle which holds that an appeal should not circumvent the critical thinking process.
That would, by definition, result in propaganda.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 22
AKH0256 REASON IS A NECESSARY DEFENSE AGAINST
NEO-CONSERVATIVISM
Jurgen Habermas, Professor of Philosophy, University of Frankfurt, HABERMAS AND
MODERNITY, Richard Bernstein, ed., 1985, p.195.
The stubbornness with which philosophy clings to the role of the "guardian of reason" can
hardly be dismissed as an idiosyncrasy of self-absorbed intellectuals, especially in a period
in which basic irrationalist undercurrents are transmuted once again into a dubious form
of politics. In my opinion, it is precisely the neoconservatives who articulate, intensify, and
spread this mood of the times via the mass media - with such an effect that "it itches."
AKH0257 REASON IS THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE TO FORCE
Ayn Rand, philosopher, CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL, 1967, p.22-3.
If a man believes that the good is a matter of arbitrary subjective choice, the issue of good
or evil becomes, for him an issue of my feelings or theirs? No bridge, understanding, or
communication is possible to him. Reason is the only means of communication among
men, and an objectively perceivable reality is their only common frame of reference; when
these are invalidated (i.e., held to be irrelevant) in the field of morality, force becomes
men's only way of dealing with one another.
AKH0258 REJECTING RATIONALISM LEADS TO NIHILISM
Stanley Rosen, Penn State philosopher, NIHILISM, 1969, p.193.
The contemporary nihilist situation is essentially a mood of boredom with the tradition of
western European rationalism. It arises from a tendency implicit in the origins of the
modern revolution against the classical Greek conception of reason, as is obvious in the
existential and ontological attacks against "Platonism" mounted by Nietzsche and
Heidegger, and which also motivates the ostensibly anti-metaphysical or even
anti-philosophical teachings of Marxism and positivism in its various contemporary guises.
AKH0259 REJECTING REASON LEADS TO INHUMANITY AND TERROR
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, FROM SHAKESPEARE TO
EXISTENTIALISM, 1980, p.368-9.
It did not take Heidegger to discover that reason cannot build a metaphysical Tower of
Babel; but it did take Heidegger to infer that poetry, or some sort of intuitive, associative,
but hardly really poetic, thinking should replace rational discourse and become immune
against critical reason. There are many men at all times who are willing to be done with
reason, and especially with critical reason. There will always be a ready audience for all
who denounce it as essentially a parasite. In truth, the critical function of reason is our best
safe guard against fanaticism, inhumanity, and terror.
AKH0260 REJECTING REASON LEADS TO NIHILISM
Roger Trigg, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, RATIONALITY AND
SCIENCE, 1993, p.255.
The idea, however, that there is no target for our beliefs, no purpose for our scientific
investigation, no genuine object on which faith, whether scientific or whatever, can be
fixed, suggests that all our reasoning is going to be unconstrained. There will be no
difference between good or bad reasoning, justified or unjustified belief, or pseudoscience
and the genuine article. When every rational suggestion is as good as any other, we can no
longer talk of rationality. The threat of nihilism is as real as the threat of a narrow
scientistic vision which insists on a monopoly of truth, and thereby removes the possibility
of talking about truth.
AKH0261 THE REJECTION OF THE RATIONAL IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY
Stanley Rosen, Penn State philosopher, NIHILISM, 1969, p.227.
We cannot insist upon the irrationality of our presuppositions without at the same time
making irrational the consequences of those presuppositions. By so doing, we make it
possible for our opponent to reject our Weltanschauung without being required even to
consider it. Why should he, if it is irrational? If whatever we say is irrational, then certainly
we can say anything we like, including that we alone are rational. From such a viewpoint,
he who pretends to deny reason is surely absurd. If there is any reason for us to think as
we do, this reason must itself be reasonable: it must be intelligible. But if it is intelligible,
one may discuss it rationally, which is to say that the conditions of its intelligibility are
independent of its own jurisdiction. If they were not, then every Weltanschauung would
define the intelligible and there would be as many conceptions of intelligibility as there are
Weltanschauungen. As a result, these conceptions would contradict each other (since for
every A, one may posit non-A), or reduce each other to silence, to chaos or nothingness.

AKH0262 INTELLECTUAL RELATIVISM IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956, p.135.
In the end, indeed, there is an embracing paradox about the idea that all ideas about human
affairs are true only from the point of view of a particular culture or social class. This
statement is itself an idea about human affairs. If, like all other such ideas, it is a doctrine
which is true for some people but false for others, there is no reason why people who hold
a different point of view should pay any attention to it. If, on the other hand, it is not
limited in its validity, then it is an exception to the very generalization it utters. It is one
example of an idea whose truth transcends the historical circumstances in which it is
uttered. And if there is one such idea, it seems arbitrary to suggest that there can be no
others. In short, it is not easy to dispense with the traditional notion of objective truth.
Even the Sociology of Knowledge implicitly invokes it.
AKH0263 IRRATIONALISM IS SELF-DEFEATING
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.27.
The left's flirtation with irrationalism, its reactionary rejection of the scientific worldview,
is deplorable and contradicts its own deepest traditions. It is a kind of self-defeating
apostasy.
AKH0264 CRITIQUES OF REASON ARE SELF-DEFEATING
J.M. Bernstein, Prof. of Philosophy, Univ. Of Essex, RECOVERING ETHICAL LIFE,
1995, p.159.
In engaging with the distortions of reason and rationality the philosophical discourses of
modernity that are the target of Habermas's critical history - the writings of Heidegger,
Bataille, Derrida, Foucault, Adorno and Horkheimer-- commit a metonymic fallacy, taking
subject-centred reason as the whole of reason. Such totalizing critiques of enlightened
reason involve an inevitable recoil, leaving them without any possible rational foundation
or ground, any place from which their critique can be lodged. As a consequence, these
writers are forced to generate an 'extraordinary discourse' that ' claims to operate outside
the horizon of reason without being utterly irrational' (p.308).
AKH0265 IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO CONSISTENTLY REPUDIATE REASON
Luc Ferry, Professor at the Sorbonne, RIGHTS--THE NEW QUARREL BETWEEN THE
ANCIENTS AND THE MODERNS, 1990, p.22.
First, it seems to me undeniable that the radical critique of the principle of reason involves
its practitioners in insurmountable aporias: to dare to write, as did Arendt subsequent to
Heidegger, that any use of the principle of causality in the historical sciences leads the
historian to repudiate "in fact the very object of his own science" is not only to make an
impossible wager (who can think more than a few minutes without using the principle of
reason?) but also to commit a major philosophical error: the error of identifying any use
of the principle of reason with ontotheology.
AKH0266 RATIONALITY CAN'T BE DISPROVEN BY RATIONAL ARGUMENT
John Searle, Berkeley philosopher, DEBATING P.C., ed. Paul Berman, 1992, p.113.
Are there convincing arguments for metaphysical realism? The demand for a proof of the
existence of a reality that is independent of our representations of reality is a puzzling one,
because it looks like making the demand itself already presupposes what is demanded to
be proved. The situation is a bit like those challenges one used to hear in the 1960s, when
students would ask for a proof of rationality, "What is your argument for rationality?" But
any demand for an "argument" or "proof" already presupposes standards of rationality, the
applicability of which is constitutive of something's being an argument or proof. You
cannot in the same breath appeal to argument and proof and deny rationality.
AKH0267 SOME JUDGMENTS ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS, EVEN IF NONE ARE
CERTAIN
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt. Prof., THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.42.
Hence a refusal on principle to say the last word about human history is not a refusal to say
any word, or to pass any firm judgment. Rather, it defines the conditions of judgment. Say
that our most cherished beliefs are matters of opinion and it is then our business to get
sound opinions, based on honest thought and the best available knowledge; only a fool will
say that any opinion is as good as any other opinion-and even a fool is apt to seek expert
opinion when he gets sick.
AKH0268 THE LACK OF CERTAINTY DOESN'T DENY RELATIVE TRUTH
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt. Prof., THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.43.
I am therefore led to my final assumption, that the admission of a principle of relativity and
uncertainty should not be simply depressing. It does not destroy all possibility of
knowledge and judgment. Rather, it is the outcome of comprehensive knowledge, and the
means to further knowledge of man's history. It enables a higher objectivity, a fuller
understanding of present and past. It enables wiser choices among the possibilities open
to us-among goods that are no less real because they are relative, and that are more relevant
than arbitrary absolutes. Above all, this principle encourages a positive faith in positive
values: of liberality, breadth of spirit, hospitality to new ideas, willingness to adventure,
humility in admitting one's own fallibility and the limitations of the human mind- of the
tolerance that is indispensable for the pursuit of truth, for social harmony, and for simple
humanity. If these are not the highest values, none are more essential to the hopes of world
order and peace.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 23
AKH0269 COMMON SENSE SHOWS WE SHOULD ACT ON THE MOST
PLAUSIBLE HYPOTHESIS
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973,
p.191.
Suppose you consult a doctor, and his reasons and the evidence cannot establish
conclusively what is the cause of your ailment. Imagine that he frankly admitted this and
then offered to flip a coin or to pluck the petals of a daisy: to cut or not to cut, to cut or not
to cut . . . This would be a paradigm of irresponsibility. What you would expect him to do
is to invoke the canon. Then the most plausible hypothesis--or one of the most
plausible-would be chosen tentatively, not with the dogged conviction that, once we have
chosen it, we have to stick with it, as if that were the essence of integrity.
AKH0270 MORAL IRRATIONALISM CONTRADICTS COMMON SENSE
EXPERIENCES
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973, p.23.
Moral irrationalism claims that because reason by itself cannot show people what to do,
reason is irrelevant when one is confronted with fateful decisions. This view is exemplified
in different ways by Kierkegaard and Heidegger and widely associated with existentialism.
It is compatible with any of the first six strategies and need not be considered here at
length as a separate strategy. The moral irrationalist says more or less explicitly that when
it comes to ultimate commitments reason is irrelevant; and the choice of a religion or a
movement or a school of thought, of a life style like drifting or a way of thinking like
exegetical thinking or possibly even Manichaeism, involves to his mind an ultimate
commitment. This is a way of saying that while it may be reasonable to keep your eyes
open when making relatively petty decisions, it makes no sense to keep them open and
examine your impulsive preferences as well as the most significant alternatives when a
choice is likely to mold your future. In other words, be careful when you drive slowly, but
when you go over fifty miles per hour shut your eyes!
AKH0271 PHILOSOPHY CAN NEVER ARRIVE AT ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY
Bertrand Russell, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, THE PROBLEMS OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1912, p.151-2.
The criticism aimed at, in a word, is not that which, without reason, determines to reject,
but that which considers each piece of apparent knowledge on its merit and retains
whatever still appears to be knowledge when this consideration is completed. That some
risk of error remains must be admitted, since human beings are fallible. Philosophy may
claim justly that it diminishes the risk of error, and that in some cases it renders the risk so
small as to be practically negligible. To do more than this is not possible in a world where
mistakes must occur; and more than this no prudent advocate of philosophy would claim
to have performed.
AKH0272 LOGIC AND MATH DON'T GIVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXTERNAL
WORLD
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.40.
But the certainty attainable through deductive logic is gained at the cost of a divorce from
everyday life and from the actual world. A syllogism can tell us nothing about what really
exists. It speaks only of itself and of its own terms. An argument of the form "If, if not-p
then not-q, and q, then p" is valid whatever propositions we put in place of "p" and "q", but
it cannot tell us whether these propositions are true or false: it can give us no information
about the actual world. This is also the case in geometry and trigonometry, which are
concerned entirely with ideal figures-perfect circles, straight lines, equilateral triangles,
and so forth, which, as we know, have no counterpart in the real world and cannot even be
drawn. The conclusions in all these cases are of the "if . . . then" variety.
AKH0273 WE CAN HAVE PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE DESPITE
EPISTEMOLOGICAL DOUBTS
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.41.
From yet another perspective, theory of knowledge has to inquire, not only what we know,
but why: why "knowledge" at all? Clearly we have no "organ of knowledge" as we have
an organ of digestion, we are not compelled to know as we are compelled to breathe: yet
the need to know seems to be as ineradicable and "natural" as the need to breathe and
digest. Or is this need in reality a need, not for knowledge, but for something else security,
for instance, or growth and expansion ? Is "knowledge" only an instrument, and our search
for knowledge a search for the most efficient instrument and not, at all an attempt to
discover "the nature of reality" ? Certain typical characteristics of our "knowledge" suggest
that these questions are not misdirected: we know that fire causes heat so as not to get
burned, and this knowledge survives our discovery that we do not know any such thing-it
is the not getting burned which weighs with us, and not any "search for the nature of
reality"; we know that the sum of the angles of an equilateral triangle is 180 degrees, and
we continue to know this even when we have understood that in reality equilateral triangles
do not exist-here our need is for a simplification of reality, not an understanding of it, and
this is also the case when we posit the existence of straight lines and circles. In these
instances, an unpredictable and impossibly complicated world is rendered predictable and
calculable: perhaps that is the purpose, the "why" of all knowledge.

AKH0274 THE SEARCH FOR CERTAINTY WHERE IT CAN'T BE OBTAINED IS
IRRATIONAL
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.72.
And this means that no general proposition referring to a matter of fact can ever be shown
to be necessarily and universally true. It can at best be a probable hypothesis. And this, we
shall find, applies not only to general propositions, but to all propositions which have a
factual content. They can none of them ever become logically certain. This conclusion,
which we shall elaborate later on, is one which must be accepted by every consistent
empiricist. It is often thought to involve him in complete skepticism; but this is not the
case. For the fact that the validity of a proposition cannot be logically guaranteed in no
way entails that it is irrational for us to believe it. On the contrary, what is irrational is to
look for a guarantee where none can be forthcoming; to demand certainty where
probability is all that is obtainable.
AKH0275 WE SHOULD ACT ON TRUTHS WHICH SEEM COMPELLING-NOT
SUSPEND JUDGEMENT
Stanley Fish, Professor of Law and English at Duke University, THERE'S NO SUCH
THING AS FREE SPEECH, 1994, p.113.
That reasoning, as I understand it, goes as follows: although we ourselves are certain that
the Holocaust was a fact, facts are notoriously interpretable and disputable; therefore
nothing is ever really settled, and we have no right to reject something just because we
regard it as pernicious and false. But the fact--if I can use that word--that settled truths can
always be upset, at least theoretically, does not mean that we cannot affirm and rely on
truths that according to our present lights seem indisputable; rather, it means exactly the
opposite: in the absence of absolute certainty of the kind that can only be provided by
revelation (something I do not rule out but have not yet experienced)} we must act on the
basis of the certainty we have so far achieved. Truth may, as Milton said, always be in the
course of emerging, and we must always be on guard against being so beguiled by its
present shape that we ignore contrary evidence; but, by the same token, when it happens
that the present shape of truth is compelling beyond a reasonable doubt, it is our moral
obligation to act on it and not defer action in the name of an interpretative future that may
never arrive. By running the First Amendment up the nearest flagpole and rushing to salute
it, the student editors defaulted on that obligation and gave over their responsibility to a
so-called principle that was not even to the point.
AKH0276 THE QUEST FOR CERTAINTY IS DESTRUCTIVE AND MISGUIDED
Christopher Lasch, Professor of History, University of Rochester, THE REVOLT OF THE
ELITES, 1995, p.13.
The quest for certainty, which became an obsessive theme in modern thought when
Descartes tried to ground philosophy in indubitable propositions, was misguided to begin
with. As John Dewey pointed out, it distracted attention from the real business of
philosophy the attempt to arrive at "concrete judgments...about ends and means in the
regulation of practical behavior." In their pursuit of the absolute and immutable,
philosophers took a disparaging view of the time-bound and contingent. "Practical
activity," as Dewey put it, became in their eyes "intrinsically an inferior sort of thing." In
the world view of Western philosophy, knowing came to be split off from doing, theory
from practice, the mind from the body.
AKH0277 RATIONALITY AND UNIVERSALITY ARE CONSISTENT WITH
ANTI-FOUNDATIONALISM
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
WORKING THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.232.
Habermas's stance is later than the modern one, for it recognizes the failure of the modern
philosophers to ground the possibility of knowledge in the self-certainty of subjectivity.
The modern philosophers privilege subjectivity as the paradigm of philosophical efforts
to discover the foundations of knowledge. Habermas claims to have moved beyond the
philosophy of subjectivity into the philosophy of language. Doing so also means that he
is not a foundationalist as the modern philosophers were. Instead, he thinks that philosophy
must recognize that its claims are fallible instead of absolute. Having substituted language
for the moderns' philosophy of the subject, and rejected their absolutism and
foundationalism for empirical fallibilism means that in central ways he comes later than
modernity. So it is tempting to think of Habermas himself as a postmodern. Yet,
supposedly unlike the neo-Nietzschean French postmoderns, he has not abandoned modern
philosophy's goal of formulating and defending rationality and universality.
AKH0278 REASON DOESN'T REQUIRE A METAPHYSICAL GROUND
Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Professors of Philosophy and anthropology, University
of California Berkeley, FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, David Couzens Hoy, ed.,
1986, p.111.
For Habermas, then, the problem of modernity, a unique historical problem, consists in
preserving the primacy of reason articulated most recently and fully in Kant's
enlightenment critique while facing up to the loss of metaphysical ground of our
substantive beliefs. Maturity is the discovery of the quasi-transcendental basis of
community as all we have and all we need, for philosophy, and human dignity.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 24
AKH0279 REASON CORRECTS ITS OWN ABUSES
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt. Prof., THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.363.
Traditional rationalism has taken too supercilious an attitude toward the instinctive,
spontaneous life, the sentiment and passion that alone can give force to its ideals. In this
century many social scientists have displayed an incredibly naive confidence in the power
of intelligence to control the 'behavior patterns' with which they play, talking as if social
conflict could be handled in the same way as infectious disease. Liberals generally have
set their sights too high, overestimating the rationality and virtue of free men. Yet it is still
reason that warns us against such unreasonable expectations. In its most mournful
judgments of its frail powers it still proves its necessity, its responsibility, and its power.
AKH0280 PARTIALITY OF PERSPECTIVES DOESN'T UNDERMINE TRUTH
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956, p.133.
These questions are the second line of argument on which the Sociology of Knowledge
depends. But they rest, quite simply, on an unwitting play on the word "partiality." Every
human perspective, it need hardly be said, is limited and selective, and human knowledge
must always be incomplete. This is partiality -partial truth. But this is a far cry from saying
that all knowledge must inevitably be distorted or biased. For to see only part of what is
to be seen does not mean that whatever we do see is partial in the sense of being
prejudiced. Partial knowledge does not necessarily mean false knowledge.
AKH0281 SELECTIVE KNOWLEDGE DOESN'T IMPLY BIAS
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956, p.134.
In fact, all knowledge is selective. If we insist, on the basis of this truism, that all
knowledge is therefore biased, we imply that we can never learn the objective facts about
anything until we are omniscient. More, we contradict the very idea of knowledge. For all
knowledge involves generalizations, and therefore abstractions. By its very nature, then,
it is selective, and if it were not selective it would not be knowledge. When we apply the
term "biased" to our beliefs merely because they are selective, we are using the term
"biased" in such a way that the distinction between being biased and being unbiased loses
all meaning.
AKH0282 BIASES DON'T PRECLUDE RELATIVITY OBJECTIVE SOCIAL
KNOWLEDGE
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956, p.133.
Physical science is not the immaculate product of the disembodied mind any more than
social science is; but this has not prevented men from attaining what everyone accepts as
objective knowledge in the study of the physical world. It is difficult to see, therefore, why
this should be absolutely impossible in our social thinking. The simple point is that all
thinking has its physical, psychic, and social determinants; but this in no way implies that
human beings cannot be objective.
AKH0283 REASON NEED NOT DESTROY CREATIVITY
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973,
p.219.
It is a romantic prejudice that a highly developed reason and a critical intelligence are not
compatible with the creation of great art. Among the ancients Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides give the lie to this legend; among the moderns it may suffice to recall Leonardo
and Goethe.
AKH0284 REASON ISN'T COMPATIBLE WITH INTUITION
H. Stuart Hughes, Stanford historian, CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIETY, 1977, p.30.
For it must be apparent that simply to oppose "intuition" to "reason" as two contradictory
(or complementary) paths to knowledge offers no real solution to the difficulty. It may be
that the two are no more than different aspects of the same sort of psychological
functioning-that what we call intuition is simply a combination of rational and affective
processes too minute to be identified. While reasoning is almost wholly conscious,
intuition is only partially so. Yet intuition is not an "unconscious" process in the Freudian
sense: it goes on in the area that Freud called the "preconscious" and William James
termed the "fringe of consciousness." It is characterized by a "fusion of intermediate steps"
that resists precise identification. Of its importance "for all normal symbolic creative
thinking, whether artistic or scientific," there can be little doubt. It alone "makes possible
those . . . leaps in art and science by means of which the creative process sometimes dons
seven league boots." Even the most science-minded could scarcely object to such a
characterization.
AKH0285 REASON IS NEEDED TO JUDGE OTHER METHODS OF INSIGHT
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt. Prof., THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.362.
Whatever higher faculties man may have-of feeling, intuition, or imagination, in vision,
trance, or ecstasy-can be trusted only after they have been interpreted and judged by
reason. Otherwise anything goes: the visions of Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, Marx,
Whitman, Nietzsche, and Hitler are on the same footing; and what goes best is apt to be
blind unreason or brute force. No product of social intercourse is more precious than
reasonableness, or more essential to attaining and sharing the goods of life; for love itself
is a partial sentiment that often goes wrong, leading to division, jealousy, and hatred.

AKH0286 UNCHECKED INTUITION INVITES SUPERSTITION AND STUPIDITY
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, FROM SHAKESPEARE TO
EXISTENTIALISM, 1980, p.268.
For philosophy, as for the sciences, vision and intuition are indispensable, but we cannot
welcome their gifts indiscriminately without inviting superstition and random stupidity.
The genius of a poet is not sufficient warrant against such dangers.
AKH0287 TO BE RELIABLE, INTUITION MUST BE SUBJECT TO CRITICAL
REASON
Talcot Parsons, sociologist, aqi H. Stuart Hughes, CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIETY,
1977, p.312.
Our immediate intuitions of meaning may be real and, as such, correct. But their
interpretation cannot dispense with a rationally consistent system of theoretical concepts.
Only in so far as they measure up to such criticism can intuitions constitute knowledge.
And without such criticism the door is opened to any number of uncontrolled and
unverifiable allegations. Weber had a very deep and strong ethical feeling on this point,
to him the intuitionist position made possible the evasion of responsibility for scientific
judgments.
AKH0288 PRINCIPLES CAN BE DISCOVERED BY INTUITION BUT MUST BE
VALIDATED BY SCIENCE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.137.
But while it must be recognized that scientific laws are often discovered through a process
of intuition, this does not mean that they can be intuitively validated. As we have said
many times already, it is essential to distinguish the psychological question, How does our
knowledge originate? from the logical question, How is it certified as knowledge?
AKH0289 INTUITIONS MUST BE EXPRESSIBLE AS EMPIRICAL PROPOSITIONS
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.118.
For his part, the mystic may protest that his intuition does reveal truths to him, even though
he cannot explain to others what these truths are; and that we who do not possess this
faculty of intuition can have no ground for denying that it is a cognitive faculty. For we
can hardly maintain a priori that there are no ways of discovering true propositions except
those which we ourselves employ. The answer is that we set no limit to the number of ways
in which one may come to formulate a true proposition. We do not in any way deny that
a synthetic truth may be discovered by purely intuitive methods as well as by the rational
method of induction. But we do say that every synthetic proposition, however it may have
been arrived at, must be subject to the test of actual experience. We do not deny a priori
that the mystic is able to discover truths by his own special methods. We wait to hear what
are the propositions which embody his discoveries, in order to see whether they are
verified or confuted by our empirical observations. But the mystic, so far from producing
propositions which are empirically verified, is unable to produce any intelligible
propositions at all. And therefore we say that his intuition has not revealed to him any
facts.
AKH0290 INEXPRESSIBLE INTUITIONS AREN'T GENUINE COGNITIVE STATES
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.118-9
It is no use his saying that he has apprehended facts but is unable to express them. For we
know that if he really had acquired any information, he would be able to express it. He
would be able to indicate in some way or other how the genuineness of his discovery might
be empirically determined. The fact that he cannot reveal what he "knows," or even himself
devise an empirical test to validate his "knowledge," shows that his state of mystical
intuition is not a genuinely cognitive state. So that in describing his vision the mystic does
not give us any information about the external world; he merely gives us indirect
information about the condition of his own mind.
AKH0291 REASON IS NEEDED TO JUSTIFY OUR EMOTIONAL RESPONSES
Ronald Dworkin, NYU law prof, TAKING RIGHTS SERIOUSLY, 1978, p.250.
If I base my view about homosexuals on a personal emotional reaction ('they make me
sick') you would reject that reason as well. We distinguish moral positions from emotional
reactions, not because moral positions are supposed to be unemotional or dispassionate -
quite the reverse is true - but because the moral position is supposed to justify the
emotional reaction, and not vice versa. If a man is unable to produce such reasons, we do
not deny the fact of his emotional involvement, which may have important social or
political consequences, but we do not take this involvement as demonstrating his moral
conviction. Indeed, it is just this sort of position - a severe emotional reaction to a practice
or a situation for which one cannot account - that we tend to describe, in lay terms, as a
phobia or an obsession.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 25
AKH0292 REASON IS KEY TO BENEVOLENCE
Charles Taylor, McGill University philosopher, THE ETHICS OF AUTHENTICITY,
1991, p.104-5.
Already in the early seventeenth century, Francis Bacon criticized the traditional
Aristotelian sciences for having contributed nothing "to relieve the condition of mankind."
He proposed in their stead a model of science whose criterion of truth would be
instrumental efficacy. You have discovered something when you can intervene to change
things. Modern science is in essential continuity in this respect with Bacon. But what is
important about Bacon is that he reminds us that the thrust behind this new science was not
only epistemological but also moral. We are heirs of Bacon, in that today, for instance, we
mount great international campaigns for famine relief or to help the victims of floods. We
have come to accept a universal solidarity today, at least in theory, however imperfect our
practice, and we accept this under the premiss of an active interventionism in nature. We
don't accept that people should continue to be potential victims of hurricanes or famines.
We think of these as in principle curable or preventable evils. This practical and universal
benevolence also gives a crucial place to instrumental reason. Those who react against the
place it has come to take in our lives on aesthetic or lifestyle grounds (and this has been
a large part of the protest over the decades since the eighteenth century) are often taxed by
defenders with being morally callous and unimaginative, putting their own aesthetic
sensibility above the vital needs of masses of suffering people.
AKH0293 REASON IS THE KEY TO HUMAN SURVIVAL
Ayn Rand, philosopher, CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL, 1967, p.17.
If some men do not choose to think, they can survive only by imitating and repeating a
routine of work discovered by others-but those others had to discover it, or none would
have survived. If some men do not choose to think or to work, they can survive
(temporarily) only by looting the goods produced by others-but those others had to
produce them, or none would have survived. Regardless of what choice is made, in this
issue, by any man or by any number of men, regardless of what blind, irrational, or evil
course they may choose to pursue-the fact remains that reason is man's means of survival
and that men prosper or fail, survive or perish in proportion to the degree of their
rationality.
AKH0294 LIFE REQUIRES RATIONAL INQUIRY
Roger Trigg, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, RATIONALITY AND
SCIENCE, 1993, p.43.
Rescher, himself, makes it clear that the comparison with religious practices is not a threat
to science or to cognitive inquiry: The religious project is optional: one may simply decline
to enter in. But the cognitive project is not so easily evaded. We must act to live, must eat
this or that, move here or there, do something or other. (1992, p.265) It seems that our need
to survive and to flourish in this world will immediately generate the need for rational
inquiry. 'We cannot,' he says, 'act effectively without rationally warranted confidence in
our (putative) knowledge' (p.266). Our science is built on our communal search for such
rational warrant, and that cannot take place without a commitment to the real world.
AKH0295 RATIONALITY IS THE NECESSARY CONDITION OF HUMAN
SURVIVAL
Ayn Rand, philosopher and novelist, THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS, 1964, p.94-5.
"The source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity.
A is A-and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for
his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right
to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product
of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature
forbids him the rational."
AKH0296 REJECTING RATIONALITY MEANS REJECTING LIFE
Ayn Rand, philosopher and novelist, THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS, 1964, p.25.
Rationality is man's basic virtue, the source of all his other virtues. Man's basic vice, the
source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his
consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal
to know. Irrationality is the rejection of man's means of survival and, therefore, a
commitment to a course of blind destruction; that which is anti-mind, is anti-life.
AKH0297 RATIONALITY IS THE ESSENCE OF HUMAN NATURE
Hans Reiss, Professor of German, University of Bristol, KANT'S POLITICAL
WRITINGS, 1970, p.36.
Kant adopts a point of view, admittedly a subjective one, from which it is not only
'possible, but profitable, and not only profitable, but necessary' to look at the facts of
history. Since his main concern is with human freedom, the development of human
freedom provides him with the necessary clue. He therefore assumes that a plan of nature
must intend the education of mankind to a state of freedom. Or (to put it differently) since
nature has endowed man with reason, and since the purpose of nature is to realize man's
essence, nature has made man in order that he should become rational.

AKH0298 ETHICAL ARGUMENT REQUIRES REASON
William Frankena, U of Michigan philosopher, ETHICS, 1973, p.25.
This point is connected with the fact, noted earlier, that particular ethical and value
judgments can be supported by reasons. If Jones makes such a judgment, it is appropriate
to ask him for his reason for believing that the act is right or the object good, and to expect
an answer like, "Because you promised to do it" or ''Because it gives pleasure." If he
answers, "Oh, for no reason whatsoever," we are puzzled and feel that he has misled us by
using ethical or value terms at all. Moral and value judgments imply reasons; and reasons
cannot apply in a particular case only. If they apply in one case, they apply in all similar
cases. Moreover, in order to give a reason in a particular case, one must presuppose a
general proposition.
AKH0299 ADVANCING RATIONALITY IS A MORAL OBLIGATION
Hans Reiss, Professor of German, University of Bristol, KANT'S POLITICAL
WRITINGS, 1970, p.37.
To advance the spread of rationality is a moral obligation, for this advance is the only way
in which our moral nature can be fully realised.
AKH0300 NEGLECTING RATIONAL TRUTH UNDERMINE ALL MEANINGFUL
CRITIQUE
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.211.
Throughout his intellectual career Habermas has relentlessly sought to track down, expose,
and defeat the varieties of nihilism, relativism decisionism, historicism, and
neo-Aristotelian contexualism that have been so fashionable in the twentieth century. Here
too his motivations are not exclusively theoretical-they are motivated by his practical
concerns. For he argues that the logic of all these "positions " when we think them through
undermines the possibility of critique that is rationally grounded and warranted. He
criticizes all forms of totalizing critique claiming that they lead to performative
contradictions. What he says about Nietzsche applies equally to all those who work in his
shadow (including Derrida): "Nietzsche's critique consumes the critical impulse itself." "If
thought can no longer operate in the realms of truth and validity claims then analysis and
critique lose their meaning." One is left only with the seductions of a "bad" aestheticism
that "enthrones taste, the 'Yes' and 'No' of the palate (BGE p. 341) as the sole organ of
knowledge beyond Truth and Falsity beyond Good and Evil."
AKH0301 RADICAL CRITIQUE REQUIRES REASON
William Hohengarter, introduction to POSTMETAPHYSICAL THINKING by Jurgen
Habermas, 1992, p.vii.
Like most contemporary thinkers, Habermas is critical of the Western metaphysical
tradition and its exaggerated conception of reason. At the same time, however, he cautions
against relinquishing that conception altogether. Against the radical critics of Western
philosophy he argues that the wholesale rejection of the metaphysical tradition inevitably
undercuts the possibility of rational critique itself. He thus defends the view that genuinely
postmetaphysical thinking can remain critical only if it preserves the idea of reason derived
from the tradition while stripping it of its metaphysical trappings.
AKH0302 EVEN DERRIDA REJECTS IRRATIONALISM
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
WORKING THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.242-3.
Similarly, Derrida denies being an enemy of reason. He may want to challenge the
rationality of many established conceptual distinctions or institutional practices. The task
of criticism involves a double gesture of formulating rationally questions about the limits
of rational endeavors. Derrida explicitly acknowledges that his own efforts conform to the
principle of reason, and he does not recommend that others who would share in these
efforts try to contest reason: "Those who venture along this path, it seems to me, need not
set themselves up in opposition to the principle of reason, nor need they give way to
'irrationalism'" Since philosophy has always been the "place" where reason must be
respected, Derrida recognizes that his own discourse is subject to the constraints and rigors
of philosophical (as opposed to those of "literary") expression. Early in his career he
opposed the interpretation of deconstruction as advocating the death of philosophy. More
recently, he has acknowledged that his own discourse is institutionally framed by the
philosophical profession.
AKH0303 TRUTH CLAIMS REQUIRE THE EVALUATION OF REASONS
William Hohengarter, introduction to POSTMETAPHYSICAL THINKING by Jurgen
Habermas, 1992, p.x.
Habermas argues that, in general, we evaluate truth claims not by directly comparing a
statement with a state of affairs in the objective world but by examining the reasons that
a speaker can give in support of what she says. Claiming that one's statement is true, or
valid, is tantamount to claiming that good reasons can be given in support of it. In
Habermas's words: "The speaker refers with his validity claim to a potential of reasons that
could be brought to bear for it." These reasons are in turn evaluated in terms of their
intersubjective acceptability as good reasons for holding something to be the case.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 26
AKH0304 UNIVERSAL VALIDITY CLAIMS ARE LEGITIMATE WHEN SUBJECT
TO ONGOING CRITICISM
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.211.
Habermas's fallibilism is not incompatible with making universal claims and seeking to
redeem them with the strongest arguments we can give. This is the way in which he
conceives of his own theory of communicative action. In this respect, Habermas sees no
epistemological difference between a theory of communicative action and any other
scientific theory. For in advancing any theory we are always making universal validity
claims which are necessarily open to ongoing criticism and revision.
AKH0305 THE CHOICE OF REASON IS HISTORICALLY VINDICATED
Leonard Peikoff, Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College, THE OMINOUS
PARALLELS, 1982, p.311.
Since men's grasp of reason and their versions of non-reason differ from era to era,
according to the extent of their knowledge and their virtue, so does the specific form of the
choice, and its specific result. In the ancient world, after centuries of a gradual decline, the
choice was the ideas of classical civilization or the ideas of Christianity. Men chose
Christianity. The result was the Dark Ages. In the medieval world, a thousand years later,
the choice was Augustine or Aquinas. Men chose Aquinas. The result was the Renaissance.
In the Enlightenment world, four centuries later, the founders of America struggled to
reaffirm the choice of their Renaissance ancestors, but they could not make it stick
historically. The result was a magnificent new country, with a built-in self-destructor.
AKH0306 RATIONALITY IS GROUNDED IN EVERYDAY CONVERSATIONAL
PRACTICES
Jurgen Habermas, Professor of Philosophy, University of Frankfurt, HABERMAS AND
MODERNITY, Richard Bernstein, ed., 1985, p.196.
The most important achievement of such an approach is the possibility of clarifying a
concept of communicative rationality that escapes the snares of Western logocentrism.
Instead of following Nietzsche's path of a totalizing and self-referential critique of reason,
whether it be via Heidegger to Derrida, or via Bataille to Foucault, and throwing the baby
out with the bathwater, it is more promising to seek this end through the analysis of the
already operative potential for rationality contained in the everyday practices of
communication. Here the validity dimensions of propositional truth, normative rightness,
and subjective truthfulness or authenticity are intermeshed with each other.
AKH0307 REASON IS INCLUDED IN ALL SUCCESSFUL COMMUNICATION
Jurgen Habermas, Professor of Philosophy, University of Frankfurt, HABERMAS AND
MODERNITY, Richard Bernstein, ed., 1985, p.197.
Rorty takes Western logocentrism as an indication of the exhaustion of our philosophical
discourse and a reason to bid adieu to philosophy as such. This way of reading the tradition
can not be maintained if philosophy can be transformed so as to enable it to cope with the
entire spectrum of aspects of rationality - and with the historical fate of a reason that has
been arrested again and again, ideologically misused and distorted, but that also stubbornly
raises its voice in every inconspicuous act of successful communication.
AKH0308 HABERMAS IS GERMANY'S LEADING PHILOSOPHER
Francis Fiorenza, Professor of Theology, Harvard, HABERMAS, MODERNITY, AND
PUBLIC THEOLOGY, 1992, p.1.
Jurgen Habermas is by far the most pre-eminent and influential philosopher in Germany.
The breath and depth of his writings are remarkable. Their influence extends over a broad
range of disciplines that include philosophy, social theory, hermeneutics, anthropology,
linguistics, ethics, educational theory, and public policy.
AKH0309 HABERMAS AVOIDS DOGMATISM AND POSTMODERN NIHILISM
Francis Fiorenza, Professor of Theology, Harvard, HABERMAS, MODERNITY, AND
PUBLIC THEOLOGY, 1992, p.8.
In contrast to the global postmodern criticisms of modernity, Habermas criticizes the
modern Enlightenment yet does not abandon the project of the Enlightenment. His
dialectical interpretation of modernity steers the middle path between a modern dogmatism
and a postmodern nihilism. Following Peukert's interpretation that the critique of reason
belongs to the tradition of the Enlightenment, Lamb underscores the point that rationality
entails a learning and self-correcting process. Communicative action is, therefore, not
simply a new model that replaces an old one. Rather, it involves an ongoing and critical
process so that we can and must interpret modernity in a way that makes us aware of its
ambiguity, that is, of its potential for domination as well as emancipation.
AKH0310 RATIONALITY IS DEFINED AS THE BEST AVAILABLE METHODS IN
PRACTICE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.100.
For we define a rational belief as one which is arrived at by the methods which we now
consider reliable. There is no absolute standard of rationality, just as there is no method
of constructing hypotheses which is guaranteed to be reliable. We trust the methods of
contemporary science because they have been successful in practice. If in the future we
were to adopt different methods, then beliefs which are now rational might become
irrational from the standpoint of these new methods. But the fact that this is possible has
no bearing on the fact that these beliefs are rational now.

AKH0311 ALL EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE SUPPORTS CAUSAL LAWS
Bertrand Russell, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE
EXTERNAL WORLD, 1929, p.171.
What we have said so far is that there have been hitherto certain observed casual laws, and
that all the empirical evidence we possess is compatible with the view that everything, both
mental and physical, so far as our observation has extended, has happened in accordance
with causal laws.
AKH0312 THE REJECTION OF CAUSE UNDERMINES EFFECTIVE AGENCY
John William Miller, Professor of Philosophy, Williams College, THE PARADOX OF
CAUSE, 1978, p.12-3.
But the failure of causal order offers no hope for freedom. Anarchy in nature excludes
power, control, or purpose quite as effectively as does necessity. Indeed, it destroys every
shred of security, every opportunity for will. Purpose can neither formulate nor execute
itself apart from dependable sequences in nature. Where objects and events possess no
regular constitution, no definite sequence, the human will gets no intellectual content in
terms of which to assert its direction and its program. How shall one proceed to cure
headaches if pain occurs for no reason at all? What drug could the physician recommend?
Both head and drug would lose their lawful outlines, would, indeed, cease to be
recognizable.
AKH0313 HUME DIDN'T DENY THE EXISTENCE OF CAUSE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.54.
It is true that Hume does not, so far as I know, actually put forward any view concerning
the nature of philosophical propositions themselves, but those of his works which are
commonly accounted philosophical are, apart from certain passages which deal with
questions of psychology, works of analysis. If this is not universally conceded, it is
because his treatment of causation, which is the main feature of his philosophical work,
is often misinterpreted. He has been accused of denying causation, whereas in fact he was
concerned only with defining it. So far is he from asserting that no causal propositions are
true that he is himself at pains to give rules for judging of the existence of causes and
effects.
AKH0314 THE PROBLEM OF INDUCTION IS A BOGUS ONE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.50.
Thus it appears that there is no possible way of solving the problem of induction, as it is
ordinarily conceived. And this means that it is a fictitious problem, since all genuine
problems are at least theoretically capable of being solved: and the credit of natural science
is not impaired by the fact that some philosophers continue to be puzzled by it.
AKH0315 IT IS RATIONAL TO EXPECT THE FUTURE TO REPEAT THE PAST
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.50.
Of course, the fact that a certain form of procedure has always been successful in practice
affords no logical guarantee that it will continue to be so. But then it is a mistake to
demand a guarantee where it is logically impossible to obtain one. This does not mean that
it is irrational to expect future experience to conform to the past. For when we come to
define rationality we shall find that for us "being rational" entails being guided in a
particular fashion by past experience.
AKH0316 CAUSALITY FOLLOWS FROM THE PRINCIPLE OF INDUCTION
Bertrand Russell, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, THE PROBLEMS OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1912, p.69.
The general principles of science, such as the belief in the reign of law, and the belief that
every event must have a cause, are as completely dependent upon the inductive principle
as are the beliefs of daily life. All such general principles are believed because mankind
have found innumerable instances of their truth and no instances of their falsehood. But
this affords no evidence for their truth in the future, unless the inductive principle is
assumed.
AKH0317 INDUCTION CAN'T BE LOGICALLY PROVEN BUT IT'S A PRACTICAL
NECESSITY
Bertrand Russell, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, THE PROBLEMS OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1912, p.68-9.
All arguments which, on the basis of experience, argue as to the future or the
unexperienced parts of the past or present, assume the inductive principle; hence we can
never use experience to prove the inductive principle without begging the question. Thus
we must either accept the inductive principle on the ground of its intrinsic evidence, or
forgo all justification of our expectations about the future. If the principle is unsound we
have no reason to expect the sun to rise to-morrow, to expect bread to be more nourishing
than a stone, or to expect that if we throw ourselves off the roof we shall fall. When we see
what looks like our best friend approaching us, we shall have no reason to suppose that his
body is not inhabited by the mind of our worst enemy or of some total stranger. All our
conduct is based upon associations which have worked in the past, and which we therefore
regard as likely to work in the future; and this likelihood is dependent for its validity upon
the inductive principle.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 27
AKH0318 OUR WHOLE WAY OF SPEAKING ABOUT REALITY ASSUMES CAUSE
Bertrand Russell, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE
EXTERNAL WORLD, 1929, p.174.
Not only do memory and hope make a difference in our feelings as regards past and future,
but almost our whole vocabulary is filled with the idea of activity, of things done now for
the sake of their future effects. All transitive verbs involve the notion of cause as activity,
and would have to be replaced by some cumbrous periphrasis before this notion could be
eliminated.
AKH0319 OUR MENTAL STRUCTURES NECESSITATE CAUSAL EXPLANATIONS
Hans Reiss, Professor of German, University of Bristol, KANT'S POLITICAL
WRITINGS, 1970, p.17.
Hume had convincingly refuted the possibility of philosophically justifying induction, the
method of establishing necessary universal laws proceeding from individual instances; for
him causality was only the result of a habitual association of the mind. Hume's writings
roused Kant from his 'dogmatic slumber'. In order to refute Hume and to vindicate science
philosophically, he found it necessary to start his enquiry not from objects of experience,
but from the mind. For him, the laws of nature were not inherent in nature, but
constructions of the mind used for the purpose of understanding nature. We can never
explain the world as it appears to us merely by reference to experience; to do so we need
necessary principles logically prior to and independent of experience. Only then can we
see any order in nature. In fact, uniformity, coherence and order are imposed on nature by
our minds. In other words, we cannot know the world other than as it appears to us, for we
must see it within the framework of our mind. The world of appearance is thus conditioned
by being located in the particulars of space and time and ordered by a priori concepts of
our understanding or categories such as causality.
AKH0320 ALL INFERENCES RELY ON CAUSAL LAWS
Bertrand Russell, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE
EXTERNAL WORLD, 1929, p.164-5.
By a "causal law" I mean any general proposition in virtue of which it is possible to infer
the existence of one thing or event from the existence of another or of a number of others.
If you hear thunder without having seen lightning, you infer that there nevertheless was
a flash, because of the general proposition, "All thunder is preceded by lightning." When
Robinson Crusoe sees a footprint, he infers a human being, and he might justify his
inference by the general proposition, "All marks in the ground shaped like a human foot
are subsequent to a human being's standing where the marks are." When we see the sun set,
we expect that it will rise again the next day. When we hear a man speaking, we infer that
he has certain thoughts. All these inferences require causal laws for their justification.
AKH0321 HUME'S SKEPTICISM IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH PRACTICAL
EXISTENCE
George Santayana, Harvard philosopher, SKEPTICISM AND ANIMAL FAITH, 1923,
p.296-7.
All this is sheer sophistry, and limping skepticism. Certainly the vulgar notions of nature,
and even the scientific ones, are most questionable; and they may have grown up in the
way these critics suggest; in any case they have grown up humanly. But they are not mere
images; they are beliefs; and the truth of beliefs hangs on what they assert, not on their
origin. The question is whether such an object as they describe lies in fact in the quarter
where they assert it to lie; the genealogy of these assertions in the mind of the believer,
though interesting, is irrelevant. It is for science and further investigation of the object to
pronounce on the truth of any belief. It will remain a mere belief to the end, no matter how
much corroborated and corrected; but the fact that it is a belief, far from proving that it
must be false, renders it possibly true, as it could not be if it asserted nothing and had no
object beyond itself which it pointed to and professed to describe. This whole school
criticises knowledge, not by extending knowledge and testing it further, but by reviewing
it maliciously, on the tacit assumption that knowledge is impossible. But in that case this
review of knowledge and all this shrewd psychology are themselves worthless; and we are
reduced, as Hume was in his deeper moments of insight, to a speechless wonder. So that
whilst all the animals trust their senses and live, philosophy would persuade man alone not
to trust them and, if he was consistent, to stop living.
AKH0322 HUME BELIEVED THAT SUCCESS IN PRACTICE JUSTIFIES
INDUCTION
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.55.
But although we are obliged, for these reasons, to reject Hume's actual definitions of a
cause, our view of the nature of causation remains substantially the same as his. And we
agree with him that there can be no other justification for inductive reasoning than its
success in practice, while insisting more strongly than he did that no better justification is
required. For it is his failure to make this second point clear that has given his views the
air of paradox which has caused them to be so much undervalued and misunderstood.

AKH0323 HUME RECOMMENDS FORGETTING THE PROBLEM OF CAUSALITY
IN PRACTICAL LIFE
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.135.
All probable reasoning follows taste and sentiment. There is no abstract justification for
preferring one principle to another. If we do prefer one, it is because we like it more. This
skeptical doubt concerning the validity of all non-deductive reasoning Hume calls a
"malady" from which one can free oneself only by "carelessness and inattention": one can
live happily only by forgetting what one knows. So far as he can see, the sole reason for
studying philosophy is that one likes to do it: that, at any rate, is the reason he does it.
AKH0324 EVEN HUME HAD TO ASSUME CAUSATION WHEN HE FORMULATED
ETHICAL AND POLITICAL PRINCIPLES.
A. J. Ayer, Oxford philosopher, HUME, 1980, p.75.
Considering the relish with which Hume denies the necessity of the proposition that every
event has a cause, we may be surprised to discover how firmly he accepts its truth. There
is, indeed, a passage in the Treatise where, in the course of discussing the passions of fear
and hope, he speaks of the probabilities which cause them as belonging to one or other of
two kinds, according as the object is already certain but 'uncertain to our judgement' or
'when the object is really in itself uncertain, and to be determined by chance' (T 444), but
this is a rare departure from his usual view that 'what the vulgar call chance is nothing but
a secret and concealed cause' (T I30). Throughout his analysis of the passions, and his
exploration of the foundations of morals and politics, his official position is that of a
determinist.
AKH0325 THE PROBLEM OF INDUCTION DOESN'T REFUTE SCIENCE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.49.
It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as
logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem
of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain
empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in
the future.
AKH0326 POSTMODERNISM LEADS TO FASCIST NIHILISM
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.73.
There is a paradox in all this. In scorning the Enlightenment, the postmodern left is clearly
cutting away the roots, emotional as well as intellectual, that formed and sustained its most
deeply held egalitarian ideals. In embracing the brittle skepticism of postmodern thought,
would-be leftists are never more than an inch away from passivity, ineffectuality, and
cynical despair. A criticism frequently advanced by opponents of
postmodernism-justifiably, in our view-is that the doctrine, at its most virulent, is hardly
distinguishable from the moral blankness, the Viva la muerte!, upon which fascism was
erected in the first half of this century.
AKH0327 POSTMODERN THOUGHT LEADS TO SUPPORT FOR
TOTALITARIANISM
Paul Berman, fellow, New York University Institute for the Humanities, DEBATING P.C.
1992, p.9-10.
The many dazzlements of '68 Philosophy were never any use in addressing mundane
questions like these. The great god of the Paris thinkers was Heidegger, who was second
to none in holding Western rationalism and humanism responsible for all the unhappiness
of modern life and for hinting at millenarian alternatives. But the alternative he ended up
embracing was the Nazism of Adolf Hitler. Of course, the Paris ultra-radicals who imbibed
the theories of '68 Philosophy were anything but right wing. Yet there was nothing in their
leftism to prevent a substantial number of them from tilting to an opposite extreme and
celebrating dictators like Mao Zedong, so long as the horrors of liberal civilization were
being opposed. For the whole point of postmodern theorizing was, after all, to adopt
positions that were so far out, so wild, as to blow your mind.
AKH0328 POSTMODERNISM UNDERMINES REASON AND TRUTH
Roger Trigg, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, RATIONALITY AND
SCIENCE, 1993, p.66.
On this understanding post-modernism is an attack on notions of reason and truth. It
dethrones science by attacking the very human rationality which has produced science.
Some may welcome the conclusion that science cannot monopolize human reason, but is
only one language game amongst many. They might, however, be more reluctant to accept
that science has only lost its authority because all human reason has been rendered
impotent. We can no longer legitimate any of our activities.
AKH0329 POSTMODERN RELATIVISM CAN'T DISTINGUISH SCIENCE FROM
FABLES
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.210.
Postmodern relativism undercuts any possible protest grounded on the notion of
objectivity. It entails a perspectivism that finds no basis for epistemological distinctions
between science and fables.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 28
AKH0330 POSTMODERNISM RESTS ON WHAT IT REJECTS--A GRAND THEORY
OF HISTORY
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.47-8.
To speak of post-modernity as superseding modernity appears to invoke that very thing
which is declared (now) to be impossible: giving some coherence to history and
pinpointing our place in it. Moreover, if Nietzsche was the principal author disconnecting
postmodernity from modernity, a phenomenon supposedly happening today, how is it
possible that he saw all this almost a century ago? Why was Nietzsche able to make such
a breakthrough without as he freely said, doing anything more than uncovering the hidden
presuppositions of the Enlightenment itself?
AKH0331 WE AREN'T ENTERING A POSTMODERN PERIOD CURRENTLY
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.3.
Rather than entering a period of post-modernity, we are moving into one in which the
consequences of modernity are becoming more radicalized and universalized than before.
Beyond modernity, I shall claim, we can perceive the contours of a new and different
order, which is "post-modern"; but this is quite distinct from what is at the moment called
by many "post-modernity."
AKH0332 MODERNITY ISN'T A FAILED PROJECT
Matei Calinescu, Indiana University, FIVE FACES OF MODERNITY, 1987, p.273.
In this speech the neo-Marxist Habermas identifies the notion of postmodernity with the
(neo)conservative position of those who believe that modernity has failed and that the
utopian impulses it gave rise to should therefore be suppressed. But modernity or the
"project of the Enlightenment," Habermas argues from the standpoint of his own
emancipatory philosophy, is not a failed project, only an unfinished one. What should be
rejected is not modernity, whose critical heritage as reappraised by the Frankfurt School
of Adorno, Horkheimer, or Benjamin is still a source of "emulation for the intellectual";
what should be rejected is the (neo)conservative ideology of postmodernity.
AKH0333 ENLIGHTENMENT IDEALS DON'T NEED TO BE ABANDONED
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, PROFILES AND CRITIQUES IN
SOCIAL THEORY, 1982, p.225.
I think it valid to say that social and political theory is currently going through a period of
transition, rather than terminal collapse. There is no need to release hold of 'modernism'
yet, to renounce the ideals of the Enlightenment as false gods to be replaced by a brutish
acquiescence in the reality of power.
AKH0334 DERRIDA IS THE CHARACTERISTIC POSTMODERN THINKER
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.206.
Derrida, who rarely even mentions "modernity" or "postmodernity," is nevertheless taken
to be the "postmodern" thinker par excellence.
AKH0335 POSTMODERNISM DEVALUES EVERYTHING
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.85.
Secondly, postmodernism, whether chiefly derived from one philosophical source or
drawing eclectically on a flock of them-Lyotard, Baudrillard in addition to Derrida and
Foucault-is, in its skepticism about everything save itself, an incarnation of the
anti-Philosopher's Stone. Everything it touches is drained of value, authority, validity, and
even the right to stand for what it has always stood for and to be understood as it has
always been understood.
AKH0336 THE POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVE PRECLUDES A POSITIVE
ALTERNATIVE
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.881.
Fisher goes on to argue that with the radicalized extension represented by postmodernism,
where the point is precisely to dismantle with no ground left, but only a multiplicity of
standpoints which amounts to no standpoint--an everywhere which is nowhere--the
enabling suspicion of the older tradition is extended and intensified into paranoia--and thus
becomes disabling. The difference is between a critical project which might choose to
exempt itself from presenting a positive alternative, and one which precludes the
possibility of a positive alternative.
AKH0337 POST-MODERNISM IS POLITICALLY REACTIONARY
Matei Calinescu, Indiana University, FIVE FACES OF MODERNITY, 1987, p.273.
What actually triggered the polemic was Habermas's attack on French "poststructuralism,"
defined as a conservative rejection of modernity and its central values of rationality and
universality. By suggesting that Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida are profoundly akin
to the group of thinkers known during the Weimar Republic as the Jungkonservativen
(Young Conservatives), Habermas wanted to stress their common descent not only from
Heidegger but ultimately from the most antimodern of modern philosophers, Friedrich
Nietzsche. Although not named in the Adorno Prize speech, a third French man, Jean
Francois Lyotard, was probably the main target of Habermas's criticism.

AKH0338 POSTMODERNISM REFLECTS A DANGEROUS NOSTALGIA
Andrew Cutrofello, St. Mary's College, SOCIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE, Spring
1993, p.94.
However, retrieval is one thing, and nostalgia another, and there is a disturbing nostalgia
lurking in most theories of the postmodern today. At its most benign, this nostalgia
functions (as I think it does in Habermas) as a wish that modern history could have turned
out differently, coupled with the sober acknowledgment that it did not. At its worst,
postmodern nostalgia functions as an undialectical wish to return to some idealized
conception of premodern reality. This is a dangerous nostalgia which finds its unlikely (or
maybe not so unlikely) paradigmatic expression in Heidegger's "Only a God can save us
now."
AKH0339 POSTMODERNISM SIMPLY REINFORCES CONSUMER CAPITALISM
Matei Calinescu, Indiana University, FIVE FACES OF MODERNITY, 1987, p.293-4.
One can now understand why postmodernism precisely by being "anti-aesthetic," by
blunting the powerful cutting edge of the aesthetic, ends up being less subversive than
modernism had been. As a domesticated kind of (anti)modernism, confined to an
unavoidably circular "textualism" and refusing to distinguish between the aesthetic and the
non-aesthetic, postmodernism cannot help but play, however unwittingly, the part of a
"reinforcer of the logic of consumer capitalism. The post-industrial (and culturally
postmodern) society in which we live, Jameson writes, has brought about "new types of
consumption; planned obsolescence; the penetration of advertising, television, and the
media to a hitherto unparalleled degree throughout society; . . . the growth of the great net
of superhighways and the arrival of automobile culture." Postmodernism, in this broad
scenario of a social mutation, is the cultural product of "the emergence of this new moment
of late, consumer or multinational capitalism. [Postmodernism's] formal features in many
ways express the deeper logic of this particular system."
AKH0340 POSTMODERNISM LEADS TO POLITICAL IMPOTENCY
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.88.
For the first time in modern American history, right-wing theorists seem on the point of
establishing themselves upon the ethical and philosophical high ground, thanks to the
postmodern contortions of the left. This fact, however has little penetrated left-academic
discourse; the entanglement of would-be progressive intellectuals with the conceptual
freak show of postmodernism continues to isolate and neutralize them, at least outside the
hothouses (i e, academic departments and conferences) in which they flourish. One will
cheer or deplore this fact as one's political tendencies dictate.
AKH0341 DERRIDA'S AND FOUCAULT'S KRITIK OF MODERNITY EMBODIES
TOTAL PESSIMISM
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.237.
In France, by contrast, chiefly in the schools of Foucault and Derrida, the antinomian
stance vis a vis the culture of modernity broke with every vestige of anthropological
optimism, with every positive appreciation of humanity or polity. Antinomianism without
Utopian ingredients became the rule.
AKH0342 POSTMODERNISM NEGLECTS PRACTICAL PROBLEMS
Craig Calhoun,. Director of UNC Program in Social Theory and Cross-Cultural Studies,
SOCIAL THEORY AND THE LAW, 1989, p.457-8.
Yet the postmodernist position is radically undermined by its refusal to enter into the world
of practical, material problems. What of value can postmodernism say about hunger in
Africa or unemployment in America's inner cities? Virtually nothing. The postmodernist
affirmation of the positive value of difference might, as a stimulus to change in other
theories, ultimately make for better theoretical understandings to inform such practical
dealings, but it cannot produce such understanding itself. Moreover as suggested above.
the critical dimension of postmodernism is challenged by its inability to ground normative
positions, an inability that is elevated into an affirmative refusal by some postmodernists.
AKH0343 ACADEMIC RADICALISM ISN'T REALLY SUBVERSIVE
Christopher Lasch, Professor of History, University of Rochester, THE REVOLT OF THE
ELITES, 1995, p.192-3.
The right and the left share another important assumption: that academic radicalism is
genuinely "subversive." Kimball takes the radical claims of the academic left at face value.
He does not object to the "tenured radicals" because they are more interested in tenure than
in radicalism. He objects to them because in his view, they use the security of their
academic position to attack the foundations of social order. "When the children of the
sixties received their professorships and deanships they did not abandon the dream of
radical cultural transformation; they set out to implement it. Now, . . . instead of attempting
to destroy our educational institutions physically, they are subverting them from within."
No doubt they would like to think so, but their activities do not seriously threaten corporate
control of the universities, and it is corporate control, not academic radicalism, that has
"corrupted our higher education." It is corporate control that has diverted social resources
from the humanities into military and technological research, fostered an obsession with
quantification that has destroyed the social sciences, replaced the English language with
bureaucratic jargon, and created a top-heavy administrative apparatus whose educational
vision begins and ends with the bottom line.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 29
AKH0344 THE CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY ENTAILS IRRATIONALISM AND
AMORALISM
Luc Ferry, Professor at the Sorbonne, RIGHTS--THE NEW QUARREL BETWEEN THE
ANCIENTS AND THE MODERNS, 1990, p.22.
If, as we have seen, the two basic 'faces' of modern metaphysics are reason (the principle
of reason) and free will (the ability to act in accordance to the representation of ends), the
phenomenological deconstructions of modernity run two risks, which they do indeed incur
in their less coherent versions-the risks of irrationalism and amoralism. I shall confine
myself to a brief description of them since their analysis is pursued in the succeeding
volume.
AKH0345 POSTMODERNISM REJECTS THE IDEA OF UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.72.
Contrasted to the Enlightenment ideal of a unified epistemology that discovers the
foundational truths of physical and biological phenomena and unites them with an accurate
understanding of humanity in its psychological, social, political, and aesthetic aspects,
postmodern skepticism rejects the possibility of enduring universal knowledge in any area.
It holds that all knowledge is local, or "situated," the product of interaction of a social
class, rigidly circumscribed by its interests and prejudices, with the historical conditions
of its existence. There is no knowledge, then; there are merely stories, "narratives," devised
to satisfy the human need to make some sense of the world. In so doing, they attack in
unacknowledged ways the interests, prejudices, and conceits of their devisers. On this
view, all knowledge projects are, like war, politics by other means.
AKH0346 POSTMODERNISM IGNORES LOGIC AND EVIDENCE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.175-6.
The postmodern left, however, has introduced a new rhetorical wrinkle that shields it from
such rebukes. They are ready, at need, to scorn the canons of logic, evidence, objectivity,
and coherence on which most of them used to depend for a living. For them, the life of the
mind is a dance on thin air.
AKH0347 POSTMODERN THOUGHT IGNORES REALITY IN FAVOR OF WORDS
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.74.
If one holds, as most postmodernists do, that "reality" is chimerical or at best inaccessible
to human cognition, and that all human awareness is a creature and a prisoner of the
language games that encode it, then it is a short step to the belief that mastery over words,
over terminology and lexicon, is mastery over the world. As Diggins says, "to the extent
that the Academic Left partook of various structuralist theories, reality eluded its
vocabulary. Such terms as 'power and hegemony' and 'domination and discourse' marked
a shift from labor to language in which text, speech, and other forms of communication
came to be seen as more refined systems of control, with power ubiquitous and
anonymous."2 In the cold light of day, such a creed seems pathetic as well as futile, a
desperate amalgam of solipsism and magical thinking. But the world of postmodern
thought is well provided with devices for keeping out the cold light of day.
AKH0348 POSTMODERNISM IS MAGICAL THINKING
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.191
Harris has leveled his guns at a very curious phenomenon indeed. The spell of postmodern
theory has lured its acolytes into a bizarre philosophical cul-d-sac, where "reality" is
effaced as a meaningful term and where representation, rhetoric, and discourse are the only
allowable phenomenological categories. Confronted by an epidemic that is all too grimly
real, these postulants are driven full circle into a giddy doctrine asserting that control over
representation and rhetoric, over language and imagery, will, of itself, dispel the menace
of AIDS. This, beneath its ostensibly up-to-date skeptical veneer, is purely magical
thinking. It recurs to the ancient confusion between names and things, between mention
and use. In a nearly literal sense, it encodes a faith in charms and magic words.
AKH0349 POSTMODERNISM IS PROPHETIC RATHER THAN ANALYTIC
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.104.
Whence, we must ask, does such grossly misplaced intellectual self-confidence come? The
smug, hermetic, self-referential atmosphere of politicized academic postmodernism
obviously has a great deal to do with it. In this milieu, there is not much thought given to
simple scientific accuracy. The caution and scrupulousness that working scientists are
conditioned to expect are swept aside, because, in the final analysis, postmodernist work
is in great measure prophetic and hortatory, rather than analytic it announces and cheers
on a sweeping "paradigm shift" within our civilization, a change that is supposed to
liberate us all.

AKH0350 POSTMODERNISM IGNORES THE FACTS AND LOGIC OF
PARTICULAR SUBJECTS
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.75.
The confidence of the postmodern cultural critic is the confidence of a generalizer who
excuses himself from many of the usual obligations of erudition. Under this dispensation,
a wide variety of disciplines may be addressed and pronounced upon without requiring a
detailed familiarity with the facts and logic around which they are organized. A recent
article by Heather MacDonald wryly analyzes this phenomenon, which, in its most
impudent form, generates scholarly essays that seem to have as their subject everything in
general and nothing in particular, and which, under the postmodernist regime, are equally
suitable for symposia in literature, history, sociology, or feminist theory. She writes
specifically about a recent forum devoted nominally to the history and analysis of
twentieth-century art, many of whose participants turned out to have no particular
knowledge thereof. This is not an anomaly-it comes closer to being characteristic of
scholarly life among contemporary humanists.
AKH0351 POSTMODERNISM IS IMPLACABLY HOSTILE TOWARD SCIENCE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.106.
We conclude that hostility to science is, after all, an inextricable element of these
postmodern philosophical excursions. It takes the form of the "good guys ( persons?)
versus bad guys" scenario that the critics impose relentlessly on the history and sociology
of science. It is mirrored in the remarkable arrogance with which postmodernists address
these issues. Virtually all of them claim to discern important intellectual themes and
political motifs in past and current science, themes and motifs that are quite invisible to the
scientists themselves. These supposed insights rest, as we have seen, on a technical
competence so shallow and incomplete as to be analytically worthless. Their arrogance,
then, is comparable to that of "creation scientists" in addressing evolutionary biology, or
to that of Galileo's persecutors within the Inquisition in their response to his cosmology.
AKH0352 POSTMODERNISM TOTALIZES ITSELF BY ATTACKING SCIENCE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.89.
The mentality of postmodernism has an emphatically totalizing component, even as it
pretends to denounce the totalizing propensities of whatever it wishes to attack. The
centrality of science to the contemporary world, its crucial role in shaping the material
conditions under which we live as well as many of the assumptions we bring into our
discussions of the world, guaranteed that sooner or later postmodern dialecticians would
feel bound to turn their guns on it.
AKH0353 POSTMODERNIST REJECTION OF SCIENCE UNDERMINES NEEDED
ANIMAL RESEARCH
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.200
If animal research is misleading anyway, if it exists only to make profits or to gratify the
ambitions of scientists trapped in a perverted system of rewards and incentives, why not
ban it and spare the poor animals all that suffering? Postmodernism, with its insistence that
science is "just another discourse," provides this impulse with a highly efficient lubricant.
That is the nub of the problem. The postmodern position, incorporated into the
sloganeering of animal rights militancy, is not only academic nonsense-it is concretely
dangerous nonsense. Animal subject research is, without any question, enormously
important to efficient medical practice, and its abandonment would entail incalculable
human costs.
AKH0354 POSTMODERNISM IS UTTERLY IMPOTENT IN DEALING WITH
SCIENCE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.95.
However, there are in contrast examples of attempts to deal with the same subject that rely
for their doctrine and methodology on the arcana of full-blown postmodern theory. The
results are grotesque. They illustrate both the megalomaniac pretentiousness and the utter
impotence of postmodernism under full sail as it attempts to engage itself with the world
of honest science.
AKH0355 POSTMODERN THINKERS ARE SCIENTIFIC INCOMPETENTS
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.80.
Even if we stick to mathematics alone, it is not hard to find other examples of postmodern
thinkers whose urge to pontificate on science far outruns their competence to do so. The
recent compendium ZONE 6-Incorporations is replete with examples. This is a volume of
meditations on science, technology, and culture by a throng of well-known postmodernists.
In perusing it, we find papers by Gilles Deleuze, Gilbert Simondon, Peter Eisenman,
Alluquere Roseanne Stone, Frederick Turner, and Manuel de Landa, wherein they attempt
to make references to deep mathematics-some of them at length, others just in passing. In
each case, there are amateurish errors or efforts to pass off mere verbal tinsel as
mathematical knowledge. Biology is similarly ill served.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 30
AKH0356 THERE IS NO DISTINCTIVELY POSTMODERN SCIENCE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.105.
By contrast, there is supposed to be an embryonic "postmodern" science that points to the
overthrow of the old order. This theme can be traced in the continued insistence that the
"chaos theory" postmodernists think they are talking about is "post-Newtonian" (even
though it is perfectly clear to the mathematically literate that Newtonian themes are central
to these new developments, whether they address Newtonian celestial mechanics or the
fractal geometry of the basins of attraction of the roots of a polynomial that appear when
Newton's method is applied in the complex plane). The "Newton" that postmodern cultural
critics are trying to escape is Blake's figment, not the preeminent mathematician and
physicist of the same name.
AKH0357 POSTMODERNISM IS ITSELF A GRAND THEORY
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.96.
Postmodernism in general and postmodern science in particular have come to liberate us
from repression. This mission is especially crucial since only postmodern science can save
us from the ecological catastrophe into which modern science is driving us: "Postmodern
science draws the conclusion that a new, postmodern paradigm is necessary, one which is
philosophically sophisticated, scientifically complex, ethically sensitive, spiritually aware,
and ecologically sane." The reader may be inclined to characterize these dicta as a Very
Grand Theory indeed, which would seem to subvert ab initio their self-proclaimed
postmodernity, within which there is supposed to be no Grand Theory.
AKH0358 THE TRUE POSTMODERN WOULDN'T ADVOCATE POSTMODERNISM
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
WORKING THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.237-8.
However, if the postmodern attitude is as I have described it, then the postmodern would
be inconsistent in thinking that postmodernism is the most advanced, most rational, or in
general, the only possible attitude. If there is no necessary progress in history, the
postmodern cannot claim a normative advantage in being later in time or a sign of the
future. Such a normative advantage is implied in the notion of "modernity," and is still
assumed by the late modern. But the postmodern seems to have abandoned the idea that
the present is necessarily better than the past, as well as any nostalgia for the past. So the
postmodern should not claim to be better or more advanced or more clever than the late
modern, and has no argument that the late modern should become a postmodern. Since the
postmodern could not be an advocate of postmodernism, I think that the label is not really
a useful one.
AKH0359 POSTMODERNISM CAN'T TRANSCEND SUBJECTIVITY
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.224.
For Habermas communicative action and rationality are the powerful magnetic poles of his
work. Everything he explores emanates from and is drawn back to these poles. His reading
of the philosophic discourse of modernity is that "postmodern" philosophic discourses are
caught within the aporias of a "philosophy of subjectivity" which is now exhausting itself.
These discourses-despite desperate protests to the contrary-have failed to break out of a
philosophy of subjectivity or consciousness. They have failed to make the paradigm shift
to a model of communicative dialogical action and rationality.
AKH0360 POSTMODERN FAITH IN THEORY IS TOTALIZING
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.38-9.
There is, for instance, an abiding cabalistic faith that excursions into theory, if pursued at
great enough length with sufficient intensity, will tease forth all the deepest truths of
human experience. This adds considerably to the impression, common outside of
academic-left circles, that the "critical theory" in which academic leftists take such delight
is a swamp of jargon, name dropping, logic chopping, and massive attempts to obliterate
the obvious. The irony is that this faith in the omnicompetence of theory runs particularly
strong in those who claim to abhor "totalizing" theories. "Both [Derrida and Foucault]
have, in different ways, actually stimulated a return to a form of scholasticism, to those
abstract and totalizing methods of the traditional Western humanist the new theory claimed
to reject."
AKH0361 POSTMODERNISM DOESN'T OFFER A PRIVILEGED POSITION
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1029-30.
Postmodernists, we think, are committed not only to the view that at any moment some
stance must be privileged, but to the view that it could be any available stance and that no
privilege is stabilized against dislodgment. If there can be no privilege over privileges, then
the claim for a privileged status vis a vis the other "jurisprudences," as critique of them all
rather than fellow target of criticism, is no less available to any other "jurisprudence" on
our list than it is to poststructuralism To claim otherwise-to insist on a privilege over
privileges-would be to restore a foundation. Poststructuralism, rejecting foundations, here
joins pragmatism: which stance stands as critique and which others stand as targets is
always and strictly a matter of (i) occasion or focus, and (ii) perspective or interest; it is
not a fixed or stable matter of conceptual structure or logical inference.

AKH0362 POSTMODERN THOUGHT IS JUST A PROVOCATION
Paul Berman, fellow, New York University Institute for the Humanities, DEBATING P.C.
1992, p.9.
The theories were modern art's extension into philosophy. They were the equivalent of
Finnegans Wake or canvases by Rothko, and in that respect they were artistically faithful
to the bleak twentieth-century spirit. But there was no point in asking whether these
theories were faithful to truth and reality in the ordinary sense of social science or
conventional philosophy. Super-brilliance was their panache, and the more super the
brilliance became the murkier became the ideas. The prose was characteristically mud, as
befitted a philosophy that regarded clarity and lucidity as engines of Western oppression.
Sometimes the theories were put-ons or jokes. Or the theories were fictions that claimed
to be nonfictions. They elevated puns into a literary genre. The truest class struggle in the
'68 sense was always the struggle between the hip and the unhip, and these theories were,
in short, the Das Kapital of hip. They were illegal thoughts, so to speak-"provocations, not
programs," in Allan Megill's phrase. Of course that will always be the subversive appeal
of '68 Philosophy.
AKH0363 ACADEMIC LANGUAGE IS AN EXERCISE IN MYSTIFICATION
Christopher Lasch, Professor of History, University of Rochester, THE REVOLT OF THE
ELITES, 1995, p.178.
But academic radicals, these days, are more interested in the defense of their professional
privileges against criticism from outside. Joan Scott of Princeton's Institute for Advanced
Study dismisses this criticism as the work of "disaffected scholars" and "marginal
intellectuals." Left-wing academics cannot be bothered to argue with opponents or to enter
into their point of view. They speak, with irritating complacency, as members of a
professional establishment that has given up the attempt to communicate with a broader
audience, either as teachers or as writers. They defend their incomprehensible jargon as the
language of "subversion," plain speech having been dismissed as an instrument of
oppression. "The language of clarity,'" they maintain, "plays . . . a dominant [role in a]
culture that cleverly and powerfully uses 'clear' and 'simplistic' language to systematically
undermine . . . complex and critical thinking."
AKH0364 POSTMODERNISM IS THE UNIFYING DOCTRINE OF THE ACADEMIC
LEFT
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.72.
It is fascinating that postmodernism, a point of view that must flirt continuously with
nihilism, has become so conspicuously identified with radical scholarship and campus
political activism on behalf of left-wing causes. As much as anything can be,
postmodernism is the unifying doctrine of the academic left, having largely supplanted
Marxism, except to the extent that the latter has been able to cover itself in postmodern
dress. In a new and highly politicized area such as women's studies, for instance, virtually
every scholar and student pays tribute to the supposed depth of postmodernist insight and
the richness of postmodernist methodology.
AKH0365 POSTMODERNIST KRITIK IS UNCONSTRUCTIVE DOGMA
Craig Calhoun. Director of UNC Program in Social Theory and Cross-Cultural Studies,
SOCIAL THEORY AND THE LAW, 1989, p.456-7.
The stance of the Crits, and of many other postmodernists. is somewhat like that of
stereotypical ex-Catholics-as rigidly antagonistic to the Church as they accuse the Church
of being dogmatic. Ultimately, many Crits and especially many other sorts of
postmodernists are not engaged in solving material problems about class society, or
practical problems of social justice. Rather they are engaged in trying to produce a space
for alternative identities.
AKH0366 NOT ALL HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.230-1.
On the other hand, there is evidence, strong to begin with and growing stronger over time,
that a number of perceived behavioral differences between males and females, especially
at an early age, are in fact innate and congenital. This inference is not easily impeached as
the warped product of sexist science, since many of the researchers who came up with it
were, in fact, women who would have been happy to reach the opposite conclusion. It is,
moreover, a fact whose political implications are generally negligible. In no way does it
imply the inadvisability of complete legal and social equality between the sexes.
Nonetheless feminists who fear the lurking dangers of essentialism are outraged and
frightened by this innocuous work. Apparently, no evidence, however strong, is to be
allowed to dent their conviction that all but the obvious anatomical differences between
men and women are "socially constructed." This proposition amounts to a credo, a virtual
article of faith, a test, in certain circles, of one's loyalty to feminist principles.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 31
AKH0367 CULTURAL CONSTRUCTIVISM IS REDUCTIONIST AND
SELF-CONTRADICTORY
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.56.
Cultural constructivism, at least in the full-blooded version of ideologues like Aronowitz,
is a relentlessly mechanistic and reductionistic way of thinking about things. It flattens
human differences, denies the substantive reality of human idiosyncrasy, and dismisses the
ability of the intellect to make transcendent imaginative leaps, in a way that O'Brien,
1984's master manipulator of consciousness, would cheerfully approve. According to the
constructivist canon, all are puppets of the temper of an age, and science is just another
inadvertent ratification of its ideological premises. Only the cultural constructivists
themselves (of course) are licensed to escape the intellectual tyranny of this invisible hand.
For their part, mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and biologists must all succumb.
AKH0368 BELIEF IN THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY IS AN
ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE REALITY ITSELF
Christopher Lasch, Professor of History, University of Rochester, THE REVOLT OF THE
ELITES, 1995, p.20.
Their belief in the "social construction of reality"-the central dogma of postmodernist
thought-reflects the experience of living in an artificial environment from which
everything that resists human control (unavoidably, everything familiar and reassuring as
well) has been rigorously excluded. Control has become their obsession. In their drive to
insulate themselves against risk and contingency-against the unpredictable hazards that
afflict human life-the thinking classes have seceded not just from the common world
around them but from reality itself.
AKH0369 POSTMODERN POLITICS CAN PRECLUDE MEANINGFUL
ENGAGEMENT
Andrew Cutrofello, St. Mary's College, SOCIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE, Spring
1993, p.105.
But must we view all action on behalf of others as a violation of their otherness? Suppose
I try to persuade the workers that they are being exploited; would I be guilty of trying to
speak on their behalf since I would be trying to persuade them that my view is the one
which they should adopt? Carried to an absurd extreme, as it is in William Corlett's attempt
to think through a Derridean politics, the postmodern categorical imperative paralyzes any
meaningful engagement with others.
AKH0370 EMPHASIS ON "DIFFERENCE" PROMOTES RACISM
Paul Berman, fellow, New York University Institute for the Humanities, DEBATING P.C.
1992, p.16.
It pains the admirers of Yale deconstruction and of race/ class/gender-ism when anyone
mentions the early career of de Man, the Yale critic, on the grounds that a young person's
early mistakes should not be used to hound his later achievements. Yet the controversy
over de Man and his youthful errors has had one merit at least, which is to give everyone
the opportunity to read some Nazi-style literary criticism, for instance de Man's
collaborationist article from 1941, "The Jews in Contemporary Literature," which has been
brought back into print. Now, here was an example of cultural analysis in which writers
were categorized on the basis of racial "difference," the Jews on one hand and the
Europeans on the other.
AKH0371 NOT ALL DIVERSITY SHOULD BE RESPECTED
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.226.
For Habermas the primary question is how one is to respond to this intensified
pluralization. His worry is that the celebration of plurality and difference all-too-easily
degenerates into a self-defeating relativism, contextualism, and "bad" historicism.
Habermas does provide an important corrective to those who uncritically celebrate
contingency, plurality, difference, and otherness. There are manifestations of otherness that
we legitimately seek to eliminate and destroy-when we are convinced the other we are
confronting is evil-like the evil of apartheid and fascism.
AKH0372 POSTMODERN RACE CONSCIOUSNESS PARALLELS OLD-STYLE
RACISM
Paul Berman, fellow, New York University Institute for the Humanities, DEBATING P.C.
1992, p.16-7.
Exactly what makes de Man's early reactionary harping on race different from the
postmodern, supposedly progressive harping on race today? It is argued that "race" in the
postmodern, sociological, progressive usage has nothing to do with "race" in the old,
reactionary, biological usage, and that only someone who is motivated by hostility or by
a stubborn unwillingness to entertain new ideas would detect in these up-to-date
progressive ideas a scent of old-fashioned reactionary rightism. Yet the distinction between
the postmodern ideas and the reactionary ones is not necessarily so clear-if only because,
among some of the deconstructionist masters of literary interpretation, there is a peculiar
inability to detect any Nazism at all in de Man's Nazi articles, which raises doubts about
the reliability of the new techniques. And because, in the movement for multiculturalism
that has emerged out of race/class/gender-ism, a touch of the young de Man's Euro-style
racial thinking does sometimes creep into the discussion, obviously not among the
sophisticated thinkers, who are embarrassed by the problem, but on the margins of the
movement. It was disturbing, for instance, but not terribly surprising, to discover a certain
inappropriate fixation on the Jews in the thinking of a couple of the professors who helped
draw up the proposed new multicultural public school social-studies curriculum in New
York State.

AKH0373 RESPECT FOR DIVERSITY REQUIRES A PRINCIPLE OF
UNIVERSALITY
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.226.
One of the most obfuscating aspects of "modern/postmodern polemics" is the way in which
universality is pitted against plurality and alterity. Even those who celebrate plurality and
difference-like Lyotard and Rorty-make an implicit appeal to universality-when, for
example they advocate a world in which there is a universal "letting be" where difference
is allowed to flourish.
AKH0374 POSTMODERNISM ALSO PRODUCES MARGINALIZATION
Andrew Cutrofello, St. Mary's College, SOCIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE, Spring
1993, p.103-4.
Obviously we should be cautious in making totalizing claims, and we should critique the
effects of marginalization that such claims produce. But in the discourse of postmodernist
politics, general statements about "others" and "marginalized subjects" produce the same
effects of marginalization as any other general statement.
AKH0375 POSTMODERN RESPECT FOR OTHERNESS JUST REPRODUCES THE
LIBERAL VALUE OF TOLERANCE
Andrew Cutrofello, St. Mary's College, SOCIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE, Spring
1993, p.106.
Carried to such an extreme--that is, to the point which White rightly critiques as an inactive
responsibility to otherness the postmodern imperative closes off the very openness to
otherness that it insists upon. After all, pushed to its obvious limit, the next question after
"How dare you speak for marginalized group x?" is "How dare you speak for me, this
particular individual?" What starts out as an absolute commitment to otherness ends in
being a degenerate affirmation of the isolated bourgeois individual the absolute otherness
of others that Hegel describes in the dialectic of the unhappy consciousness. It is just here
that we see how little difference there is between postmodernist insistence on respect for
otherness and the traditional liberal insistence on tolerance.
AKH0376 POSTMODERNISM IS INCREASINGLY OBSOLETE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.272.
Michael Rosenthal, in "What Was Postmodernism," suggests, with more relief than regret,
that the high-water mark of postmodernism has passed and that it is likely soon to be
regarded as a mere relic of the discontents of the eighties.
AKH0377 POSTMODERNISM IS OBSOLETE IN FRANCE
Paul Berman, fellow, New York University Institute for the Humanities, DEBATING P.C.
1992, p.10.
In Paris, the '68 theories had their day, which lasted well into the late seventies and
beyond. Then a new generation of writers came along, the people who were students in '68
but came into adulthood only in the calmer years that followed-writers like Ferry, Renaut,
Pascal Bruckner, Alain Finkielkraut (and writing in English, the late J. G. Merquior), who
worried about the mind-blowing ultraradicalism of the older generation. These younger
writers began to suspect that '68 Philosophy, in turning so ferociously against liberalism,
sometimes bore a closer relation to the old German romantic philosophies of the far right
(the cult of irrationalism, the eagerness to disparage universal ideas of rights, etc.) than
anyone seemed to imagine when the theories were in vogue. They worried that by carrying
skepticism to extremes, the '68 Philosophers were turning into a species of idiot, the sort
of people who can no longer make sensible judgments because they stumble around
wondering: Is that a door? Is that a window? The younger writers raised an eyebrow at the
muddy prose style, too, and suspected, as Merquior commented (citing Pope), that: Much
was believ'd, but little understood, and to be dull was constru'd to be good.
AKH0378 CONTEMPORARY FRENCH PHILOSOPHY REEMBRACES LIBERAL
HUMANISM
Paul Berman, fellow, New York University Institute for the Humanities, DEBATING P.C.
1992, p.10-1.
The younger writers set out to resurrect the very notions that '68 Philosophy was designed
to debunk-an admiration for Enlightenment reason, clarity, lucidity, and Western-style
freedoms. Their resurrections have sometimes leaned in a more leftish direction,
sometimes in a more conservative direction (whatever those terms might mean in today's
world). Either way, the drift toward humanism was unmistakable. Even a few of the elders
of the sixties, disturbed by the implications of their own doctrines, pulled back over the
course of the later seventies and the eighties. There were writers like Tzvetan Todorov, the
Paris literary theorist, who shifted camp altogether. And in the realm of ideas a new liberal
age, the era of human rights, was at hand-in Paris.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 32
AKH0379 POSTMODERNISM IS SIMPLY AN INTELLECTUAL FAD
Paul Berman, fellow, New York University Institute for the Humanities, DEBATING P.C.
1992, p.12-3.
Still, the sixties Paris ideas did establish some footholds in the United States, in the art
world, for instance, where radical posturing has a certain virtue-the more radical, the more
virtuous, if you do it well. But the biggest and most important of the footholds, the
foothold that has mattered most in the current debate, was in the humanities departments
of a handful of universities. French ideas established themselves in waves of fashion in
these departments during the course of the seventies and into the eighties. There was an
early vogue for the anthropological/ Marxist/linguistic ideas of Roland Barthes. Next came
a wave for the Heideggerian/linguistic ideas of Derrida, in the form of "deconstruction"
(meaning, interpreting literature in order to show the impossibility of a definite
interpretation). Then came a feminist wave for the Freudian/linguistic ideas of Lacan, and
after that a wave for Foucault.
AKH0380 POSTMODERNISM FREEZES US IN INTELLECTUAL PARANOIA
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.880.
Paranoia must be distinguished from the mature, skeptical view that not everything can be
taken at face value. Paranoia amounts to a refusal to take anything at face value. William
Bywater recently suggested that some postmodern literary criticism has come to resemble
a paranoid, rather than simply critical, posture. "Postmodernism's relentless refusal to
accept any description, theory, or state of consciousness at face value, its unswerving
insistence that what seems most clear and certain is least likely to be so, and its maneuvers
which demonstrate that stability in meaning or in sense of self must give way to eternal
slippage have all been cited as evidence of postmodernism's nihilistic and destructive
character.... The self which formerly was able to confront nothingness is now dissolved
into a concatenation of signifiers or a jumble of disconnected images. The hope which
might have sprung from the dissolution of the old values is rendered as suspect as those
old values themselves. Postmodernism does not refresh us with a sense of renewal, rather
we seem to be frozen with intellectual paranoia."
AKH0381 POSTMODERNISM DISSOLVES THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN
SUSPICION AND PARANOIA
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.880.
Linda Fisher intelligently extends Bywater's claim in her comparison of postmodernism
and the tradition of the "hermeneutics of suspicion" exemplified by Marx, Nietzsche, and
Freud. The subtle dialectic of the hermeneutics of suspicion and the hermeneutics of
belonging, elegantly represented in the famous exchanges between contemporary
Continental philosophers Jurgen Habermas and Hans-Georg Gadamer, is flattened by
postmodernism's radical quest to overturn received traditions. Consequently, at least some
postmodern efforts dissolve the important distinctions "between suspicion and paranoia,
limitation and abnegation, and, finally, destruction and self-destruction."
AKH0382 NIETZSCHE'S ETHIC IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
Francis Fukuyama, Rand Corp. Policy Consultant, THE END OF HISTORY AND THE
LAST MAN, 1992, p.313.
It is difficult for those of us who believe in liberal democracy to follow Nietzsche very far
down the road he takes. He was an open opponent of democracy and of the rationality on
which it rested. He hoped for the birth of a new morality that would favor the strong over
the weak, that would heighten social inequality and even promote a certain kind of cruelty.
AKH0383 NIETZSCHEAN RELATIVISM HELPED LEAD TO FASCISM
Francis Fukuyama, Rand Corp. Policy Consultant, THE END OF HISTORY AND THE
LAST MAN, 1992, p.333.
Nietzsche's relationship to German fascism has been debated at great length, and while he
can be defended from the narrow charges of being the forefather of National Socialism's
simpleminded doctrines, the relationship between his thought and Nazism is not accidental.
Just as in the case of his follower, Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche's relativism shot out all of
the philosophical props holding up Western liberal democracy, and replaced it with a
doctrine of strength and domination. Nietzsche believed the era of European nihilism,
which he was helping to inaugurate, would lead to "immense wars" of the spirit, objectless
wars whose only purpose was to affirm war itself.

AKH0384 POSTMODERNISM FAILS AS A THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
Ken Booth, professor of international relations, University of Wales, INTERNATIONAL
AFFAIRS, 1995, p.116.
Fifth: the international politics of relativism/post-modernism is undermined by its own
critique. Postmodernism is an anti-metanarrative metanarrative. Its political logic is that
of universal toleration (once a bold and original idea, and still not universal). If one
scratches a committed post-modernist one will almost certainly find a comfortably off
Western urban liberal. Those who live against the wall, or who have emancipated
themselves from such a position, do not hold these views. At British International Studies
Association conferences, we do not have panels endorsing post-modern ethics organized
by formerly footbound Chinese women. Nor are they organized by those ANC supporters
who identified with the metanarrative and world-wide political movement against racism.
The reason for this is obvious. and relates to the fact that post-modernism-certainly that
of a doctrinaire variety-does not deliver an ethics for the emancipation of victims across
the world. Therefore, as long as the world is full of victims, it is an approach which will
not become universal.
AKH0385 WE'RE EXPERIENCING THE RADICALIZATION OF MODERNITY, NOT
POST-MODERNITY
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.51.
The break with providential views of history, the dissolution of foundationalism, together
with the emergence of counterfactual future-oriented thought and the "emptying out" of
progress by continuous change, are so different from the core perspectives of the
Enlightenment as to warrant the view that far-reaching transitions have occurred. Yet
referring to these as post-modernity is a mistake which hampers an accurate understanding
of their nature and implications. The disjunctions which have taken place should rather be
seen as resulting from the self-clarification of modern thought, as the remnants of tradition
and providential outlooks are cleared away. We have not moved beyond modernity but are
living precisely through a phase of its radicalisation.
AKH0386 THE MODERN/POSTMODERN DISTINCTION IS UNILLUMINATING
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.205.
Although these passages give some indication of the "postmodern" mood, it is becoming
increasingly evident that the terms "modern" and "postmodern" are not only vague,
ambiguous, and slippery, they have been used in conflicting and even contradictory ways.
Even when this confusion is acknowledged there has been a strong temptation to go on
using them, to slide into a quasi-essentialism where we talk as if there are a set of
determinate features that mark off the "modern" from the "postmodern." The trouble is that
nobody seems to agree about what these distinguishing characteristics are. My own
conviction is that we have reached a stage of discussion where these labels (and their
cognates) obscure more than they clarify-that it is better to drop these terms from our
"vocabularies," and to try to sort out the relevant issues without reifying these labels.
AKH0387 MODERN AND POST-MODERN ARE MEANINGLESS EXPRESSIONS
Leszek Kolalowski, Oxford philosopher, MODERNITY ON ENDLESS TRIAL, 1990, p.6.
Having no clear idea what modernity is, we have recently tried to escape forward from the
issue by talking about postmodernity (an extension or an imitation of the somewhat older
expressions postindustrial society, postcapitalism, etc.). I do not know what postmodern
is and how it differs from premodern, nor do I feel that I ought to know. And what might
come after the postmodern? The post-postmodern, the neo-postmodern, the neo-
antimodern?
AKH0388 THE CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY IS FUTILE
Leszek Kolalowski, Oxford philosopher, MODERNITY ON ENDLESS TRIAL, 1990,
p.11.
The critique of modernity, whether literary or philosophical, might be seen, in its immense
variety, as a self-defense organ of our civilization, but so far it has failed to prevent
modernity from advancing at an unprecedented speed.
AKH0389 IT'S ABSURD TO OPPOSE MODERNITY IN ITS TOTALITY
Leszek Kolalowski, Oxford philosopher, MODERNITY ON ENDLESS TRIAL, 1990,
p.12.
It would be silly, of course, to be either "for" or "against" modernity tout court, not only
because it is pointless to try to stop the development of technology, science, and economic
rationality, but because both modernity and antimodernity may be expressed in barbarous
and antihuman forms. The Iranian theocratic revolution was clearly antimodern, and in
Afghanistan it is the invaders who carry in various ways the spirit of modernity against the
nationalist and religious resistance of poor tribes. It is trivially true that very often the
blessings and the horrors of progress are inseparably tied to each other, as are the
enjoyments and the miseries of traditionalism.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 33
AKH0390 MODERNITY IS AN ARBITRARY CONCEPT
Leszek Kolalowski, Oxford philosopher, MODERNITY ON ENDLESS TRIAL, 1990,
p.6-7.
How far back modernity may be extended depends, of course, on what we believe
constitutes the meaning of the notion. If it is big business, rational planning, the welfare
state, and the subsequent bureaucratization of social relationships, the extent of modernity
is to be measured in decades rather than centuries. If we think, however, that the
foundation of modernity is in science, it would be proper to date it from the first half of the
seventeenth century, when the basic rules of scientific inquiry were elaborated and codified
and scientists realized-thanks mainly to Galileo and his followers-that physics was not to
be conceived as a report from experience but rather as an elaboration of abstract models
never to be perfectly embodied in experimental conditions. Yet nothing prevents us from
probing more deeply into the past: the crucial condition of modern science was the
movement toward the emancipation of secular reason from revelation, and the struggle for
the independence of the faculties of arts from those of theology in medieval universities
was an important part of this process. The very distinction between natural and divinely
inspired knowledge, as it was worked out in Christian philosophy from the eleventh
century onwards, was, in its turn, the conceptual foundation of this struggle, and it would
be difficult to decide which came first: the purely philosophical separation of the two areas
of knowledge or the social process whereby the intellectual urban class with its claims to
autonomy was established. Shall we then project our "modernity" onto the eleventh century
and make St. Anselm and Abelard its (respectively unwilling and willing) protagonists?
There is nothing conceptually wrong with such an extensions but there is nothing very
helpful about it either.
AKH0391 MODERNITY CAN BE REDEEMED BY COMMUNICATIVE
RATIONALITY
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.212.
Habermas's entire project can be conceived of as a rethinking and rewriting of the Dialectic
of Enlightenment. Habermas, like his mentors, has been alert to the self-destructive
tendencies unleashed by the Enlightenment. But against them he argues that we need a
more differentiated analysis of the conflicting tendencies of modernity and the
Enlightenment legacy-one that does justice to the powerful tendencies of the growth and
spread of systems rationality and those fragile practices in which we can still discern the
transcending power of communicative rationality.
AKH0392 KRITIK NEGLECTS THE RATIONAL POTENTIAL OF MODERN
CULTURE
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.259.
Habermas's particular diagnosis of the centrality of the aesthetic is up to now the best
discussion of postmodern and poststructuralist theory. Its advantage over those who
correctly note the aestheticist nature of Kulturkritik, but leave it at that, is that unlike them
Habermas sees that aestheticism, as far as cognitive standards go, is more of a problem
than a solution. Moreover, as he is at pains to stress, aesthetocentric thought, whether in
Nietzsche himself or in Heidegger, Foucault or Derrida, overlooks the positive rational
potential of modern culture-its humanizing, emancipatory horizon.
AKH0393 THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERNITY IS NOT
HISTORICALLY INEVITABLE
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.212.
Habermas is far more dialectical than Horkheimer and Adorno. For the overwhelming
thrust of the Dialectic of Enlightenment is negative-it is a dark narrative of ineluctable
self-destruction. But in a more dialectically nuanced manner. Habermas shows that our
present situation, and the future possibilities open to us are systematically ambiguous.
Whether we will some day live in the cosmic night of nihilism or restore a proper balance
between communicative and systems rationality is still an open question. The "colonization
of the lifeworld by systems rationality" is the most powerful tendency of advanced
technological societies. But this tendency is not the manifestation of a logic of history that
is working itself out "behind our backs." The promise of modernity is still an unfinished
project-a project whose realization is dependent upon our present praxis.
AKH0394 COMMUNITY HASN'T DECLINED
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.116.
The idea of the decline of community has been effectively criticised in the light of
empirical research into city neighbourhoods, and many have drawn upon such
investigations in order to challenge these two positions. Thus in criticising Louis Wirth's
interpretation of the anonymous nature of urban life, Claude Fischer has sought to show
that modern cities provide the means of generating new forms of communal life, largely
unavailable in premodern settings. According to the proponents of this third view,
communal life either manages to survive under modern circumstances or actively becomes
resurgent.

AKH0395 THE REJECTION OF FOUNDATIONALISM IS AN UNDERSTANDING OF
MODERNITY
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.48.
It is difficult to resist the conclusion that the break with foundationalism is a significant
divide in philosophical thought, having its origins in the mid- to late nineteenth century.
But it surely makes sense to see this as "modernity coming to understand itself" rather than
the overcoming of modernity as such.
AKH0396 THE MODERN WORLD IS PHYSICALLY SAFER THAN THE
PREMODERN
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.107.
Modern urban milieux are often considered dangerous because of the risk of being attacked
or mugged. But nor only is this level of violence characteristically minor as compared with
many pre-modern settings; such milieux are only relatively small pockets within wider
territorial areas, in which security against physical violence is vastly greater than ever was
possible in regions of comparable size in the traditional world.
AKH0397 LIFE IN PREMODERNITY WAS LESS SECURE THAN LIFE IN
MODERNITY
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.105-6.
To specify these various contexts of trust in premodern cultures is not to say that
traditional settings were comforting and psychologically snug, while modern ones are not.
There are some definite respects in which levels of ontological insecurity are higher in the
modern world than in most circumstances of pre-modern social life, for reasons I shall try
to identify. Yet the settings of traditional cultures were in a generic way fraught with
anxieties and uncertainties. I refer to these, taken together, as the environment of risk
characteristic of the pre-modern world.
AKH0398 LIFE IN THE PREMODERN WORLD WAS NASTY, BRUTISH, AND
SHORT
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.106.
The risk environment of traditional cultures was dominated by the hazards of the physical
world. Hobbes's celebrated observation that, in a state of nature, human life would be
"nasty, brutish, and short" is not inaccurate if it is read as a description of the real life
circumstances of many individuals in pre-modern cultures. Rates of infant mortality as well
as death of women in childbirth were by modern standards extremely high. For those who
survived childhood, life expectancy was relatively low and many people suffered from
chronic illnesses as well as being vulnerable to infectious diseases of different kinds. There
is some evidence that hunters and gatherers, especially those inhabiting naturally bountiful
areas, may have been less subject to infectious illness than individuals living in fixed local
communities or urban areas in larger pre-modern societies, but even they were certainly
not free from the range of endemic illnesses which abounded in pre-modern times. All
types of pre-modern social order were affected, often in drastic ways, by the vagaries of
climate and had little protection against natural disasters such as floods, storms, excessive
rainfall, or drought.
AKH0399 ETHNIC CONFLICT SHOWS THE EVIL OF REJECTING UNIVERSALISM
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.203
As we write, we are confronted with the spectacle of a revived ethnic tribalism in Europe,
where Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Moslems rape and murder one another in the charnel
house of the former Yugoslavia; we may soon see something similar between Balts and
Russians, Russians and Romanians, Romanians and Magyars, or Magyars and Slovaks.
The murderous hatreds that rend Northern Ireland no longer seem anomalous. Elsewhere,
the racial and religious chauvinism that pits Sikh against Hindu against Moslem, Sinhalese
against Tamil, Arab Sudanese against black Sudanese goes on unabated. We might expect
the humanitarian conscience to be especially aware, in such a time, of the horrors lurking
in tribalism. Yet in the decidedly less lethal venue of academic life, we find that tribalism,
in one form or another, is the most-favored project of leftist ideologues, who appear to
have abandoned, for the moment, the universalism that once shone through even the
dreariest left-wing can't.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 34
AKH0400 REPUDIATING MODERNITY REJECTS ALL DEMOCRATIC VALUES
Luc Ferry, Professor at the Sorbonne, RIGHTS--THE NEW QUARREL BETWEEN THE
ANCIENTS AND THE MODERNS, 1990, p.20
The political motivation for a return to classical thinking is deeply antidemocratic. Given
that democracy seems not incompatible with Hellenism, since democracy found its first
adherents in ancient Greece, I should make clear what I mean by "antidemocratic." First,
classical political philosophy (in Strauss's sense), insofar as it assumed that politics is an
imitation of the natural order, was inegalitarian:--in both its cosmology and politics--was
naturally hierarchical: just as "`above' is not anything you like, but where fire, and what
is light move [to]. Likewise, `below' is not anything you like, but where heavy and earth-
like things move [to]," and "every place should have `above' and `below,' and . . . each
body should naturally move to and remain in its proper places, and this it must do either
above or below," individuals are similarly and naturally--i.e., irreversibly--destined to
occupy different hierarchical stations in the social body--of which Plato's Republic is the
most striking example. Apart from such a cosmology, Greek slavery is unthinkable; on the
basis of such a cosmology, slavery is defensible.
AKH0401 THE CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY CAN'T EFFECTIVELY COUNTER
TOTALITARIANISM
Luc Ferry, Professor at the Sorbonne, RIGHTS--THE NEW QUARREL BETWEEN THE
ANCIENTS AND THE MODERNS, 1990, p.21
The critics of modernity then find themselves in an acutely ironic situation when they
claim to be attacking totalitarianism: after analyzing the plan for absolute mastery of the
social, they condemn the will to transparency that leads to the inevitable terroristic goal of
suppressing all social division; but once they have performed this "deconstruction"--
analogous at every point to the one conducted against metaphysics--, they remain
resolutely unable, precisely because of the critique of subjectivity on which they based
their critique of totalitarianism, to think of something like human rights.
AKH0402 THE INDICTMENTS OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALITY NEGLECT
ITS DEMOCRATIC DIMENSION
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.208-9
But at first, almost instinctively, and later, with increasing theoretical finesse, Habermas
argued that this monolithic portrait of the totalitarian character of Enlightenment rationality
was overdrawn. It failed to do justice to those philosophic and historical tendencies--also
rooted in the Enlightenment--that gave rise to democratic public spaces in which a
different type of communal rationality was manifested. At a deeper level there was a failure
to do justice to what Habermas first called symbolic interaction (and later called
communicative action), and its distinctive type of rationality--the type of action that is
oriented to mutual understanding and consensual action rather than to the goals of
efficiency and success.
AKH0403 THE ENLIGHTENMENT LEGACY CAN BE REHABILITATED
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, Haverford College, HABERMAS AND
MODERNITY, 1985, p 31
One might epitomize Habermas's entire intellectual project and his fundamental stance as
writing a new Dialectic of Enlightenment--one which does full justice to the dark side of
the Enlightenment legacy, explains its causes but nevertheless redeems and justifies the
hope of freedom, justice, and happiness which still stubbornly speaks to us. The project
of modernity, the hope of Enlightenment thinkers, is not a bitter illusion, not a naive
ideology that turns into violence and terror, but a practical task which has not yet been
realized and which can still orient and guide our actions.
AKH0404 HABERMAS OFFERS A VALID EMANCIPATORY CRITIQUE
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.881
Paul Ricouer popularized the term "hermeneutics of suspicion." See Paul Ricouer, Freud
and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation 32-36 (Denis Savage trans,, 1970); see Fisher,
supra note 8, at 107 n.5 (recognizing Paul Ricouer as an authority on the hermeneutics of
suspicion). Jurgen Habermas has provided the most careful translation of this tradition into
a modern conception of emancipatory critique.
AKH0405 THE ENLIGHTENMENT DIDN'T DOGMATICALLY BELIEVE IN
EMPIRICISM
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.49
Although most regarded the evidence of our senses as the most dependable information
we can obtain, even the early Enlightenment thinkers were well aware that such "evidence"
is always in principle suspect. Sense data could never provide a wholly secure base for
knowledge claims.

AKH0406 ENLIGHTENMENT VALUES ARE NEEDED TO EFFECTIVELY
CRITIQUE OUR CULTURE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.218
Yet the mind framed by the ethic of the Enlightenment has no natural path of retreat. The
very clarity of vision, the insistence on calling things by their true names, that defines us
a heirs to the Enlightenment makes it impossible for us (that is to say, the honest among
us) to disguise the rancid corners of our history under gaudy banners of nationalism,
religion, progress, or justice. The very scope of the knowledge we have insisted upon rules
out a comforting ignorance. We are bound to Enlightenment values--the universality of
moral principles, the sanctity of individual volition, a detestation of wanton cruelty--and
yet we have no choice but to indict the very civilization that begat those values as it goes
careening through time leaving pain, death, bewilderment, the wreckage of aboriginal
tribes and of rain forests in its wake. But again, the terms of that indictment can be spelled
out only in the language of those values. This, and not the mincing word games of the
deconstructionists, is the true aporia.
AKH0407 EVEN FOUCAULT ACCEPTS ENLIGHTENMENT PRINCIPLES
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.22
Foucault was working toward the end of his life on an essay also called `What is
Enlightenment?' Here he insists that he is not a `counter-enlightenment' thinker, if by that
is meant someone who denies that `we still depend in large part' on the enlightenment.
Foucault recognizes that his efforts to show the extent to which the present is historically
conditioned by the enlightenment are guided by the enlightenment's own `principle of a
critique and a permanent creation of ourselves in our autonomy'. So while he still wishes
to criticize humanism for borrowing a specific theological and metaphysical conception
of human nature, he admits that he cannot claim to stand outside the enlightenment
tradition itself.
AKH0408 18TH CENTURY THOUGHT WAS FLEXIBLE AND BALANCED
H. Stuart Hughes, Stanford historian, CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIETY, 1977, p.27.
"More than ever before, it seems to me the time is . . . ripe for applying . . . self-criticism
to the present age, for holding up to it that bright clear mirror fashioned by the
Enlightenment . . . The age which venerated reason and science as man's highest faculty
cannot and must not be lost . . . for us. We must find a way not only to see that age in its
own shape but to release again those original forces which brought forth and molded" it.
This profession of faith by the greatest contemporary historian of eighteenth-century
philosophy I should like to make my own. and in so doing I associate myself with his view
of the Enlightenment--a view that stresses the open, undogmatic understanding for
"sensibility" and "the passions." Thus re-established in it original outlines the philosophy
of the enlightenment appears far less intellectualistic than as usually characterized, and its
presumed fondness for mechanistic and materialistic explanations and naive faith in human
progress stand revealed as largely the product of subsequent critical distortion.
AKH0409 ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM SHOULD BE MODIFIED BUT NOT
REJECTED
H. Stuart Hughes, Stanford historian, CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIETY, 1977, p.28.
What I mean to suggest rather is that certain ethical postulates characteristic of the
eighteenth century--chief among them the insistence, where possible, on rational solutions
and humane behavior--represent an abiding legacy of overriding importance: as a guide
for intellectuals no subsequently enunciated principles have been anywhere near as
effective Obviously it is our privilege--and duty--to accept as our own the nineteenth- and
twentieth-century criticisms that have corrected the epistemology and psychology of the
Enlightenment to the extent that they actually were shallow and mechanistic. And after the
horrors of the past four decades it would be difficult to retain the full eighteenth-century
confidence in man's potentialities for good. Yet as guides to conduct and intellectual
investigation we can reject the principles of the Enlightenment only at our peril.
AKH0410 THE ENLIGHTENMENT PERSPECTIVE IS INESCAPABLE
H. Stuart Hughes, Stanford historian, CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIETY, 1977, p.27.
Throughout the study the point of reference, the base line from which the analysis will
proceed, is the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. My own position is quite
consciously "eighteenth century." I believe that we are all to a greater or lesser extent
children of the Enlightenment, and that it is from this standpoint that civilized members
of Western society--the heirs to a humane tradition more than two centuries old--almost
necessarily judge the political and social movements of their own time.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 35
AKH0411 THE GREATEST CRITICS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT ACCEPTED ITS
FUNDAMENTAL VALUES
H. Stuart Hughes, Stanford historian, CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIETY, 1977, p.29.
And it will be our further responsibility to distinguish between different types of criticism
of the Enlightenment. If the greatest minds of the early twentieth century, such as Freud
and Weber and Croce, were actually "loyal" critics, some of those of second rank may
properly be described as "disloyal": Sorel is the obvious example. Hence it is important to
distinguish between those who in scoffing at the Enlightenment were consciously attacking
the humane values of the West, and those who, by probing more deeply the problem of
human motivation and the structure of society, sought to restate that tradition in terms that
would carry conviction to a skeptical generation.
AKH0412 FREUDIAN PSYCHOLOGY VINDICATES THE ENLIGHTENMENT
PROJECT
H. Stuart Hughes, Stanford historian, CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIETY, 1977, p.152.
Thus from one standpoint his discoveries seemed to throw into the discard the optimistic
anticipations inherited from the Enlightenment. From another standpoint, they were a
triumphant vindication of those same anticipations. The paradox of the matter is that
"Freud, the man who above all others is supposed to have destroyed the justification of
Enlightenment rationalism, was the greatest child of the Enlightenment which our century
has known." For "his fundamental assumption" was "that the search for truth must never
stop, that only knowledge allows reason to function, and that only reason can make us
free." Freud's own career offered the best possible proof that his faith in human reason was
no mere illusion. For by the use of his faculties of observation and analysis he added more
to our knowledge about humanity than any other thinker of our time.
AKH0413 POST-STRUCTURALISM FOCUSES ON FRAGMENTATION,
NEGLECTING INTEGRATION AND WHOLENESS
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.96
Lacan's work is significant because it helps capture the fragility and fragmentation of the
self. In so doing, however--in common with post-structuralist thought in general--it
focuses primarily upon one type of process, which is in actuality complemented by
countertendencies towards integration and wholeness. Object-relations theory is
informative because it analyses how the individual obtains a sense of coherence and how
this connects with reassurance in the "reality" of the external world. in my view, such an
approach is (or can be made) consonant with a Wittgensteinian view of the "givenness" of
the world of objects and events, which can be "experienced" only as it is lived in and
which is intrinsically refractory to being put into words.
AKH0414 POSTSTRUCTURALISM RESPONDS TO A CRISIS OF ITS OWN
INVENTION
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.243
Post-structuralism essentially makes gestures towards an apocalyptic sense of a crisis
largely of its own invention. The whole thing clearly belongs to the kind of problem
analysed by Frank Kermode in a crucial chapter (`The modern apocalypse') of his book
The Sense of an Ending (1967). Kermode's point was to distinguish between early and late
modernisms, showing how the latter, having rekindled `eschatological pressures', breathes
an ethos of `schismatic nihilism'; but he acknowledged that `the sense of an ending' is `as
endemic to . . . modernism as apocalyptic utopianism is to political revolution '; then--
apropos of Pound's fascist leanings--he spoke of a `a failure' or `betrayal' of clerical
scepticism.
AKH0415 POSTSTRUCTURALISM BETRAYS THE KRITIK BY ABANDONING
CRITICAL ARGUMENT
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.243
Building on this we could say that when, via post-structuralism, modernist ideology
invades philosophy (in which we called the literization of thought), the 'modern
apocalypse' turns overtly nihilistic. As for the new trahison des clercs, it consists less in
embracing spurious political millenarisms than in betraying critique through crisis-
mongering; it is a betrayal of critical scepticism in that it abandons critical argument and
shuns debate.
AKH0416 POSTSTRUCTURALIST THOUGHT IS POLITICALLY DEBILITATING
Paul R. Gross, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and Norman Levitt,
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.82.
For its part, Foucauldian analysis despite the tender-heartedness of some of its instincts,
seems equally to lead to resignation and quietism. If consciousness is such a prisoner of
power--and Foucault seems much more gloomy than Marx in this respect--then hopes for
a break with the oppressive past must be futile indeed. Notes Alan Ryan, Princeton
professor of politics: "It is, for instance, pretty suicidal for embattled minorities to embrace
Michel Foucault, let alone Jacques Derrida. The minority view was always that power
could be undermined by truth . . . Once you read Foucault as saying that truth is simply an
effect of power, you've had it. . .

AKH0417 POSTSTRUCTURALISM FALSELY ASSUMES THE ROTTENNESS OF
OUR CULTURE
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.240
By the same token, post-structuralist theory should be prepared to accept the possibility
that its One Big Thesis--the massive rottenness of our culture--is a creative fake. Hence the
invariable phoniness of its thundering against Western (that is modern, enlightened)
values: it must sound hollow, since it is all a construct rather than a record of a real
situation. In any case, how can such a school of thought, embattled as it is against all
notions of objective truth, ever convince us that its picture of our cultural predicament is
the right one? Karl Kraus wryly dubbed psychoanalysis the illness for which it purports
to be a cure. Similarly, nihilist theory might be described as the cultural crisis of which it
deems itself to be a diagnosis.
AKH0418 POSTSTRUCTURALISM IS INTELLECTUALLY FRIVOLOUS
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.243-4
As Jacques Bouveresse has recently noted, it is as if this form of philosophy deliberately
advanced further and further towards amateurism and frivolity--precisely what those who
are concerned with scientific or argumentative standards blame much continental
philosophy for. Not surprisingly, this fuite en avant from intellectual responsibility reaches
unheard-of heights of conceptual laxity: question-begging, fallacies and non-sequiturs
reign unimpeded. For instance, in their Nietzchean epistemology, the post-structuralists
eagerly uphold the idea that there are no thoroughly neutral independent facts, all
observations being already theory-laden and thus bound to a prior interpretation of reality.
But the same thinkers seem keen to conclude, from the premiss that one needs a theory
whenever one knows a fact, that facts are actually created by our theories. However, it does
not in the least follow that because our knowledge of the world presupposes interests and
values the world itself is therefore but a product or a projection of those values and
interests.
AKH0419 POST-STRUCTURALISTS SKEPTICISM IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkeley English prof, SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.xvii-xvii.
Moreover, as E. D. Hirsch, Jr. (1967, 1976) and others have explained, the vanguard
position of cognitive nihilism can only be managed through a logical trick, one that Gerald
Graff has named the "Postructuralist Two-Step." In step one, the theorist asserts a total
undecidability between propositions, and anyone who doubts his claim is accused of being
stuck in the outmoded Cartesian dualism of subject and object, whereby the facts of the
world are innocently thought to lie "out there." But since the theorist is himself a subject
making a claim that he wants to be deemed objectively true, he must take a discreet hop
toward the cognitive center. In step two, then, he implies that for himself alone the truth
is accessible after all, thanks merely to his watchfulness against the biases he finds in
others.
AKH0420 POST-STRUCTURALISM IS DOGMATIC AND ANTI-EMPIRICAL
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkeley English prof, SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.168-9.
Of course the direct intellectual inspiration for most theoriticism has come from such
French thinkers as Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Lacan, Althusser, Foucault, and Derrida,
representing various currents of structuralism and poststructuralism. Anglo-American
academics, who seem only dimly aware that structuralism became vieux jeu in Paris
shortly after they discovered it around 1966, continue to draw liberally on both structuralist
and poststructuralist authorities. In doing so they have absorbed a dogmatism of
intellectual style that is plainly apparent in their sources. For, while the gurus of
theoreticism differ sharply among themselves, in another sense they are much alike: all of
them neglect or openly dismiss the principle of intersubjective skepticism, the core of any
empirical commitment.
AKH0421 PRAGMATISM IS THE BEST WAY OUT OF THE PRESENT
INTELLECTUAL IMPASSE
Christopher Lasch, Professor of History, University of Rochester, THE REVOLT OF THE
ELITES, 1995, p.14
The trouble is academia, however, derives not from the absence of secure foundations but
from the belief (shared, it must be repeated, by both parties to this debate( that in their
absence the only possible outcome is a skepticism so deep that it becomes
indistinguishable from nihilism. That this is not, in fact, the only possible outcome would
have been abundantly clear to Dewey, and the revival of pragmatism as an object of
historical and philosophical study--one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dismal
picture--holds out some hope of a way out of the academic impasse.
AKH0422 DECONSTRUCTION IS NIHILISTIC
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.85
Notes Vincent Pecora, a literary critic of emphatic left-wing sympathies but scornful of
deconstruction and its political consequences: "To many of Derrida's critics, the
deconstructive rejection of humanism and the Enlightenment has seemed mere nihilism.
But it is precisely this anti-`Western' stance that has been the key, I think, to the influence
Derrida's work has had on a broad spectrum of the academic left."
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 36
AKH0423 DECONSTRUCTION IS INTELLECTUALLY CONFORMIST, NOT
INNOVATIVE
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.89
The temper of deconstructionist criticism is, in fact, remarkable for its conformism, rather
than the reverse; deconstructive writings tend to go over the same ground and use the same
vocabulary (logocentrism, difference, demystifying, etc.) without substantial modification
or fresh analysis on each occasion. these are not the signs of a genuinely open,
intellectually probing new movement.
AKH0424 DECONSTRUCTION IS POLITICALLY INEFFECTUAL AND
REACTIONARY
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.83
Even those among leftist intellectuals who have in part accepted the stance or methodology
characteristic of postmodernism are left with a degree of unease. Alexander J. Argyros, is
the statement of purpose that begins his book, flatly asserts: "Since it is essentially a
negative methodology, when deconstruction is called upon to address concrete issued, such
as political ones, its penchant for eliding commitment and its resistance to postulating
scales of value render it ineffectual at best and reactionary at worst."
AKH0425 WE SHOULD BOTH DECONSTRUCT AND POLITICALLY ACT
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.218
Derrida declares "all of our political codes and terminologies still remain fundamentally
metaphysical, regardless of whether they originate from the right or the left." But this still
leaves open the question whether it is even possible to imagine a "political code" that is
not metaphysical--at least in the "objectionable" sense of metaphysical. Derrida himself
is not clear whether this is possible. When asked again whether he thinks this implies
inaction and noncommitment, he answers: Not at all. But the difficulty is to gesture in
opposite directions at the same time: on the one hand to preserve a distance and suspicion
with regard to the official political codes governing reality; on the other, to intervene here
and now in a practical and engaged manner, whenever the necessity arises. This position
of dual allegiance, in which I personally find myself, is one of perpetual uneasiness. I try
where I can to act politically while recognizing that such action remains incommensurate
with my intellectual project of deconstruction.
AKH0426 DECONSTRUCTION FAILS TO OFFER ALTERNATIVE IDEAS
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.41-2.
Perhaps the greatest general weakness of the deconstructive pattern of thinking is visible
here--the tendency to place greatest emphasis on "putting in question" a given view,
instead of moving on to search for a more viable idea representing a new and higher level
of thought.
AKH0427 THE KRITIK RESTS ON A FALSE BELIEF IN CULTURAL CRISIS
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.240
The kind of theory represented by Derrideanism must be treated less as philosophy stricto
sensu than as a new style of free-wheeling, essayistic cultural criticism with an apocalyptic
spirit. Its content is not a set of arguments but an axiom of debunking--the indictment of
modern culture; and its method consists in pinpointing crises in the latter's main
assumptions about truth and knowledge. Modern culture is deemed to be in crisis because
its mental set is `shown' to be fallacious; Kulturkritik presupposes a Kulturkrisis. However,
what if one turns the table against it? What if the crisis, too, has no referent? For it may
well be that behind the cultural void and trash alleged by advanced nihilist thought there
is nothing to be apprehended. The crisis, then, would be less an object than a product of
countercultural thought.
AKH0428 DECONSTRUCTION IS UNPERSUASIVE--IT JUST INVERTS ALL
ACCEPTED VIEWS
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.81
Paradoxically, it would seem that deconstruction is a victim of the restrictive binary logic
that it likes to denigrate: it thinks in terms of subverting and undermining traditional views,
but that excludes the really progressive possibility of just departing from those views, their
emphases, and their terms. It is surely that kind of departure that provides real progress.
AKH0429 DERRIDEAN PHILOSOPHY IS ESSENTIALLY IRRATIONALIST
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.226
Once removed from this original `theological' and mystical framework, the Derridian
ontology of absence makes for an irrationalist philosophy, as well the case with Heidegger.
Hence its blatant non-sequiturs.

AKH0430 DERRIDA CONVERTS LINGUISTICS INTO METAPHYSICAL
MYSTICISM
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.223-4
Derrida's grammatology employs Saussurean concepts such as `difference' and `signifier'
to convey Heideggerian tenets. Thus Saussure's `difference', which in the Course in
General Linguistics humbly denotes the diacritical nature of linguistics signs, was
converted into a portent of ever-delayed meaning based on a pun on difference (differance,
a mix of differing and deferring): a modest scientific conceptual tool became burdened
with an unexpected metaphysical load, quite alien to the original empirical analysis of
semiotic phenomena. These metaphysical conceits turn deconstruction into a kind of blank
mysticism. Difference theory beckons to a nowhere, a desert of being that is deemed to
supersede all reality. To Mikel Dufrenne, it all comes down to an ontology of the void that
recalls Plotinus: `Because there is nothing in the One, all things derive from it; (for) in
order for being to be, the One cannot be being, but the breeder of being' (Enneads, v, 2, I).
AKH0431 DECONSTRUCTION IS INTELLECTUAL ANARCHISM
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.236
Deconstruction, on the other hand, seems content to undo meaning instead of trying to
make knowledge. Its theory of the text is not only anti-empiricist but downright anti-
empirical. At heart, it relishes the starkest intellectual anarchism. Feyerabend abolished
only the hierarchy of contending scientific theories. Derrida goes far beyond this: he wants
to suppress order among meanings, not just among theories. Feyerabend and his like, the
anarchists of epistemology, remain logocentric squares: anarchy must free signification,
not just knowledge.
AKH0432 DECONSTRUCTION IS BASED ON INTELLECTUAL FAKERY
John Searle, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Berkeley, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, 1993, p.188
There is deconstructive writing. What becomes even more surprising is that the authors
seem to think it is all right to engage in these practices, because they hold a theory to the
effect that pretensions to objective truth and rationality in science, philosophy, and
common sense can be deconstructed as logocentric subterfuges. To put it crudely, they
think that since everything is phony anyway, the phoniness of deconstruction is somehow
acceptable, indeed commendable, since it lies right on the surface ready for further
deconstruction. Thus, the general weaknesses of the deconstructive enterprise become self-
justifying. With such an approach I am indeed not sympathetic.
AKH0433 DERRIDA'S STYLE RELIES ON TERRORISTIC OBSCURITY
John Searle, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Berkeley, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, 1993, p.178-9
Michel Foucault once characterized Derrida's prose style to me as "obscurantisme
terroriste." The text is written so obscurely that you can't figure out exactly what the thesis
is (hence "obscurantisme") and then when one criticizes it, the author says, "Vous m'avez
mal compris; vous etes idiot" (hence "terroriste").
AKH0434 DERRIDA'S PHILOSOPHY IS MERELY A RHETORICAL RESTATEMENT
OF HEIDEGGER
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.218
Trained philosophers such as Searle usually protest when they read literary critics like
Culler who, in their enthusing over Derrida, overlook the importance to him of Husserl or
Heidegger. Few realize--as did Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut--that Derrida's originality is
at bottom merely rhetorical, an enterprise of relentless symbolization of Heidegger's theme
of the `ontological difference'.
AKH0435 HEIDEGGER'S NAZISM ALSO IMPUGNS DERRIDA
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.76-7
At about the same time, new facts came to light concerning the enthusiasms of the
influential philosopher Martin Heidegger for Nazi doctrine, enthusiasms that now appear
to have been heartfelt, and that let Heidegger, as rector of his university during the thirties,
to perpetrate unforgivable acts of repression. Since Derrida had always claimed derivation
of his thought from Heidegger, his own credibility as a liberatory thinker came under
challenge.
AKH0436 DECONSTRUCTION IS A DECADENT NIHILISM
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.237
As for Derrida, his own addendum--quickly imparted to all his school--was not a direct
statement of pessimism, for any direct statement is against the first law of deconstruction:
perpetual equivocation. His way of unnerving the original Nietzschean temper used not
despair but radicalized unbelief. Yet in the end the result is pretty much the same as in
Adorno or Foucault: a Kulturkritik conspicuously lacking positive horizons, constructive
alternatives, in a word--historical optimism, however prudently qualified. So one might say
that whilst Nietzsche was a tragic but not a pessimist thinker, Derrida is a non-tragic yet
a (crypto-) pessimist one. The name of the difference is, of course, Nietzsche's old foe:
decadent nihilism. And that is what makes deconstruction, the unscience of the decadent
humanities, so dismal in performance.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 37
AKH0437 DERRIDA'S PROGRAM IS TOTALLY NEGATIVE
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.227
Derrida, who has no discernible positive programme, harnesses the ontology of absence
to a quite different task. His leitmotiv is not the appeal to an uncanny salvation but the
relentless undermining of the western code of values. Hence the paradoxically parasitical
status of deconstruction: it feeds on the text of tradition, from Plato and Rousseau to Freud,
Husserl and Saussure. Yet it has no theory other than the systematic reversal of western
thought--`a complete overturning of cultural domination'. Deconstruction is Kulturkritik
in the form of corrosive commentary; it is the art of lethal paraphrase.
AKH0438 HABERMAS SEES DERRIDA AS PURELY NEGATIVE
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
WORKING THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.239
More strongly than Foucault, Habermas accuses Derrida of being like Heidegger in
maintaining that politics and history are merely ontic, everyday matters that can be ignored
in favor of the more important ontological investigations. Unlike Heidegger, however,
Habermas thinks that Derrida's practice is subversive and anarchistic, with no redeeming
theory but simply a desire to blow up and trash tradition and continuity.
AKH0439 DERRIDA NEGLECTS ETHICAL CHOICE
Diane Michelfelder and Richard Palmer, MacMurray College, DIALOGUE AND
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.5
In Derrida, Dallmayr welcomes a more thoroughgoing critique of subjectivism. He is
bothered, though, by the consequences of Derrida's emphasis on difference and
undecidability: his inclination to avoid the risks of dialogue, to "circumvent and elude"
interaction with other points of view, and also his indifference to ethics, his "neglect" of
the dimension of human activity in which judgment and decision-making are essential.
AKH0440 DECONSTRUCTION IS CRITICAL TERRORISM
HUDSON REVIEW, Autumn, 1991, p.487.
Deconstruction has indeed become a form of "critical terrorism" (to use a phrase from
Foucault) built upon the priestly resentments of extraordinarily intelligent intellectuals who
profess to loathe bourgeois success but who are crazed with a desire for the very power and
fame they find so vulgar in people like Donald Trump and Lee Iacocca. Since Trump and
Iacocca have no interest in the involutions of academic cerebration, avant-garde literary
theorists are forced to antagonize their own more conventional colleagues instead, who at
least may be capable of appreciating their insults. An apotheosis of epater le bourgeois is
accomplished by demonstrating that the apparent meaning of whatever we read, hear, and
think is little more than an effect of our own subversion by sign-systems whose operations
we are unaware of. This leaves just about everyone in the position of dupes, except for the
people who are telling us we are dupes.
AKH0441 DERRIDA IS AN INTELLECTUAL NIHILIST
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkeley English prof, SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.171.
Derrida's judgment that "there is nothing outside the text" (Derrida 1976, 158)
automatically precludes recourse to evidence. Hence he has no way of arriving at more
fruitful ideas than the inherited ones he has doomed himself to deconstruct ad infinitum
and thus to retain in a limbo of combined attention and nonassertion. His contentment with
that annotative role marks him as an intellectual nihilist, though a learned and exuberant
one.
AKH0442 DECONSTRUCTION ONLY PRODUCES THE ILLUSION OF
CREATIVITY
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.144
These, then, are the essentials of the deconstructive logic: a logic not well adapted to
productive, original thinking, but rather to creating its illusion. This analysis is both
confirmed by and explains the sometimes baffling behavior of deconstructionists when
they are under attack. Anyone who has engaged in an exchange on deconstruction will
have noticed that the defense takes very standard forms. The defensive moves correspond
exactly to the essentials of deconstructive logic.
AKH0443 DECONSTRUCTION MERELY REPEATS FAMILIAR IDEAS IN
OBSCURE LANGUAGE
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.142
But there is a second and even more important means that deconstruction employs to
maintain a semblance of viability: the issues are generally cast in new and strange
terminology so that familiar positions may not seem so familiar and otherwise obviously
relevant scholarship may not seem so obviously relevant. The attack on the reference
theory of meaning is translated into an attack on the "metaphysics of presence," though
both are essentially the same rather naive view of the relation of words and things; but the
new terms make the issue seem different and help to conceal the otherwise embarrassing
fact that Derrida, in mounting this attack, does not come to terms with the large body of
writing that has already performed this task. To reject the reference theory might seem too
obviously commonplace; to attack "the metaphysics of presence" is to attack at least a new
set of words, if not ideas.

AKH0444 CREATIVITY REQUIRES INTELLECTUAL DISCIPLINE
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.134
Imagination and creativity are vital aspects of all thought, in science just as in philosophy
and criticism. Deconstruction is not wrong to say that the critic is creative; where it is
disastrously wrong, however, is in its assumption that creativity means freedom from
constraints or from standards of judgment operating on its results. Creativity is not simply
achieved by letting the mind wander with complete freedom into thoughts never previously
recorded; in any sphere of activity, we judge someone to have been creative only if he
produces an idea that is both original and valuable. A new idea in a business concern that
results in a highly successful new venture is called creative; one that results in bankruptcy
is called a piece of folly.
AKH0445 DECONSTRUCTION UNDERMINES DEBATE
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.9
When, for example, it is claimed that Derrida must be judged and evaluated by different
logical standards, standards uniquely appropriate to him, there is explanation of just what
those standards are and how they are to be justified; without some kind of explanation, this
claim cannot be granted. If it were allowed to stand, no debate on or evaluation of differing
viewpoints would be possible; theory would degenerate into a series of solipsistic
monologues without any points of contact between them.
AKH0446 DECONSTRUCTION DESTROYS ARGUMENTATIVE RIGOR
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.218
For deconstruction is acclaimed in philosophically unskilled quarters precisely because it
got rid of argumentative rigour while providing the pathos of an apocalyptic
Weltanschauung. The first thing liberated by the Liberation of the Signifier movement is
the right to wild philosophizing--an outcome blessed frivolously by Derrida's own
destruction of the difference between logos and mythos, best expressed in his famous plea
for `white mythologies'.
AKH0447 THE DECONSTRUCTIONIST REJECTION OF REASON STOPS ALL
DEBATE
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.150
The inevitable result of this generalized resistance to any change in or analysis of terms,
as opposed to a showing that a particular change involves particular losses in meaning,
with particular arguments addressed to those changes, can only be a rejection of reason
itself; Mas'd Zavarzadeh takes just that position in his review of Culler's The Pursuit of
Signs. But this is a very serious step indeed, one that must, if taken seriously, stop the
whole argument dead. It implies that there can be no discussion of deconstruction at all and
no possibility of arguing for or against a particular viewpoint, deconstruction or any other,
and thus no exposition, examination, or evaluation of any views or arguments.
AKH0448 DECONSTRUCTION UNDERMINES PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL
CHANGE
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1055
Such implications risk not only communicative misunderstanding, but dissipation of
reformist political will. A conception of politics in which it is intelligible for politics to be
"progressive," to aspire to creation of communities that empower human beings, is hard
to couple with a conception of politics that cannot make sense of a commitment to work
toward a vision of a better future. To sustain political motivation, better reason must exist
to dislodge the status quo than the mere fact that it is the status quo. That better reason can
only be our vision of a better future; yet no vision can motivate if it always arrives already
(atemporally, foundationally, irreparably, terminally) deconstructed.
AKH0449 DECONSTRUCTION CAN'T ENLIGHTEN POLITICAL ACTION
Andrew Cutrofello, St. Mary's College, SOCIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE, Spring
1993, p.100
How can we translate the lessons of deconstruction into concrete political action? Any
such translation must occur by way of language, White seems to think; unless
deconstruction gives us a new vocabulary it is useless as a guide to action. The problem,
though, is that deconstructive politics claim that the adoption of any fixed vocabulary will
involve the construction of a marginalized Other. Yet if we opt for perpetual
deconstruction, we will never rise to the level of the political. Again voicing the typical
complaint, White contends that Derrida can recommend nothing other than a "perpetual
withholding operation," a strategy which never quite rises to the level of the political
because it is forever problematizing political categories. "It can be interpreted as a strategy
for avoiding certain sorts of questions that anyone concerned with politics and political
reflection must fact."
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 38
AKH0450 HABERMAS SEES DERRIDA AS NEGLECTING PRACTICAL PROBLEM
SOLVING
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
WORKING THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.243-4
Habermas thinks that Derrida does not see that philosophy can recognize the problem-
solving capacity of theory, and that as a result Derrida falls back into an older conception
of philosophical theory as world-disclosing. He sees Derrida as holistically trying to get
a global picture of how everything hangs together with everything else, and thus sharing
in Heidegger's preference for the ontological over the ontic, philosophy over science,
speculative and poetic over the empirical and practical, world-disclosure over problem-
solving.
AKH0451 HABERMAS AND FOUCAULT SEE DECONSTRUCTION AS OFFERING
NO POLITICAL SOLUTIONS
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
WORKING THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.246
Habermas and Foucault both allege that Derrida has not paid enough attention to the social
practices that surround textuality. I would express their worry as follows. The practice of
deconstruction appears to be subversive. But in reality it offers nothing to replace that
which it destroys, and it suggests that nothing could serve as a replacement that could not
be deconstructed and subvened in turn. At the same time, the deconstructionist's admission
that we cannot think in any other terms than those metaphysically-laden ones being
deconstructed, that we cannot get beyond metaphysics, seems to leave thought in the same
situation, and not to change anything. So deconstruction is not even subversion, since
subversion implies a desire to change, and deconstruction demurs from thinking about how
things could be different, let alone better.
AKH0452 HABERMAS SEES DERRIDA AS REJECTING CONSTRUCTIVE
POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
WORKING THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.246
Habermas believes that Derrida is like Heidegger in preferring the realm of pure
philosophy to that of politics, except that unlike Heidegger's fascistic allegiance to
authority, Derrida's stance is anarchistic.
AKH0453 DERRIDA'S FAILURE TO DEAL WITH HISTORICAL COMPLEXITY
LIMITS HIS POLITICAL VALUE
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.228-9
When Derrida examines questions of justice, law, violence he does not primarily deal with
specific institutional practices, but with the texts, specifically the writings of those who
have addressed these issues--Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Kafka, Benjamin, Levinas, etc. I do
not want to denigrate this way--this methodus. His analyses are extraordinarily perceptive
and rich in their consequences. But surely--as Derrida himself acknowledges--they need
to be supplemented by the theoretical and empirical study of societal institutions and
practices. But this is not what Derrida does. There is nothing in Derrida's writings that
seeks to rule out the importance of critical theoretical and empirical research into the
structural dynamics of society and politics. On the contrary, such an endeavor is what his
own questioning of boundary-fixing demands. nevertheless, his neglect of dealing more
directly and explicitly with political and societal institutions in their historical complexity
does have the consequence of making his own understanding of society and politics sound
rather "thin."
AKH0454 DECONSTRUCTION FAILS TO OFFER A MEANINGFUL GUIDE TO
POLITICAL ACTION
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.227
It is an important virtue to be vigilant--as Derrida is--about the ways in which any general
social and political theory or code can go awry, how it can deconstruct itself. But it is just
as important and necessary to seek, in a fallibilistic spirit, for a general understanding and
explanation of the institutional dynamics of politics and society. Otherwise the specific
ways in which we intervene "here and now" can lack any orientation. Derrida's claims
about a "democracy to come" are powerfully evocative. He warns us against identifying
this "democracy to come" with any of its present institutional forms. Like Habermas, he
would insist that it is not the task of the philosopher or theorist--as some sort of "master"
intellectual--to lay out blueprints for such a democracy. This can and should be decided
by participants. But still it is fair to ask for some determinate content. we want some
understanding of what kinds of institutions and practices should be developed for "a
democracy to come." Or even more minimally, we want some orientation about what
changes "here and now" are needed in our present institutional structures. Derrida, thus far,
has very little to say about any of this. Consequently there is a danger that, for all the
evocative power of the very idea of a "democracy to come," the idea of such a democracy
can become an impotent, vague abstraction.

AKH0455 DERRIDEAN DECONSTRUCTION IS A SYMPTOM OF POLITICAL
IMPOTENCE.
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, THE AMERICAN EVASION OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1989, p.236
Although both Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault reject the term "postmodernism," their
philosophies are widely viewed as major examples of postmodern thought. As with their
fellow Frenchman Lyotard, Eurocentric frameworks and modernist loyalties loom large
in the work of Derrida and Foucault. Derrida's deconstructionist version of
poststructuralism accents the transgressive and disruptive aspects of Nietzsche and
Heidegger, Mallarme and Artaud. As an Algerian Jew in a French Catholic (and anti-
Semitic) society, Derrida attacks the major philosophic traditions of the West in the form
of fascinating though ultimately monotonous deconstructions. This version of relentless
skepticism toward logical consistency and theoretical coherence, which refuses to entertain
or encourage novel reconstructions, may be symptomatic of the relative political impotence
of marginal peoples, their inability to creatively transform and build on the ambiguous
legacy of the Age of Europe.
AKH0456 DECONSTRUCTION CAN'T PRODUCE SOCIAL REFORM
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkeley English prof, SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.118.
Taken at face value as efforts to found a new social order, the critical maneuvers of the
more politically minded deconstructionists would appear to border on the delusional. They
fail the first test of any revolutionary utterance, that it be understandable to people outside
the revolutionary's immediate circle; and there is something distinctly odd about attacking
a system of oppression by altering the rules of its literary criticism. But of course we
needn't take these efforts at face value. They are made by people who, to a significant
extent, are members in good standing of the academic establishment from which they claim
to be freeing us. And in at least three respects, the benefits they seek are conferred, not
upon the huddled masses, but upon themselves, at the expense of others.
AKH0457 DECONSTRUCTION UNDERMINES REFORM
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.82
Deconstructionism in its pure form would seem to be an unlikely candidate for such
popularity. It is a uniquely disenchanted and crepuscular philosophy, carrying the reek of
a decadent mandarinate that has seen everything once too often. To toy with ideas in such
an idle and self-vitiating fashion would seem to confess a lack of interest in bringing about
salutary change in human affairs.
AKH0458 DECONSTRUCTION REINFORCES CONSERVATISM
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.89
In general, any wild and incoherent attack on conservatism always tends to strengthen it
and to give it added legitimacy. Instead of slowly changing and relaxing with the passage
of time, it is suddenly given new life as the legitimate alternative to the current excesses.
But in the case of deconstruction, there are added reasons to believe that it promotes rather
than erodes conservatism. For, as we have seen, when deconstruction puts such heavy
emphasis on the undermining of the traditional view, it is giving that view a privileged
status, a permanent existence at stage center where it is to stay while being deconstructed.
The real way forward from a conservative viewpoint that needs revision is to go on from
it--to find something better, and that something will not just oppose the older view but
replace it. Finding something better is a genuinely progressive move; running rings around
a dying idea is neither original nor productive. Deconstruction and conservatism are in a
kind of symbiosis in which the two feed on each other; and thus ideas that deserve to die
will not be allowed to do so.
AKH0459 DECONSTRUCTION WOULD FAVOR REACTIONARY IDEAS IF THEY
BECAME MARGINALIZED
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.96
But feminists and Marxists are very mistaken to see support for their position in
deconstruction's rhetoric. For they are surely attempting to identify particular omissions
from the center and making specific proposals to change the consensus, which is as it
should be. But given such aims, deconstruction's generalized strategy is a very dangerous
thing; if, as a result of feminist and left-wing efforts, male chauvinist and fascist voices
become marginalized, will that very fact make them suddenly intellectually respectable
again? Surely that would be an unacceptable development, but it is the conclusion to which
we are committed by deconstruction's essentially random theory of the vitality and
importance of that which has been marginalized.
AKH0460 DECONSTRUCTIONIST DENIAL OF STANDARDS OF EVIDENCE
ENTRENCHES ELITES
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkeley, English prof, SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.118.
In the first place, the deconstructionist denial that there are standards of evidence by which
one critical judgment might be found more adequate than another effectively turns
criticism into a mystery exclusively controlled by its high priests. To be sure, such
exclusivism has always thrived in the academic world. It has been moderated, however,
by a shared willingness to acknowledge that young critic A has said something new and
important about Shakespeare or that young critic B has forced us to revise our
understanding of The Red Badge of Courage.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 39
AKH0461 EVEN DERRIDA ADMITS QUESTIONING MUST SOMETIMES BE
SUSPENDED IN ORDER TO ACT
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.219
Nevertheless, responsibility, action, and decision "here and now" demand that we at least
temporarily suspend constant questioning. (Otherwise we would slip into inaction and
noncommitment which are also modes action and commitment.) This is his point about
gesturing "in opposite directions." We cannot escape from the responsibilities and
obligations that are thrust upon us--thrust upon us by the other. Given our radical
contingency we can never know or control when we are called upon to respond. We must
always be prepared to confront new unpredictable responsibilities. So when Derrida speaks
of his "perpetual uneasiness" he is not merely expressing an idiosyncratic subjective state
of mind but rather expressing a condition of undecidability which--to speak in a non-
Derridean manner--is built into "the human condition."
AKH0462 DERRIDA ENDORSES SIMULTANEOUSLY QUESTIONING AND
ACTING
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.219-20
Derrida has an acute sense that, at least since the "rupture" we call Nietzsche, we can no
longer be content with self-satisfied appeals to moral and political foundations, first
principles and archai. We are compelled to question these. But he is equally acute in his
realization that such a questioning doesn't "solve" anything. We cannot assume a
permanent frozen stance of an-arche. For this is another fixed metaphysical position. We
cannot escape responsibility, decision, and choice. They are thrust upon us by the other.
Furthermore, we cannot simply dismiss or ignore those ethical and political principles that
are constitutive of our traditions. The problem--and it is a problem for which there cannot
be any final or permanent "solution"--is how to live this perpetual uneasiness in a way in
which we "gesture in opposite directions at the same time," where we keep alive the
distance of questioning and are prepared to act decisively "here and now"--where we do
not hide in bad faith from the double-blinds that we always confront.
AKH0463 DECONSTRUCTION FAILS TO SUGGEST INTERESTING
ALTERNATIVES
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.80-1
The focus of any genuinely new piece of criticism or interpretation must be on the creative
act of finding the new, but deconstruction puts the matter the other way around: its
emphasis is on debunking the old. But aside from the fact that this program is inherently
uninteresting, it is, in fact, not at all clear that it is possible; for as Charles Saunders Pierce
argued against Descartes's recommendation that we should doubt all that we know, doubt
can only really arise from specific causes and anxieties, not from the contemplation of the
present state of knowledge taken only by itself. To find a better, more complex
interpretation needs skill, imagination, and thought: it is not at all easy, and the direction
in which one must go is not at all obvious. But to recognize this is to see both what the
appeal of deconstruction is and why it is fruitless: deconstruction makes the next step easy
but trivial. One looks mechanically in the opposite direction. Deconstruction's strategy
seems focused but is really random.
AKH0464 DECONSTRUCTION LEADS TO INFINITE REGRESS
Russell Jacoby, University of California, San Diego, THE LAST INTELLECTUALS,
1987, p.172-3
This new Marxism converges with, indeed partly promotes, a "poststructuralism" that
concentrates on texts, signs, and signifiers as the stuff of interpretation. Insofar as this
method, inspired by Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes, posits, "there is nothing outside
the text" and "interpretation of any signifying chain is necessarily only another chain of
signs," it both surrenders attention to a social or material context--or fails to appreciate its
import--and encourages endless spirals of commentary.
AKH0465 DERRIDA LEADS TO INFINITE REGRESS
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.222
However, if deconstruction, a necessarily immanent method, `falls prey to its own work'
by continuously inverting, subverting signifieds, then it only destabilizes logocentric
readings through a cascade of reinterpretations `en abime'. No meaning escapes the hidden
spell of its contrary, so that the end result of text-deciphering can but be aporetic (from the
Greek apria, puzzle)--a raising of problems without offering any stable solutions.
Deconstruction has turned infinite regression from a philosophical vice into an interpretive
virtue; in practice, it operates as the euphoria of aporia. It is this abyss-effect, the ultimate
bottomlessness of its readings, that appears to turn deconstruction into a paroxysm of over-
interpretation. Interpretation forever on the move is not a bad description of the art of
deconstruction (in fact, Derrida's translator, Gayatri Spivak, insists on this ever-dynamic
character in her introduction to Of Grammatology).

AKH0466 DERRIDA'S FOCUS ON THE TEXT IS JUST NAVAL GAZING
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.242
Michel Foucault, in his polemic with Derrida (for example his afterword to the second
edition of Histoire de la Folie) singled out the `pedagogic authoritarianism' of the
deconstructors as a model of `obscurantist terrorism' built on Derrida's resoundingly
dogmatic dictum, `there is nothing outside the text'. Foucault was right in attacking the
navel-gazing of the ideologues of the text, still more so in denouncing the snooty
abstruseness of most deconstructionists.
AKH0467 DECONSTRUCTION PRODUCES AN INFINITE REGRESS
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1054
Another sort of incompletion to which poststructuralist practice is liable ends in skeptical
loss of valuational focus or political direction. Deconstruction as an "edifying" discourse
has been used in the service of emancipatory social change. For example, when it is shown
that the feminine, as a dangerous supplement to the masculine, cannot be held outside, but
is always already inside the masculine, then this, the poststructuralist critic reasonably
hopes, will help us stop privileging the masculine. but there is nothing that could make
deconstruction "by its nature" progressive. Anything can be privileged, and anything can
be deconstructed. Some of the conceptions we privilege may be good (in their places) and
some may be bad, but this is not something deconstruction can tell us; from inside the
deconstructive perspective, characterizations of one conception or another as "good" or
"bad" are not coherently understandable except as more fodder for deconstruction.
Deconstruction can open the way to new understandings and hence social change, but it
cannot help to guide the direction of change or say whether change (however guided) will
be for the "better" or "worse." Each new understanding can be deconstructed with the very
same vigor as the one it replaces.
AKH0468 DECONSTRUCTION DECONSTRUCTS ITSELF
John Searle, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Berkeley, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, 1993, p.181
One sometimes gets the impression that deconstruction is a kind of game that anyone can
play. One could, for example, invent a deconstruction of deconstructionism as follows: In
the hierarchical opposition, deconstruction/logocentrism (phono-phallo-logocentrism), the
privileged term "deconstruction" is in fact subordinate to the devalued term
"logocentrism," for, in order to establish the hierarchical superiority of deconstruction, the
deconstructionist is forced to attempt to represent its superiority, its axiological primacy,
by argument and persuasion, by appealing the logocentric values he tries to devalue. But
his efforts to do this are doomed to failure because of the internal inconsistency in the
concept of deconstructionism itself, because of its very self-referential dependence on the
authority of a prior logic. By an aporetical Aufhebung, deconstruction deconstructs itself.
AKH0469 THE DECONSTRUCTIONIST CRITIQUE OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE
FAILS
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.221
But the moral of the exercise is clear: the remedy for bad history is more, and better,
history--a far cry from wholesale distrust, let along ditching, of the `historical approach',
on the reckless a priori assumption that all historical narratives are equally unwarranted
because they can be questioned. This piece of Derrideanism, like so many others, amounts
to little more than a sweeping rhetoric of cavalier scepticism. The `historical approach'
cannot be dispatched in one page of unargued assertion in a cursory interview with the
Master of Deconstruction, let alone by epigonic pot-shots from his literary critical
disciples. So long as history refuses to be swallowed by `textuality', the odds are against
our dispensing with the historical approach.
AKH0470 DERRIDA MISUNDERSTANDS WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL
TRADITION
John Searle, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Berkeley, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, 1993, p.178
Derrida's eccentric reading of the history of Western philosophy, a reading according to
which philosophers are supposed to be roundly condemning writing, while privileging
spoken language, is not grounded on an actual reading of the texts of the leading figures
in the philosophical tradition. Derrida only discusses three major figures in any detail:
Plato, Rousseau, and Husserl. Rather it seems motivated by his conviction that everything
in logocentrism hinges on this issue. If he can treat the features of a suitably redefined
notion of writing as definitive of truth, reality, etc.--then he thinks he can deconstruct these
notions.
AKH0471 DECONSTRUCTION IGNORES TEXTUAL CONTEXT
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.219
In plain english, this means that deconstruction, for all its stress on the text, cares nothing
for the textual context. Instead texts become mere pretexts for daring speculations based
on rickety etymologies--a spurious habit introduced into continental philosophy by
Heidegger (but then, even the term `deconstruction' is itself a refraction of the
Heideggerian `destruction' of metaphysics).
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 40
AKH0472 DECONSTRUCTION'S REDUCTIONISM ROBS IT OF FRUITFULNESS
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.236
Yet when all is said and done, the general result belies the exaggerated claims of the whole
current of thought. For all its official Nietzschean alacrity, deconstruction invariably
sounds pretty dull: a vastly repetitive and overpredictable strategy, a tiresome
`demonstration' that everybody always says the very opposite of what they mean. In its
obsessive reductionism, deconstruction turns out to be a rather melancholy business--the
dismal unscience of our time.
AKH0473 DECONSTRUCTIONIST BLURRING OF ESSENTIAL AND INESSENTIAL
PRODUCES INTELLECTUAL CHAOS
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.94
Focusing on what is central or essential for a given task or inquiry does not involve a
choice between one set of things and another but instead of choice of a small number of
things from a forbiddingly large number--in fact, a universe of possibilities.
Deconstructionists write as if to subvert this distinction would be to transfer attention from
one idea to another; but, in reality, to subvert the distinction between essential and
inessential would have considerably more serious consequences. This distinction is one
that allows us to focus our minds instead of letting them wander aimlessly. Without it we
should, in fact, be completely disabled and unable to function intellectually. Without the
ability to discern differing degrees of importance and relevance in the potentially infinite
variety of things around us, we should be completely lost in a meaningless world.
AKH0474 DECONSTRUCTION IGNORES RECENT THOUGHT IN ORDER TO
ATTACK STRAW MEN
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.138
Deconstructionist thinking shifts the context we begin with, away from the most
sophisticated thought achieved to date, on to unsophisticated, simple notions. This involves
considerable loss. When dealing with meaning, for example, the deconstructive approach
is to focus immediately upon the simple belief that words refer directly to things;
deconstructionists develop their argument by stressing the naivete of that view, in so doing
avoiding the advanced, subtle work of many decades that has made this view hardly worth
bothering with any more in any reasonably sophisticated context. Or when discussing the
issue of certainty in knowledge, deconstruction tends to begin with the naive belief in
clear, certain knowledge rather than the work in philosophy of science that abandoned that
idea long ago.
AKH0475 DECONSTRUCTION SIMPLY REPLACES PRIMITIVE IDEAS WITH
MORE PRIMITIVE ONES
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.139-40
The emotional weight of deconstructionist writings leans heavily to positions that reverse
and stand on their head the naive beliefs from which the argument begins, regardless of the
claims for a "neither/nor and either/or" logic. From our point of view, however, it scarcely
matters whether one takes the position of those deconstructionists who insist that logic is
always controlling, and never forgotten, or those who simply embrace and advocate ideas
such as free play and textuality; the logical objections to either one of these two positions
are much the same, and they are decisive. Primitive ideas reversed produce more primitive
ideas; the jump from one extreme to another is not productive thinking whether one takes
the second to have replaced the first or displaced it. Free play is an incoherent notion
whether one takes it by itself or as a package together with the equally incoherent notion
that was there before it.
AKH0476 DECONSTRUCTION DICHOTOMIZES RATHER THAN SEEING A
CONTINUUM OF THOUGHT
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1053
If a strength of deconstruction is to disabuse us of rigid dichotomies, a corresponding
danger is to see (construct) rigid dichotomies in places where our discourse is saliently
more complex, more "continuum-ized." Deconstruction itself maps structure onto the
thought it deconstructs, rendering that thought into a bimodal categorical form. It is good
to put bimodal categories to the test where these exist in our discourse, but deconstruction
may be less useful if applied where usage is already less bimodal. In some cases, in other
words, deconstruction may obscure rather than clarify our situation vis-a-vis our own
discourse.
AKH0477 DERRIDA DISSOLVES REALITY INTO LANGUAGE
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.221
The roots of Derrida's mystique of the text lie in his pansemioticism--in which reality is
engulfed by the sign. From the assumption, which he has never bothered to prove, that
every `embodied' meaning leads directly to what Of Grammatology spurns as the
`transcendental signified', Derrida infers, in that same seminal book, that `from the moment
there is meaning there are nothing but signs'. Texts, of course, are clusters of signs. It
follows that `there is nothing outside the text'--the saying that so infuriated Foucault.

AKH0478 DECONSTRUCTION IMPROPERLY IGNORES TRUTH
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.20
That he rejects epistemological relativism is especially apparent from his attack on
Derrida's reading of Plato. Foucault believes that the method of textual deconstruction tries
incorrectly and unsuccessfully to bracket all questions about the truth claims of texts. He
does not hesitate to claim that there are truths about how people do understand themselves
and what sort of life they esteem.
AKH0479 DERRIDA REJECTS OBJECTIVE REALITY
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.76
Derrida's deep epistemological pessimism has infected his disciples as much as have his
stylistic eccentricities. Deconstructionism holds that truly meaningful utterance is
impossible, that language is ultimately impotent, as are the mental operations conditioned
by linguistic habit. The verbal means by which we seek to represent the world are
incapable, it is said, of doing any such thing. Strings of words, whether on the page or in
our heads, have at best a shadowy and unstable relation to reality. In fact "reality" is itself
a mere construct, the persistent but illusory remnant of the Western metaphysical tradition.
There is no reality outside the text, but texts themselves are vertiginously unstable,
inherently self-contradictory and self-canceling.
AKH0480 DECONSTRUCTION THOUGHT DESTROYS INTELLECTUAL
STANDARDS
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.86
The role of the skepticism and relativism of the deconstructionists is also clear; if no text
is "privileged," no narrative tradition closer to ethical, aesthetic, or historical truth than any
other, then there are no grounds for regarding the traditional venues of humanist
scholars)high literature and high art)as sacred ground. Thus, it becomes permissible for
professors of English to inquire solemnly into what are by tradition (and in fact) trivial
matters, and to festoon those inquiries with the abundant neologisms of the postmodern
lexicon, giving thereby further assurance that the subject at hand, be it rap music or
professional wrestling, has deep implications for theory.
AKH0481 DECONSTRUCTION REJECTS REASON, TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.235
Well before the death of Foucault, deconstruction had already conquered a dominant
position in post-structuralism. Its growing spate of texts, ever fulminating against `Western
logocentrism' in all forms, constitutes a glaring confirmation that the chief commitment of
recent French new thought is an onslaught on the critical rationalist ethos of the
Enlightenment tradition. Critical thinking is victimized by lofty proclamations of
Kulturkrisis; crisis theory declares war on the rigours of critique. Such is the final
consequence of the surrender of philosophy to the literary ideology forged by High
Modernism. Every concern with objective knowledge is thrown overboard: no more of
truth, reason, evidence or reference)they were just ploys of a repressive civilization . . .
Yet nobody bothers to prove the point.
AKH0482 DERRIDA IS AN IRRATIONALIST NIHILIST
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.238
Foucault and Derrida have not just transmuted the disillusionment of the structuralist
world-view into nihilism)they have also directed nihilism against truth. As a result, the
countercultural idea is no longer just a romantic vision)it is also an openly irrationalist
idiom of thought. But there is a difference. While in Foucault, a post-structuralist without
a proper structuralist background, irrationalism was a question of Nietzschean premisses
and conclusions that did not affect the style of exposition, in Derrida, it manages to engulf
his very language.
AKH0483 DECONSTRUCTION REJECTS CLEAR, RATIONAL EXPOSITION
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.10
The assumption here is evidently that rational analysis is inherently an inappropriate and
unfair means of approaching deconstruction. Similarly, Steven Rendall has recently written
that "Culler's measured, systematic and reassuring exposition risks exposing him to the
charge that he is contributing to the recuperation and revitalization of deconstruction by
the American critical establishment. I do not think the charge can be summarily
dismissed." And Rendall points to the issue of "distortions" and "simplifications" in
Culler's exposition, not as a specific matter of the particular points Culler has misstated
when he when he could and should have stated them properly (for no examples are given),
but rather as a general issue of distortion and simplification that must be present whenever
any clear and rational exposition occurs.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 41
AKH0484 DECONSTRUCTION ATTEMPTS TO UNDERMINE RATIONALITY
John Searle, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Berkeley, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, 1993, p.179
What are the results of deconstruction supposed to be? Characteristically the
deconstructionist does not attempt to prove or refute, to establish or confirm, and he is
certainly not seeking the truth. On the contrary, this whole family of concepts is part of the
logocentrism he wants to overcome; rather he seeks to undermine, or call in question, or
overcome, or breech, or disclose complicities. And the target is not just a set of
philosophical and literary texts, but the Western conception of rationality and the set of
presuppositions that underlie our conceptions of language, science, and common sense,
such as the distinction between reality and appearance, and between truth and fiction.
AKH0485 DECONSTRUCTION ISN'T CONCERNED WITH TRUTH
John Searle, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Berkeley, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, 1993, p.187
The single most unplausible claim that Mackey makes is that "the deconstructionist is
almost obsessively occupied with truth." If he means to imply that they seek the truth, then
a purely textual analysis of the works that I have cited would show that is simply not the
case. Authors who are concerned with discovering the truth are concerned with evidence
and reasons, with consistency and inconsistency, with logical consequences, explanatory
adequacy, verification and testability. But all of this is part of the apparatus of the very
"logo-centricism" that deconstruction seeks to undermine.
AKH0486 DECONSTRUCTION CAN BE ATTACKED BY RATIONAL ARGUMENT
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.13-4
During his much-publicized dispute with John Searle, Derrida clearly conceded the point
at issue. Believing that Searle's exposition of his position had been unfair to him, Derrida
could not resist saying, at several points in his reply, that Searle had misunderstood him
and misstated his views, even adding at one point that what he, Derrida, had meant should
have been clear enough and obvious to Searle. This is indeed a very far cry from the claim
that Derrida's essential position cannot be stated as others can (or that a reader should not
try to grasp the author's intent!). Derrida thus abandons this position, just as others do,
when he feels the need to replace a misstatement of his view with an adequate statement
of it. And so the claim that deconstruction is a special case, not to be judged or discussed
by rational argument and ordinary logic, is a claim that is neither explicated nor really
consistently believed and acted upon by those who make it.
AKH0487 DERRIDA NEGLECTS PHILOSOPHIC ANALYSIS IN FAVOR OF
RELIGIOUS PROPHESY
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.226
Yet the tenor of Derridean philosophy shares with Heidegger's a dangerous proclivity
towards the bombastic translation of problems of being and knowledge into strident moral
dilemmas. Like the cosmic drama of Being repressed by being in Heidegger, Derrida's
protest against phonocentrism sounds more like lay sermonizing than genuine analytical
argument. These manichaean dichotomies)Being versus being, `writing' versus
phone)betray a religious pattern of thought that leaves Derrida)for all his reticence
regarding eschatology)infinitely closer to the prophet Levinas that to the cool-headed
practitioners of philosophy as analysis.
AKH0488 HABERMAS THINKS DERRIDA IS A NOSTALGIC MYSTIC
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
WORKING THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.233-4
Thus, Habermas's analysis is that Derrida is attempting to break with modernity, and his
desire is to be postmodern. But Derrida is unsuccessful in doing so, and his attempt at
postmodernism is a failure. Derrida's desire to transcend the aspirations of modern reason
is in reality a frustrated desire for a return to the premodern traditions where reason has not
yet undermined the mystery of hidden religious authority. Since the quarrel is between the
Enlightenment's faith in reason and the counter-Enlightenment rebellion against reason,
what Habermas is objecting to is the vestige of Jewish mysticism (not because it is Jewish,
of course, but because it is mystical to the point of being not only mysterious but also
unintelligible.
AKH0489 DERRIDA'S THOUGHT IS THEOLOGICAL AND ANTIQUATED
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.224
Dufrenne also reminds us that in the history of ancient thought this fascination with
nothingness has been interpreted as a clash between Greek intellectualism and eastern
theology. Oriental religions had proposed the idea of a supreme Being beyond the grasp
of language. But Greek thinkers were so wont to identify the real and the conceivable with
what can be said that they dared not state there is an unintelligible reality; therefore, they
made it into a non-being, thus originating the ontology of absence whose latest versions
are Heidegger's Being (always placed beyond all positive existence) and its semiotic child,
Derridean difference or `trace', forever avoiding presence and identity. The usefulness of
such comparisons is that they show that, for all the novelty of his terminology, the thought-
structure of Derrida is a philosophical antique with a more theological than epistemological
origin)something that may remain concealed to those who broach deconstruction theory
as though it were just a conceptually sharpened semiotics.

AKH0490 DECONSTRUCTION IS JUST INVERTED METAPHYSICS
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkeley English prof, SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.170-1
Unfortunately, however, poststructuralist cynicism is by no means the same thing as
empirically based skepticism. We can see that divergence quite clearly in the writings of
Derrida, whose "deconstructionist" viewpoint dominated vanguard opinion on both sides
of the Atlantic throughout the Seventies. Deconstruction, the technique of laying bare the
metaphorical nature of all attempts to establish referential terms, holds that any use of
language points only to further language and that the whole Western "metaphysics of
presence" from Plato onward is erroneous. This is an arguable position, but in Derrida's
hands it becomes an inverted metaphysics of its own, an unsupported contention that
"differance," or the endless deferral of meaning, "constitutes the essence of life" (Derrida
1978,203).
AKH0491 DECONSTRUCTION IS A STERILE MIX OF DISPARATE ELEMENTS
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.235
As a widespread practice signalling the triumph of `text and theory')an appallingly
uncritical mix of wild philosophizing, truistic semiotics, unexamined Lacanese, and
occasional bits of ill-digested social science)deconstruction is a drab neo-structuralist
scholastics.
AKH0492 DECONSTRUCTION CAN CAUSE DEBILITATING SKEPTICISM
Patricia Smith, Professor of Philosophy, University of Kentucky, FEMINIST
JURISPRUDENCE, 1993, p.6-7
One problem with postmodern views, particularly those associated with deconstruction,
is that they tend to be better at destroying theories than at building the, which may generate
a debilitating skepticism that is not useful to the feminist cause in the long run. One
response to this skepticism has been a revitalization of pragmatism within feminism.
Pragmatism also subscribes to a postmodern antiessentialist theory of human nature and
knowledge. In law it is associated with legal realist theory, which views law as a dynamic
process of conflict resolution and focuses on the function of courts to analyze law and legal
reasoning. Feminists are drawn to the practical, personal, contextual approach of
pragmatism, which coincides with feminist rejection of traditional abstract categories,
dichotomies, and the conceptual pretensions of the logical analysis of law.
AKH0493 DERRIDA'S RADICAL SKEPTICISM IS JUST DISAPPOINTED
ABSOLUTISM
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.233
To Norris, Derrida's philosophical merit lies in his Nietzschean surpassing of the
`foundational' dreams of the Fregean. yet one can turn the tables on such a claim. For one
might say that, far from rejecting the foundationalist outlook, Derrida offers a mirror-
image of it. In fact, precisely this charge was levelled at Derrida by an elder statesman of
American criticism, M.H. Abrams. In a remarkable article in Partisan Review, "How to do
things with texts" (1979), Abrams points out that Derrida's urge to deconstruct meaning
is based on a curious non sequitur. From the fact that language lacks an ultimate ground,
Derrida concludes that the work of meaning can only be deceptive. Texts may be legible,
but they are not truly intelligible, since meaning is `undecidable'. Thus in the end Derrida
shares the belief that for determinate meanings to obtain, language must have an absolute
foundation. derrida, says Abrams, is `an absolutist without absolutes'. Unlike the later
Wittgenstein, he cannot bring himself to trust language games that do not have a bedrock
of ultimate meanings. In a curious negative way, a belief in foundational meaning seems
to have survived, in his thought, the demise of the transcendental signified. As so often,
radical scepticism, about meaning as about almost everything else, is at bottom just a
disappointed absolutism.
AKH0494 DERRIDA IS A CRYPTIC ABSOLUTIST
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.234
But mark: if Derrida is really a `rooted sceptic' with little time or taste for rational dialogue
and the hardships of sustained argument, then Abrams is basically right. Instead of viewing
him as a Nietszchean Quine, rationally trying to surpass the foundationalist stance in
modern epistemology, we should indeed see him as a crypto-absolutist, `an absolutist
without absolutes'. Which is scarcely surprising, since few things suit an apocalyptic
prophet better than an all-or-nothing philosophical outlook. Apocalyptic visions make
short shrift of relative truths; and deconstruction is pre-eminently a scholastic way of
spelling doom for enlightened culture under the pretext of making `theory'.
AKH0495 DECONSTRUCTION ISN'T APPROPRIATE FOR REAL WORLD
PROBLEMS
Stanley Fish, Duke English and Law prof, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE
SPEECH, 1994, p.18.
There is no slide to nihilism or relativism implied here; "going deep" is an analytical action
performed by philosophers and metacritics in the privacy of their seminars; outside those
seminars they, like the rest of us, move quite nicely on the very ground they have
deconstructed.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 42
AKH0496 THE CHALLENGE OF DECONSTRUCTION IS TOO VAGUE TO BE
USEFUL
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.149
But there is still another contradiction here; on the one hand, we are told that the ideas
inherent in deconstruction are challenging, disturbing, provocative (and if there is one
constant in all the descriptions of and claims for deconstruction, it is this); but on the other
hand, we are also told, in effect, that the nature of the challenge cannot be precisely stated,
because that would remove the challenge. To this it must be said that any challenge is by
its nature sharp, specific, and clear: a challenge without a well-placed thrust is not a
challenge at all.
AKH0497 EVEN DECONSTRUCTION MUST MAKE SOME UNCHALLENGED
ASSUMPTIONS
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1054-5
Of course, something must be privileged for deconstruction to take place. Something must
be privileged if we are to speak and understand each other, if we are to understand the
deconstructer as saying something. We must assume a common language, and common
language must have some fixed points)some points we select (or have had selected for us)
as fixed points, even if we fail to notice the selection happening. Poststructuralists are
often ironically aware of how they willy-nilly reflect such selections as they write, and how
their readers do the same as they read. Yet the imperfect poststructuralist may suppress this
ever-present irony. She can forget sometimes that, in her own very act of writing, the same
kind of privileging that she deconstructs in others must always already be going on in
order to enable her to write)or even to be.
AKH0498 DECONSTRUCTION COLLAPSES INTO FOUNDATIONALISM
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1055
So, imperfect poststructuralist writing can tend to be self-privileging. This failing can
extend to the privileging of the methodology itself. Like the skeptic who forgets to be
skeptical about the "truth: of skepticism, the poststructuralist-minded critic may lapse
rhetorically into implying that there is something good or right about deconstruction itself,
privileging deconstruction, making it foundational.
AKH0499 DECONSTRUCTION IS JUST PRETENTIOUS VERBOSITY
John Searle, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Berkeley, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, 1993, p.179
The trouble with this claim is that it requires us to have some way of distinguishing
genuine knowledge from its counterfeits, and justified feelings of mastery from mere
enthusiasms generated by a lot of pretentious verbosity. And the examples that Culler and
Derrida provide are, to say the least, not very convincing. In Culler's book, we get the
following examples of knowledge and mastery: speech is a form of writing (passim),
presence is a certain type of absence (106), the marginal is in fact central (140), the literal
is metaphorical (148), truth is a kind of fiction (181), reading is a form of misreading
(176), sanity is a kind of neurosis (160), and man is a form of woman (171). Some readers
may feel that such a list generates not so much feelings of mastery as of monotony. There
is in deconstructive writing a constant straining of the prose to attain something that
sounds profound by giving it the air of a paradox, e.g., "truths are fictions whose
fictionality has been forgotten" (181).
AKH0500 DECONSTRUCTION IS PHILOSOPHICALLY TRIVIAL
John Searle, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Berkeley, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, 1993, p.188
I believe that any one who reads deconstructive texts with an open mind is likely to be
struck by the same phenomena that initially surprised me: the low level of philosophical
argumentation, the deliberate obscurantism of the prose, the wildly exaggerated claims,
and the constant striving to give the appearance of profundity by making claims that seem
paradoxical, but under analysis often turn out be silly or trivial.
AKH0501 DECONSTRUCTIONIST JARGON CREATES A FALSE SENSE OF
PROFUNDITY
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.101
I have not used deconstructive jargon here, e.g., "privileged ideas" or "demystify," because
to do so would be to concede a crucial part of the issue: it would imply acceptance of the
fact that this point is new and has its origin in this language. But these new coinages are
completely unnecessary; there were plenty of quite acceptable ordinary English words for
the status of entrenched ideas and for the process of questioning and undermining them.
The avoidance of this perfectly ordinary, available vocabulary seems to me to be part and
parcel of an attempt to create a feeling that something extraordinary and unusual is going
on. As my text argues, it is by no means clear that this is really so.

AKH0502 DECONSTRUCTION IS SYSTEMATICALLY EVASIVE
John Searle, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Berkeley, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, 1993, p.186
Deconstructive prose tends to be systematically evasive. Several of the examples that
Mackey gives are typical of this evasiveness. Crucial words are put in quotation marks so
as to suggest an ambivalence in the author's stance toward them. Thus, e.g., "`sanity' is
only a particular determination of neuroses." Or central theses are imbedded in subordinate
clauses and not stated directly, as in "if truths are fictions whose fictionality has been
forgotten . . ." In this way the deconstructionist can make unplausible assertions while
appearing not to; and this is part of what Culler calls the deconstructionist's "nimbleness,"
his moving "in and out of philosophic seriousness".
AKH0503 DECONSTRUCTION IS SIMPLY AN EXERCISE IN SELF-
DRAMATIZATION
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.141-2
How, then, does so unproductive a procedure manage to maintain a semblance of being
exciting and complex nonetheless? Two factors seem to me important. I have already
pointed to the emotional component in the performance. By keeping attention fixed on the
initial simple view that is to be displaced and making the denunciation of that view a
central aspect of the whole performance (rather than merely a starting point that is to be
left behind and forgotten), deconstruction creates a sense of the excitement of intellectual
progress beyond the commonplace, of the drama of intellectual confrontation, and of the
exhilaration of provocativeness. Formulations are chosen not for their logical or
intellectual appropriateness but, instead, for their drama and shock. Extremes of
formulation are thus required; they are not simply the product of intellectual inadequacy
but an essential and required part of deconstruction.
AKH0504 DECONSTRUCTION SACRIFICES INTELLECTUAL COMPLEXITY TO
DRAMATIC FLARE
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.140-1
A further typical feature of deconstructionist arguments can bee seen in its manner of
introducing the idea that is the polar opposite of the initial naive belief. This is essentially
and inevitably dramatic and gives the production of the reversal a provocative quality, one
of iconoclasm. Accordingly, there is heavy emphasis on moral terminology in
deconstructive writings. Deconstruction is "disturbing," "disruptive," it "unmasks,"
"subverts," "dismantles," "exposes," "challenges," and, a favorite word, it is a "scandal."
But with these emotional gains come considerable intellectual losses. If an idea is to make
a dramatic impact, it needs to be simple and direct, and so this in one more factor that tends
towards a primitive kind of notion as the counter to the initial commonsense starting point.
There is no room in this process for the gain in intellectual complexity that comes from
looking carefully at the formulation of the commonsense notion, and the way in which it
poses the question, in order to leave it behind not by reversal but by discarding its terms
completely. And once more, this rush from one end of the spectrum to the other inevitably
leaps over and avoids previous thought on these issues, thought that had frequently
explored what lies between the two ends of the spectrum with considerable subtlety.
AKH0505 DERRIDA REPLACES ARGUMENT WITH WORDPLAY
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.228
We will say more about the theme of Kulturkrisis in our concluding pages. For the
moment, we can sum up the situation of mainstream deconstruction by pointing out that
while in literary criticism, where it has a growing constituency, deconstruction now
operates basically as a technique for showing)for the umpteenth time)that all literature is
self-subversive, in Derrida's hands, it has become increasingly quaint in style and
apocalyptic in content. In most later essays by Derrida, oracular assertion by dint of jocular
or half-jocular pun-juggling has come to replace argument almost completely.
AKH0506 DERRIDA SUBSTITUTES WORDPLAY FOR ARGUMENT OR ANALYSIS
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.239
Derrida did it in a subtler way. He kept the genre or format of conventional philosophy
only to subvert it from inside. He shuns the burning issues of insanity, punishment and
sexuality and remains abstract and theoretical, endlessly commenting not only on the `hot'
topicalities of Nietzsche or Freud (as in La Carte Postale, 1980) but also on the arduous
ruminations of Husserl, Hegel or Kant (as in `Economimesis', 1975). Alas, the laborious
cogitations of prior philosophers are to him little more than pretexts for embarking on
long, loose chains of conceptual jokes, as though great and vexed questions of knowledge
and signification could be settled by the obiter dicta of a wanton scepticism that
increasingly substitutes verbal witticisms for argument and analysis.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 43
AKH0507 DECONSTRUCTIONISTS PUN INSTEAD OF THINKING
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.239-40
To claim, as does Richard Rorty in his influential books, that the difference between these
two widely disparate styles of thought-writing is not also a difference in value)of
cognitive power or at the very least of rational control)would imply too great a
debasement of the standards we have a right to expect from skilled critical thinking. Denis
Donoghue said of a foremost English critic (Christopher Ricks) that `he puns to think'. I
wish I could say the same of the deconstructionists, who seem to pun instead of thinking.
AKH0508 DECONSTRUCTION REDUCES REAL ISSUES TO LANGUAGE GAMES
Christopher Lasch, Professor of History, University of Rochester, THE REVOLT OF THE
ELITES, 1995, p.183
But anyone who reads Kimball's book with an open mind will recognize the accuracy of
many of his observations. By translating the "overcharged verbiage" of deconstruction into
plain English, he deflates its pretensions and shows "just how far" it "can intrude on the
reader's credulity without making concessions to common sense." He shows, for example,
how Michael Fried can torture Courbet's painting The Quarry into a metaphorical
representation of castration, of the violence inflicted by the artist on nature; how certain
theorists of architecture "can pretend that architecture is really about `interrogating form,'
subverting `the logic of the wall,' etc., not about building appropriate, serviceable, perhaps
even beautiful buildings"; and how apologists for Paul de Man, confronted with his
wartime articles in support of the Nazis, can reduce the whole controversy about de Man
to a debate about language.
AKH0509 DECONSTRUCTION IS SIMPLY LINGUISTIC PARASITISM
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.238
Deconstruction, after all, as the undoing of meaning, is a parasite of language: it wages war
on meanings by means of a relentless technique of word-stretching. Panofsky said that
Hegel's dialectic was a boa constrictor. Now, each age getting the Hegel it deserves, we
have our boa-deconstructor and are none the wiser for it. Between them, Derrida and
Foucault, the two caudillos of post-structuralism, reoriented French philosophy away from
the last semblance of sustained argument. Both sound decidedly `literary' compared to their
Anglo-Saxon or German counterparts. They made a vice out of a necessity: since
mainstream continental philosophy had a pretty poor analytical performance, why not
jettison the rites of careful analysis?
AKH0510 DECONSTRUCTIONIST WRITINGS ARE EXCESSIVELY OBSCURE
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.ix.
This attack on the self-confidence of intellectual opponents has probably been assisted by
the obscurity of many deconstructive writings; that obscurity makes it difficult to make
interpretive statements about them with confidence, and most scholars are loath to commit
themselves in print when such confidence is lacking.
AKH0511 OBSCURITY IS A FAULT, NOT A DEFENSE
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.16
This obscurity itself is sometimes adduced as the reason why one should not try to state
deconstruction's positions and arguments in direct, comprehensible terms in order to
discuss them: thus difficulty and obscurity are simply equated with complexity and
profundity. Since most of our experience is decidedly to the contrary)that is, texts that are
difficult and obscure are most usually confused and poorly thought out)this can never be
an automatic assumption; it needs to be demonstrated anew in each case claimed to be an
exception to the general rule. It cannot be assumed without argument, then, that Derrida's
obscure style precludes any possibility of his ideas being infected with confusions and
faulty inferences; obscurity, far from insuring against this, as a general rule makes it more,
not less, likely. Derrida, however, explicitly appeals to his own obscurity as a defense in
the exchange with Searle cited above.
AKH0512 DERRIDA IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY IN DEFENDING A
DETERMINATE MEANING OF HIS OWN TEXTS
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.77
Derrida's declining prestige was not, however, merely a matter of guilt by association. In
trying to defend de Man and Heidegger, Derrida and those closest to him sent forth a
stream of polemic and vituperation that stupefied many of its readers by its unreason and
its resort to special pleading. What is more, Derrida fell into the ironic position of insisting
that texts, especially his own, have quite determinate meanings which he, as author, was
uniquely privileged to understand, and that history and facts were on his side. Thus, at a
crucial point, the panic-stricken deconstructionists ran headlong from the implications of
their own doctrine, which had loudly proclaimed the "death of the author" and had
despised appeals to historical fact.

AKH0513 DECONSTRUCTION IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkeley English prof, SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.116-7.
Deconstructionism denies that propositions can be true, but it graciously makes an
exception for the propositions of its own theory. It scorns the idea of extrinsic standards
of value, but it elevates the subversion of conventional opinions into exactly such an
extrinsic standard)one that is luckily met by every single text that the deconstructionist
critic examines. In denying the primacy of authorial intentions, furthermore,
deconstructionism behaves as if those elusive intentions were knowable after all; the
program of decentering implies recognition of a center. And in asserting that no form of
discourse is more privileged than another, deconstructionism lays claim to knowledge of
the ultimate order or equality of things)a knowledge, once again, for which the theory
makes no provision. These anomalies suggest to me that we are dealing here, not with a
fully considered epistemology, but with a polemical posture or a current of ideological
enthusiasm.
AKH0514 DECONSTRUCTION RESTS ON PSYCHOLOGICAL NOT LOGICAL
APPEALS
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.151
It follows that deconstructive logic makes its way not by any genuinely logical means but,
instead, by its psychological appeal. Deconstruction offers its followers much
psychological satisfaction. Essential to its logic)not a by-product, as is the case where a
substantial intellectual innovation really has taken place)is the sense of belonging to an
intellectual elite, of having left behind the naivete of the crowd, of operating on a more
sophisticated intellectual plane than that crowd. I say essential, because the naivete of the
crowd is deconstruction's very starting point, and its subsequent move is as much an
emotional as an intellectual leap to a position that feels different as much in the one way
as the other.
AKH0515 CHAOS THEORY DOESN'T SUPPORT DECONSTRUCTION
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.99
Even philosophers who see some parallels between deconstructive literary theory and the
mathematics and physics of chaos theory are loath to push the comparison as far as does
Hayles. Alexander Argyos, commenting on Hayles's work, notes: "I suspect that this
apparent compatibility may be implying to literary theorists that chaos is a validation of
deconstruction. My own view is that such a claim is, for the most part, wrong . . . While
it is certainly true that deconstruction and chaos are both interested in highlighting non-
linearity, to claim that they are fellow travellers is, I believe, to make an unwarranted
assumption."
AKH0516 DERRIDA HAS NO COHERENT VIEW OF MEANING
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.66
Derrida's rejection of logocentrism is not revolutionary, and because he thinks it is, he is
unable to take advantage of the sophistication that the debate on essentialist thinking has
already reached; as a result, he jumps from one extreme (meaning is a matter of fixed,
immutable concepts) to the other (meaning is a matter of indeterminate, infinite play of
signs). This appears very like the undeveloped response of one who has just been surprised
by the realization that real essences do not exist. The conclusion of this discussion can
therefore only be that Derrida's contribution to the debate on language and meaning is not
substantial; it fails to establish any coherent new view of meaning or of the way language
functions.
AKH0517 DECONSTRUCTION'S EMPHASIS ON LANGUAGE STRUCTURES
NEGLECTS INDIVIDUALITY
Diane Michelfelder and Richard Palmer, MacMurray College, DIALOGUE AND
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.11
But Frank has another concern: individuality. he faults both hermeneutics and
"neostructuralism" (which includes both Foucault and Derrida) for bypassing the
importance of individuality in interpretation. Taking his lead from Schleiermacher, Frank
argues that in their perhaps necessary denial of subjectivity (in the name of language, or
structures, or convention, or tradition), neither hermeneutics nor deconstruction come to
grips with the claims of individuality. Precisely because hermeneutics and deconstruction
have in common the denial of subjectivity and an affirmation of the priority of language,
they also have in common the neglect of individuality.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 44
AKH0518 DERRIDA MISUNDERSTANDS THE RELATION OF WRITING AND
SPEECH
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.21
More important still are the obvious logical problems involved in asserting that writing is
prior to speech. Here we must deal with a strange fact: these objections are so very obvious
that they seem barely to need stating, and yet they are almost never alluded to in the
voluminous literature on deconstruction. It is as if there were a belief abroad that any
objections so simple as these must be beneath the level of sophistication required to make
a contribution to this debate:
1. Speech quite clearly existed long before the invention of writing.
2. There still exist in the world languages that are spoken but not written, but none that are
written without being spoken.
3. There are large numbers of individuals who speak without writing, but none who write
without speaking (except when their physical capacity to produce speech is deficient).
AKH0519 DERRIDA'S THEORY OF LANGUAGE FAILS
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.65-6
What, then, are the results of this discussion of Derrida's ideas on language and meaning?
Derrida's major thrust lies in (1) an attack on the essentialist view of meaning typified in
logical positivism, for example, but also found in Platonism and many other sources and
(2) the development of ideas that run counter to that view. Neither of these two aspects of
his work is successful. The first fails because Derrida allows it to become embroiled in an
unnecessary and fallacious argument about the priority of writing and speech; because it
lacks the perspective of the many other prior attacks on this theory and thus does not learn
from and build on them; and because it is incoherently formulated. The second fails
because its key points are not supported but simply asserted, which means that many
obvious logical difficulties are ignored and equally obvious objections are not met by any
argument; because while using the terminology developed by Saussure, Derrida misuses
those terms without explaining why he is doing so and possibly without understanding that
he is garbling them; and because the very heavy emphasis on iconoclastic denunciation of
logocentrism, now surely unnecessary, prevents Derrida from facing the real task he had
to face)developing an alternative, not to logocentrism, but to the alternatives that have
already been developed by thinkers that he does not consider.
AKH0520 DERRIDA'S THEORY OF MEANING IS COMPLETELY UNORIGINAL
John Ellis, Professor of German, University of California-Santa Cruz, AGAINST
DECONSTRUCTION, 1989, p.38
Derrida is, in fact, attacking a view of meaning that by now would have to be counted a
very naive and uninformed one; for example, it has been dismembered in various ways,
with varying emphases, by analytic philosophers such as Wittgenstein and others who have
worked in his tradition, by linguists such as J.R. Firth, by anthropological linguists
working in the tradition of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf,and by countless others.
When, in 1966, Derrida began to denounce this kind of thinking as a universal error, he
was demonstrating an extraordinary isolation from what had been happening for many
years; and the mood of gleeful iconoclasm, revolutionary fervor, and avant-garde daring
of the uniquely enlightened displayed by the followers of the deconstructionist banner
contrasted strangely with the underlying reality that none of this could by now be
considered remarkable or even unusual.
AKH0521 DERRIDA'S FOCUS ON TEXTS IGNORES SOCIAL CONTEXT
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
WORKING THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.238-9
Given this problem, there is a genuine question whether Derrida's method of dissemination
or deconstruction can help. Habermas is not alone in arguing that Derrida's approach has
not been and cannot be applied to such a concrete issue. Foucault also accuses Derrida of
being overly preoccupied with texts and ignoring their social context. Foucault suspects
that Derrida's method tacitly claims authority for itself as a result of the authority and
primacy it grants to the text. Furthermore, Foucault believes that a text is not autonomous
from the social practices to which it is tied both in its own time and in the time of its later
interpretation. Foucault suggests that deconstruction is blind not only to the ways in which
the text reflects social practices, but also to the extent to which deconstruction is itself a
social practice.

AKH0522 DERRIDA DOESN'T OFFER A COHERENT SOCIAL AND POLITICAL
THEORY
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.226
Nevertheless, for all Derrida's affirmation that deconstruction intervenes, that it is a way
of taking an ethical-political "position," and that it may be "too political" for some, there
is a certain "abstractness" in his understanding of politics. Placing Derrida in constellation
with Habermas helps to pinpoint this. Deconstruction, he tells us, "should not be separable
from [the] politico-institutional problematic and should seek a new investigation of
responsibility." Derrida has shown, in a series of perceptive analyses ranging from Kant
through Heidegger, how their discourses about the university cannot be separated from
their discourses about the institutional structure of the modern university. He has
developed a sharp and incisive critique of university institutions and practices. But suppose
we step back and ask, what does Derrida mean by a "politico-institutional structure"? Of
course, there is no univocal answer to this question. But Derrida never quite rises to the
level of necessary generality (as he does in telling us what he means by a "text") where we
can gain some perspective, some overview of the complex dynamics of institutional
structures that shape politics and society in the contemporary world. We will simply not
find in his writings anything resembling a social and political theory)as we do find in
Habermas.
AKH0523 DECONSTRUCTION ELEVATES WISHFUL THINKING OVER SOCIAL
FACT
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.85
Everything by which that civilization contrives to hold itself in high regard)Shakespeare
and Dante, Descartes and Kant, Locke and Jefferson, Newton and Einstein, Mozart and
Beethoven)wilts under the deconstructive gaze (at least in the minds of those doing the
gazing). It is a heaven-sent device for avoiding close argument and the analysis of
particulars. Once a postmodern critic has at hand a license to read every proposition as its
opposite when it suits his convenience, analytic skills of the more traditional sort are
expendable and logic is effaced in the swirling tide of rhetoric. Once it has been decided
that determinate meaning is chimerical and not worthy of slightest deference from the well-
honed poststructuralist postmodernist, the entire edifice of hard-won truth becomes a house
of cards. Once it has been affirmed that one discursive community is as good as another,
that the narrative of science holds no privileges over the narratives of superstition, the
newly minted cultural critic can actually revel in his ignorance of deep scientific ideas.
That this is a canny political act is accepted as an article of faith, no matter how much it
seems to elevate wishful thinking over hard social fact.
AKH0524 HABERMAS THINKS DERRIDA FAILS TO RECOGNIZE THE
POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL LEARNING
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
WORKING THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.240
The philosophical issues separating them is Habermas's charge that Derrida's aesthetic
contextualism ignores how the idealization procedures built into the communicative action
of everyday practices require us to redeem and prove the validity of our claims. In seeming
to deny that validity claims can be redeemed or proved, Derrida's view is blind to the social
learning processes through which we change and improve our understanding of ourselves
and our world. Because of this blindness, deconstruction implies that we are stuck in our
context, and caught fatalistically in the forces of textual production. We are doomed to
provincialism by the overpowering background of the arche-writing.
AKH0525 DERRIDA FALSELY ASSUMES THAT THE LACK OF PHILOSOPHICAL
FOUNDATIONS MATTERS
John Searle, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Berkeley, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, 1993, p.180-1
Derrida correctly sees that there aren't any such foundations, but he then makes the mistake
that marks him as a classical metaphysician. The real mistake of the classical
metaphysician was not the belief that there were metaphysical foundations, but rather the
belief that somehow or other such foundations were necessary, the belief that unless there
are foundations something is lost or threatened or undermined or put in question. It is this
belief which Derrida shares with the tradition he seeks to destruct.
AKH0526 ANTI-FOUNDATIONALISM DOESN'T DESTROY KNOWLEDGE
John Searle, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Berkeley, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, 1993, p.181
Derrida sees that the Husserlian project of a transcendental grounding for science,
language, and common sense is a failure. But what he fails to see is that this doesn't
threaten science, language, or common sense in the least. As Wittgenstein says, it leaves
everything exactly as it is. The only "foundation," for example, that language has or needs
is that people are biologically, psychologically, and socially constituted so that they
succeed in using it to state truths, to give and obey orders, to express their feelings and
attitudes, to thank, apologize, warn, congratulate, etc.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 45
AKH0527 DERRIDA FAILS TO RECOGNIZE THAT CONTEMPORARY
KNOWLEDGE IS ANTI-FOUNDATIONALIST
Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, WORKING
THROUGH DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.210-1
Habermas is a thoroughgoing fallibilist who rejects classical foundationalist and
transcendental arguments. One of his criticisms of thinkers like Heidegger, Adorno, and
Derrida is that they still write in the "shadow of the `last' philosopher, as did the first
generation of Hegelian disciples. They still feel the need to battle against those `strong'
concepts of system, totality, truth, and completed theory which belong to the past.'"
Ironically, much of the pathos of their writings gains its force from the specter of The
Grand System. "they still think that they have to arouse philosophy from what Derrida calls
`the dream of its heart.' they believe they have to tear philosophy away from the madness
of expounding a theory that has the last word." Despite their protests to the contrary, they
are still entrapped in the aporias and cul-de-sacs of what Habermas calls "The Philosophy
of Subjectivity." Their failure, according to Habermas, is not to realize and fully appreciate
that the "fallibilist consciousness of the sciences caught up with philosophy too, a long
time ago." When they declare that philosophy or metaphysics is over, their image of
philosophy is still that of the Absolute System)the philosophy of "the last word." Each,
in his way, wants to keep philosophy or thinking "pure")pure from any contamination by
empirical social scientific research.
AKH0528 FOUCAULT'S THEORY IS BANKRUPT)IT CAN'T DISTINGUISH
BETWEEN STALINISM AND DEMOCRACY
Christina Sommers, Clark University philosopher, WHO STOLE FEMINISM?, 1994,
p.230.
How seriously can one take Foucault's theory? Not very, says Princeton political
philosopher Michael Walzer, who characterizes Foucault's politics as infantile leftism.
Foucault was aware that he was equating modern democracies with repressively brutal
systems like the Soviet prison camps in the Gulag. In a 1977 interview, he showed some
concern about how his ideas might be interpreted: "I am indeed worried by a certain use
. . . which consists in saying, `Everyone has their own Gulag, the Gulag is here at our door,
in our cities, our hospitals, our prisons, it's here in our heads.'" But, as Walzer points out,
so long as Foucault rejected the possibility of individual freedom, which is the moral basis
for liberal democracy, it was unclear how he could sustain the distinction between the real
Gulag and the one inside the heads of bourgeois citizens.
AKH0529 FOUCAULT NIHILISTIC
Michael Walzer, Princeton, FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.613.
At this last passage suggest, when Foucault is an anarchist, he is a moral as well as a
political anarchist. For him morality and politics go together. Guilt and innocence are the
products of law just as normality and abnormality are the products of discipline. To abolish
power systems is to abolish both moral and scientific categories: away with them all! But
what will be left? Foucault does not believe, as earlier anarchists did, that the free human
subject is a subject of a certain sort, naturally good, warmly sociable, kind and loving.
Rather, there is for him no such thing as a free human subject, no natural man or woman.
Men and women are always social creations, the products of codes and disciplines. And
so Foucault's radical abolitionism, if it is serious, is not anarchist so much as nihilist. For
on his own arguments, either there will be nothing left at all, nothing visibly human; or
new codes and disciplines will be produced, and Foucault gives us no reason to expect that
these will be any better than the ones we now live with. Nor, for that matter, does he give
us any way of knowing what `better' might mean.
AKH0530 FOUCAULT'S UNDERSTANDING OF POWER VASTLY
OVERSIMPLIFIED)MAKES COMPREHENSION IMPOSSIBLE
Charles Taylor, McGill philosopher, FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.82-3.
Foucault's attraction is partly that of a terrible simplificateur. His espousal of the reversal
of Clausewitz's aphorism, which makes us see politics as war carried on by other means,
can open insights in certain situations. But to make this one's basic axiom for the
examination of modern power as such leaves out too much. Foucault's opposition between
the old model of power, based on sovereignty/obedience, and the new one based on
domination/subjugation leaves out everything in Western history which has been animated
by civic humanism or analogous movements. And that means a massive amount of what
is specific to our civilization. Without this in one's conceptual armoury Western history
and societies become incomprehensible, as they are for that reason to so many Russians
(like Solzhenitsyn).

AKH0531 DISCIPLINE ENHANCES FREEDOM TO SOCIETY
Charles Taylor, McGill philosopher, FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.81-2.
But Foucault has missed the ambivalence of these new disciplines. The point is, they have
not only served to feed a system of control; they have also taken the form of genuine self-
disciplines which have made possible new kinds of collective action characterized by more
egalitarian forms of participation. This is not a new discovery. It is a truism of the civic
humanist tradition of political theory that free participatory institutions require some
commonly accepted self-disciplines. The free citizen has the virtu to give willingly the
contribution which otherwise the despot would coerce from him, perhaps in some other
form. Without this, free institutions cannot exist. There is a tremendous difference between
societies which find their cohesion through such common disciplines grounded on a public
identity, and which thus permit of and call for the participatory action of equals, on one
hand, and the multiplicity of kinds of society which require chains of command based on
unquestionable authority on the other.
AKH0532 FOUCAULT'S THEORIES AREN'T GROUNDED IN EVIDENCE
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkeley English prof, SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.171.
But Foucault's concreteness, such as it was, by no means entailed a belief in regulating his
ideas according to the evidence he encountered. Indeed, though his historical works attach
portentous significance to certain developments and details, his epistemological
pronouncements appear to rule out the very concept of a fact.
AKH0533 DISCIPLINE PERVADES ALL SOCIETY)SMALL REFORMS ONLY
POSSIBILITY
Michael Walzer, Princeton, FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.60.
But what other victories can he think possible, given his strategic knowledge? Consider:
1. that discipline-in-detail, the precise control of behaviour, is necessary to the
(unspecified) large-scale features of contemporary social and economic life;
2. that this kind of control requires the micro-setting, the finely meshed network, the local
power relation, represented in ideal-typical fashion by the cellular structure of the prison,
the daily timetable of prison events, the extra-legal penalties inflicted by prison authorities,
the face-to-face encounters of guard and prisoner;
3. that the prison is only one small part of a highly articulated, mutually reinforcing
carceral continuum extending across society, in which all of us are implicated, and not only
as captives or victims;
4. and finally, that the complex of disciplinary mechanisms and institutions constitutes and
is constituted by the contemporary human sciences)an argument that runs though all of
Foucault's work, to which I will return. Physical disciplines and intellectual disciplines are
radically entangled; the carceral continuum is validated by the knowledge of human
subjects that it makes possible.
Given all this ) leave aside for the moment whether it adds up to a fully satisfactory
account of our social life ) how can Foucault expect anything more than a small reform
here or there, an easing of disciplinary rigour, the introduction of more humane, if no less
effective methods?
AKH0534 FOUCAULT MAKES RESISTANCE IMPOSSIBLE
H.F. Haber, Asst. Philosophy Prof., U. Colorado, Denver, BEYOND POSTMODERN
POLITICS,1994, p.101-2.
But if, as this thesis implies, individuals are wholly constituted by the power/knowledge
regime Foucault describes, how can discipline be resisted in the first place? (Unless it
comes about as an inevitable moment in the march of . . . but no, this is a very
unfoucauldian thesis.) If individuals are wholly constituted by the power/knowledge
regime, then it would make no sense to talk about resistance to discipline. As Sandra Lee
Bartky notes, Foucault seems sometimes on the verge of depriving us of a vocabulary in
which to conceptualize the nature and meaning of resistance. And where he suggests the
possibility of an alternative vocabulary, his thesis that individuals "with his identity and
characteristics [are] the product of a relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities,
movements, desires, forces" must leave us skeptical about the possibility of alternative
vocabularies. If the subject is "constituted through practices of subjugation," then what
sense can we make of the claim that it is also constituted "through practices of liberation,
of freedom . . . starting, of course, from a certain number of rules, styles, and conventions
that are found in the culture"? This grossly begs the question: how does one start from the
rules, styles, and conventions of a disciplinary and normalizing culture and end up with
practices of liberation and freedom? Foucault never provides us with the missing steps, and
in fact, has given us powerful reasons to suppose practices of "liberation" and
"freedom")even if these are liberations from one power regime to another)are impossible.
The difficulty of finding the possibility of a revolutionary vocabulary is not a problem
peculiar to Foucault; it haunts many revolutionary proponents of poststructuralist politics.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 46
AKH0535 FOUCAULT PRESERVES PATRIARCHY - PREVENTS EMPOWERMENT
OF WOMEN
H.F. Haber, Asst. Philosophy Prof., U. Colorado, Denver, BEYOND POSTMODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.108.
When Lyotard and Foucault deny the possibility of coherent subjects, when they repudiate
consensus and community, it can be argued that their postmodern theories merely
reproduce the effects of enlightenment theories; the result of theories which deconstruct
subjects is to deny the marginalized to participate in defining their interests, goals,
desires)to construct a new voice. Foucault emphasizes, and sometimes totalizes, the
prepressive effects of power (critique or theory) at the expense of its potential for
liberation (construction), and this deemphasis on liberatory practices makes him suspect
from the perspective of the disempowered. In The History of Sexuality, Foucault
characterizes confessional practices which aim at self-disclosure and self-discovery as
aiding the interests of domination and social control. Indeed, as Jana Sawicki notes,
"Foucault was suspicious of most efforts to tell the truth about one-self."
AKH0536 FOUCAULT ANTI-DEMOCRATIC
Christina Sommers, Clark U. Philosopher, WHO STOLE FEMINISM?, 1994, p.229.
Michel Foucault, a professor of philosophy at the distinguished College de France and an
irreverent social thinker who felt deeply alienated from the society in which he lived,
introduced his theory of interior disciplines in 1975. His book Discipline and Punish, with
its novel explanation of how large groups of people could be controlled without the need
of exterior controllers, took intellectual Paris by storm. Foucault had little love for the
modern democratic state. Like Marx, he was interested in the forces that keep citizens of
democracies law-abiding and obedient.
AKH0537 FOUCAULT'S PERSPECTIVE IS NIHILISTIC
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.10
By denying the possibility of an independent standpoint, Foucault appears to such critics
to be not simply a functionalist, but a nihilistic, fatalistic one. Thus Walzer interprets
Foucault as a functionalist who presupposes that society is a whole governed by an
invisible hand rather than by an accountable, legitimate state power and a rational rule of
law. As an anarchist, Foucault is said to disavow any political structure but also any human
nature that could persist without social systems. So Foucault seems to believe that social
improvement is impossible short of abolishing modern society altogether. But Walzer
thinks that this radical abolitionism is nihilistic because `either there will be nothing left
at all, nothing visibly human; or new codes and disciplines will be produced, and Foucault
gives us no reason to expect that these will be any better than the ones we now live with.
Nor, for that matter, does he give us any way of knowing what "better" might mean.'
AKH0538 IN REJECTING UNIVERSALISM, FOUCAULT LACKS ANY MORAL
BASIS FOR HIS POLITICS
Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Professors of Philosophy and anthropology, University
of California Berkeley, FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, David Couzens Hoy, ed.,
1986, p.113
But, Habermas asks how can Foucault legitimately make such normative judgements once
he has defined maturity as the relinquishing of dependence on the authority of law, religion
and science as well as formal universal claims put forward by philosophers? From
Habermas's point of view, Foucault's propounding a political theory without justification
must be pure decisionism.
AKH0539 FOUCAULT DEVALUES MORAL DISCOURSE
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, THE AMERICAN EVASION OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1989, p.226
The last prophetic pragmatist criticism of foucault's project is that he devalues moral
discourse. His fervent anti-utopianism)again in reaction to Hegelian and Marxist teleogical
utopianisms)rejects all forms of ends and aims for political struggle. Therefore, he
replaces reform or revolution with revolt and rebellion. In this way, Foucault tends to
reduce left ethics to a bold and defiant Great Refusal addressed to the dominant powers
that be. Yet by failing to articulate and elaborate ideals of democracy, equality, and
freedom, Foucault provides solely negative conceptions of critique and resistance. He
rightly suspects the self-authorizing and self-privileging aims of "universal" intellectuals
who put forward such ideals, yet he mistakenly holds that any attempt to posit these ideals
as guides to political action and social reconstruction must fall prey to new modes of
subjection and disciplinary control.

AKH0540 FOUCAULT'S PHILOSOPHY ENDS IN INEFFECTUAL NIHILISM
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.185-6.
There can be little doubt that Foucault was a humane man, viscerally concerned about the
injustices that existed in the world, and frequently prepared to act militancy in defense of
human rights. But he offers no basic philosophy for his actions and in many ways vitiates
the emergence of one. As a critic of power he in fact leaves us quite powerless to change
our fate, and foresees, along with Nietzsche, not only the end of God but the end of man.
His explicit antihumanism, his rejection of the potentialities opened by the Enlightenment,
his ahistoricism, and his treatment of truth as a 'regime' of domination are too debilitating
in their social effects to support the image of the engaged French intellectual. He drifted
from Stalinism to Maoism to a life-style anarchism - more properly, nihilism within a span
of only two decades. It is as a defining thinker of poststructuralism and postmodernism that
his basic ideas are of concern here.
AKH0541 FOUCAULT'S CRITIQUE FAILS BECAUSE HE LACKS NORMATIVE
STANDARDS
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.8
Habermas contends that Foucault's critique of modernity fails because Foucault loses his
sense of direction. This loss occurs because Foucault is both a `crypto-normativist' and an
`irrationalist'. The former label applies because Foucault cannot explain the standards
Habermas thinks must be presupposed in any condemnation of the present. Habermas cites
Nancy Fraser's pointed questions, `Why is struggle preferable to submission? Why ought
domination to be resisted? Only with the introduction of normative notions of some kind
could Foucault begin to answer this question. Only with the introduction of normative
notions could he begin to tell us what is wrong with the modern power/knowledge regime
and why we ought to oppose it.'
AKH0542 FOUCAULT'S VIEW OF POWER IS A REDUCTIONISTIC EXPLANATION
FOR EVERYTHING
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, PROFILES AND CRITIQUES IN
SOCIAL THEORY, 1982, p.226-7
Power is a secondary phenomenon, to be added in at second reserve. Foucault, and those
influenced in a more uninhibited way by Nietzsche, are right to insist that power is
chronically and inevitably involved in all social processes. To accept this, I think, is to
acknowledge that power and freedom are not inimical; and that power cannot be identified
with either coercion or constraint. But I also think it quite wrong to be thereby seduced by
a Nietzschean radicalisation of power, which elevates it to the prime position in action and
in discourse. Power then becomes a mysterious phenomenon, that hovers everywhere, and
underlies everything. I consider it very important to reject the idea that power has primacy
over truth, or that meanings and norms can be explicated as congealed or mystified power.
A reductionism of power is as faulty as economic or normative reductionisms are.
AKH0543 FOUCAULT NEGLECTS THE VITAL ISSUE OF WHO HOLDS POWER
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, THE AMERICAN EVASION OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1989, p.225
Edward Said perceptively states regarding Foucault: Yet despite the extraordinary
worldliness of this work, Foucault takes a curiously passive and sterile view not so much
of the uses of power, but of how and why power is gained, used, and held onto. This is the
most dangerous consequence of his disagreement with Marxism, and its result is the least
convincing aspect of his work . . . However else power may be a kind of indirect
bureaucratic discipline and control, there a ascertainable changes stemming from who
holds power and who dominates whom.
AKH0544 FOUCAULT MISTAKENLY DISCOUNTS ALL HUMAN AGENCY
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, THE AMERICAN EVASION OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1989, p.225
By downplaying human agency)both individual and collective human actions)Foucault
surreptitiously ascribes agency to discourses, disciplines, and techniques. there indeed are
multiple unintended consequences and unacknowledged antecedent conditions of human
actions that both produce and are produced by institutions and structures. methodological
individualism in social theory, according to which isolated and atomistic individual actions
fully account for humans' societies and histories, will not suffice. But the alternative is not
the exclusive ascription of agency to impersonal forces, transcendental entities, or
anonymas and autonomous discourses. For prophetic pragmatists, human agency remains
central)all we have in human societies and histories are structured and unstructured human
social practices over time and space.
AKH0545 FOUCAULT BLURS DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TYPES OF SOCIAL
CONTROL
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.10
Michael Walzer's article is a good place to start for the reader who wants a clear and
incisive representation of the social and political issues more from an Anglo-American
perspective. Walzer begins by accusing Foucault's account of being inadequate on
empirical grounds. Foucault is said to underestimate the difference between being in prison
and being out of it in a carceral society, or between being in a carceral yet social
democratic society and being in a Gulag.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 47
AKH0546 FOUCAULT FAILS TO RECOGNIZE THE INDIVIDUAL NATURE OF
POWER
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.10-1
Steven Lukes thinks that Foucault treats power exclusively as an impersonal, deterministic
structure and thereby fails to explain how power is exercised by individuals who bear the
responsibility for their actions.
AKH0547 KNOWLEDGE ISN'T SIMPLY POWER; IT ALSO MAPS REALITY
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.190
When the end of ideology failed to materialize, it was easy to conclude, with Foucault and
Derrida, that knowledge of any kind is purely a function of power or, as Stanley Fish puts
it, that "might makes right" if that means that "in the absence of a perspective independent
of interpretation some interpretive perspective will always rule by having won out over its
competitors." Geertz argues, on the other hand, that a given ideology prevails in the
struggle with other ideologies not because its advocates have the power to silence
opposition but because it provides a better "map" of reality, a more reliable guide to action.
His rehabilitation of ideology)and, by extension, the critique of foundationalism, at least
in some of its forms)serves to reopen the possibility of subjecting moral and political
issues to serious discussion and of refuting those who deny the possibility of intelligently
defending any moral or political position.
AKH0548 THE STATE IS THE SOURCE OF POWER
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, PROFILES AND CRITIQUES IN
SOCIAL THEORY, 1982, p.223-4
There is a surprising `absence' at the heart of Foucault's analyses)thus far at any rate)an
absence shared with Marxism. It is what I have drawn attention to earlier: an account of
the state. In Marx, as I have commented, this lack is in some part to be traced to his
involvement with political economy. In Foucault, one suspects, it is related to the very
ubiquity of power as discipline. The state is what Foucault describes as the `calculated
technology of subjection' writ large, the disciplinary matrix that oversees the others.
AKH0549 FOUCAULT FALSELY GENERALIZES FROM PRISON TO SOCIETY AT
LARGE
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, PROFILES AND CRITIQUES IN
SOCIAL THEORY, 1982, p.222-3
Foucault draws too close an association between the prison and the factory. There is no
doubt that prisons were in part consciously looked to as models by some employers in the
early years of capitalism in their search for the consolidation of labour discipline. Unfree
labour was actually sometimes used. But there are two essential differences between the
prison and the factory. `Work' only makes up one sector, albeit normally the most time
consuming one, of the daily life of individuals outside prisons. For the capitalistic work-
place is not, as prisons are, and clinics and hospitals may be, a `total institution', in
Goffman's term. More important, the worker is not forcibly incarcerated in the factory or
office, but enters the gates of the work-place as `free wage-labour'. This gives rise to the
historically peculiar problems of the `management' of a labour force that is formally `free',
analysed interestingly by Pollard among others. At the same time, it opens the way for
forms of worker resistance (especially unionisation and the threat of collective withdrawal
of labour) that are not part of the normal enactment of prison discipline. The `docile
bodies' which Foucault says discipline produces turn out very often to be not so docile at
all.
AKH0550 THE PRISON DEVELOPED AS A CONSCIOUS SOCIAL CHOICE, NOT
JUST AN EFFECT OF POWER
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, PROFILES AND CRITIQUES IN
SOCIAL THEORY, 1982, p.222
This first objection has concrete implications for the analysis that Foucault has produced
of the prison and the clinic. `Punishment', `discipline', and especially `power' itself, are
characteristically spoken of by him as though they were agents)indeed the real agents of
history. But the development of prisons, clinics and hospitals was not a phenomenon that
merely appeared `behind the backs' of those who designed them, helped to build them, or
were their inmates. Ignatieff's work on the origins of prisons is in this respect a useful
counterbalance to Foucault. The reorganisation and expansion of the prison system in the
nineteenth century was closely bound up with the perceived needs of state authorities to
construct new modes of controlling miscreants in large urban spaces, where the
sanctioning procedures of the local community could no longer apply.
AKH0551 FOUCAULT IGNORES THE REALITY OF CENTRALIZED POWER
Michael Walzer, Princeton, FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.63.
One of Foucault's followers, the author of a very intelligent essay on Discipline and
Punish, draws from that book and the related interviews the extraordinary conclusion that
the Russian Revolution failed because it `left intact the social hierarchies and in no way
inhibited the functioning of the disciplinary techniques'. Exactly wrong: the Bolsheviks
created a new regime that overwhelmed the old hierarchies and enormously expanded and
intensified the use of disciplinary techniques. And they did this from the heart of the social
system and not from what Foucault likes to call the capillaries, from the centre and not the
extremities. Foucault desensitizes his readers to the importance of politics; but politics
matters.

AKH0552 FOUCAULT FAILS TO MEANINGFULLY LOCATE POWER
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.240-1.
The historian Jacques Leonard makes a similar point, noting how vague Foucault is when
it comes to specifying exactly who is exercising the power that is so ubiquitous in
Discipline and Punish Foucault manages to evade the question of agency in a number of
ways: for example, by making liberal use of reflexive verbs, infinitives, and the impersonal
French on--the anonymous "one"; by speaking of strategy, tactics, and the like without
indicating whose strategy or tactics it is; and by telling us that such and such an historical
reality "can be viewed as" having such and such a significance, with the question of
whether this was its significance for the historical actors themselves not really confronted.
The same anonymity surrounds the related conception of "biopower" in The Will to
Knowledge (VS,pp. 177-211/135-159).
AKH0553 FOUCAULT DOESN'T OFFER A VALID HISTORY OF THE PRISON
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.246.
I am arguing, however, against naive readings of Foucault. For example, there is a
temptation to derive from Foucault's history of the prison true propositions regarding the
actual institution within society that we know as the prison. But it is an error to try to
derive from Foucault such propositions as, for example, "the prison exists in order to foster
delinquency and thus to provide a rationale for strengthening the instruments of
repression." Rather, what one can usefully find in Foucault's writings on the prison are
suggestions, pregnant hints for further work and investigation, perspectives that, pursued
and tested, may allow us to see more clearly the world in which we live--and may perhaps
help us in any attempts to alter that world. Foucault is best treated as an animator--not as
an authority.
AKH0554 THE CONTINUING MOVE TO DEMOCRACY DENIES FOUCAULT'S
THEORIES
Robert Hughes, critic and historian, CULTURE OF COMPLAINT, 1993, p.76-7.
Outside its perimeter, real life, real language and real communication go on. In the late 80s,
while American academics were emptily theorizing that language and the thinking subject
were dead, the longing for freedom and humanistic culture was demolishing the very
pillars of European tyranny. Of course, if the Chinese students had read their Foucault they
would have known that repression is inscribed in all language, their own included, and so
they could have saved themselves the trouble of facing the tanks in Tiananmen Square. But
did Vaclav Havel and his fellow playwrights, intellectuals and poets free Czechoslovakia
by quoting Derrida or Lyotard on the inscrutability of texts? Assuredly not: they did it by
placing their faith in the transforming power of thought--by putting their shoulders to the
immense wheel of the word. The world changes more deeply, widely, thrillingly than at
any moment since 1917, perhaps since 1848, and the American academic left keeps fretting
about how phallocentricity is inscribed in Dickens's portrayal of Little Nell.
AKH0555 THE DISPERSION OF POWER PERMITS REFORM
Stanley Fish, Professor of English and Law, Duke, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS
FREE SPEECH, 1994, p.189.
If we have learned anything from Foucault, it is that power is never concentrated in one
place (or person) but is distributed everywhere throughout a system, so that its exercise is
always reciprocal, a two- (or more) way traffic in relation to which the action of one person
is effective only insofar as some other persons affirm its scope and thereby maintain a
balance that can always be altered at almost any point. What this means is that there is
never a situation in which there is "no room for hermeneutics" (Dallmayr, quoting
Gadamer), that is, no room for the interpretive maneuvering that produces change; since
the structure of any situation or of any system of ideas is one of layered dependencies and
coordinations, there are innumerable nodal junctures at which a shift in emphasis and
pressure can lead to a systemwide readjustment or even to a systemwide breakdown. As
I have put it elsewhere (Doing What Comes Naturally), a horizon of understanding is not
a monolithic unity of which one asks, how can it change'? Rather, it is itself an engine of
change, a complex mechanism whose every exertion is simultaneously a self-alteration. If
we understand criticism as the possibility of correction and reform (a word that should be
read with a literal emphasis), then it is a possibility that can never be foreclosed.
AKH0556 POST-STRUCTURALISM CAN'T EXPLAIN HOW CHANGE OCCURS
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.91.
This is why post-structuralism and its New Historicist offshoot are so utterly lacking in
conceptual and ethical resources when it comes to explaining how changes have
occurred--fitfully, no doubt, but often with momentous consequences - in the spheres of
human moral and political awareness. All that they can offer is a textualist
(discourse-theoretical) variant on the old empiricist notion of the subject as a tabula rasa,
a passive receptacle for whatever impressions, ideas, or meanings happen to constitute the
current range of ideological structures-in-dominance. Any resistance to those structures
can only be attributed to a reflex tendency for power to generate some counter-discourse
likewise complicit with the omnipresent workings of power/knowledge.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 48
AKH0557 SOVEREIGN POWER IS CRITICAL
Michael Walzer, Princeton, FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.66.
A liberal state is one that maintains the limits of its constituent disciplines and disciplinary
institutions and that enforces their intrinsic principles. Authoritarian and totalitarian states,
by contrast, override those limits, turning education into indoctrination, punishment into
repression, asylums into prisons, and prisons into concentration camps. These are crude
definitions; I won't insist upon them; amend them as you will. I only want to suggest the
enormous importance of the political regime, the sovereign state. For it is the state that
establishes the general framework within which all other radically shuts down the
possibility of local resistance. The agents of every disciplinary institution strive, of course,
to extend their reach and augment their discretionary power. Ultimately, it is only state
power that can stop them. Every act of local resistance is an appeal for political or legal
intervention from the centre.
AKH0558 FOUCAULT'S THEORY OF POWER REFLECTS 60'S PARANOIA
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkeley English prof, SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.177.
Not coincidentally, it was immediately after 1968 that Foucault switched from his quasi-
structuralist "archaeologies" of Western "epistemes" to more drastic Nietzschean
"genealogies" reducing all truth claims to exercises of power. The attractive new ingredient
in Foucault's thought was Sixties paranoia toward the hidden, all-powerful oppressors
whom he never attempted to identify.
AKH0559 FOUCAULT'S METHOD JUST INFANTILE LEFTISM
Michael Walzer, Princeton, FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.51.
My concern here is not primarily with Michel Foucault's political positions, the statements
he has made, the articles he has written, his response to `events') May '68, the prison
revolts of the early seventies, the Iranian revolution, and so on. Though he insists that he
doesn't have a political position and doesn't want to be situated on the chessboard of
available positions (he doesn't play chess, or any other game whose rules the rest of us
might know), he does indeed respond to events, and his statements and articles have a
fairly consistent character. They are of the sort I was taught to call, in the political world
where I grew up and learned to talk, `infantile leftism', that is, less an endorsement than an
outrunning of the most radical argument in any political struggle.
AKH0560 FOUCAULT'S ANTI-EMPIRICISM MAKES HIS WORK
AUTHORITARIAN
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkeley English prof, SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.171-2.
For Foucault the whole Enlightenment was a continuing nightmare of ever-harsher social
control)a movement to draw "reasonable" distinctions (rational-irrational, sane-insane,
innocent-criminal, normal-abnormal) so as to stigmatize and punish behavior that threatens
bourgeois self-regard. Foucault's own delicate mission was to trace the origins of that
mania without at the same time enlarging its dominion. Such a feat called for a
determination not just to "escape the grasp of categories" but to "play the game of truth and
error badly" (Foucault, 190))in other words, to remain unbound by any norms of evidence
and logic. Foucault could only hope that his books might serve as "Molotov cocktails, or
minefields" that would "self-destruct after use" (quoted by Megill, 243). The guerrilla
imagery, evoking the Romantic anti-rationalism of May 1968, points not only to the
wellsprings of the continuing Foucault cult but also to the common denominator of all
theoreticism: a refusal to credit one's audience with the right to challenge one's ideas on
dispassionate grounds. It is hard in any case to attach positive significance to the
replacement of one revered master by another, when the very appetite for unquestioning
belief is the heart of the problem.
AKH0561 FOUCAULT FAILED TO CONSULT ACTUAL EXPERIENCE
Robert Hughes, critic and historian, CULTURE OF COMPLAINT, 1993, p.125.
What I found useless, by contrast, was the abstract theorizing about prison and power in
texts that became sacred in American academe in the early 80s, such as Michel Foucault's
Discipline and Punish. In his ruminations about Jeremy Bentham's theory of the
Panopticon, or total-surveillance prison, Foucault contrived to do exactly what he blamed
the State for doing in real life: ignore the experience of prisoners themselves, hardly even
bother to consult evidence about it, lest it disturb the autocratic, cuckoo-clock
self-referentiality of his own theoretical constructs. Foucault's American admirers fail to
see what an authoritarian he was, deep in the closet.
AKH0562 FOUCAULT'S DETERMINISM LEAVES NO SCOPE FOR EFFECTIVE
MORAL OR POLITICAL ACTION
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.41-2.
New Historicism inherits this dead-end predicament without the least sign of
acknowledging its problematic character. That is to say, it follows Foucault in reducing all
questions of knowledge, judgment and ethics to the level of an intra-discursive force-field,
an agonistic play of resistances or power/knowledge effects where the subject is just a
ghost in the linguistic machine, an epiphenomenon of discourse. Nor is it in any way
fortuitous that in drawing out the aporias of Foucault's position one is led to invoke these
Cartesian metaphors and echoes of Gilbert Ryle on Descartes. For there is a similar
problem with Foucault: how to overcome the deep-laid conflict that exists between a
thoroughgoing determinism as applied to the body and its various disciplinary-discursive
regimes, and the necessary margin of free-will required to envisage any ethics or politics
worth the name.

AKH0563 FOUCAULT'S VIEW OF REASON UNDERMINES CONSTRUCTIVE
CHANGE
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.42.
But his case appears much less convincing if one asks, with Habermas, what reasons
Foucault can offer - factual, ethical, or principled reasons - for bringing that history to
book (so to speak) as an instance of certain determinate abuses in the discourse of
oppressive instrumental rationality. For he is working with so impoverished a notion of
'reason' - and so minimal a conception of the subject - that there seems no alternative to the
power/knowledge nexus that defines every aspect of human social interaction. In short,
Foucault deprives himself of any normative (i.e., reasoned and principled) grounds on
which to mount his otherwise passionate case as regards the great legacy of suffering,
injustice, and human waste brought about by such specific perversions of the rationalist
project. In Habermasian terms he fails to distinguish between the various spheres of reason
- instrumental (problem-solving), ethico political, aesthetic or 'world-disclosive', etc. - and
hence fails to see how encroachments by the first on to the others' domain may result in
just the kinds of large-scale abuse that his texts so persistently denounce. By reducing
'reason' to its lowest common denominator (instrumental rationality) Foucault in effect
closes off any prospect of progressive or emancipatory change.
AKH0564 FOUCAULT'S PERSPECTIVE UNDERMINES ANY HOPE OF PROGRESS
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.108-9.
We are now better placed to understand why 'theory' (or the version of it promoted by
post-structuralists, Foucauldians, New Historicists and others) has fallen in so readily with
this current counter-enlightenment trend. By 'decentring' the subject to the point of
non-existence -reducing it to a mere position within discourse or a figment of the humanist
Imaginary-post-structuralism has removed the very possibility of reasoned, reflective, and
principled ethical choice. From Foucault comes the Nietzsche-inspired (but ultimately
Hobbesian) notion that 'subjectivity' end 'subjection' are synonymous terms; that all
truth-claims - including ethico-political ideas of reason - are reducible to effects of
power/knowledge; and hence that we might as well abandon any hope of achieving
progress through the exercise of reason in its enlightened (critical-emancipatory) role.
AKH0565 FOUCAULT'S THEORY OF POWER IS A POLITICAL DEAD END
Robert Hughes, critic and historian, CULTURE OF COMPLAINT, 1993, p.75-6.
'To this was joined the belief of French poststructuralism, exemplified by Michel Foucault
and Jacques Derrida, that the "subject"--the thinking, single agent, the "I" of every
sentence--was an illusion: all you had left was language, not mentality: frustration with
pervasive systems of repressive undecidability written everywhere in the surrounding
culture, but no means of overcoming it. Once there were writers, but now there is only
what Foucault derisively called "the author function." The intellectual, under these
conditions, is thought to be as helpless against power and control as a salmon in a polluted
stream, the only difference being that we, unlike the fish, know the water is poisoned.
Thus, by the theory, we are not in control of our own history and never can be. We hold
it true that truth is unknowable; we must suspect all utterances, except the axiom that all
utterances are suspect. It would be difficult to find a worse-- or more authoritarian--dead
end than this. John Diggins, in The Rise and Fall of the American Left, puts it in a nutshell:
'today the intellectual's challenge is not the Enlightenment one of furthering knowledge to
advance freedom: the challenge now is to spread suspicion. The influence French
poststructuralism enjoys in American academic life . . . answers a deep need, if only the
need to rationalize failure.
AKH0566 REFORM CAN BE MEANINGFUL
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, PROFILES AND CRITIQUES IN
SOCIAL THEORY, 1982, p.223
Foucault says of the prison that `prison reform' is born together with the prison itself: it is
part of its very programme. But the same point could be made, and in less ironic vein,
about various of the political and economic transformations introduced with the collapse
of feudalism. Liberalism is not the same as despotism, absolutism or totalitarianism, and
the bourgeois ethos of rational, universalised justice has the same double-edged character
as prisons and their reform. With this major difference: prisoners are denied just those
rights which the remainder of the population formally possess. Taken together, freedom
of contract and freedom to organize politically have helped generate the rise of labour
movements that have been both a challenge to, and a powerful force for change within, the
political and economic orders of capitalism.
AKH0567 FOUCAULT'S SKEPTICISM UNDERMINES EFFECTIVE POLITICAL
PRACTICE
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, THE AMERICAN EVASION OF
PHILOSOPHY, 1989, p.226
Foucault rightly wants to safeguard relentless criticism and healthy skepticism, yet his
rejection of even tentative aims and provisional ends results in existential rebellion or
micropolitical revolt rather than concerted political praxis informed by moral vision and
systemic (though flexible) analysis. In stark contrast, prophetic pragmatists take seriously
moral discourse)revisable means and ends of political action, the integrity and character
of those engaged, and the precious ideals of participatory democracy and the flowering of
the uniqueness of different human individualities.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 49
AKH0568 FOUCAULT'S VIEW OF POWER UNDERMINES POLITICAL REFORM
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.82
For its part, Foucauldian analysis, despite the tender-heartedness of some of its instincts,
seems equally to lead to resignation and quietism. If consciousness is such a prisoner of
power)and Foucault seems much more gloomy than Marx in this respect)then hopes for
a break with the oppressive past must be futile indeed. Notes Alan Ryan, Princeton
professor of politics: It is, for instance, pretty suicidal for embattled minorities to embrace
Michel Foucault, let alone Jacques Derrida. The minority view was always that power
could be undermined by truth . . . Once you read Foucault as saying that truth is simply an
effect of power, you've had it . . . But American departments of literature, history, and
sociology contain large numbers of self-described leftists who have confused radical
doubts about objectivity with political radicalism, and are in a mess.
AKH0569 FOUCAULT'S THEORIES UNDERMINE RADICAL ACTION
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.83
Though less disdainful of Foucault, Lentricchia is in the end disenchanted with that
thinker's beatification: "Foucault's theory of power, because it gives power to anyone,
everywhere, provides for a means of resistance but no real goal for resistance . . . In this
version, the economic version of exploitation seems insignificant." An even more
sweeping uneasiness is expressed by Bogdan Denitch, influential political scientist and co-
chairman of the Democratic Socialists of America: "Politics of identity and mechanical
imports of French intellectual fashions have trivialized and decentered attempts to build
genuinely broad coalitions that could provide an arena for a resurgent left."
AKH0570 FOUCAULT HAS NO COHERENT BASIS FOR POLITICAL RESISTANCE
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.10
but finally Walzer maintains that the problem is more serious, and that Foucault's political
epistemology is simply incoherent. Foucault calls for resistance but offers no account of
what would constitute good reasons both for criticising that which is to be resisted and for
explaining how it should be resisted: `Foucault believes that truth is relative to its sanctions
and knowledge to the constraints that produce it. There would appear to be no independent
standpoint, no possibility for the development of critical principles.'
AKH0571 FOUCAULT'S THEORY OF POWER LEADS TO PASSIVITY
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.11
Yet Cliffort Geertz believes that in reading Discipline and Punish `we seemed to be faced
with a kind of Whig history in reverse)a history, in spite of itself, of the Rise of
Unfreedom'. If Foucault's project is to do social criticism without appealing to a utopian,
teleological philosophy of history, his use of the rhetoric of negative or dystopian
functionalism is paradoxical. While dystopian stories can be told to counter the belief in
utopias, they are equally as mistaken as the utopian stories if the goal is to avoid all stories
about where history as a whole is going. Furthermore, the reverse Whiggish narrative has
a decided moral or practical disadvantage when contrasted to the progressive narrative. The
story of the inevitable slide into catastrophe evokes attitudes of fatalism and quietism,
which make social criticism pointless since individual agents are helpless to rectify the
resented social practices and institutions.
AKH0572 FOUCAULT'S DIAGNOSIS MAKES RESISTANCE FUTILE
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.11
Other critics have noted that Foucault's rhetoric often conflicts with his more considered
articulation of his method. Fredric Jameson argues that Foucault is trapped in a rhetorical
strategy that Jameson identifies as a `"winner loses" logic': What happens is that the more
powerful the vision of some increasingly total system or logic)the Foucault of the prisons
book is the obvious example)the more powerless the reader comes to feel. Insofar as the
theorist wins, therefore, by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to
that very degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is thereby paralyzed, and
the impulses of negation and revolt, not to speak of those of social transformation, are
increasingly perceived as vain and trivial in the face of the model itself.
AKH0573 FOUCAULT'S METHOD OF EXPLANATION REINFORCES STATUS QUO
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.7-8
The use of functional rather than causal explanation standardly leads to consequences
Foucault himself would not accept. Foucault's model for analysing `systems' of thought
seems to borrow from sociological functionalism, which sees social life as systematically
interconnected, such that change in any part affects every other part and reconfigures the
whole. Since each part of the social system thus appears indispensable, functionalism can
lead to political conservatism. Functionalist explanations may imply either that the whole
is so powerful that attempts to bring about social improvements by particular reforms will
inevitably fail, or that the existent social institutions must be preserved since they are at
least better than the social chaos that might result from efforts at social transformation.

AKH0574 FOUCAULT'S PHILOSOPHY SOCIALLY INEFFECTUAL
Frederick Crews, U-Cal Berkeley English prof, THE CRITICS BEAR IT AWAY, 1992,
p.xx.
Not all New Americanists, it should be emphasized, have ensnared themselves in these
debilitating contradictions. Those who have personally experienced
marginalization)feminists, lesbians and gays, members of ethnic minorities)tend on the
whole to be wary of doctrines that conceive of society as a seamless fabric of
undifferentiated and mystified oppression. Classical Marxists, too, often fault
poststructuralism for its neglect of "uneven development" among different underclasses
at any given historical moment. As the social ineffectuality of Foucault's world view
becomes more generally apparent, New Americanism will surely evolve toward a less
quixotic critical style.
AKH0575 FOUCAULT PRODUCES HELPLESSNESS
Frederick Crews, U-Cal Berkeley English prof, THE CRITICS BEAR IT AWAY, 1992,
p.xix.
Taking its cues from such thoroughgoing enemies of democracy as Nietzsche and
Heidegger, poststructuralism projects a deep negativity about the possibilities of both
knowledge and social progress)a negativity so unrelenting that it decomposes the
individual human "subject" into a helpless vector of forces that typically cannot even be
located, much less stemmed. Obviously, you can't be a very effective spokesman for
freedom when your philosophy tells you that it doesn't exist.
AKH0576 FOUCAULT'S THEORY JUST A REFUSE FOR LEFTIST FAILURES
Frederick Crews, U-Cal Berkeley English prof, THE CRITICS BEAR IT AWAY, 1992,
p.xix.
As John Patrick Diggins has recently argued, it is not coincidental that poststructuralism
took hold in Western universities immediately after the theatrical student revolutionism
of 1968 came crashing down. Poststructuralist fatalism toward established power served
a consoling function, assuring the disillusioned survivors of the New Left that the collapse
of their emancipatory dreams was built into the nature of things. At the same time, its
private jargon, its token allegiance to all things "marginalized" by the capitalistic West, and
its vision of interpretation without ground or end fostered a clannish leftism-of-the-library
that promised immunity from further rude surprises.
AKH0577 FOUCAULT DETERMINIST)DENIES POTENTIAL FOR INDIVIDUAL
CONTROL
Frederick Crews, U-Cal Berkeley English prof, THE CRITICS BEAR IT AWAY, 1992,
p.xix-xx.
Methodologically, the key feature of poststructuralist criticism is its downgrading of what
Michel Foucault belittled as "the author function." Once writers have been discounted as
the primary shapers of their works, critics are free to "liberate" signifiers from the
signified")that is, to make a text mean anything or nothing according to whim. From
Roland Barthes through Jacques Derrida to Foucault himself, poststructuralism has
conflated such quasi-libidinal linguistic play with political liberty, as if a carnival of
unconstrained textuality could somehow serve as a proxy for the actual release of
oppressed social groups from neglect and exploitation. As many observers have noted,
however, the Foucauldian model of social action)now the leading paradigm for New
Americanists among other theorists on the academic left)is rigidly deterministic. If even
major authors are to be regarded as altogether "socially constructed" from the "discourses
of power" surrounding them, what hope can the rest of us entertain for taking some control
over our lives?
AKH0578 FOUCAULT STOPS COMMUNITY RESISTANCE
H.F. Haber, Asst. Philosophy Prof., U. Colorado, Denver, BEYOND POSTMODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.104-5.
At his worst, Foucault's pluralism, which results from his insistence on the proliferation
of localized power struggles)not only intersubjectively, but also interpersonally)keeps
him from allowing for a subject sufficiently coherent to form communities of active
resistance and transformation. We saw this in Lyotard's paralogistic and agonistic model
of politics. We see this again in Foucault's commitment to the confrontational
omnipresence of power and its concomitant destabilizing effect of the subject, evident in
such passages as "there aren't any immediately given subjects of the struggle . . . who
fights against whom? We all fight each other. And there is always within each of us
something that fights something else." Since the individual is nothing but the effects of
power, it is better, he thinks, to speak of the subjects of struggle not as "individuals," but
as "sub-individuals" always at war with their own values. But if the very self is thus
fragmented into antagonistic sites of power, then he is no better able to admit consensus
and community than was Lyotard. It is this kind of conclusion that leads those engaged in
oppositional struggles to repudiate the viability of postmodern politics. This is true, for
example, of some feminists who consider Foucault, and postmodernism in general, to be
disadvantageous for oppositional struggles: The postmodern project, if seriously adopted
by feminists, would make any semblance of a feminist politics impossible)to the extent
that feminist politics is bound up with a specific constituency or subject, namely women,
the postmodernist prohibition against subject-centered inquiry and theory undermines the
legitimacy of a broad-based organized movement dedicated to articulating and
implementing the goals of such a constituency. Without a subject there can be no locus of
resistance and without subjects coherent enough to form coalitions there can be no force
to resistance.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 50
AKH0579 FOUCAULT FAILS TO EXPLAIN RESISTANCE
H.F. Haber, Asst. Philosophy Prof., U. Colorado, Denver, BEYOND POSTMODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.98.
While Foucault does mean to leave open the possibility for seeing self-conscious subjects
as necessary to resistance, he does not do much to explain how such self-consciousness is
possible, or why resistance would result in the transformation of power)and it is not
enough of an excuse to say that this is a function of his unwillingness to prescribe what
ought to be done.
AKH0580 FOUCAULT NOT EMPOWERING
H.F. Haber, U Colorado-Denver, Asst. Philosophy Prof., BEYOND POSTMODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.104.
So even if being alerted to the productive effects of power could result in attempts to
oppose the hegemony of the dominant power regime, the resister who would refuse to be
part of that regime is left with the difficult personal, psychological, epistemological, and
also the difficult political question of who she might be. Foucault's analysis of power
might lead the disadvantaged to want to formulate alternatives to the subjugating power
regime, but it also implies the impossibility of this, since the question of being a woman-or
any unco-opted, "deviant" identity-has been made more difficult by Foucault than we
might have originally thought, for to refer to an identity is not just to refer to a social
category, but to a felt sense of self. I find in Foucault no reason for revolting against
oneself, and even more problematic from the standpoint of oppositional politics, no
strategy for recovering an empowered, oppositional self.
AKH0581 RESISTANCE IS CO-OPTED
H.F. Haber, U Colorado-Denver, Asst. Philosophy Prof., BEYOND POSTMODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.99-100.
Foucault states in the passage quoted above, that the existence of power "depends on a
multiplicity of points of resistance," that resistance "can only exist in the strategic field of
power relations." But this means that resistance is co-opted for the purposes of disciplinary
and normalizing regimes of power, and is evidence of the fact that resistance need not
result in transformation. And in fact, Foucault is not wrong. We see this co-opting of
resistance all the time. Enough white middle-class women objected to being confined to
the role of housewife for it to have become the norm for those women to find jobs outside
of the home. But, far from changing the basic power structure, the phenomenon of women
in the workplace has served to strengthen it. The male-dominated society hasn't given
much up-women are still responsible for the household; government has not taken on the
responsibility of making day care available to all, it has not sufficiently altered the
workplace to accommodate demands for maternity (much less demands for paternity)
leave, women are still not given equal pay for equal work, etc., it would not then be
surprising if these women "chose" to go back to being housewives. The dominant power
regime assures a no-win situation. If women work, more can be produced, and two-income
families are able to spend more in an inflationary age than a single-income family would.
On the other hand, if women are forced to go back to being housewives, the patriarchal
power regime wins by having its values reinforced. Either way the dominant power regime
is able both to benefit from, and deflect, resistance. Or one could take the example of how
resistances are used as a target to strengthen the hold of the dominant powers by unifying
the people against a common enemy.
AKH0582 DESIRE SUBVERTS RESISTANCE
H.F. Haber, U Colorado-Denver, Asst. Philosophy Prof., BEYOND POSTMODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.100.
Resistance is also made problematic at the level of desire. Since we are formed by
strategies of power we may well identify our interests with the interest of that very power
which was formulated to oppress us. This is why Susan Bordo argues that a Foucauldian
analysis of the strategic uses of power force us to question the integrity of our
understanding of our oppositional realities. She is right to argue that Foucault "constantly
reminds us that the results of individual interest and desire do not always lead where
imagined and may often sustain unintended and unwanted configurations of power."
Foucault's analysis of power forces all marginalized voices to be alert to the possible
co-opting of their particular consciousness. Bordo asks the question Foucauldian analysis
makes worrisome: "Could feminist gender-skepticism, in all its multifaceted 'deployment'
(to continue the Foucauldian motif), now be operating in the service of the reproduction
of white male knowledge/power?" We must be on the lookout to recognize the ways even
defiant alternatives are co-opted.

AKH0583 NO POTENTIAL FOR RESISTANCE
H.F. Haber, U Colorado-Denver, Asst. Philosophy Prof., BEYOND POSTMODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.99.
This gives us a summary of Foucault's theory of resistance in its relation to power. But
how much does this description really tell us? It seems to hold out hope for the possibility
of meaningful resistance even though resistance itself is always inscribed within those very
relations of power it opposes. But I want to ask, "How exactly is this possible?" And on
the face of it, at least, Foucault does not do more than merely state the relation of resistance
to power as one of logical entailment. This leaves Foucault open to the charge that his is
a world in which things move, rather than people, a world in which subjects become
obliterated or, rather, recreated as passive subjects." In fact, it seems as if power/resistance
follows an inevitable kind of materialist logic: wherever there is power, there will also be
resistance; this is simply the logic of the situation. This is rather like a political application
of Newton's third law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. But can this
law be applied to people? What reason does Foucault give for believing it can ? And even
if resistance is logically entailed by power, what does this make of resistance? Can we get
from resistance to purposive transformation? In fact, though in informal discussions and
interviews Foucault speaks as a revolutionary, as a theorist Foucault gives us reason not
to be optimistic about the possibility of resistance and transformation.
AKH0584 FOUCAULT DOESN'T ALLOW POLITICAL ACTION
H.F. Haber, Asst. Philosophy Prof. U. of Colorado-Denver, BEYOND POSTMODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.89.
Rorty criticizes Foucault for failing to appeal to any "we." He argues that the "rhetoric of
emancipation is absent from Foucault's work. Foucault's work "lacks an identification with
any social context, any communication"; he "forbids himself the tone of the liberal sort of
thinker who says to his fellow citizens: 'we know that there must be a better way to do
things than this; let us look for it together.' " There is, he concludes, "no 'we' to be found
in Foucault's writings, nor in those of many of his French contemporaries." The question
is not, however, whether Foucault fails to identify himself with any particular community,
but whether there is anything inherent in his work-as I argued there was in Lyotard-to
preclude the possibility of a ''we": of consensus or community. For the worry behind
Rorty's criticism is valid: without some form of community there cannot be an effective
politics. But it is one thing to allow for the formation of communities, and another to
specify the form these communities must take. Whether or not Foucault's analysis
precludes the formation of community will remain, for the moment, an open question. But
it is true that he does not attempt to specify the form future communities must take, and
this motivates much of the criticism against him. In part, this boils down to a contest
between champions of the tradition and its dominated opponents.
AKH0585 FOUCAULT DOESN'T OFFER A POLITICAL MODEL
H.F. Haber, U. of Colorado-Denver, Asst. Philosophy Prof., BEYOND POSTMODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.77-8.
However, it is arguable that in itself, Foucault's thesis is no less mystifying than Lyotard's.
His understanding of the self as an effect of disciplinary and normalizing power regimes
forces one to he skeptical about the viability of a Foncauldian politics. Poststrutural and
postmodern politics has yet to be seen to offer a constructive political model.
AKH0586 INTEREST IN OPPOSITIONAL STRUGGLE DOESN'T LEAD TO
ABANDONING EXISTING ORDER
H.F. Haber, U. of Colorado-Denver, Asst. Philosophy Prof., BEYOND MODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.97-8.
In short, the thesis that ''we cannot abandon our own order, even where we would attack
it," renders Foucault's theory of power problematic for the possibility of resistance, and an
evaluator of Foucault interested in the formation of oppositional struggles, and the voicing
of marginalized voices, can both respect his refusal to shape those struggles while at the
same time refusing to thereby be put off from ' demanding a more constructive (or even
coherent) notion of resistance and transformation from a power regime to which we are
subjected, to one we control.
AKH0587 FOUCAULT GENEALOGY UNCALLED FOR
H.F. Haber, U. of Colorado-Denver, Asst. Philosophy Prof., BEYOND MODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.83.
Foucault's genealogical deconstruction of the public/private is, on Rorty's view, both
uncalled for and unnecessary. It is uncalled for since it encourages intrusion on other
people's private poems and it is unnecessary, since the public humanist values of liberal
societies allow for the greatest freedom of private expressions coincident with the greatest
good for the greatest number.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 51
AKH0588 FOUCAULT FAILS AS A MODEL FOR OPPOSITIONAL POLITICS
H.F.Haber, U. of Colorado-Denver, Asst. Philosophy Prof., BEYOND POSTMODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.111-2.
However, he failed in his goal insofar as he can also be said to participate in the
patriarchal, colonizing, order. Given Foucault's analysis of the subject as the effect of
power, the possibility for self-consciousness remains problematic. And since he placed the
formation of self-identity within the disciplinary and normalizing structure of power, it is
doubtful that such reflection, even if possible, would result in resistance. Despite his
opening up the political space, and freeing "us" to ask correspondingly new and provoking
questions of it, he never adequately opened up a space for this "questioning us." This,
despite his active role in prison reform and gay liberation. Though he did indeed work to
help dissonant communities resist or revolt, the possibility of this community formation
is significantly absent from his theory. He did not explain where the self-conscious voice
of the Other could come from or how it could speak or assert itself for the purposes of
resistance. I suggest that this failure is at least partially explained by his deemphasis on the
importance of community for the formation of the subject of resistance. At its worst,
Foucault's poststructuralism keeps him from allowing for subjects sufficiently coherent to
form communities of active resistance and transformation. At best it could be argued that
while he did not exclude the possibility of the formation of community, neither did he take
into account the seminal role of self-disclosure in community and community formation
for the possibility of oppositional politics. For various reasons, then, all the proponents of
poststructural and postmodern politics I have been examining fail to provide a viable
politics for oppositional struggles. It is time to assess this failure and its implications for
an oppositional politics.
AKH0589 FOUCAULT DOESN'T FURTHER OPPOSITIONAL POLITICS,
H.F.Haber, U. of Colorado-Denver, Asst. Philosophy Prof., BEYOND POSTMODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.107.
Foucault's insights regarding the omnipresence of power should have led him to insist, in
a way that he unfortunately did not, that since one's identity is always already the prime
effect of power, it is always more than a personal question. In failing to insist on this,
Foucault makes an important mistake-and an important political mistake, for in the
formation of resistance, of oppositional consciousness, I would argue that it is necessary
to seek others out: to reconstruct, revitalize one's identity in community with others.
Foucault misses this point because he does not do enough to differentiate between effects
of power.
AKH0590 FOUCAULT DOESN'T HELP OPPOSITIONAL DISCOURSE
H.F.Haber, U. of Colorado-Denver, Asst. Philosophy Prof., BEYOND POSTMODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.103.
Given that subjectivity is constituted through disciplinary practices and rationalizing
discourses and is an effect of patriarchal, racist, and classist society, it could be said that
Foucault cannot account for the fact that oppositional discourses do, in fact, appear. For
while on the one hand, Foucault thinks that resistance requires subjects capable of acting
in self-conscious and regulatory ways-the hoped-for practical application of his
genealogical analyses of power presupposes the belief that because human practices are
made they can be unmade, "of course, assuming we know how they were made"-on the
other hand, his thesis that resistance only exists in strategic fields of power relations where
those relations of power are conceived of as disciplinary and normalizing, makes it
unlikely that there can be regulatory or even self-conscious subjects of resistance.
Furthermore, while his analysis may enable us to see ourselves as the objects of those
relations of power which have made us what we are (and have made the world what it is),
it does not help us to see how we can be the makers of new histories-how Foucault can
begin with resistance and end up with self-conscious transformation. Foucault's thesis is
further muddied if we consider passages like the one quoted above in which he seems to
be implying that the necessary and sufficient catalyst for resistance is self-conscious
subjects. When speaking of his role, Foucault says that by uncovering the multiple effects
of power he thereby aids the formation of multiple points of resistance-once we see not just
that, but how forms of rationality and formations of the subject rest upon a foundation of
human practices, once we know how these are made, he believes it then becomes possible
for them to be unmade. This possibility rests upon subjects becoming aware of the multiple
effects of power. But it is not obvious that resistance will follow upon awareness of the
effects of power. And the inference is even more unlikely if we take seriously the thesis
that the subject and her or his identity is entirely a product of disciplinary and normalizing
discourse. If our personal identity is bound up with the interests of domination, radical
critiques may in fact be seen as the threat to be resisted.
AKH0591 FOUCAULT'S THESIS DOESN'T HELP OPPOSITIONAL POLITICS
H.F.Haber, U. of Colorado-Denver, Asst. Philosophy Prof., BEYOND POSTMODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.78.
On the negative side, however, I will argue that Foucault's thesis of power/knowledge
leaves no room for subjects of oppositional resistance. This is a problem which comes
about with the tendency to equate power with terror, a tendency found totalized in Lyotard
and present also in Foucault, though not perhaps consistently. (This is a point to which I
will be returning later in this chapter.)

AKH0592 FOUCAULT PATRIARCHAL - HURT WOMEN'S STRUGGLE
H.F. Haber, Asst. Philosophy Prof., U. Colorado, Denver, BEYOND POSTMODERN
POLITICS, 1994, p.105-6.
And yet he doesn't always go this far. It is also clear that Foucault sees himself as
participating in the formation of oppositional consciousness)in the formation of the
consciousness of oppositional subjects)and that he sees such subjects as necessary for the
project of the instantiation of new regimes of power formed from the standpoint of
subjugated knowledges. Unfortunately, where he allows for agents of struggle, these
agents are "subjects" in an uncomfortably familiar sense of the word, and despite his
advances over Rorty, this signifies yet another of those totalizing impulses which mask the
viewpoint of the bourgeois male. There are (even if he doesn't say how)and this points to
tensions which can be said to exist between Foucault's modern and postmodern tendencies)
times in Foucault's writings where he posits the existence of subjects coherent enough to
form coalitions, some of which coalitions will even, he says, be "permanent" [sic]. But, as
he sees it, the first and last components of these coalitions will be "individuals," and this
doesn't get us away from the bourgeois individualism which has dominated modern
patriarchal, racist, and classist power regimes. It also does not, therefore, adequately reflect
how we come to achieve the self-consciousness necessary for oppositional political
struggle. On this point Lacanian theory proves instructive. It helps feminist theory
articulate the ways in which the very notion of the subject is a masculine prerogative
within the terms of culture. As Judith Butler notes, The paternal law which Lacanian
psychoanalysis takes to be the ground of all kinship and all cultural relations not only
sanctions male subjects, but institutes their very possibility through the denial of the
feminine. hence, far from being subjects, women are variously, the Other, a mysterious and
irrecoverable lack, a sign of the forbidden and irrecoverable maternal body, or some
unsavory mixture of the above.
AKH0593 FOUCAULT'S CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY FAILS
David Couzens Hoy, Professor of Philosophy, University of California-Santa Cruz,
FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER, 1986, p.9
From Habermas's perspective Foucault's belittling of the progressive character of modern
enlightenment and rationality is mistaken. He thinks Foucault's generalization of
panoptical or conformist forces to the entire process of the modernization of society is
false. Also, by ignoring the progress achieved through the modern guarantees of liberty
and legality, habermas thinks that Foucault fails to see clearly that the real problem is that
the legal means for securing freedom also endanger it. Finally, Foucault's attacks on the
human sciences for being unconsciously manipulative and thus uncritically co-opted are
out-of-date since for Habermas these fields are genuinely hermeneutical and critical by the
1970s.
AKH0594 BOURGEOIS FREEDOMS ARE REAL AND MEANINGFUL
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, PROFILES AND CRITIQUES IN
SOCIAL THEORY, 1982, p.222
But the `mere' bourgeois freedoms of freedom of movement, formal equality before the
law, and the right to organise politically, have turned out to be very real freedoms in the
light of the twentieth-century experience of totalitarian societies in which they are absent
or radically curtailed.
AKH0595 BELIEVING POWER SATURATES ALL RELATIONS UNDERMINES
SCIENCE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.236
We worry for the reason articulated by Arthur Potynen, for example, among many others
who have begun to ask this question: Those attempting to ignore Post-modernism are
many: for example, the natural sciences and business departments often hope that the
affected, yet essentially harmless, humanities will remain isolated and irrelevant. But if
power is the essence of all human endeavors, then can science escape being labeled willful
and coercive? Can business be anything other than rapacious? Can either science or
business continue to function in a political culture that assumes them to be oppressive.
AKH0596 OUR ABILITY TO MAKE LOCALIZED PREDICTIONS DENIES "THE
INDISSOLUBLE CONTINUUM OF FORCES"
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.151.
We have, indeed no a priori ground either for accepting or for rejecting the doctrine that
every event is causally connected with every other, but there are good empirical grounds
for rejecting it, inasmuch as it denies the possibility of natural science. For it is plain that
in making any given prediction we are able to consider only a limited set of data; what we
do not take into account, we assume that we are entitled to ignore as irrelevant. I assume,
for example, that in order to determine whether it will rain tomorrow I need not take into
account the present state of mind of the Emperor of Manchukuo. If we were not entitled
to make such assumptions, there would be no likelihood of our predictions ever being
successful, for we should always be ignoring the greater part of the relevant data. The fact
that our predictions are very often successful gives us reason to believe that some at least
of our judgements of irrelevance are correct, and so to reject the monistic doctrine which
denies their legitimacy.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 52
AKH0597 LAWS PROPERLY EXPRESS MORAL VALUES
Amitai Etzioni, GW govt prof, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p.47.
Second, laws do represent, in every society, a proper method of expressing social and
moral values and of signaling conduct that the community considers proper or
abhorrent)even when these laws are rarely enforced through fines, jail sentences, or other
coercive means.
AKH0598 CRIMINAL SANCTIONS ARE NEEDED TO CHECK HARMFUL
BEHAVIOR
Amitai Etzioni, GW govt prof, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p.82.
Galston argues that it is insufficient merely to express unequivocally society's moral
opinion. "Mandatory declarations)laws with teeth)are typically needed to convince
citizens that the community is serious about its professed standards of responsibility. From
drunk driving to racial discrimination, vigorous enforcement backed by sanctions has
proved essential in changing behavior."
AKH0599 ONLY CRIMINAL SANCTIONS CAN CONTROL CERTAIN PEOPLE
Amitai Etzioni, GW govt prof, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p.191.
There is a hard core of psychopaths and criminals that the most dedicated parents, the most
effective schools, and the most attentive and caring neighborhoods cannot reach. To cope
with them, all communities require the hand of public authorities, lest people be subject
to serial killers; wilding gangs out to torture, maim, and kill for kicks; child abusers and
arsonists. To suggest that these people can be reached by involving them in positive
community work, meaningful creative work, or national service is a fairy tale. They are the
proper subjects for police. Their legal rights should be fully protected, but otherwise there
is no denying that when it comes to hard-core criminals and dangerous mental patients,
public authorities are not only essential, but a legitimate, morally appropriate way to
protect the public.
AKH0600 THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM DETERS BY INCULCATING MORAL
SENSE
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973, p.53.
A penal code deters people from committing crimes not only (1) by engendering fear but
also (2) by inculcating a moral sense. A trivial penalty (say, a five cent fine) suggests that
an offense is trivial, while a severe penalty conveys the sense that the crime for which it
is decreed is grave. The code may also deter people simply (3) by informing them of what
is forbidden.
AKH0601 THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IS NEEDED TO PREVENT
VIGILANTISM
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973, p.53.
But crimes occur in spite of all this, and the penalties are intended to undo, or at least to
minimize, the damage. How? By preventing private vengeance, lynchings, and a general
breakdown of order. Often the offense injured others who, in the absence of a penal code,
might have taken the law into their own hands.
AKH0602 SOCIAL LIFE REQUIRES PUNISHMENT
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973,
p.132.
Nevertheless I have argued that we need to retain the institution of punishment for future-
oriented reasons. To live together, people have to prohibit some kinds of conduct, and
prohibitions without penalties are ineffective in the face of temptation. If we always
waived all penalties, the law would cease to deter men, and the kind of conduct that we
sought to prevent would flourish.
AKH0603 FOUCAULT'S REJECTION OF REASON IS A DISABLING
CONTRADICTION
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.10-1.
Thus there is no point saying, with breezy assurance, that 'all concepts are metaphors' (all
truth-claims rhetorical, all philosophy just a 'kind of writing' and so forth) if one thereby
deprives criticism of the analytic means - the conceptual resources - required to make good
such an argument. It is the same point that Derrida raises against Foucault with regard to
certain passages in the latter's book Madness and Civilization. Here again there is a
self-disabling paradox - a 'performative contradiction', to adopt the Habermasian term - in
Foucault's strictly exorbitant claim to be somehow speaking from a position outside the
very discourse of Western (post-Cartesian) reason on behalf of those oppressed or deviant
voices which that discourse has sedulously kept off bounds. Foucault cannot advance a
single proposition - let alone a whole book of inter-articulated statements, judgments,
inferences, and truth-claims - without necessarily falling back into the forms of rational
argumentation.

AKH0604 FOUCAULT'S WORK EMBODIES A PERFORMATIVE CONTRADICTION
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.33.
This is what Habermas means when he writes of the 'performative contradiction' involved
in all such wholesale sceptical assaults on the philosophic discourse of modernity. It is
particularly evident in Foucault's case, since here one finds all the resources of classical
scholarship and criticism - not to mention those of philosophic argument and textual
exegesis - deployed with a view to discrediting the values of reason and truth, or revealing
their complicity with the will-to-power over minds and bodies alike. Derrida makes the
same point about Foucault - to subtler and more telling effect - when he shows how
impossible is the latter's claim (in his book Madness and Civilization) to be speaking the
very language of madness as against the tyrannizing discourse of post-Cartesian reason.
What Foucault fails to recognise is the flat contradiction involved in presenting an
elaborately argued and documented case against the very same standards (of rational,
scholarly, and critical argumentation) which his book avowedly disowns.
AKH0605 FOUCAULT ATTACKS AN OVERLY NARROW CONCEPT OF REASON
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.33-4.
On the one hand - doubtless for strategic purposes - Foucault narrows his genealogical
sights to equate 'reason' with just that singular episode (the Cartesian cogito) and just that
arguably consequent history (the 'great confinement') which together allow him to press
the case for condemning rationality and all its works. Thus '(t)o all appearances it is reason
that he [Foucault] interns, but, like Descartes, he chooses the reason of yesterday as his
target and not the possibility of meaning in general'. For on the other hand - by the strictest
order of discursive necessity - Foucault is constrained to abide by the ground-rules of
reasoned critical argument even in the act of denouncing them with all the rhetorical means
at his disposal.
AKH0606 FOUCAULT'S CRITIQUE OF REASON IS SELF-UNDERMINING
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.34-5.
This is precisely his point about Foucault: that the latter falls into manifest absurdity when
he claims that Madness and Civilization is not only a book about the history of 'madness'
but one that is written in the very language and from the deepest interior of the discourse
of insanity itself. Foucault could not have advanced a single proposition on the subject -
let alone an entire work of sophisticated argument and erudite scholarship - without
undermining his own professed objective at every turn. Quite simply, reason is not an
option in the sense that one could leave it behind (or opt out of it) for the sake of
promoting some radically 'other' kind of discourse, some language on the far side of truth,
normativity, 'logocentric' thinking, or whatever.
AKH0607 FOUCAULT HOLDS A REDUCTIONIST OF REASON
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.35.
That Foucault imagines such a break to be possible is a sign of his labouring under a
twofold confusion. One is the idea that Descartes can be taken as having somehow
inaugurated the 'age of reason' and, along with it, those various forms of repressive
institutional regime from the asylum to psychiatric medicine - which (so it is argued)
represent the dark side of enlightened thought. But this is to mistake the peculiar character
of Descartes' 'hyperbolical' thought experiment for an instance of what Derrida calls
'reason in general'. That is to say, it ignores the inescapable requirement that a work like
Foucault's - a discourse on or of madness - should itself make sense according to criteria
of logic, rational argument, critique of historical source-texts, etc. And the second
confusion, following from this, is his treatment of 'reason' as a monolithic discourse,
always on the side of instituted power and repressive (instrumental) rationality. For it is
because he holds such a reductive, quasi-Hobbesian conception of 'power/knowledge' that
Foucault is thus driven to discount all appeals to reason in its other (i.e.
critical-emancipatory) role.
AKH0608 CONFLATING KNOWLEDGE AND POWER UNDERMINES ETHICAL
ACCOUNTABILITY
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.118.
At any rate it offers a more promising option than those other (post-structuralist or
textualist) theories which count 'reality' a world well lost and 'truth' just a cover-term to
mask the operations of an all-pervasive epistemic will-to-power. For the result of such
thinking, if consistently pursued, is to undermine every last standard of scholarly, critical,
and ethical accountability.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 53
AKH0609 FOUCAULT'S THEORIES UNDERMINE THE POSSIBILITY OF TRUTH
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.245.
But this is not to exempt Foucault from criticism, for his claims are infinitely more radical
than those of Weaver's "true rhetorician." The "true rhetorician ' in Weaver's reading,
admits the legitimacy of a counterpart to rhetoric--namely, dialectic. Dialectic is here
defined in the Aristotelian rather than in the Hegelian sense as (in Weaver's words) "a
method of investigation whose object is the establishment of truth about doubtful
propositions." In contrast, by his exclusion of representation, Foucault excludes the
establishment of truth in this sense. Foucault speaks not of truth but of "truth '
understanding this term in the same way that Nietzsche understands it in "On Truth and
Lie." Thus, we can call into question, as having a rhetorical significance and no other kind,
Foucault's claim that he is engaged in "fictioning" a history "on the basis of a political
reality that makes it true."
AKH0610 FOUCAULT'S CRITIQUE OF TRUTH MEANS THERE'S NO REASON WE
SHOULD BELIEVE HIM
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.251-2.
But we have not yet fathomed the full extent of the difficulty that Nietzsche and Foucault
raise for us. As Kaufmann points out, Nietzsche considers the will to power an absolutely
universal principle, to which even the search for truth is subject. But what is Nietzsche's
project if not the articulation of a truth--namely, the truth that all truth is subject to the will
to power? Kaufmann observes that "by including truth within the confines of this theory
of the will to power, [Nietzsche] has perhaps called in a Trojan Horse that threatens his
entire philosophy with ruin." The same objection--if objection it is--applies to Foucault.
Foucault tells us that there is no such thing as a "genuine" rhetoric, that all rhetorics are
subject to the play of power, that all rhetorics are coercive. But he does so in a rhetoric that
by this very argument cannot be genuine. Why, then, should we believe Foucault? All
Cretans are liars. Or are they? We can hardly be sure. The move that seemed to get us
outside discourse finishes by enclosing us even more deeply within it.
AKH0611 IF KNOWLEDGE IS SIMPLY POWER, THOUGHT IS WORTHLESS
Amy Gutmann, Professor of Politics, Princeton, MULTICULTURALISM, 1994, p.18-9.
The argument is self-undermining, both logically and practically. By its internal logic,
deconstructionism has nothing more to say for the view that intellectual standards are
masks for the will to political power than that it too reflects the will to power of
deconstructionists. But why then bother with intellectual life at all, which is not the fastest,
surest, or even most satisfying path to political power, if it is political power that one is
really after.
AKH0612 IF KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, THE LESS POWERFUL COULD NEVER
WIN.
Amy Gutmann, Professor of Politics, Princeton, MULTICULTURALISM, 1994, p.19.
Deconstructionism is also impractical. If intellectual standards are political in the sense of
reflecting the antagonistic interests and will to power of particular groups, then
disadvantaged groups have no choice but to accept the hegemonic standards that society
imposes on the academy and the academy in turn imposes on them. The less powerful
cannot possibly hope to have their standards win out, especially if their academic
spokespersons publicize the view that intellectual standards are nothing more than
assertions or reflections of the will to power.
AKH0613 GOOD ARGUMENTS DON'T SIMPLY REFLECT THE WILL TO POWER
Amy Gutmann, Professor of Politics, Princeton, MULTICULTURALISM, 1994, p.19.
The deconstructionist outlook on the academy not only deconstructs itself, it does so in a
dangerous way. Deconstructionists do not act as if they believed that common standards
are impossible. They act, and often speak, as if they believed that the university curriculum
should include works by and about disadvantaged groups. And some version of this
position, as we have seen, is defensible on universalistic grounds. But the reduction of all
intellectual disagreements to conflicts of group interests is not. It does not stand up to
evidence or reasoned argument. Anyone who doubts this conclusion might try to
demonstrate in a nontautological way that the strongest arguments for and against
legalizing abortion, not the arguments offered by politicians but the most careful and
compelling philosophical arguments, simply reflect the will to power, class and gender
interests of their proponents.

AKH0614 EQUALING KNOWLEDGE WITH POWER DESTROYS REASONED
ARGUMENT
Amy Gutmann, Professor of Politics, Princeton, MULTICULTURALISM, 1994, p.19-20.
Reductionism of intellect and argument to political interest threatens to politicize the
university more profoundly and destructively than ever before. I say "threatens" because
deconstructionism has not actually "taken over" the academy, as some critics claim. But
the anti-intellectual, politicizing threat it poses is nonetheless real. A great deal of
intellectual life, especially in the humanities and the "soft" social sciences, depends upon
dialogue among reasonable people who disagree on the answers to some fundamental
questions about the value of various literary, political, economic, religious, educational,
scientific, and aesthetic understandings and achievements. Colleges and universities are
the only major social institutions dedicated to fostering knowledge, understanding,
intellectual dialogue, and the pursuit of reasoned argument in the many directions that it
may lead. The threat of deconstructionism to intellectual life in the academy is twofold:
(1) it denies a priori that there are any reasonable answers to fundamental questions, and
(2) it reduces every answer to an exercise of political power.
AKH0615 FOUCAULT'S THOUGHT IS ULTIMATELY UTOPIAN
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.196.
In view of his rejection of the present in all its forms, and his related rejection of the visual,
representational metaphor, Foucault is perhaps best regarded as the exponent of an
unaccustomed form of utopianism. I have used the term utopian before, in relation to both
Nietzsche and Heidegger. It is essential that I say something about this term now,
especially since the utopian moment is much more obvious in Foucault than it is in either
of his predecessors. By utopian I mean an orientation that carries idealism, in Berki's sense,
to the furthest degree.
AKH0616 FOUCAULT IS A RADICAL UTOPIAN
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.265.
The alienation of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault from "the modern age" is beyond
question: in one way or another, they all want to make a leap into a utopia that radically
negates this reality. Radical dereliction and radical utopianism go together. Art best
exercises its ex nihilo creativity where there is a nullity out of which this creation can
emerge.
AKH0617 FOUCAULT OFFERS NO ALTERNATIVE MORAL STANDARD
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.35.
Hence, as several commentators have noted, the curious conjunction in Foucault's work
of a passionate address to issues of social injustice with a flat refusal to provide that work
with any normative basis for judgments of truth and falsehood (or right and wrong) beyond
the idea of localized strategic intervention. All that is left, as in Madness and Civilization,
is an ill-defined notion of absolute alterity - of the excluded or marginalized 'other' - whose
locus shifts successively from text to text as Foucault engages the various 'discourses' of
psychiatry, criminology, penal institutions, confessional practices, gender-role
enforcement, and so forth.
AKH0618 FOUCAULT CAN'T EVADE THE LOGICAL ORDER HE SEEKS TO
TRANSCEND
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.233.
As we have seen, in his critique of History of Madness Derrida points out that Foucault is,
by his own argument, trapped within "logocentrism," within the general historical guilt
borne by Western language. For whatever his claims to be resurrecting the silent language
of an oppressed madness, Foucault continues to speak the language of the very reason that
carried out the oppression in the first place. In short, he is still caught within the
all-powerful order that he is seeking to evade. Thus, the radicalism of Foucault's critique
of psychiatry is called into question.
AKH0619 FOUCAULT OFFERS NO ALTERNATIVE TO THE WESTERN
TRADITION
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.256.
There is nothing to prevent Foucault from moving off in a different direction in the future.
Still, most of his work to date is best summed up under the dual headings of utopianism
and crisis. He is clearly an enemy of the dominant, Western tradition. A major problem
with his attack on the tradition, however, is his inability to specify what we have outside
it.
AKH0620 FOUCAULT'S LANGUAGE IS INCOMMENSURATE WITH THE
LANGUAGE OF SCIENTIFIC TRUTH
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.250.
What does seem clear, however, is that Foucault's denial of the objectivity of science
cannot be logically refuted: having adopted the language of power-knowledge, he has
taken up residence within a self-consistent rhetoric. And looking at things from the other
direction, the notion of an objective science--to which many others besides Marx have
adhered--cannot be convincingly established for those who have rejected the language
within which this notion exists. At best, lacunae within each language can be pointed out;
each language speaks about certain things while failing to speak about certain other things.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 54
AKH0621 THE LATE FOUCAULT RECONCILES HIMSELF WITH HUMANISM
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.126.
In his final interview with Paul Rabinow in May 1984 Foucault makes it clear just why he
had abandoned the position taken up in both his early ('archaeological') and his middle
period ('genealogical') writings. 'Thought is not what inhabits a certain conduct and gives
it meaning.' Rather, he suggests, it is 'what allows one to step back from this way of acting
or reacting, to present it to oneself as an object of thought and question it as to its meaning,
its conditions, and its goals'. Such critical reflection would be strictly inconceivable - yet
another figment of the obsolete humanist imaginary - on the set of assumptions that had
characterized Foucault's previous work, that is to say, the post-structuralist view of
language (or 'discourse') as the absolute horizon and condition of possibility for thought
in general. If indeed it is the case that all truth-claims and subject-positions are inscribed
within a pre-existent discourse, then clearly one cannot 'step back' from that discourse in
order to criticize its 'meaning, its conditions, and its goals.'
AKH0622 EVEN THE LATE FOUCAULT SAW KNOWLEDGE AS DISTINCT FROM
POWER
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.124.
Most striking in this regard is the essay 'What Is Enlightenment?', a text that not only
borrows its title from Kant but finds Foucault adopting a very different attitude to the
Kantian values of truth autonomy, and enlightened self-knowledge. It is still - I should add
- a heterodox reading, one that sets out to shift argumentative terrain by pairing Kant
(improbably enough) with a poet like Baudelaire, and thus re-defining 'modernity' in
relation to the discourse of aesthetic self-fashioning, rather than that of philosophical
critique. But taken together with his other late works it shows just how far Foucault had
travelled from the idea of truth as nothing more than a ruse in the service of an epistemic
will-to-power over minds and bodies alike. What he now discovers in the Kantian project
is a moment whose uniqueness in the history of thought has to do with its opening a
wholly new space for critical reflection on the scope and limits of our freedom. 'How are
we constituted as subjects of our own knowledge? How are we constituted as subjects who
exercise or submit to power relations? How are we constituted as moral subjects of our
own actions? No longer can such issues be consigned, as in Les mots et les choses, to the
status of pseudoproblems thrown up by a mere local perturbation in the sovereign order
of discourse.
AKH0623 THE LATE FOUCAULT MOVED AWAY FROM THE EQUATION OF
KNOWLEDGE AND POWER
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.124.
But in subsequent volumes - The Use of Pleasure and The Care of the Self--Foucault
modifies this position at least to the extent of acknowledging that we need to reconstruct
a more truthful genealogy of morals, of erotic and ethical conduct, which will trace the
'history of the present' from Greek and Roman antiquity, through the Christian
confessional, to Freudian psychiatry and other such modes of sexual
knowledge-production. And this can be achieved only in so far as we recognize first the
claims of accurate (truth-seeking) scholarship, and second our shared human interest in
dispelling the sources of imaginary misrecognition and attaining a better, more informed
or adequate sense of that formative prehistory. In these late writings, as Foucault says, 'a
whole morality is at stake, a morality that concerns the search for the truth and the relation
to the other'.
AKH0624 FOUCAULT RELIES ON THE LOGIC OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.32-3.
This would make 'enlightenment' a term more or less synonymous with the critique of
unwarranted doctrinal impositions - especially the truth-claims of revealed religion -
carried on by thinkers from Erasmus to Montaigne, Spinoza, Kant, and their latter-day
demythologizing heirs. Indeed - as will be evident to those with a knowledge of the
relevant background history -it is this tradition that is tacitly invoked by critics and
theorists who eagerly proclaim the eclipse of 'grand narratives', the demise of the
'transcendental signified', the obsolescence of any absolute, unitary Truth, and so forth. In
this sense one could argue that just about every school of present-day critical thought, from
deconstruction to New Historicism, acknowledges its debt whether wittingly or not - to the
legacy of Enlightenment critique. It is a project carried on in the deconstructive
questioning of 'logocentric' values and truth-claims, in the effort to redeem those
marginalized voices that have suffered the violence of colonial rule or the enormous
condescension of posterity, and also - despite his anti-enlightenment rhetoric - in
Foucault's genealogies of power/knowledge.

AKH0625 FOUCAULT OFFERS AN IMPOVERISHED RELATIVISM
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.185.
Foucault, in effect, escalates Nietzsche's own perspectivism without adding any dialectic
of truth, of knowledge, of thought, and least of all of history. The reader is left with only
the impoverished relativism of a fixed time and place, of power in all its 'masks'. History
appears as 'data' organized into 'regimes of truth', each of which is essentially hermetic and
self-enclosed. Given these specific 'regimes of truth', social freedom is essentially
impossible because power, as exercised by these 'regimes', is integral to social life as such.
The 'regimes of truth' do depend to one degree or another on each other, in the form of
shredded 'hand-me-downs', not as a developing continuum, let alone a universalistic one.
AKH0626 FOUCAULT'S FAILURE TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN KINDS OF
INSTITUTIONS UNDERMINES HIS POLITICS
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.184.
His pseudo-libertarian approach is ultimately so sweeping as to verge on extreme
individualism. No distinction is made between power held by state institutions and power
claimed by popular institutions or between institutions that lead to tyranny and those that
lead to freedom. Not surprisingly, Foucault, a political activist in his own way, was
committed to episodic events: to demonstrations, protests, battles with the police - in short,
to discontinuous occurrences, local situations that are entirely ephemeral, that come and
go in the flux of mere events and never lead to the formation of broad social movements.
Advancing no constructive structural analysis of power as such, Foucault offers no
remedies for social change beyond the impact of incidents - tumultuous at best and passive
at worst.
AKH0627 FOUCAULT'S OPPOSITION TO ALL INSTITUTIONS UNDERMINES HIS
CRITIQUE OF POWER
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.183-4.
Foucault's opposition to institutions as such significantly impairs his critique of power. Not
only does the substantial and formal exercise of power vex him; institutionalization in all
forms is so integrally related to the exercise of power that his critique is completely
reductionist, which is to say, vacuously abstract. Institutions are part of even the simplest
of human affiliations, be they families, clans, tribes, or municipalities of one kind or
another, not to speak of the multitude of 'establishments' human beings require simply to
have a society. Thus, Foucault exhibits little or no concern about the nature of power.
AKH0628 INSTITUTIONS ARE ESSENTIAL TO HUMAN FREEDOM
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.183.
More specifically, power itself is not something whose elimination is actually possible.
Hierarchy, domination, and classes can and should be eliminated, as should the use of
power to force people to act against their will. But the liberatory use of power, the
empowerment of the disempowered, is indispensable for creating a society based on
self-management and the need for social responsibility - in short, free institutions. It seems
inconceivable that people could have a free society, both as social and personal beings,
without claiming power, institutionalizing it for common and rationally guided ends, and
intervening in the natural world to meet rational needs.
AKH0629 FOUCAULT'S VIEW DENIES THE POSSIBILITY OF AUTHENTIC
SOCIAL LIBERATION
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.185.
There is enough in Foucault's often equivocal and cryptic writings to suggest that he denies
the possibility that we can actually attain social liberation. We may resist the social order
perhaps, but only in the defensive actions of "local insurrections", as Foucault calls them.
We can defy protest, strike a blow against the all-embracing authority of "regimes of
truth", but a radical breach with the established order and its replacement with a truly
liberated one is precluded by the premise that social life and its indispensable
institutionalization is essentially a system of subordination and domination that we merely
"reinscribe" when we try to replace one social form with another.
AKH0630 FROM FOUCAULT'S PERSPECTIVE, NO SOCIETY CAN EXIST
WITHOUT DOMINATION
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.182-3.
Lacking any searching theoretical or historical contextuality, Foucault's statements on the
profoundly important issue of just treatment for criminal behavior are completely reckless
and only seemingly radical. To see an 'embryonic' state power in institutionalized human
interaction, even in its strictly functional and ad hoc forms, is as simplistic as it is
misleading. Carried to its logical conclusion, Foucault's view essentially excludes the
possibility that any kind of society can exist without domination, unless it is a
free-wheeling mass of individuals who somehow congeal into 'functional' bodies like the
September crowds.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 55
AKH0631 POST-HUMANISM IS TOTALITARIAN AND REJECTS DEMOCRACY
Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, French philosophers, FRENCH PHILOSOPHY OF THE
SIXTIES, 1990, p.xv-xvi.
Since the (recent) collapse of the Marxist dream of a radiant future, it is the
neoconservative critique of the Heideggerian type that is in turn being politically
compromised. That the two major critiques of modern humanism have proven to be linked
with totalitarian adventures is most significant: Whether conducted in the name of a radiant
future or a traditionalist reaction, the total critique of the modern world, because it is
necessarily an antihumanism that leads inevitably to seeing in the democratic project, for
example in human rights, the prototype of ideology or of the metaphysical illusion, is
structurally incapable of taking up, except insincerely and seemingly in spite of itself, the
promises that are also those of modernity.
AKH0632 POST-HUMANISM LEADS TO BARBARISM
Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, French philosophers, FRENCH PHILOSOPHY OF THE
SIXTIES, 1990, p.120-1.
The antihumanism of '68 philosophy opens onto "barbarism," not because it leads to
unleashing all kinds of violence but insofar as all possibility of a real dialogue between
consciousnesses, which had been open to thinking of their differences on the basis of
identity, is destroyed by the accusations brought against subjectivity: When only
exaggerated individual differences survive, then everyone's other becomes "wholly other,"
the "barbarian." The link between the critique of subjectivity and the expulsion of the
problematics of communication (from the re-public) is so close that we see once again in
someone like Lyotard the same hostility and incomprehension toward the question of
intersubjectivity: "Consensus obtained through discussion as Habermas believes? It
violates the heterogeneity of language games." If we think for a moment of the political
implications of this type of statement (in terms of the representation of the community) in
Lyotard, as well as in Foucault, we should logically congratulate ourselves that the authors
of these statements have so ardently cultivated inconsistency and have fortunately also
been able to defend human rights and the values of the republic, as almost everyone has.
AKH0633 POST-HUMANISM IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH HUMAN RIGHTS
Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, French philosophers, FRENCH PHILOSOPHY OF THE
SIXTIES, 1990, p.22.
Nevertheless, from Heidegger to Derrida, the gesture of radicalizing the critique of
humanism is what constitutes French philosophy of the sixties (in this case what we call
French Heidegerianism). It began with the relationship between humanism and the
(modern) metaphysics of subjectivity established by Heidegger and became a hyperbolic
antihumanism that, twenty years later, can be seen to have had some difficulty
accommodating itself to the newly rediscovered reference to human rights.
AKH0634 POST-HUMANISM IS BASED ON HEIDEGGER
Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, French philosophers, FRENCH PHILOSOPHY OF THE
SIXTIES, 1990, p.xii.
It is on the basis of this twofold critique, of abstract man and of instrumental (or technical)
reason, that the Heideggerian deconstruction of the metaphysics of subjectivity could join
Marxism in a common rejection of humanism.
AKH0635 HEIDEGGER'S NAZISM DERIVED FROM HIS VIEW OF HUMAN
NATURE
Stanley Rosen, philosopher, Penn State, NIHILISM, 1969, p.121-2.
During Heidegger's brief tenure as rector of Freiburg University, he delivered a number
of speeches and official pronouncements which may fairly be described as an effort to
justify national socialism by assimilating the terms of his own philosophy to those of the
popular Nazi vocabulary. One of the most useful attempts by a student of the period, J-P.
Faye, to demonstrate this point seems to be virtually unnoticed by English writers. In his
analysis of Heidegger's language, Faye shows, for example, how Heidegger accommodated
to the rhetoric of the vulgar and to that of the academic community depending upon the
occasion, and how his own rhetoric permitted him to introduce revolutionary and
demagogic political idion into theoretical speeches. The least one can say is that the ease
with which Heidegger succeeded in accommodating the teaching of Being and Time to the
resolute choice of Hitler and the Nazi party provides us with an essential clue to the
political philosophy implicit in his ontological analysis of human existence.
AKH0636 HUMANISM HAS PRODUCED MAJOR HISTORICAL ADVANCE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.217
Humanism)post-Enlightenment Western humanism)has created, in the face of all the
narrow particularism and dogmatic absolutism that has eternally plagued our species, an
ethic of universal justice and universal tolerance. Moreover, history attests to the value of
the humanistic view in tokens that go far beyond sentiment. The Western culture that
grows from, extends, and intensifies the Enlightenment proves itself and displays its
uniqueness most impressively by its ability to fathom nature and nature's regularities, to
a depth unimaginable in prior civilizations. Western culture converts that knowledge into
the instruments, conveniences, and perceived necessities of daily life with a swiftness that
far outspeeds the traditional pace of historical process.

AKH0637 HEIDEGGER HAS NO POSITIVE TEACHING
Stanley Rosen, Penn State philosopher, NIHILISM, 1969, p.101.
Once again put bluntly, in the deepest sense, Heidegger has no doctrine, no philosophical
position, no positive teaching. As he himself always emphasized, and as the title of his last
book explicitly asserts, his thought has been from the beginning "on the way toward
speech." There is no need to repeat the argument of Chapter 2: the way toward speech,
although tangentially illuminating, has led to, and in a sense always been within, the heart
of darkness.
AKH0638 HEIDEGGER USES OBSCURE LANGUAGE TO MASK HIS CONFUSION
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, FROM SHAKESPEARE TO
EXISTENTIALISM, 1980, p.339.
"Language is the house of Being," says Heidegger; but in truth his language is the house
in which he hides, and his Gothic terminology is like a row of towers that frightens us
away while it gives him a feeling of security. His philosophy is like a castle that, though
certainly not beautiful, stands out from a generally dull landscape and catches the eye. We
should not dream of settling down beneath it to spend our lives, like Kafka's K., in futile
efforts to penetrate the mysteries that, more often than not, are expressions of confusion
rather than profundity.
AKH0639 HEIDEGGER WAS SIMPLY AN INTELLECTUAL PERFORMER
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, DISCOVERING THE MIND; NIETZSCHE,
HEIDEGGER, AND BUBER, 1980, p.234.
Some images that recur in Nietzsche's writings seem to me to fit Heidegger beautifully. I
see him as a magician or wizard, "a philosophical Cagliostro and pied piper, in short, a
seducer." He was a great performer who took in large numbers of highly intelligent men
and women and perhaps even himself.
AKH0640 HEIDEGGER FAILS TO CONSIDER ALTERNATIVES
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, DISCOVERING THE MIND: NIETZSCHE,
HEIDEGGER, AND BUBER, 1980, p.189.
What I mean by calling Heidegger's anthropology "dogmatic" is that he put forward
apodictically, without considering negative evidence or alternatives, commonplaces
dressed up in an imposing but confusing jargon.
AKH0641 HEIDEGGER HAS NO VALID ALTERNATIVE TO REASON
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, DISCOVERING THE MIND: NIETZSCHE,
HEIDEGGER, AND BUBER, 1980, p.228.
Neither Heidegger nor Scheler has come up with any alternative method that could replace
the use of hypotheses and the patient weighing of objections and alternatives. But both
claimed that they had found such a method, and as long as they were saying things that
their audience had "been unconsciously [or for that matter consciously] hoping to hear
from someone who could assert them with authority" they were naturally not found out.
AKH0642 HEIDEGGER FAILED TO RECOGNIZE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
Walter Kaufman, Princeton philosopher, DISCOVERING THE MIND: NIETZSCHE,
HEIDEGGER, AND BUBER, 1980, p.190.
Secondly, despite the reference to time in the title of his main work and his insistence that
he had illuminated the temporality of human existence, the book is as oblivious of
development and possible differences in time and place as Kant was in his Critique of Pure
Reason. Although Heidegger later wrote extensively on Nietzsche and also an article on
Hegel and has often been linked with both, it is utterly astonishing how little he learned
from them and how unaffected he remained by their central intentions. To give a single
example, in his long discussion of "Being-toward-death" it never seems to have occurred
to him to ask whether human attitudes toward death might differ (1) according to one's age
and the stage one has reached in one's development, (2) at different stages in history, and
(3) in different cultures. he seems to have looked for timeless truths that are absolutely
certain and his tone frequently gives the impression that he has found such truths.
AKH0643 HEIDEGGER WAS AN INTELLECTUAL AUTHORITARIAN
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, DISCOVERING THE MIND: NIETZSCHE,
HEIDEGGER, AND BUBER, 1980, p.189.
Heidegger's thinking is deeply authoritarian. His insistence that he was engaged in
existential ontology or fundamental ontology as well as the proliferation of strange labels
helped to immunize his discourse against the obvious charge that it was absurdly dogmatic
and apodictic. Any appeal to evidence or rival observations and interpretations was
discounted in advance. So was empirical research as a matter of principle. All this is as
different from Nietzsche as can be and, of course, also from Goethe. Heidegger, like Kant,
did not admit hypotheses into philosophy, demanded certainty, and purchased the
semblance of it through extreme obscurity.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 56
AKH0644 HEIDEGGER'S THOUGHT IS ESSENTIALLY AUTHORITARIAN
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, FROM SHAKESPEARE TO
EXISTENTIALISM, 1980, p.360.
Although Heidegger suggests at the end of the Introduction that he is condemned to endure
in perplexity and that this is the human condition in our time he really ends by "proving"
this point with a quotation from Holderlin. It may be objected that the final quotation is
merely a pleasant stylistic device. But does Heidegger ever entertain the possibility that
Holderlin or Sophocles, Heraclitus or Parmendides might be mistaken about anything? His
attitude toward these men is invariably one of humility before authority. Any criticism of
the pre-Socratics is out of the question. It is assumed that they, living so near the beginning
of Western thought, knew what we do not know and would like to know. When Heidegger
explores the nature of man, he gives us a translation of the wonderful second chorus from
Sophocles' Antigone and then interprets it. He proceeds exactly like a theologian who cites
Scripture.
AKH0645 HEIDEGGER SIMPLY SECULARIZED CHRISTIANITY
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, DISCOVERING THE MIND: NIETZSCHE,
HEIDEGGER, AND BUBER, 1980, p.209.
Heidegger secularized Christian preaching about guilt, dread, and death but claimed to
break with two thousand years of Western thought. His teaching that "human Being as
such is guilty" is a secularized version of the Christian doctrine of original sin. Section 58,
which deals with guilt, begins with four pages that are devoid of any description of
relevant phenomena as well as anything that one could call an argument. Then we are told:
"What lies in this, however, is: Being guilty does not result only from becoming guilty, but
it is the other way around: the latter becomes possible only `on the basis of' an original
Being guilty."
AKH0646 HEIDEGGER'S REJECTION OF LOGIC INVITES FANATICISM
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, FROM SHAKESPEARE TO
EXISTENTIALISM, 1980, p.356-7.
The great philosopher, like the great poet, has a vision. Philosophy is not all analysis and
scrutiny and intellectual anatomy. Precisely the greatest philosophers have often sold
carefulness short because it mattered less to them than did the spirit's fight. They were
concerned above all else with something they had seen, or were still seeing)something that
seemed to them to belong to a higher order than all mere analysis. Analysis might come
afterward, or might be used as a steppingstone: it can never become a substitute for vision
any more than criticism can take the place of poetry. But Heidegger fails to see that his
disparagement of logical scrutiny and his scorn of "the cheap acid of mere logical acumen"
open the floodgates to fanaticism, superstition, and stupidity.
AKH0647 HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY LEADS TO NIHILISTIC PASSIVITY
Stanley Rosen, Penn State philosopher, NIHILISM, 1969, p.135-6.
This mandate, despite its parious and even nihilistic character, with the danger it brings of
the destruction of the human race, also reveals the sense of Being as Historicity. It reveals
the sense of Being as presence-and-absence, but also as temporal process which, in
completing each stage, "clears the stage" for new possibilities for which man, and the
exemplary authentic thinker, can only wait. To attempt to accelerate by political action the
demise or completion of our present parlous stage would be to surrender to its intrinsic
nihilism, for nihilism is the will to will, the will to dominate Being instead of letting it be,
nihilism is both man's forgetting of Being and the gift of Being. Being gives man nihilism,
yet man is the agent of nihilism. Hence the strange conclusion that to act against nihilism
is to act against Being, and so to perpetuate nihilism. This is the ontological conclusion of
the long revolt against Platonism, in the version given its decisive shape by Nietzsche and
Heidegger. In his desire not to do violence to Being, man is violated by Being. Having
identified action with radical destruction, or a purifying self-laceration, the ontological
nihilist retreats into total inaction.
AKH0648 HEIDEGGER'S ATTEMPT TO OVERCOME NIHILISM LED
ULTIMATELY TO ITS ACCEPTANCE
Stanley Rosen, Penn State philosopher, NIHILISM, 1969, p.101.
In more concrete terms, Heidegger began his journey as a student of Christian theology
and Aristotle's metaphysics. His response to the nihilism of post-Nietzschean Europe, and
specifically to the political situation following the First World War, led him to a
reinterpretation of Nietzsche. Heidegger radicalized the significance of Zarathustra's
revelation that ''God is dead," making use of elements from Christianity, Greek philosophy,
German thought, and the spiritual despair of the decades culminating in the Nazi rise to
power. His intention was to overcome European nihilism by setting the stage for a new
understanding of "the question of Being." In my opinion, it is clear that the development
of an ontology of historicity was conditioned by Heidegger's response to the political and
social events of 1919 and thereafter.

AKH0649 HEIDEGGER'S VIEW OF AUTHENTICITY IS NIHILISTIC
Stanley Rosen, Penn State philosopher, NIHILISM, 1969, p.100.
For these reasons it would be a contradiction in terms if Heidegger were to give a positive,
"doctrinal" content to his analysis of the existential process of authenticity. Heidegger's
silence in this respect is consistent, but it also reveals the necessarily nihilistic implications
of his thought. Put bluntly, no one can say anything to anyone about what constitutes
genuine choice in a specific situation. It therefore becomes impossible to prevent total
suspension of judgment. The Christian may say, "judge not, lest ye be judged," because of
the eternal presence of an eternal judge. But the Heideggerian becomes indistinguishable
from the nihilist, who says that "everything is allowed," because part of the Christian
doctrine has been wedded to a resolute self-reliance in the absence of all gods.
AKH0650 HEIDEGGER'S CONCEPT OF AUTHENTICITY PRODUCES BRUTALITY
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, DISCOVERING THE MIND: NIETZSCHE,
HEIDEGGER, AND BUBER, 1980, p.201.
The whole account of inauthenticity is a mere foil for authenticity, and that does not have
three characteristics but only one: resoluteness. Thus the fundamental contrast is between
indecisive ambiguity and chatter on one side and resoluteness on the other. Heidegger's
definition of resoluteness is emphasized in print: "this taciturn self-projection, ready for
dread, into one's most authentic being guilty)is what we call resoluteness." Kierkegaard's
critics, I among them, have never been satisfied that he succeeded in Fear and Trembling
in establishing sufficient safeguards against inhumane and brutal commitments.
heidegger's reliance on the same old Kierkegaardian notions of silence, readiness for dread,
and guilt suggests, and closer examination bears out, that he was unable to improve on
Kierkegaard.
AKH0651 HEIDEGGER'S ANALYSIS OF AUTHENTICITY IS FLAWED
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, DISCOVERING THE MIND: NIETZSCHE,
HEIDEGGER, AND BUBER, 1980, p.197-8.
Heidegger's analysis of authenticity and inauthenticity is shallow and Manichaean. The
shallowness is due in no small measure to the Manichaeism. He denied repeatedly that his
contrast of these two modes of Being had anything at all to do with moralizing and insisted
that his descriptions were value-free; but this may well be the most incredible claim in the
whole book. His account of inauthenticity is extremely sarcastic, while authenticity is
romanticized.
AKH0652 IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO TALK MEANINGFULLY ABOUT BEING
Stanley Rosen, Penn State philosopher, NIHILISM, 1969, p.45.
I have been arguing that ontological speech, in the sense attributed to it by those who
follow Heidegger's distinction between the ontological and ontic, is in fact silence.
Ontologists of this type wish to talk about Being as distinct from beings, and speech will
simply not permit this. If this is a defect of speech, and the significance of speech is in the
deepest and final sense relative to silence, then there is no reason for what we say or for
whether we speak at all, other than the mere fact, although there is equally no reason to
keep silent. The result is absurdism or nihilism. Therefore no reason can be given which
would justify our falling into such desperate straits. Every fundamental ontological speech
of the type in question is not just self-refuting but self-canceling. It is exactly as if the
fundamental ontologist had never spoken (except, unfortunately, for the practical effects
of his speech).
AKH0653 HEIDEGGER'S QUESTIONS ABOUT BEING ARE FUNDAMENTALLY
INCOHERENT
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, FROM SHAKESPEARE TO
EXISTENTIALISM, 1980, p.366-7.
In his Introduction Heidegger would still like to unravel Being, and is still unable to do it.
This is certainly not due to the age we live in. Heidegger finds no answers to his questions
because he does not ask answerable questions. The questions he poses are questions in the
same sense in which we speak of a "Jewish question" or "the question of homosexuality."
They are exciting but utterly vague)not really questions at all in the ordinary sense, but
labels for vast complexes of problems that must be distinguished before any answers can
be attempted. Heidegger does not even offer penetrating insights apropos of his questions.
AKH0654 EVEN HEIDEGGER ADMITS ONLY HUMAN BEING CAN HAVE
MEANING
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, DISCOVERING THE MIND: NIETZSCHE,
HEIDEGGER, AND BUBER, 1980, p.188-9.
Finally, Heidegger himself undermines his own "fundamental question" about "the
meaning of Being" as well as his repeated insistence that "the purpose of the interpretation
is purely ontological" and that his ultimate concern is not with human existence but with
the meaning of Being, when he admits)and the emphasis is his own: "Only human Being
can therefore be meaningful or meaningless'.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 57
AKH0655 HEIDEGGER'S CONCEPT OF BEING IS INCOHERENT
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, DISCOVERING THE MIND: NIETZSCHE,
HEIDEGGER, AND BUBER, 1980, p.188.
The whole enterprise of S&Z is ill considered. Heidegger's "fundamental question" about
"the meaning of Being" simply ignores Hegel's and Nietzsche's critical discussions of
"Being" and assumes that "Being" has a meaning. Then Heidegger suggests that in order
to discover this meaning we must first lay the foundation by analyzing "human Being" and
above all the two allegedly basic modes of that: authenticity and inauthenticity. In other
words, even as Kant allegedly laid the foundation for a new metaphysics by first offering
a critique of reason, Heidegger begins by first offering an analysis of "human Being" and
of its two dichotomy and his accounts of both modes are utterly inadequate and impede the
discovery of the mind. But even if his "anthropology" were better, how could it possibly
reveal, or provide the indispensable foundation for a revelation of, "the meaning of
Being"?
[Editor's Note: S&Z = Heidegger. Sein und Zeit: Erste Halfte]
AKH0656 HEIDEGGER'S CONCERN WITH BEING IS JUST PSEUDO-THEOLOGY
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, FROM SHAKESPEARE TO
EXISTENTIALISM, 1980, p.347-8.
Nietzsche's Zarathustra said in the chapter "On the Afterwordly": "The belly of Being does
not speak to humans at all, except as a human. Verily, all being is hard to prove and hard
to induce to speak." Nietzsche suggests that the concern with Being and metaphysics and
the concern with God and theology ("the afterworldly" is intended as a literal translation
of "metaphysicians") are variations of a single attitude; and we shall return to this theme
later when comparing Heidegger's approach with that of theologians.
AKH0657 EMPHASIS ON BEING UNDERMINES EFFECTIVE POLITICS
Stanley Rosen, Penn State philosopher, NIHILISM, 1969, p.143.
Similarly, Heidegger was led to mistake madness for courage in 1933 and to identify the
destiny of the Third Reich with that of Being. This mistake would seem to be consequent
upon the elimination of the divine, and hence of divine madness. The least one may say is
that the courageous turn to Being, when unaccompanied by justice or moderation, raises
political dangers of so great a magnitude as to cast a shadow on the wisdom of unmitigated
hybris.
AKH0658 HEIDEGGER'S CATEGORIES ARE BASED ON LINGUISTIC
CONFUSIONS
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.43-4.
In general, the postulation of real non-existent entities results from the superstition, just
now referred to, that, to every word or phrase that can be the grammatical subject of a
sentence, there must somewhere be a real entity corresponding. For as there is no place in
the empirical world for many of these "entities," a special non-empirical world is invoked
to house them. To this error must be attributed, not only the utterances of a Heidegger, who
bases his metaphysics on the assumption that "Nothing" is a name which is used to denote
something peculiarly mysterious, but also the prevalence of such problems as those
concerning the reality of propositions and universals whose senselessness, though less
obvious, is no less complete.
AKH0659 THE CONCEPT OF BEING IS A LINGUISTIC CONFUSION
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.43.
But, as Kant pointed out, existence is not an attribute. For, when we ascribe an attribute
to a thing, we covertly assert that it exists: so that if existence were itself an attribute, it
would follow that all positive existential propositions were tautologies, and all negative
existential propositions self-contradictory; and this is not the case. So that those who raise
questions about Being which are based on the assumption that existence is an attribute are
guilty of following grammar beyond the boundaries of sense.
AKH0660 STATEMENTS ABOUT BEING ARE UNVERIFIABLE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.42.
A simpler and clearer instance of the way in which a consideration of grammar leads to
metaphysics is the case of the metaphysical concept of Being. The origin of our temptation
to raise questions about Being, which no conceivable experience would enable us to
answer, lies in the fact that, in our language, sentences which express existential
propositions and sentences which express attributive propositions may be of the same
grammatical form.
AKH0661 BEING IS AN EMPTY FICTION
Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher, TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS (in THE
PORTABLE NIETZSCHE), 1888, p.481.
But Heraclitus will remain eternally right with his assertion that being is an empty fiction.
The "apparent" world is the only one: the "true" world is merely added by a lie.

AKH0662 AUTHENTIC UNDERSTANDING OF BEING IS POSSIBLE
M.C. Dillon, professor of philosophy, SUNY-Binghamton, WORKING THROUGH
DERRIDA, Gary Madison, ed., 1993, p.189.
But, whereas Heidegger sought "to destroy the traditional content of ancient ontology" in
order to retrieve "those primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of
determining the nature of Being,"' Derrida challenges the core notion of phenomenology,
the notion that there is a retrievable domain of primordial experience upon which an
authentic understanding of Being could be founded.
AKH0663 QUESTIONS OF BEING SHOULDN'T INFLUENCE ORDINARY ACTIONS
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.93.
Philosophers pose questions about the nature of being, but they are not, we may suppose,
ontologically insecure in their ordinary actions and in this outlook they are in accord with
the mass of the population.
AKH0664 HEIDEGGER'S PURSUIT OF BEING NEGLECTS ETHICAL DUTY
TOWARD OTHERS
J.G. Merquior, King's College, London, FROM PRAGUE TO PARIS, 1986, p.225.
According to Levinas, It was not enough to condemn, like Heidegger, the ontological
oblivion of technological civilization: one should also stop looking for being as such, for
every ontology brings about a tyranny of sameness; all theory of being is violent, both
because it is 'theory' and because it deals with 'being', with the One as a mask of the Same.
The only way to save a true respect for the other(s) is to insist on ethics, the realm of duty
towards others, instead of pursuing ontology-a point missed by Heidegger because, with
his 'pagan' peasant roots, he remained ensnared in the cautious, possessive love for
sameness characteristic of agrarian culture, and therefore had no grasp of the value of
infinite alterity so strong in Jewish piety and in the Jew's long experience of exile and
outsiderness.
AKH0665 HEIDEGGER ACTIVELY SUPPORTED THE NAZIS
Stanley Rosen, Penn State philosopher, NIHILISM, 1969, p.119.
I have given a brief summary of some aspects of Junger's teaching as a prelude to the
discussion of the connection between historicity and political nihilism in Heidegger. It is
interesting to observe that Junger, the soldier, war hero, and political journalist, however
he may have assisted indirectly the Nazi rise to power, never became a member of the party
and from a rather early period (1930) began a process of increasing criticism, both direct
and in the form of literary parables. The same cannot be said of Heidegger, the only thinker
of the first rank to join the Nazi Party and to speak out, albeit for a brief period, regularly
and with great force on its and the Fuhrer's behalf.
AKH0666 HEIDEGGER'S THOUGHT REQUIRED THE IDENTIFICATION OF BEING
WITH NAZISM
Stanley Rosen, Penn State philosopher, NIHILISM, 1969, p.131.
The openness of Sein and the openness of Da-sein are one and the same. For this reason,
the dominance of political nihilism in the actions of man is identical with the self-
concealing "gift" of Being to and through man. It is a strange consequence of Heidegger's
doctrine that the dominant political configuration of the day must be taken as a sign of the
character of the revelation of Being in the given epoch. Ostensibly beyond theory and
practice, this doctrine gives a special importance to practice. Such is the result of
Heidegger's adaptation of Parmenides' dictum that "thinking and Being are the same" to
a teaching of radical Historicity.
AKH0667 HEIDEGGER REGARDED HITLER AS THE ONLY AUTHENTIC CHOICE
FOR GERMANS
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, DISCOVERING THE MIND: NIETZSCHE,
HEIDEGGER, AND BUBER, 1980, p.224.
On November 3, 1933, with national elections impending, Heidegger published this
summons: ". . . The Fuhrer himself and alone is the present and future actuality and its law.
Learn to know ever more deeply: Henceforth everything demands decision . . . " And on
November 10: "The German people has been summoned by the Fuhrer to vote. But the
Fuhrer does not beg anything from the people. Instead he gives the people the most
immediate possibility of highest free decision: whether it)the whole people)wills its own
Dasein or whether it does not want this . . ." Thus authenticity required a vote for the
Fuhrer!
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 58
AKH0668 FROM HEIDEGGER'S PERSPECTIVE, NAZISM WAS INEVITABLE
Stanley Rosen, Penn State philosopher, NIHILISM, 1969, p.134-5.
The prophet-shepherd of Being is in fact a plaything of the absent gods. he cannot err in
the human sense because his "errance" is not human or ontic, but ontological. Adherence
to the Nazi party in 1933, when interpreted at the ontological or genuine level insisted
upon by Heidegger himself, cannot be understood as an act of naivete, as Heidegger's
admirers inconsistently and (from his viewpoint) superficially maintain. Similarly, his
negative attitude toward the party after 1934 cannot be understood as he himself explains
it in his statement to the Allied authorities of 1945, that is, merely as the recognition of a
political miscalculation while in the service of man's philosophical spirit. It is the gift of
Being, and not the ontic judgment of Martin Heidegger, that must assume responsibility,
and so too credit if credit is due, for the "new" attitude. As Heidegger expounds its
theoretical sense in his philosophical writings, the practical stance of 1934 and thereafter
is not a moral condemnation of the Nazis, but an acceptance of their historical inevitability,
exactly was the case in 1933.
AKH0669 HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY CAUSED HIM TO ACCEPT HITLER
Stanley Rosen, Penn State philosopher, NIHILISM, 1969, p.122-4.
At least in the early period of Heidegger's thought, the process by which Being reveals
itself in history (as historicity) was regarded as a consequence of human activity.
Therefore, the process could be modified by man's will or choice, and indeed would have
to be so modified in order to continue to occur. The fate of Being in the west was said to
be dependent upon the authentic and profound resolution with which Germany responded
to its historical situation. In a rather Hegelian sense, Hitler was described as the leader not
simply of the state or people, but of the next epoch of world history. In a sense peculiar to
Heidegger, German students were told by him that "the Fuhrer himself and alone is the
present and future German reality and its law." The will of the Fuhrer as the expression of
the historical destiny of the German people thus replaces Ideas, science, and the specious
freedom, academic or otherwise, by which an objective rationalism duped the west. These
practical translations of Heidegger's teaching, which remind us of the previously studied
assertions of Junger and scarcely conform with Heidegger's own account of his
professional activities under the Nazi regime, have never been repudiated by him, nor were
they altogether superseded by later developments in his thought. They follow from
Heidegger's peculiar identification of Being with Time (which I capitalize to indicate its
ontological sense) or Historicity, in the first as well as the last stages of his thought.
AKH0670 REJECTING HUMANISM WOULD BE HISTORY'S GREATEST
TRAGEDY
Herbert Muller, Indiana U govt prof, THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.366.
Humanism, or the religion of humanity, may not do either. Toynbee attacks it as peculiar
enough)it has not had the chance of religion. No doubt it makes too heavy demands on
human nature in its present state, especially when it asks men to put humanity above the
tribe)something they have never succeeded in doing under the fatherhood of God. Yet I
still hold that the Western humanistic faith is not perverse, and not so pathological as
historic religion has often been. It has proved itself in many good men, by many good
works. It has brought finer possibilities of life to masses of men who in the past could
invest their hope only in a hypothetical life to come. The utter defeat of this cause would
be the worst tragedy in history.
AKH0671 HUMANISM SUPPORTS THE NEW WORLD ORDER
William Spanos, SUNY-Binghamton English prof, HEIDEGGER AND CRITICISM,
1993, p.9-10.
Indeed, it could be argued that the recently renewed effort to delegitimize Heidegger's (as
well as Paul de Man's) "antihumanist" discourse is implicated in the present massive
multisituated effort to recuperate the authority humanism lost in the Vietnam decade,
when, in the face of the overt complicity of the institutions of knowledge production
(especially the university) in the conduct of the state's colonial war against the Vietnamese
people, the students and a large segment of the American public refused their spontaneous
consent to its discursive principles. It could be said, further, that this effort to discredit
Heidegger's antihumanist discourse and that of the posthumanists it enabled allies itself
with that interpretation of the events of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe that represents
them in the global terms of the Cold War narrative: the "fall of communism" or,
alternatively, the "triumph of democracy." It is not possible to read this mounting
campaign to delegitimize Heidegger's interrogation of humanism as the closure at the site
of ontology of the dominant culture's effort to annul the only critical discourse that, at this
historical conjuncture, is capable of resisting the planetary hegemony of the United States?
I mean the (neo-)imperialism that now masks itself in the language of the Pax Americana:
the "end of history" and the "coming of the new world order."

AKH0672 HUMANISM SUPPORTS THE NEW WORLD ORDER
William Spanos, SUNY-Binghampton English prof., THE END OF EDUCATION, p.xxiii.
This imperative is underscored by recent history, specifically the events in Central and
Eastern Europe in 1989 and the Gulf War in 1991. The collapse of Stalinist Marxism and
the decisive defeat of a tyrannical dictator have been interpreted by the agencies of
knowledge production and the information media in the Western capitalist nations, most
notably in the United States, as the "fall of Communism" or "the triumph of democracy":
indeed, as the emergence of a "new world order" determined by the relay deontological
principles subsuming the discourse of Man and the Western liberal democratic tradition.
This representation of contemporary global history has already gone far in effacing the
memory of the Vietnam War, a forgetting synecdochically suggested by the reduction of
the healthy crisis of the American cultural identity (defined by its self-ordained global
"errand in the wilderness") precipitated by the United States' brutally executed, if finally
abortive, intervention in Vietnam to the "Vietnam Syndrome": a collective psychological
sickness that the decisive defeat of Saddam Hussein cured (what President George Bush
announced in the wake of victory as "kicking the Vietnam Syndrome".
AKH0673 HUMANIST DISCOURSE UPHOLDS THE NEW WORLD ORDER
William Spanos, SUNY-Binghampton English prof., THE END OF EDUCATION,
p.xxiii-iv.
To counter this increasingly reactionary momentum, an oppositional discourse and practice
can no longer, as in the past, rely either on a Marxist critique that continues to be
determined by the base/superstructure model or on a poststructuralist critique that is
vestigially disciplinary. The task contemporary history has assigned oppositional
intellectuals is that of thinking contemporary power relations in terms of a relay extending
throughout the indissoluble continuum of being, from the ontological (the anthropologos)
through the cultural (the discourse of Man) to the economic and socio-political (the
practices of consumer capitalism, patriarchy, and racism). Only such a mode of critical
thinking can enable effective resistance to and subversion of the neoimperialism that masks
itself in the hegemonic discourse of the "new world order." Because the modern humanist
university is, above all, the locus of production of the hegemonic discourse overdetermined
by the new world context, the educational project-vis-a-vis the intellectual, pedagogy, and
the curriculum-I will provisionally articulate in this book becomes an imperative of our
contemporary occasion.
AKH0674 HEIDEGGER ENDORSED "THE INNER TRUTH AND GREATNESS" OF
NAZISM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.98.
The key to comprehending Heidegger's political judgments in his postrectorship phase is
a distinction he makes toward the conclusion of An Introduction to Metaphysics (1935)
between "the inner truth and greatness of National Socialism" as opposed to the "works
that are being peddled about nowadays as the philosophy of National Socialism." That is,
Heidegger comes to view the movement in terms of a dialectic of "appearance" and
"essence," whose true nature the philosopher himself is best able to discern. Potentially,
the movement contains the prospect of the "radical overcoming of Western nihilism" that
had been prophesied by Nietzsche. In actuality, its ultimate philosophical "truth and
greatness" has been perverted by epigones and pretenders--by Heidegger's philosophical
opponents (E. Krieck, A. Baumler, and A. Rosenberg), who threaten to banish this
potential for greatness back to the nether world of everydayness.
AKH0675 HEIDEGGER'S RECTORAL ADDRESS WAS INTENSELY PRO-NAZI
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.85.
The consummate fusion of the conservative revolutionary and metaphysical dimensions
of Heidegger's thought may be found in the 1933 Rectoral Address, "The Self-Affirmation
of the German University"; a work, according to Lowith, whose interweaving of Nazi
rhetoric with the language of classical philosophy was so extreme that at the end "the
listener was in doubt as to whether he should start reading the pre-Socratics or enlist in the
SS."
AKH0676 HEIDEGGER'S ACCEPTANCE OF THE RECTORSHIP ENDORSED THE
NAZIS
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.85.
From a contemporary political standpoint, Heidegger's acceptance of the rectorship in May
1933 was a far from innocent affair. It provided a tacit semblance of cultural respectability
for the fledgling Nazi dictatorship: Heidegger, its most prestigious convert to date from
the world of letters, was then at the very crest of his renown. Despite his own repeated
claims that he took on the position only in order to prevent the politicization of university
life (a fact that can now be easily refuted on the basis of the evidence compiled by Farias
and Ott), his appointment was widely perceived as an instance of political Gleichschaltung.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 59
AKH0677 EVEN BEING AND TIME DISPLAYS A PROTO-NAZI PERSPECTIVE
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.20.
The extent to which Heidegger may have consciously or unconsciously incorporated such
putatively "ideological elements" into the philosophical framework of Being and Time is
contestable; their overall presence, however, is not. Here, I am referring to various
components of the so-called conservative revolutionary world-view that became so
influential among the German mandarin intelligentsia in the middle to late 1920s; a
world-view that, in many crucial respects, laid the intellectual foundations for Hitler's rise
to power. For a full understanding of the overall cultural significance of Being and Time,
an appreciation of the work's so-called "ideological" dimension will prove essential. For
were this dimension to be omitted from the picture, Heidegger's "existential decision" for
National Socialism in 1933 would be explicable solely as a leap of faith; a commitment
possessing only the most adventitious and ephemeral connection with his philosophical
standpoint of the late 1920s.
AKH0678 HEIDEGGER'S SPEECHES MADE HITLER SEEM LIKE THE
CONSUMMATION OF HISTORY
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.86.
On the one hand, it is precisely the innovative mixture of existential categories and Nazi
oratory that prevents the address from degenerating into one of the standard professions
of faith--so fashionable at the time--in the virtues of the National Revolution. On the other
hand, it is the same seamless interlacing of philosophical and political motifs that creates
the impression that the categorial framework of Being and Time had found its consummate
historical embodiment in the total state of Adolf Hitler.
AKH0679 HEIDEGGER SAW HITLER AS THE EMBODIMENT OF AUTHENTICITY
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.107.
Heidegger's portrayal of the Hitler regime as an embodiment of "authenticity," moreover,
betrays a profound, philosophically grounded affinity with the political self-understanding
of the regime itself. As J. P. Stern reminds us: "[Hitler's] originality consists in a deliberate
reversal of the functions normally attributed to personal-existential values on the one hand
and social-political values on the other. Hitler's discovery . . . is astonishingly simple: it
is to introduce a conception of personal authenticity into the public sphere and proclaim
it as the chief value and sanction of politics."
AKH0680 HEIDEGGER EQUATED HITLER WITH BEING
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.105.
Whereas from a metaphysical standpoint, Russia and America are the same--they exhibit
"the same dreary technological frenzy, the same unrestricted organization of the average
man"--Germany alone, because of a more primordial relation to the thought of Being--a
spiritual superiority that was for Heidegger evinced in the incomparable greatness of its
poets, its thinkers, in the very structure of its language--possessed the capacity to deliver
European destiny from the specter of perpetual spiritual decline. Thus, according to one
commentator, Heidegger believed that "Philosophy is for Hitler, because Hitler stands on
the side of Being."
AKH0681 HEIDEGGER SAW HITLER AS A DEMIGOD
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.126-7.
And thus, in an allusion to the contemporary German political situation (1934-1935),
Heidegger illustrates how his theory of demigods might gain concrete historical
application: "The true and only Fuhrer points by virtue of his Being toward the realm of
the demigods. To be Fuhrer [Fuhrersein] is a fate and therefore finite Being."
AKH0682 HEIDEGGER FREQUENTLY HAILED HITLER
Dinesh D'Souza, American enterprise institute, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, March 1991,
p.78.
In 1989 deconstructionists became alarmed when it was confirmed by Victor Farias, in his
book Heidegger and Nazism, that the philosopher Martin Heidegger, whom Jacques
Derrida has called the intellectual progenitor of deconstruction, harbored strong Nazi
sympathies until (and probably during) the Second World War. "The Fuhrer, and he alone,
is the sole German reality and law, today and in the future," Heidegger said in 1933. In a
letter requesting endorsements for a speech of his the: praised Hitler, Heidegger wrote, "Of
course it is clear that no non-Aryans should appear on the signature page." His
correspondence was frequently signed "Heil Hitler."

AKH0683 HEIDEGGER'S REJECTION OF DEMOCRACY IS BRAZENLY ELITIST
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.46.
The political philosophical implications of this theory are as unequivocal as they are
distasteful to a democratic sensibility. On the basis of the philosophical anthropology
outlined by Heidegger, the modern conception of popular sovereignty becomes a sheer non
sequitur: for those who dwell in the public sphere of everydayness are viewed as
essentially incapable of self-rule. Instead, the only viable political philosophy that follows
from this standpoint would be brazenly elitist: since the majority of citizens remain
incapable of leading meaningful lives when left to their own devices, their only hope for
"redemption" lies in the imposition of a "higher spiritual mission" from above. Indeed, this
was the explicit political conclusion drawn by Heidegger in 1933. In this way, Heidegger's
political thought moves precariously in the direction of the "Fuhrerprinzip" or "leadership
principle."
AKH0684 HEIDEGGER SAW FASCISM AS THE ONLY POLITICAL OPTION
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.98.
The same differentiation between the appearance and essence of the movement is implicit
in his 1936 claim that "These two men, Hitler and Mussolini, who have, each in essentially
different ways, introduced a countermovement to nihilism, have both learned from
Nietzsche. The authentic metaphysical realm of Nietzsche has not yet, however, been
realized." The statement itself is a reaffirmation of Heidegger's conviction that the fascist
movements of the 1920s and early 1930s represent the only real historical alternatives
("countermovements") to the darkness of European nihilism so presciently diagnosed by
Nietzsche. However, whether they have learned enough from Nietzsche is by no means
clear, since the "authentic metaphysical realm" that would embody the true epochal
overcoming of nihilism has yet to be realized.
AKH0685 HEIDEGGER'S THOUGHT IS ANTI-DEMOCRATIC AND
AUTHORITARIAN
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.56.
Hence, the rudiments of a "collectivist" interpretation of the social ontology of Being and
Time are to a certain extent confirmed by the category of resolve. However, as we have
already noted, the political implications of this social ontology are anything but benign
given the unabashedly elitist motifs that inform the existential analytic. The de facto
separation of human natures into authentic and inauthentic is radically undemocratic. The
political philosophy that corresponds to this ontological dualism suggests that human
beings are divided by nature into leaders and followers. Indeed, this authoritarian
conviction was a longstanding precept of the German mandarin intelligentsia and was well
reflected in the traditional class divisions of German (especially Prussian) social structure.
By celebrating this division between human types and their capacities, Heidegger in effect
merely codified in ontological form a time-honored commonplace of German authoritarian
political thought.
AKH0686 HEIDEGGER EXTOLLED A NEW RULING CLASS
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.127.
Consequently, for Heidegger, "The authentic idea of the state must necessarily be
antiliberal, requiring . . . a new ruling caste which can lay the foundations for the coming
of a new kind of man, the superman." Even then, of course, there was the real danger that
"the many" would remain immobilized in their inauthentic torpor, failing to recognize the
prospects for historical greatness awaiting them. Thus, the Fuhrerprinzip, as it manifested
itself in Heidegger's own philosophical theory, far from being an expendable, subaltern
component, took on the role of a sine qua non, the indispensable key to the authentic
unfolding of history as the "history of Being.
AKH0687 HEIDEGGER REJECTED DEMOCRACY
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.125.
Nowadays, a little too much fuss is made over the Greek polis," remarks Heidegger; that
is, the Greek polis as the historical origin of the democratic idea. Instead, all Heidegger can
find to admire about the polis as a political entity is the primacy of "rank and domination,"
the traces of that same Fuhrerprinzip he wishes to see transposed to the modern political
context.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 60
AKH0688 HEIDEGGER EMBRACED POLITICAL ELITISM AS A SOLUTION TO
THE PROBLEM OF BEING
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.123-4.
Given his philosophical self-understanding as someone in possession of privileged access
to the mysteries of Being, it is far from mere chance that in the mid-1930s, Heidegger
attempts to formalize the notion of an elite cadre of poets, thinkers, and statesmen--a cadre
of authentic "leader-types"--who stand in a more immediate proximity to Being, and whose
historical responsibility it is to lead the unenlightened many into the vicinity of such
"nearness" (Nahe). The Fuhrerprinzip--refunctioned as an existential theory of authentic
leadership--thus serves as the essential ground for Heidegger's thinking about the way in
which politics, philosophy, and poetic creation should become historically actualized. In
vintage Nietzschean fashion, the nihilism of the indigent historical present can only be
vanquished via the iconoclastic heroism of a creative elite, referred to by Heidegger as the
"great creators" (die grosser Schaffende). And in consequence of the a priori divide
between authentic and inauthentic natures, it is in the hands of this clique of superior
human types that the destiny of Being rests.
AKH0689 HEIDEGGER'S EXISTENTIALISM VENERATES POWER
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.108-9.
Toward the end of a long discussion of the intellectual origins of Nazi imperialist
geopolitical doctrines, Neumann offers the following observations: What is left as
justification for the [Grossdeutsche] Reich? Not racism, not the idea of the Holy Roman
Empire, and certainly not some democratic nonsense like popular sovereignty or
self-determination. Only the Reich itself remains. It is its own justification. The
philosophical roots of the argument are to be found in the existential philosophy of
Heidegger. Transferred to the realm of politics, existentialism argues that power and might
are true: power is a sufficient theoretical base for more power. Germany lies in the center,
it is well on its way toward becoming the mightiest state. Therefore, it is justified in
building the new order. An acute critic has remarked about [Christoph] Steding [author of
the 1938 work, The Reich and the Sickness of European Culture]: "From the remains of
what, with Heidegger, was still an effective transcendental solipsism, his pupil constructs
a national solipsism."
AKH0690 HEIDEGGER GLORIFIED VIOLENCE
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.126.
Thus, in Heidegger's metaphysical schema, violence takes on the character of an
ontological imperative; it is an essential means possessed by the Fuhrer elite to combat the
forces of everydayness and routine, whose predominance prevents the posing of the
question of Being. However, what comes through unmistakably in this philosophical
glorification of violence are the patent affinities between Heidegger's Gewalt-tatige--the
"shock-troops of Being," as it were--and the National Socialist rhetoric of Sturm und
Kampf. Whatever its intrinsic philosophical merit, this theory of a creative elite who are
"apolis" and "without statute" cannot help but strike one as a fanciful but crude, post
festum justification of the Nazi Fuhrerprinzip and its train of illegalities. As devoid of any
underlying moral or legal restraints, Heidegger's glorified image of a Fuhrerstuat zealously
underwrites the totalitarian claims of the ruling elite. The elevated metaphysical terms of
discussion cannot mask the ease with which his approach lends itself to abuse: despite
Heidegger's qualification that "rulers alone" must rule, the theory represents carte blanche
for authoritarian licentiousness.
AKH0691 HEIDEGGER ASPIRED TO BE THE SPIRITUAL FUHRER OF NAZI
GERMANY
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.188.
In point of fact, one of Heidegger's colleagues, the economist Walter Eucken, complained
in May 1933 to Heidegger's predecessor as Rector, Joseph Sauer (then pro-rector), that
Heidegger saw himself as the greatest philosopher since Heraclitus and that he aspired to
become the "spiritual Fuhrer" of the new movement.
AKH0692 NEW BIOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH SHOWS HEIDEGGER'S NAZISM
WASN'T INCIDENTAL
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.8.
But given the results of the new biographical researches into Heidegger's past--which have
established that Heidegger's National Socialist sentiments, far from being an episodic
phenomenon in the philosopher's life, continued to haunt his thinking at least until the
mid-1940s--it has become increasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion that Heidegger's
Nazi experience stood in an "essential" relation to his philosophical project as a whole.

AKH0693 HEIDEGGER JUSTIFIED NAZISM IN TERMS OF HIS BASIC
PHILOSOPHICAL CATEGORIES
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.21.
We know that during the years 1933-1934, Heidegger went to great lengths to justify his
partisanship for National Socialism in categories explicitly culled from the theoretical
framework of Being and Time; categories such as "decision," "resolve," "fate,"
"authenticity," and so forth. Indeed, the most cursory glance at his political speeches and
writings from this period readily confirms this impression. And thus, the posing of a
quasi-Kantian question would seem to be in order. Given the fact that Heidegger himself
sought to ground and justify his participation in the National Socialist movement on the
basis of his early philosophy of existence, how was this possible? Could it be that in a
qualified sense, the existential framework of Being and Time may have provided a type
of "transcendental grounding" for Heidegger's political conduct in the 1930s? If our
preliminary reflections concerning the essential interrelatedness of the philosophical and
ideological components of Being and Time are valid, this would suggest the necessity of
submitting the work to a "double reading." One would have to understand it not only as
a work of "first philosophy," but also as a work of its time.
AKH0694 HEIDEGGER HIMSELF STRESSED THAT THOUGHT CAN'T BE
DIVORCED FROM ACTION
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.33.
Although an understanding of Heidegger's political thought should in no way be reduced
to the concrete political choices made by the philosopher in the 1930s, neither is it entirely
separable therefrom. And while the strategy of his apologists has been to dissociate the
philosophy from the empirical person, thereby suggesting that Heidegger's Nazism was an
unessential aberration in the hope of exempting the philosophy from political taint, this
strategy will not wash for several reasons. To begin with, Heidegger's philosophy itself
would seem to rule out the artificial, traditional philosophical separation between thought
and action. In truth, much of Being and Time is concerned with overcoming the
conventional philosophical division between theoretical and practical reason; a fact that
is evident above all in the "pragmatic" point of departure of the analytic of Dasein: "Being
in-the-world" rather than the Cartesian "thinking substance." More importantly, though,
what is perhaps the central category of Heidegger's existential ontology--the category of
"authenticity"--automatically precludes such a facile separation between philosophical
outlook and concrete life-choices.
AKH0695 HEIDEGGER'S NAZISM WASN'T AN INCIDENTAL MISTAKE
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.95.
Heidegger's involvement with National Socialism has often been described as a
misunderstanding or an error that had little to do with his basic philosophical orientation.
But as Franzen observes: Such a misunderstanding and error were only possible because
of those "consonances," hidden and manifest, between National Socialist ideology and
Heidegger's philosophy.... Only because so many "depth-dimensions" in Heidegger's
thought--in Being and Time and then in his investigation of the "history of Being"--were
related to those of the National Socialist worldview could Heidegger fall victim to the
illusion that National Socialism was something greater and larger than it was in fact.
AKH0696 THE SINCERITY OF HEIDEGGER'S NAZISM IS UNDENIABLE
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.91-2.
Heidegger's commitment to the National Socialist program of radical social reform as
articulated in the Rectoral Address can be seen in both his future conduct as Rector as well
as in the numerous political articles and speeches he composed during his year in office.
In this respect, there can little doubt concerning the sincerity of his support for the policies
of the new regime. As he says at one point, "The National Socialist Revolution brings the
total transformation of our German Dasein.... Let not propositions and 'ideas' be the rules
of your Being. The Fuhrer alone is the present and future German reality and its law."As
his former student, Herbert Marcuse, would later comment about these lines: such a claim
is "actually the betrayal of philosophy as such and of everything it stands for." What
Marcuse found incomprehensible about this and similar claims was how this matchless
interpreter of the Western philosophical tradition could come to view the National Socialist
movement as the positive culmination of this intellectual heritage.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 61
AKH0697 HEIDEGGER'S POLITICS WERE INHERENTLY TOTALITARIAN
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.89.
The political object of Heidegger's speech is clear. The shallowness of bourgeois
life--evident, for example, in the fact that knowledge is shorn of essential ties to the
Volksgemeinschaft--can only be radically overcome via the wholesale integration of life
in a society of total mobilization. The multiple fragmentations and divisions of bourgeois
society--those of political parties, classes, academic disciplines, and competing
value-claims--can be resolved only by recourse to a total state. Since Heidegger fully
shares the conservative revolutionary critique of liberal democracy, not only does he have
no reservations concerning a totalitarian alternative; he in face perceives the latter as a
form of political deliverance. The various Bindungen he emphasizes in the address--labor
service, military service, and service in knowledge--aim at the creation of an
all-encompassing, total state in which the (modern) specialization of competences is
abolished and all pursuits are integrated by a common goal: the realization of the
historical-spiritual destiny of the German Volk.
AKH0698 HEIDEGGER RELIED HEAVILY ON BASIC NAZI CONCEPTS
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.85-6.
It is with the 1933 Rectoral Address that Heidegger, in his public utterances, passes over
from the language of conservative revolutionary cultural criticism to the Sturm and Kampf
vocabulary of National Socialism proper. From a purely rhetorical standpoint, the evidence
is telling enough. Though direct appeals to the theme of "race" are absent from the speech,
there is hardly an additional Nazi shibboleth that Heidegger fails to invoke. The content
of the address revolves around categories such as Volk, deutsches Volk,
Volksgemeinschaft, Volklich, "the forces of earth and blood" (erd- und bluthaftigen
Krafte), followers and leaders, "fate," "mission," "affliction," and "hardness." There are
detailed discussions of "will," the "essential will," "decisiveness," and "power." Some of
these terms, were they to appear in a different historical and cultural context, would present
no great cause for alarm. However, in 1933 Germany--with the nation swarming with
Brown Shirts, the Reichstag in ruins, parliament suspended, the trade-unions broken, and
the first Jewish boycotts of the previous month fresh in memory--the stakes were of an
entirely different order.
AKH0699 HEIDEGGER HIMSELF SAW A PROFOUND LINK BETWEEN NAZISM
AND HIS PHILOSOPHY
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.75.
In a 1936 conversation with Heidegger outside of Rome, Karl Lowith expressed his
disagreement with recent reports alleging that there was no intrinsic connection between
Heidegger's philosophy and his political option for National Socialism. Instead, Lowith
suggested that his former mentor's "partisanship for National Socialism lay in the essence
of his philosophy." Heidegger agreed with Lowith "without reservation, and added that his
concept of 'historicity, was the basis of his political 'engagement.' ' Lowith's description
of his "last meeting with Heidegger" is fascinating not only for the crucial information it
supplies toward a proper understanding of the philosopher's political biography. It also
contains a striking confirmation by Heidegger himself that his political convictions
evolved directly from his philosophy; and that, moreover, it is the concept of "historicity,"
as elaborated in Being and Time, that specifically accounts for his "engagement" on be half
of the National Socialist cause. While Heidegger's claim is far from unambiguous, there
is one interpretation that seems to recommend itself above all others.
AKH0700 HIS NAZISM REFLECTED THE INNERMOST TENDENCIES OF
HEIDEGGER'S THOUGHT
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.66.
Heidegger's involvement with National Socialism--which was of the order of deep-seated,
existential commitment--was far from being an adventitious, merely biographical episode.
Instead, it was rooted in the innermost tendencies of his thought. This claim in no way
entails the assumption that Nazism is somehow a necessary and inevitable outgrowth of
the philosophy of Being and Time. It does suggest, however, that the politics of the Nazi
movement emphatically satisfied the desiderata of authentic historical commitment
adumbrated in that work.
AKH0701 HEIDEGGER'S NAZISM WAS GROUNDED IN PHILOSOPHICAL
CONVICTION
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.65-6.
The aporetic nature of Heideggerian decisionism is thus indicated by its "negative" and
"positive" dispositions. Both determined, in a complementary manner, Heidegger's
partisanship for the National Socialist cause. For this was a partisanship that was carefully
grounded in premeditated philosophical conviction. The "negative" side lies, as we have
just seen, in a nihilistic historical opportunism that promotes unprincipled conformity with
what ever-choices are presented under given historical conditions. It is this side as well that
mandates the a priori rejection of "bourgeois" political forms--liberalism,
constitutionalism, parliamentarianism, etc.--and predisposes Heidegger toward a choice
of "extreme" solutions: since bourgeois life-forms--represented by the Existenzialien of
"everydayness"--are discounted in advance as degraded and profane, only radical
alternatives to this thoroughly prosaic order of life will suffice.

AKH0702 HEIDEGGER'S EMBRACE OF NAZISM REFLECTS HIS MORAL
NIHILISM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.65.
The consequences of this decisionistic "ethical vacuum," coupled with the prejudicial
nature of Heidegger's conservative revolutionary degradation of the modern life-world,
suggests an undeniable theoretical cogency behind Heidegger's ignominious life-choice
of 1933. In its rejection of "moral convention"--which qua convention, proves inimical to
acts of heroic bravado--decisionism shows itself to be distinctly nihilistic vis-a-vis the
totality of inherited ethical paradigms." For this reason, the implicit political theory of
Being and Time--and in this respect, it proves a classical instance of the German
conservative-authoritarian mentality of the period--remains devoid of fundamental "liberal
convictions" that might have served as an ethicopolitical bulwark against the enticement
of fascism. Freed of such bourgeois qualms, the National Socialist movement presented
itself as a plausible material "filling" for the empty vessel of authentic decision and its
categorical demand for existentiell-historical content. The summons toward an "authentic
historical destiny" enunciated in Being and Time was thus provided with an ominously
appropriate response by Germany's National Revolution. The latter, in effect, was viewed
by Heidegger as the ontic fulfillment of the categorical demands of "historicity": it was
Heidegger's own choice of a "hero," a "destiny," and a "community."
AKH0703 HEIDEGGER APPLIED HIS PHILOSOPHICAL CATEGORIES TO NAZI
POLITICS
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.107-8.
Only in view of this existential orientation--only in light of a "politics of authenticity"--can
one make sense of Heidegger's repeated utterances (e.g., in the Rectoral Address) that
engagement on behalf of National Socialism is a question of "wanting ourselves." In the
same way, in his pre-plebiscite address of November 10, 1933, he will explain that the
Fuhrer, by summoning the people to vote, accords it "the possibility of making, directly,
the highest free decision of all: whether it--the entire Volk--wants its own Dasein or
whether it does not want it." In his partisanship for National Socialism, Heidegger has in
effect transposed an entire series of categories from Division II of Being and
Time--resolve, potentiality-for-Being, historicity, and, above all, authenticity--to the
contemporary historical situation.
AKH0704 HEIDEGGER SAW NAZISM AS THE AUTHENTIC CHOICE OF THE
GERMAN NATION
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.107.
A "politics of authenticity"--although Heidegger never uses this expression per se, it
accurately captures the metaphysical transfiguration of politics he anticipated from the
Third Reich. In terms of the categories of Being and Time, he viewed the turn toward
National Socialism as nothing less than an "authentic decision" based on Germany's
ownmost potentiality-for-Being a nation or Volk. Because it was an "existential decision"
("from now on, every single thing demands decision," he would go on to observe in the
address cited above), Germany was choosing itself--affirming its own existential basis and
future, opting for an authentic mode of historicity.
AKH0705 HEIDEGGER'S NAZISM WAS THE ESSENCE OF HIS THOUGHT
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.102.
With the incorporation of the category of "the destiny of a historical Volk" into the very
heart of his theory of the history of Being, Heidegger undertakes a final retreat from the
quasi-solipsistic, Kierkegaardian theory of subjectivity advanced in Being and Time. Not
only is the question of Being thoroughly historicized; but now the very posing of the
question has become inseparable from the capacity of a collective megasubject--a
historically situated Volk-- to heed Being's call. Given the influence of the conservative
revolutionary critique of modernity on Heidegger, as well as his own longstanding
conviction concerning the innate superiority of Germany as a nation of "poets and
thinkers," it is clear that his theoretical justification of the "inner truth and greatness of
National Socialism"--far from being a random biographical error--was rooted in the
essence of his thought.
AKH0706 HEIDEGGER RETAINED TO THE END THE NAZIS CRITIQUE OF
MODERNITY
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.24.
Heidegger's career may be treated as a paragon of the cultural dynamic described by
Abendroth. The smug apoliticism of the Weimar years gives way to a period of radical
engagement on behalf of the National Socialist cause in 1933. His eventual disillusionment
with Nazism is then followed by a return to an apparently unshakable apoliticism in the
postwar years. But this later "apoliticism" is preserved in name only, insofar as Heidegger
retains to the end--for example, in his frequent lamentations concerning the universal fate
of Seinsvergessenhert that characterizes the modern age--the basic categories of the
antimodernist critique of posttraditional societies.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 62
AKH0707 HEIDEGGER CONTINUED TO BELIEVE IN THE POTENTIAL OF
NAZISM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.98-9.
That Heidegger continued to adhere even after the war (and very likely, until the end of his
life) to the distinction between the original historical potential of National Socialism as a
"countermovement" to nihilism and its subsequent factual degradation is evidenced by the
following unguarded admission in "The Rectorate 1933-34": "I saw in the movement that
had come to power the possibility of an inner gathering and renewal of the Volk and a way
for it to find its western-historical [geschichtlich-abendlandischen] destiny." Similarly,
when questioned as late as 1966 in the Spiegel interview about the paean to the "greatness
and glory of the [National] Awakening" with which the Rectoral Address concludes,
Heidegger simply confesses, "Yes, I was convinced of that."
AKH0708 HEIDEGGER REMAINED A NAZI ENTHUSIAST
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.97.
But Heidegger's enthusiasm for the National Socialist revolution persisted for quite some
time. In a 1936 conversation with Karl Lowith, he reaffirmed his conviction that "National
Socialism was the proper course for Germany; one only had to 'hold-out' long enough."
Moreover, his published lectures of this period are replete with positive allusions to the
historical course pursued by contemporary Germany. To be sure, the unreserved
enthusiasm for the "National Awakening" that suffused the 1933 Rectoral Address as well
as his political speeches of the same year was mitigated in his subsequent political
pronouncements. But even when he at tempts to distance himself from the pedestrian and
vulgar currents of National Socialism which had assumed responsibility for providing the
movement with "philosophical direction" (e.g., the Rosenberg-Krieck faction, which on
occasion took to attacking Heidegger's own philosophy), the break Heidegger makes never
goes far enough.
AKH0709 HEIDEGGER SUPPORTED THE NAZIS EVEN AFTER THEIR ABUSES
WERE CLEAR
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.130.
As these lines were composed, the German army stood in ruins before Stalingrad, and there
could no longer be any doubt about the gruesome nature of Hitler's Endlosung to the
"Jewish question": the entire Jewish population of Germany had been forcibly removed,
and the reports from the death-camps had already made the rounds among the civil
population. That the world conflagration alluded to by Heidegger had been unleashed by
Germany itself--specifically, by a political movement that Heidegger had once vigorously
and wholeheartedly supported--which thus represented the "cause" of the catastrophe
rather than its "solution," is a fact that--appallingly--seems beyond the pale of the
philosopher's powers of historical comprehension.
AKH0710 HEIDEGGER EMBRACED NAZISM INTO THE 1940S.
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.129.
And thus there can be little doubt that, in the mind of the philosopher himself, there existed
profound affinities between his project for the historical reclamation of Being and German
National Socialism--despite Heidegger's own increasing misgivings concerning the
determinate empirical form the movement had assumed in actual practice. That his
confidence in the ultimate historical mission of Germany as a "nation in the middle"
remained unshaken at least through the mid-1940s is illustrated by a number of startling
observations from his lecture courses of 1942-43. Though these years signify the historical
turning point in the course of World War II, this fact seemed to be of little consequence
for Heidegger's own political sensibilities. Instead, as late as the summer of 1942, he
astonishingly persists in alluding to the "historical singularity [geschichtlichen Einzigleit]
of National Socialism."
AKH0711 HEIDEGGER'S CULTURAL CRITIQUE LED TO NAZISM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.74-5.
As Franzen observes, there is little doubt that a vitalist preference for danger, risk, and
excess, coupled with a pronounced distaste for conditions of bourgeois "everydayness,"
may be counted as among the "most important ingredients of the mentality of National
Socialism." Nor would it take Heidegger himself long to draw the logical political
conclusions from this program of cultural critique.
AKH0712 HEIDEGGER WAS SEDUCED TO NAZISM BY ITS CRITIQUE OF
MODERNITY
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.105-6.
In part, many of the virtues of National Socialism were deduced by Heidegger ex negativo:
they pertained more to what National Socialism was against than what it advocated in a
positive sense. Among these components must be numbered its disdain for democratic
institutions, political parties (it always strove to present itself as a "movement" rather than
as a political party in the traditional sense), "intellectualism," bourgeois egalitarianism,
aesthetic modernism, and "cosmopolitanism." In sum, the movement seemed in many ways
to be the legitimate political heir to the conservative revolutionary critique of Western
modernity with which Heidegger identified in so many crucial respects.

AKH0713 HEIDEGGER'S CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY IS SIMPLY RECYCLED
ROMANTICISM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.166-7.
In the end, Heidegger's critique of modernity ends up by retracing the well-worn path
already trod by the German romantics: "poetic transcendence" is abstractly counterposed
to the ills of modern world consumed by the imperatives of technical reason. Thus, "To
'dwell poetically' means: to stand in the presence of the gods and to be involved in the
proximity of the essence of things." This is Heidegger's solution to an age of (double)
"affliction": an age that is caught between "the no-longer of the gods that have fled and the
not-yet of the god to come."
AKH0714 HEIDEGGER'S NAZISM STEMS FROM HIS CRITIQUE OF
RATIONALISM
Allan Bloom, Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago, THE CLOSING OF THE
AMERICAN MIND, 1987, p.311.
Thus it was no accident that Heidegger came forward just after Hitler's accession to power
to address the university community in Freiburg as the new rector, and urged commitment
to National Socialism. His argument was not without subtlety and its own special kind of
irony, but in sum the decision to devote wholeheartedly the life of the mind to an emerging
revelation of being, incarnated in a mass movement, was what Heidegger encouraged. That
he did so was not a result of his political innocence but a corollary of his critique of
rationalism.
AKH0715 HEIDEGGER WAS INFATUATED WITH IRRATIONALITY
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.43-4.
The peculiar aversion of the call to discursive articulation thus seems to indicate little more
than a willful obscurantism on Heidegger's part. That Heidegger seeks to make a virtue out
of the call's incommunicability, that he goes out of his way to laud its "conspicuous
indefiniteness," suggests a deliberate infatuation with the forces of unreason. Whereas the
ethos of modernity makes a virtue out of insights that can be linguistically redeemed, and
thereby subjected to the approval of the senses communis, Heidegger disappoints us by
dogmatically regressing behind the terms of this program. In fundamental ontology, the
idea of the senses communis is flatly degraded to the "publicness" of the "They"-- in
Heideggerian parlance, a term of derision from which no conceivable good can emerge.
In his thought, the metaphor of the "light of reason" has no place. We are once more
provided with evidence for Tugendhat's claim concerning the predominantly
"nonargumentative and evocative" character of Heideggerian discourse.
AKH0716 HEIDEGGER'S NAZISM SHOWS THE DANGERS OF POLITICAL
IRRATIONALISM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.106.
However, another undeniable factor in Heidegger's enthusiasm for the movement was his
personal attraction to Hitler as an archetypal embodiment of charismatic leadership. In this
connection, the following exchange between Heidegger and Karl Jaspers in June 1933 may
be of more than merely anecdotal import. To the latter's query, "How could you think that
a man as uncultivated as Hitler can govern Germany?" Heidegger responds: "It's not a
question of culture. Take a look at his wonderful hands!" When understood within the
framework of Seinspolitik, the meaning of this claim is clear: existential qualifications are
more important than intellectual ones. It would be unfair to overburden with theoretical
significance an offhand conversational remark made by Heidegger. But in a far from trivial
sense, Heidegger's response is superbly illustrative concerning the pitfalls involved in
employing "irrationalist," existential criteria in the formulation of political judgments.
AKH0717 HEIDEGGER'S NAZISM WAS INTIMATELY RELATED TO THE
REJECTION OF UNIVERSALISM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.106.
Heidegger will express a similar thought five months later, this time in a public context,
when, in view of the upcoming plebiscite called by Hitler (ex post facto) on Germany's
withdrawal from the League of Nations, he implores his student audience: "Let not
doctrines and 'ideas' be the rules of your Being. The Fuhrer alone is the present and future
German reality and its law." According to Heidegger's logic, the greatness of the National
Socialist movement is ultimately irreducible to a given set of intellectual precepts or
"ideas." It is not so much "ideological," but existential, rooted in the authenticity of the
Fuhrer as an individual, historically existent Dasein. In this sense, Heidegger would have
undoubtedly seconded Carl Schmitt's proclamation that "On this day [January 30, 1933]
one can say that 'Hegel died' "--viz., the idea of the German Rechtsstaat as an entity based
on universal principles and norms.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 63
AKH0718 THE CRITIQUE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT LED TO THE NAZI
DEBACLE
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.152.
This verdict gives cause for dismay, for it suggests that the philosopher has drawn
precisely the wrong conclusions - from the political events of 1933-1945: instead of
participating in the attempt to forge, out of the ravages of postwar Europe, a new
conception of reason and truth, Heidegger himself has become an even greater
"stiff-necked" advocate of counterenlightenment. His thought seeks refuge in the
recrudescence of myth: "openness for the mystery," "the remembrance of Being," and "the
mirror-play of the four-fold" (gods and mortals, heaven and earth) becomes the mystified
categorial scheme around which his later thinking revolves. The notion that analogous
counterenlightenment attitudes and doctrines might have played a key role in the spiritual
preparation for the German catastrophe is a thought that has obviously never crossed his
mind.
AKH0719 THE EMPHASIS ON BEING DESTROYS HUMAN FREEDOM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.153.
Consequently, the major problem with Heidegger's later philosophy is that the doctrine of
Being, in its oppressive omnipotence, causes the conceptual space in which freedom can
be meaningfully thought to all but disappear. In light of this fact, Jaspers' verdict
concerning Heidegger's inability to grasp the nature of human freedom--"Heidegger doesn't
know what freedom is"--becomes readily intelligible. For according to the theory of the
"destining of Being," all the worldly events we experience undergo a prior, other-worldly,
metaontological determination.
AKH0720 EMPHASIS ON BEING IS ETHICALLY IMPOVERISHING
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.149.
For Heidegger, what is of primary importance is that "man is 'the neighbor of Being'--not
the neighbor of man." And thus, as Emmanuel Levinas has pointed out, the ethical
impoverishment of Heidegger's standpoint derives from the fact that it lacks the all
important counterweight of the Other--without which all reflection on the nature of human
affairs threatens to succumb to a nihilistic abyss of moral meaningless. By radically
privileging "Being," physis, and "fate" over the mundane, inner-worldly encounters of
sentient human beings--that is, by radically privileging ontology over ethics--the
amoralism to which Heideggerianism succumbs in actual fact seems theoretically
foreordained. The tendency to write off the intersubjective character of the human
life-world as simply a staging-ground for "inauthenticity" is inherited from Being and
Time. But this practice is radicalized in Heidegger's post-Kehre thought, where all
prospects for choosing an authentic potentiality-for-Being are preempted a priori by the
"world-night" of nihilism and Seinsverlassenheit.
AKH0721 THE EMPHASIS ON BEING UNDERMINES HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.148.
With the deification of Being at the expense of Dasein, Heidegger's later philosophy enters
into contradictions that undermine its entire credibility as theoretical project. At certain
times, he speaks of Seinsvergessenheit as a "fate" that is merely a logical consequence of
Dasein's narcissistic obsession with its own "self-assertion" (the "will to will"), as a result
of which the question of Being itself never gets posed. In a similar vein, he frequently
discusses our abandonment by Being as if it could be directly attributed to a series of
category mistakes perpetrated by three "essential" philosophers--Plato, Descartes, and
Nietzsche. In both cases, how ever, there seems to be a direct and consequential
relationship between the "conduct" of Dasein and the specific "destiny of Being" that
humanity must endure.
AKH0722 HEIDEGGER'S VIEW OF BEING IS AUTHORITARIAN
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.147-8.
According to Karl Jaspers, Heidegger's way of thinking is "essentially unfree, dictatorial,
and incapable of communication [communikationslos]." Nowhere would this judgment
prove more apt than with respect to the articulation of the relationship between Being and
human existence in his later philosophy. "But Being--what is Being?" inquires Heidegger
in the "Letter on Humanism." "It is It itself," he rejoins in a phrase redolent of the "I am
who I am" of the Biblical God. It is as though the tautological definition of the word itself
were a self-evident indicator of its philosophical profundity. In Being and Time, Heidegger
could still claim that, "Only so long as Dasein is--that is, the ontic possibility of the
understanding of Being--'is there' Being."

AKH0723 HEIDEGGER'S QUASI-RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM LEAD TO NAZISM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.33.
As Lowith observes: Whoever . . . reflects on Heidegger's later partisanship for Hitler, will
find in this first formulation of the idea of historical "existence" the constituents of his
political decision of several years hence. One need only abandon the still quasi-religious
isolation and apply [the concept of] authentic "existence"--always particular to each
individual--and the "duty" which follows from it to "specifically German existence" and
its historical destiny in order thereby to introduce into the general course of German
existence the energetic, but empty movement of existential categories ("to decide for
oneself," "to take stock of oneself in face of nothingness," "wanting one's ownmost
destiny," and "to take responsibility for oneself") and to proceed from there to
"destruction" now on the terrain of politics.
AKH0724 HEIDEGGER WAS A STRONG CULTURAL NATIONALIST
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.94.
And though Heidegger may not have shared the Nazi emphasis on race, he, too, was
convinced that Germany and the Germans occupied a special niche in world-history--they
had a "destiny" to fulfill. Thus, only German Kultur, as opposed to the Zivilisation of the
Western nations, offered the prospect of a true revival of the "Greek beginning." His belief
in a special affinity between German language and culture and that of the ancient Greeks
was one shared by many of his countrymen since the end of the eighteenth century. When
viewed from this perspective, there was unquestionably an inner conceptual logic behind
his "enlistment" for the National Socialist cause in the 1930s.
AKH0725 HEIDEGGER EXTOLLED GERMAN NATIONALISM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.129-30.
And in his Heraclitus lectures of the same year, Heidegger reaffirms his delusory
conviction--against a massive weight of historical evidence to the contrary--that Germany
and the Germans represent the only force capable of redeeming the West from a fate of
impending catastrophe: "the Germans and they alone can save the West for its history," he
declaims. "The planet is in flames. The essence of man is out of joint. Only from the
Germans can there come a world-historical reflection--if, that is, they find and preserve
'Germanness' [das Deutsche]."
AKH0726 HEIDEGGER'S STRESS ON TRUTH AS UNCONCEALMENT JUSTIFIED
STATISM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.113-4.
"Clearings" are produced by works of art; for example, the environmental openness
established by the Greek temple as "work." But they are produced by other types of works
as well. As Heidegger observes: "One essential way in which truth establishes itself in the
beings it has opened up is truth setting itself to work. Another way in which truth occurs
is the act that founds a political state." With this claim, we have arrived at the threshold of
Heidegger's political philosophy proper: viz., the role played by the state in the setting to
work of truth. The state--in a way that remains as yet unspecified--participates in the work
of unconcealment. It, too, is a type of work, a rescuing of openness from the shadows of
concealment, a clearing in which the phenomenal glory of truth first comes to light.
AKH0727 EXISTENTIALIST REJECTION OF REASON SURRENDERS TO THE
TOTAL STATE
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.130.
As a disillusioned former student would write of his fallen mentor shortly after the
Rectoral Address: Existentialism collapses in the moment when its political theory is
realized. The total-authoritarian state which it yearned for gives the lie to all its truths.
Existentialism accompanies its collapse with a self-abasement that is unique in intellectual
history; it carries out its own history as a satyr-play to the end. It began philosophically as
a great debate with western rationalism and idealism, in order to redeem the historical
concretion of individual existence for this intellectual heritage. And it ends philosophically
with the radical denial of its own origins; the struggle against reason drives it blindly into
the arms of the reigning powers. In their service and protection it betrays that great
philosophy which it once celebrated as the pinnacle of western thinking.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 64
AKH0728 HEIDEGGER FAILS TO DISTINGUISH DEMOCRACY AND
TOTALITARIANISM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.143.
There is no small measure of irony that such shortcomings must be attributed to a thinker
whose claim to philosophical originality in the 1920s was based on an avowed revival of
the dimension of existential concreteness that was otherwise so lacking in modern
philosophy; a thinker whose great achievement was a purported reincorporation of
"history"--via the category of "historicity"--into modern philosophical discourse. In truth,
it is the essential facts of twentieth-century political life that Heidegger, time and again,
shows himself incapable of comprehending. Or, as Franzen has remarked, "In Heidegger's
late philosophy . . . the avoidance of concrete history is in a certain sense perfected." This
dilemma is perhaps nowhere as evident as in his leveling conflation of twentieth-century
ideologies: fascism, communism, and democracy all stand under the accursed sign of the
"will to will."
AKH0729 HEIDEGGER'S STATISM IS LATENTLY TOTALITARIAN
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.115-6.
There are many dangers lurking in the statist conception of politics advanced by Heidegger
in the preceding citation. The specifically political danger of this theory of the polis/state
is that it is latently totalitarian: when the state--and the "destiny of a historical volk" that
is its raison d'etre--are accorded unchallenged ontological primacy as "the work for the
works," the autonomy and integrity of the other spheres of life (social, cultural, religious)
disappears: they are gleichgeschaltet or immediately subsumed within the political sphere.
AKH0730 HEIDEGGER'S COMMUNITARIAN STATISM WAS TOTALITARIAN
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.116.
Many similar objections to Heidegger's political philosophy have been raised by Karsten
Harries in his essay on "Heidegger as a Political Thinker": Unfortunately this project [i.e.,
the extension of Heidegger's analysis of the work of art to the state] became intertwined
with a rejection of the modern conception of the state, with its separation of the ethical and
the political, of the private and the public, separations which are difficult to reconcile with
the kind of unity and self-integration demanded by Heidegger's conception of authenticity.
Recalling Nietzsche's hope for a creative resurrection of Greek tragedy, Heidegger calls
for a state which would be a "repetition"--in his sense of the word--of the Greek polis, a
state which would assign man his ethos, his place as member of a genuine community. It
is this romantic conception of the state with its fusion or confusion of the political and the
social which we must question. The attempt to restructure the modern state in the image
of the polis will tend towards totalitarianism.
AKH0731 BY GIVING POLITICS A METAPHYSICAL DIMENSION, HEIDEGGER
MADE IT TOTALITARIAN
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.117.
Though we may readily accept and even welcome Heidegger's claim that works of art
reveal the truth or essence of beings ("The work [of art] . . . is not the reproduction of some
particular entity that happens to be present at any given time," observes Heidegger; "it is,
on the contrary, the reproduction of the thing's general essence"), we must question the
attempt to transpose aesthetico-metaphysical criteria to the realm of political life proper.
Is it in point of fact meaningful to speak of the "unveiling of truth" as the raison d'etre of
politics in the same way one can say this of a work of art or a philosophical work? Is not
politics rather a nonmetaphysical sphere of human interaction, in which the content of
collective human projects, institutions, and laws is articulated, discussed, and agreed upon?
Is it not, moreover, in some sense dangerous to expect "metaphysical results" from
politics? For is not politics instead a sphere of human plurality, difference, and
multiplicity; hence, a realm in which the more exacting criteria of philosophical truth must
play a subordinate role? And thus, would it not in fact be to place a type of totalitarian
constraint on politics to expect it to deliver over truth in such pristine and unambiguous
fashion.
AKH0732 HEIDEGGER'S VIEW OF TRUTH CAN'T DISTINGUISH TRUTH FROM
ERROR
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.122-3.
Thus, for Marx, the "perilous character" of Heidegger's concept of truth derives from its
obstinate insistence on treating "error, sham, and evil" as coexistent moments of truth. The
central dilemma of this theory of truth is that it is essentially non-falsifiable: since error
and truth are for Heidegger equiprimordial aspects of the Ereignis, we are given no criteria
on the basis of which we might distinguish between them. Only the philosopher himself,
who possesses privileged access to the history of Being qua "Mystery," is capable of
determining authentic from inauthentic manifestations of truth and error. The philosopher
thus becomes a "high priest of Being" who no longer need prove his case by reason or
force of the better argument. Instead, his status as an "initiate" of the secret rites of Being
should suffice to allay all questions and doubts (except in the case of nonbelievers, who
are beyond redemption in any event).

AKH0733 HEIDEGGER'S CRITIQUE OF PROPOSITIONAL TRUTH LED TO HIS
POLITICAL ERRORS
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.120-1.
However promising Heidegger's ontological critique of the traditional philosophical ideal
of propositional truth may have been it ultimately founders in consequence of his inability
to distinguish between "truth" and "error." In fact, as a result of the radicalism with which
Heidegger seeks, from the standpoint of the history of Being, to re-pose the question of
philosophical truth he comes to perceive the inseparability of truth and error explicitly as
a gain in metaphysical profundity. In point of fact, however, it is precisely the
complacency with which he allows this fundamental intellectual distinction to blur into
meaninglessness that accounts for his egregious errors of political judgment. Just as the
Nietzschean superman is "beyond" the traditional moral divide between good and evil, so
Heidegger's political judgments--by virtue of a claim to greater metaphysical
profundity--are able to imperiously disregard all conventional, modern standards of
political and intellectual judgment.
AKH0734 HEIDEGGERIAN "UNCONCEALMENT" SIMULTANEOUSLY
CONCEALS
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.119.
However (and what follows constitutes a crucial admission by Heidegger), insofar as
letting beings be always lets beings be in a specific way--that is, because letting be is itself
always perspectival or selective--its very manner of disclosing beings also conceals them.
Thus, every act of unconcealment, is simultaneously an act of concealment. Or as
Heidegger himself expresses this thought: "Precisely because letting be always lets beings
be in a particular comportment which relates to them and thus discloses them, it conceals
beings as a whole."
AKH0735 REJECTING PROPOSITIONAL TRUTH IS AN OPENING TO ABSOLUTE
EVIL
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.118-9.
This breakthrough (as we have already indicated) is to be achieved via Heidegger's
conception of truth as "unconcealedness." But in the end, one cannot but doubt whether
the overall losses are not greater than the partial gains. For the rash dismissal of the idea
of propositional truth at the same time entails a wholesale rejection of the truth/untruth
dichotomy; the net result being that Heidegger has rendered himself intellectually (and
morally) defense less against the "absolute historical evil" of the twentieth century: the
genocidal imperialism of German National Socialism. Heidegger is not merely defenseless
in face of this evil' but remains sufficiently deluded to defend its true "inner potential" even
at a point where the horrific truth of the movement was unveiled for all to see.
AKH0736 HEIDEGGER'S RETHINKING LEADS TO NOWHERE
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.53.
According to the formidable Heidegger interpretation set forth by Reiner Schurmann, the
antinormativism of fundamental ontology is in truth an antifoundationalism: it represents
a thoroughgoing assault against philosophical "essentialism," i.e., against all metaphysical
doctrines in which fixed, eternally valid meanings are proclaimed. In Schurmann's view,
Heidegger understands Being as something inherently "polyvalent" which must be thought
of as an "ever-new event." Heidegger's significance as an ethical thinker thus lies in the
fact that he devalues the "teleological model of action." This means that action (and by
implication, politics) can have no final goal or purpose: the Heideggerian Holzwege are
"paths that lead nowhere."
AKH0737 HEIDEGGER'S ACCEPTANCE OF NAZISM WAS EXPRESSIVE OF HIS
IDEA OF AUTHENTICITY
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.34-5.
The conclusion to be drawn from what we might define as the "existentiell imperative" of
Being and Time--from the fact that its ontological categories necessitate ontic
realization--is of great moment for an understanding of Heidegger's own political
experiences; It suggests the possibility that Heidegger intended his political involvements
of the 1930s as the existentiell consummation of the categorial framework of his 1927
book; more specifically, that the philosopher viewed his entry into the Nazi Party as a
concrete, historical manifestation of authentic, resolute existence. This conclusion, already
suggested in the remarks by Karl Lowith cited above, is forcefully borne out by
Heidegger's numerous political writings and speeches, in which he has gone to no small
lengths to articulate his support for National Socialism in categories explicitly gleaned
from the existential analytic of his 1927 work.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 65
AKH0738 HEIDEGGER'S VIEW OF CHOICE IS NORMATIVELY IMPOVERISHED
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.52-3.
For what might be described as the nonnative impoverishment of the Heideggerian
category of "resolve" or "decisiveness" goes far toward explaining the failings of
decisionism in all its forms. For when it is devoid of any and every normative orientation,
"decision" can only be blind and uninformed--ultimately, it becomes a leap into the void.
Without any material criteria for decision, it becomes impossible to distinguish an
authentic from an inauthentic decision, responsible from irresponsible action--let alone on
what grounds an individual would even prefer one course of action to another. Indeed, at
times, Heidegger seems to openly glorify the irrationalist bases of decision; for example,
when he observes: "Every decision bases itself on something not mastered, something
concealed, confusing; else it would never be a decision."
AKH0739 HEIDEGGER'S MORAL OBTUSENESS UNDERMINES HIS CRITIQUE OF
TECHNOLOGY
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.168.
The ultimate proof of the bankruptcy of Heidegger's later thought--including the critique
of technology that represents an integral moment thereof--may well be contained in a
relatively obscure remark from his 1949 lecture series, "Insight into That Which Is." For
it is this observation that perhaps best reveals the "leveling" tendencies inherent in his
theory of the "destiny of Being," his incapacity for making rational sociohistorical
judgments, as well as his insensitivity to the suffering of the victims of Nazism. According
to Heidegger: Agriculture is today a motorized food industry, in essence the same as the
manufacture of corpses in gas chambers and extermination camps, the same as the
blockade and starvation of countries, the same as the manufacture of atomic bombs. That
Heidegger can in good conscience equate mechanized agriculture with the genocidal
politics of the Nazis is not only a monumental non sequitur in historical reasoning; it
suggests a fundamental incapacity for both moral and theoretical discernment. It is at this
point that his thought fully regresses behind the standards of the healthy human
understanding that he treated with unremitting condescension throughout his life. This
judgment, far from representing a momentary lapse, is wholly consistent with the "leveling
gaze" of the theory of Seinsgeschick in general, viz., its endemic propensity for equating
incomparables. Ironically, here we see metaphysics at its purest: a theoretically conditioned
insensitivity to the concrete specificity of the phenomena of contemporary historical life.
Above all, Heidegger's observation proves shocking insofar as it signifies a calculated
regression behind the received standards of twentieth-century morality, which have been
"indexed" in relation to the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust.
AKH0740 TECHNOLOGICAL DOMINATION IS DUE TO A DEARTH OF REASON
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.167.
Heidegger's theory of technology ultimately collapses under the weight of its own
self-imposed conceptual limitations. And thus, the intrinsic shortcomings of his theoretical
framework prevent him from entertaining the prospect that the problem of technological
domination owes more to the dearth of reason in the modern world rather than an excess.
For in modern life, the parameters of rationality have been prematurely restricted: formal
or instrumental reason has attained de facto hegemony; practical reason--reflection on
ends--has been effectively marginalized. Instead of the "overcoming" of reason
recommended by Heidegger, what is needed is an expansion of reason's boundaries, such
that the autonomous logic of instrumental rationality is subordinated to a rational reflection
on ends.
AKH0741 HEIDEGGER REINFORCES TECHNOLOGICAL DOMINATION
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.165-6.
Since the doctrine of the history of Being has already banished all categories of practical
reason from its theoretical purview, we are left with two complementary extremes that
combine to produce the image of a totally reified world from which there can be no
escape--for, strictly speaking, there are no "social actors" left to alter its course. On the one
hand, there is the implacable advance of technology itself, which "can never be stopped";
on the other hand, there is a wholesale devaluation of the possibilities for human action,
which has the performative consequence of encouraging a total submission to fate. In the
last analysis, Heidegger's theory ends up reinforcing the logic of technological domination
it claims to oppose: technology is ontologized as the modern condition humaine, and our
historical capacities for resisting or reshaping this fate are written off a prioiri as merely
a further expression of the nefarious and omnipresent "will to will."

AKH0742 HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY BECOMES STERILE BECAUSE IT
BYPASSES SCIENCE
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.123.
But as Lowith has observed: Philosophical reflection on the whole of what exists in nature,
which is the world . . . cannot merely "pass science by" without falling into the void. It is
easily said, and it would be a relief, if philosophical thought were to dwell beyond what
is provable and refutable; if, however, the realm of "essential thinking" were to surpass all
proof and refutation, then philosophy would have to do neither with truth nor with
probability, but rather with uncontrollable claims and allegations.
AKH0743 THE EMPHASIS ON BEING LEADS TO TOTAL PASSIVITY
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.147.
As we suggested earlier, the essential thinking of the later Heidegger promotes an "eclipse
of practical reason." For his post-Kehre reformulation of the relation between Being and
Dasein rebels so fervently against the voluntarist dimension of his own earlier thinking that
the very concept of "meaningful human action" is seemingly rendered null and void. If the
early Heidegger attempted to rally Dasein to "decisiveness" (Entschlossenheit), the thought
of the later Heidegger appears at times to be a summary justification of human passivity
and inaction (Gelassenheit)--so prejudicially is the balance between Sein and Mensch
struck in favor of the former term.
AKH0744 HEIDEGGER CULTIVATES DEBILITATING PASSIVITY
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.180.
Heidegger inculcates a quietism. This quietism is dangerous: those who think that the
forces of technology lie utterly beyond human control are likely to find that this is in fact
the case; those who believe that only a god can save them will likely need such salvation.
AKH0745 HEIDEGGER'S RADICAL PASSIVITY LEADS TO POLITICAL
IMPOTENCE
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.194-5.
This conviction leads in Heidegger to a radical passivity, to the notion that we ought to let
beings be. Heidegger's position has political implications, though it denies its own political
nature, for it amounts to nothing less than an acceptance--indeed, a confirmation--of the
existing social and political order.
AKH0746 HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHER JARGON REVEALS HIS
AUTHORITARIANISM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.20.
For the "mimesis of fate" promoted by Heidegger's imperious and presumptive use of
philosophical terminology reveals the latently authoritarian tendencies of his thought in
general. Or, as Sollner concludes, "the authoritarian sense or non-sense of Heideggerian
philosophy lies in its jargon and its linguistic gestures."
AKH0747 HEIDEGGER FAILS TO UNDERSTAND THE REAL WORLD
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.180.
But I do not think that quietism is the main danger of Heidegger's thought. For I would
argue that a Heideggerian activism risks equal danger. It is not simply a matter of rejecting
the passive for the active mode. It is a matter of moving beyond Heidegger's utopian
idealism toward an understanding of the forces, structures, passions, and desires at work
in the real world. (Admittedly, the world in question is the "ordinary" world, not
Heidegger's "extraordinary" world.) The danger, in short, lies in the tendency of
Heidegger's utopianism to obscure this world, enveloping it in a utopian haze. Heidegger
is a poor guide for those who want to grasp how the "ordinary" world operates. His
archaizing idealism tempts one into ignoring the forms of social, economic, and political
power at work within it. If this sounds like a defense of an intelligent empiricism against
Heidegger's utopianism, this is indeed what it is.
AKH0748 HEIDEGGER'S VENERATION OF BEING REINVENTS THE MEDIEVAL
GOD
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.152.
For Blumenberg, the unchallengeable primacy of Being in Heidegger's later work signifies
recourse to an ersatz divinity; a divinity, moreover, that assumes vengeful traits in response
to the hubristic self-assertion of modern man. The end result is a secularized replay of
medieval ontology. In the words of Blumenberg: The [modern] age appears as an absolute
"fact"--or better: as a "datum"; it stands, sharply circumscribed, outside of any logic,
adapted to a state of erring [Irrnis]; and in spite of its immanent pathos of domination (or
precisely on account of it) finally permits only the one attitude that is the sole option that
the "history of Being" leaves open to man: submission. The absolutism of "Being" is in
truth only the continuation of the medieval result by other means.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 66
AKH0749 POSTHUMANISM DESTROYS THE CONCEPT OF FREEDOM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.153-4.
Heidegger's incapacity to comprehend the concept of freedom is merely a logical
outgrowth of his post-Kehre radical antihumanism. The philosophical economy of
Seinsgeschichte necessitates that the autonomy of human conduct be negated, for in this
way alone can Heidegger reconceptualize Dasein as an abject and pliable conduit for
Being's "coming to presence." In order to secure Dasein's compliance with the goals of
Seinsgeschichte, it must be divested of the capacity for free action. Thus, in his 1936
Schelling lecture, Heidegger essentially proclaims the obsolescence of "freedom" as a
viable philosophical category--that is, when understood from the "essential" standpoint of
Seinsgeschichte: "From the originary perspective of the history of Being, 'freedom' has
forfeited its role. For Being [Seyn] is more originary than the totality of beings and
subjectivity."
AKH0750 FREEDOM IS INDISPENSABLE TO MEANINGFUL HUMAN LIFE
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.154.
The project of human freedom, incessantly belittled by "essential thinking," receives its
inspiration from the conviction that "it is more honest, courageous, self-clairvoyant, hence
a higher mode of life, to choose in lucidity than it is to hide one's choices behind the
supposed structure of things." In this respect, the concept of freedom, as it has been handed
down to us on the basis of the Greek ideal of autonomic or self-rule, represents an
indispensable touchstone of the Western tradition: it has become a sine qua non for the
ideal of a meaningful human existence. And thus, in a far from trivial sense, we view a life
led under conditions of "unfreedom" as a life deprived of an essential prerequisite for the
fulfillment of human potential. It would be a life bereft of those autonomous capacities of
decision and choice on the basis of which alone we are able to identify and define our
projects as our projects. We are of course simultaneously defined by a preexisting network
of values, institutions, and belief-systems, which have themselves been shaped and
handed-down by the members of a given community or group. Yet, it is our capacity to
"choose in lucidity" as to which among these would endow our projects with direction and
significance that forms the indispensable basis of a meaningful human life.
AKH0751 REJECTING HUMANISM TOLERATES OPPRESSION
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.87-8.
This is what distinguishes Montaigne's scepticism from the wholesale varieties currently
in vogue among postmodernists, New Historicists, and others. It works on a principle
directly counter to the 'radical alterity' thesis: that is to say, on the assumption that however
deep such cultural differences may run, they are still (in William Empson's fine phrase) 'a
small thing by comparison with our common humanity'. The trouble with the current
anti-humanist doxa is that it swings so far against those bad old forms of quasi-universalist
subject-centred thought that it leaves no room for treating other subjects - including the
victims of colonial oppression - as in any way capable of reasoned enquiry or reflective
moral awareness. At this point scepticism passes over into cynicism, or the critique of
prejudice into another (just as damaging) kind of prejudice that regards all truth-claims and
ethical values as relative to this or that 'discourse', or again, as mere products of the
will-to-power in its protean manifestations.
AKH0752 REJECTING HUMANISM LEADS TO NAZISM
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.100
Her position now amounts to a point-for-point rebuttal of the entire post-structuralist doxa
on Enlightenment and its supposed evil legacy. 'The Nazis', she writes, did not lose their
humanity because of the 'abstraction' that may have existed in the notion of 'man' . . . On
the contrary - it is because they had lost the lofty, abstract, fully symbolic notion of
humanity and replaced it with a local, national, or ideological membership, that savageness
materialized in them and could be practiced against those who did not share such
membership. Had they abandoned it because it was 'abstract' to the point of lacking
meaning or, on the contrary, because in that so-called 'abstraction' there was a symbolic
value that went against the desire to dominate and possess others under the aegis of a
national, racial, or ideological membership that was considered superior?
AKH0753 HEIDEGGER'S REJECTION OF HUMANISM CONDEMNS THE MASS OF
HUMANITY
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.46.
In point of fact, the purportedly "timeless" categories of fundamental ontology seem to be
based upon a prejudicial, antihumanist philosophical anthropology, whose political
implications are distinctly unsavory. The a priori division between authentic and
inauthentic spheres essentially condemns the inhabitants of the latter realm to a life of
perdition; Heidegger is quite explicit on this score, insofar as their lot is generally
described by variants of the German fallen. On the basis of this division, the vast majority
of men and women are deemed incapable of meaningful self-determination.

AKH0754 HEIDEGGER'S FAILURE TO REPUDIATE THE HOLOCAUST STEMMED
FROM HIS ANTI-HUMANISM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.146-7.
In the recent debate spurred by the appearance in France of Victor Farias' book, Heidegger
et le Nazisme, a number of prominent French intellectuals--Maurice Blanchot, Emmanuel
Levinas, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe--have found the most disturbing aspect of " l'affaire
Heidegger" to be the philosopher's unpardonable refusal to utter a word of remorse for the
victims of the Holocaust. But in light of our reconstruction of Heidegger's post-Kehre
world view, it becomes clear that this refusal was far from a simple crime of omission; nor
as several Heideggerians have claimed--thus perpetuating the duplicity of their
mentor--was "silence" Heidegger's way of expressing his solidarity with those who had
perished, owing to the "unspeakable" character of the crimes that had been committed.
Instead, Heidegger's reticence was fully consistent with his postmetaphysical,
philosophical antihumanism. For, according to this view, it was not the conscious acts of
men and women that were responsible for the unfolding of historical events, but the
"destining of Being." A gesture of penitence or contrition toward the victims of National
Socialism would have been wholly superfluous according to the strictures of his theoretical
standpoint. Moreover, by means of this conceptual framework, the question of historical
"fault" or "blame" could not even be posed. Perhaps nowhere more than in this
philosophically engendered reticence vis-a-vis the sins of the German past does "essential
thinking" stand convicted of moral bankruptcy: by systematically denying the legitimacy
of questions of historical responsibility, it even proves capable of effacing the difference
between "victims" and "executioners."
AKH0755 HEIDEGGER'S POLITICAL VIEWS DESTROY ALL CHECKS ON
TOTALITARIANISM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.128-9.
According to a charitable reading of Heidegger's doctrine of Sernspolitik--his theory of the
integral interrelationship between creators, the yolk, and the state as viewed from the
standpoint of the history of Being--the philosopher is merely advocating a theory of
national self-determination to be based on the "higher powers" of poetry, philosophy, and
statesmanship; a doctrine that, thus understood, is essentially unobjectionable. In truth,
however, the historical and conceptual bases of Heidegger's theory are decidedly more
complex. They are inseparable from his acceptance of the (proto-fascistic) conservative
revolutionary critique of modernity, including the imperialist vision of Germany as "master
of Mitteleuropa"; from a systematic devaluation of all conceivable institutional checks
vis-a-vis the eventuality of totalitarian state power; and from a glorification of the ideals
of authority, hierarchy, and rank that in its essentials is indistinguishable from the Nazi
Fuhrerprinzip itself. When these systematic aspects of his philosophical theory are in turn
viewed against the background of the philosopher's own numerous observations and asides
in support of Germany's National Revolutionary course in the 1930s, the portrait of the
man and the thinker that emerges is far from innocent. Philosophy and politics are not
related in a contingent or nonessential fashion. Instead, as our theoretical reconstruction
has attempted to show, they exist as communicating vessels.
AKH0756 HEIDEGGER'S ANTI-HUMANISM IS INHERENTLY TOTALITARIAN
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.151.
Is the resolute antihumanism of the coercive doctrine of Seinsgeschichte not, at least in
part, politically overdetermined? Do not the ceaseless polemics against the Enlightenment
ideal of autonomous subjectivity represent an unconscious reenactment of Germany's own
struggle against Weimar liberalism in the name of a more primal, superordinate destiny?
Would it be correct to observe that in a crucial sense, Heidegger's later philosophy has
remained "unregenerate"; that, in the last analysis, it has remained a philosophy of
hetironomy--in a manner strongly suggestive of that politics of "total mobilization" whose
rhetoric of Sturm and Kampf ultimately proved so seductive? This is indeed the
uncharitable conclusion reached by Karl-Heinz Haag in Kritik der neutered Ontologie. As
Haag observes: "The world to which ontology as a system corresponds is the totalitarian
world whose social organization it imitates and whose metaphysical hierarchy it glorifies."
AKH0757 HEIDEGGER'S ANTI-HUMANISM LEADS TO TOTALITARIANISM
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE POLITICS
OF BEING, 1990, p.150.
The profound antihumanism of the later Heidegger compels one to inquire in all
seriousness whether he has in fact ever surmounted those habits of thought that Jaspers
described as "essentially dictatorial and unfree." And thus, as Jaspers observes,
"[Heidegger's] manner of speaking and his actions have a certain affinity with National
Socialist characteristics; these alone begin to make his 'error' comprehensible." For in the
helplessness of Dasein visa-vis the mysterious coming to presence of the primordial
powers of Being, there survives distinct traces of that masochistic submission of the
individual to the collective destiny of the Volksgerneinschaft under a totalitarian regime.
In the later Heidegger, pride of place is accorded to the idea that only via the total
self-prostration of Dasein in face of the superior destining of Seinsgeschichte might the
truth of Being be preserved. The very capacity of Dasein to receive the truths that the lofty
forces of Being on occasion deign to dispense is, moreover, a matter that is ultimately
determined by the whims of Being itself.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 67
AKH0758 SAVING THE EARTH IS AN EXPRESSION OF LETTING IT BE
Leslie Paul Thiele, Professor of Political Science, University of Florida,
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Summer 1995, p.184.
As Bruce Foltz observes in his discussion of Heidegger: To save the earth is to let it be
earth in its inherent self-withholding, rather than demanding only its availability as a
storehouse of energy. But letting the earth be earth does not entail our somehow ceasing
to need it, for the earth is that which preeminently supports and sustains.
AKH0759 LIMITING ENVIRONMENTAL EXPLOITATION IS CONSISTENT WITH
RELEASEMENT
Leslie Paul Thiele, Professor of Political Science, University of Florida,
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Summer 1995, p.184.
Use and predation in themselves are neither unwarranted nor illegitimate -- as long as we
understand the origin of human freedom and dignity to lie not in the mastery and
possession of beings, but in the witnessing of their Being. Humans are inextricably
integrated with the natural world. Since we cannot (and should not) isolate ourselves from
nature, we must establish limits to our exploitation of it, and to our attempts at its
"restoration." Although there can be no categorical and timeless resolution to this problem
of balance, we can initiate a strategy of restraint.
AKH0760 SCHLAG'S KRITIK APPLIES TO NORMATIVITY IN LAW, NOT PUBLIC
POLICY
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.873.
Pierre Schlag lays it on the line in his recent contribution to the Michigan Law Review:
judges and legal academics are trapped in a jointly constructed maze of meaningless
normative justifications of the legal system.
AKH0761 ESCAPE FROM NORMATIVE THOUGHT IS IMPOSSIBLE
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.885-6.
Escape from the maze of normative legal thinking is the familiar dream of empiricists and
rationalists alike, but it simply is not possible. Talking about the reality of law as distinct
from our representation of this reality in normative legal dialogue constitutes a
performative contradiction. This is not to say that reality is wholly linguistic, but rather
that our experience and understanding of reality is always linguistically mediated in a
shared realm of normative public dialogue.
AKH0762 SCHLAG DISPLAYS PARANOID INTELLECTUAL STYLE
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.874-6.
In this essay I will argue that the psychoanalytic imagery in Schlag's article runs deeper
than Schlag intends. Schlag champions the postmodern legal critic who can pierce the
delusions of normative legal justifications, but upon close inspection Schlag's critic
exhibits the style of functioning that we commonly would attribute to a paranoid
individual. My thesis is that this affinity between Schlag's account of postmodern criticism
and the symptoms of paranoia reveals that Schlag's project is desperately misguided. I do
not mean to suggest in any way that Schlag personally exhibits any symptoms of paranoia,
but only that his account of the postmodern critic describes a person whose approach to
the world parallels that of a paranoid individual. Neither Schlag nor any similarly
intelligent and well-adjusted critic seriously can propose to adopt in real life the critical
pose that Schlag describes in his article.
AKH0763 SCHLAG'S VIEW OF THE WORLD IS CONTRADICTED BY OUR
EXPERIENCE
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.876.
On a deeper level, I argue that Schlag does not and cannot exhibit the paranoid tendencies
that he describes. Just as the motivating world view of the founding fathers no longer rings
true, the assumptions about individual and social life that motivate Schlag's critical
paranoid style appear to be contradicted by the manner in which we conduct our "real"
(that is to say, not our "scholarly") lives. In other words, Schlag is not paranoid, and so his
account of the legal critic can hold no appeal, even for himself, except on a very stylized,
provocative, and intellectual level.
AKH0764 THE ARGUMENT AGAINST NORMATIVITY IS INCOHERENT
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1021.
We should talk more normatively (WSTHN, for short) is the name of a certain
sentence--the one that says we should talk more normatively. If uttering WSTMN is
contemptible as just talk or as normative talk (and, to boot, as naively presupposing that
how we talk, what we do, is within our power to decide), then what is a reader supposed
to make of the sentence that says that uttering WSTMN is contemptible on those grounds?
It seems that saying that cannot (coherently) be an argument about whether or how we
should (or should not) talk. How can one argue that what makes an utterance (or a genre)
unworthy of attention or respect is that it is normative talk? To argue is to involve the
practice of argument, and that practice consists of normative talk. (Maybe you could try
by some other means to remove that practice from societies repertoire, but you can't well
do that by arguing about it).

AKH0765 THE REJECTION OF FREEDOM RESULTS IN COMPLETE PASSIVITY
Luc Ferry, Professor at the Sorbonne, RIGHTS--THE NEW QUARREL BETWEEN THE
ANCIENTS AND THE MODERNS, 1990, p.22-3.
It next seems to me that the criticism of the modern idea of freedom conceived as the
faculty of acting spontaneously according the representation of ends (the will), also runs
into insurmountable difficulties. Certainly, here again, the criticism is not baseless: it seeks
to save the "miraculous," or, to put it less emphatically, the unpredictable character of
action. To infer from this that the very idea of will is in essence "forgetfulness of
Being"-since it amounts to thinking of the event as based on the voluntary consciousness
of the subject, and not as Ereignis; a prompting of Being itself-, once again there is a step
that cannot be taken without absurdity: for if it is Being that "acts" through us, if under
these conditions it behooves us "to do nothing, merely to wait" and to adopt the pure and
simple attitude of "releasement" (Gelassenheit), any ethical view of the world, every form
of criticism should vanish. It would be pointless, then, to clutter up the marketplace with
books denouncing the ravages of technology, the horrors of totalitarianism, or "the banality
of evil", because for someone thinking philosophically, "coherence," however conceived,
cannot be a vain word.
AKH0766 LIFE REQUIRES NORMATIVE JUDGMENTS
Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, Professors of Philosophy, Bellarmine College
and St. John's University, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey Paul, ed., 1981, p.238.
Values come into existence because life is a way of being that requires that a certain type
of entity (a living one)be an actor for ends, a valuer of ends. Living things are the only type
of beings that can be affected by their actions, and if such actions could not ultimately
make a difference to the life of a living being, there would be no values.
AKH0767 HISTORICAL CHANGE REQUIRES FREE AGENCY
H. Stuart Hughes, Stanford historian, CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIETY, 1977, p.5.
For the essence of history is change-and change must be at least partially the result of
conscious mental activity. Somewhere at some time someone must have decided to do
something. "Vast impersonal forces"' are simply abstractions the sum of an infinite number
of small but strictly personal decisions. In a statistical sense, the outcome of a large number
of choices may be predictable, but in a metaphysical and ethical sense most of us are
convinced that each individual choice is free. Our vocabulary and categories of thought
imply this conviction. Hence, Croce was right-although not quite in the way he imagined-
when he insisted that history was necessarily the "story of freedom."
AKH0768 WE'RE FREE IF OUR ACTIONS REFLECT OUR DESIRES, NOT THE
DESIRES OF SOMEONE ELSE
Bertrand Russell, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE
EXTERNAL WORLD, 1929, p.182-3
Freedom, in short, in any valuable sense, demands only that our volitions shall be, as they
are, the result of our own desires, not of an outside force compelling us to will what we
would rather not will. Everything else is confusion of thought, due to the feeling that
knowledge compels the happening of what it knows when this is future, though it is at once
obvious that knowledge has no such power in regard to the past. Free will, therefore is true
in the only form which is important; and the desire for other forms is a mere effect of
insufficient analysis.
AKH0769 FREEDOM IS AN UNAVOIDABLE PRACTICAL PREMISE
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.108.
We cannot help acting under the idea of freedom, it seems; we are stuck deliberating as if
our futures were open.
AKH0770 IMAGINATION ALLOWS AUTONOMOUS SELF-CREATION
Walter Kaufman, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973, p.225.
For creativity is not encountered in the arts only but also in the dimension of human
relationships and in the practice of the new integrity. We have noted how the new integrity
involves autonomy: making decisions for oneself)especially those decisions that mold our
character and future. Thus the autonomous human being makes himself and gives shape
to his life. he not only considers alternatives that others present to him, but he uses his
imagination like a novelist or dramatist to think up possibilities.
AKH0771 NORMATIVE THOUGHT IS UNAVOIDABLE
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1022
For, even if by dint of great concentration we can occasionally and fleetingly glimpse a
different possibility, normative moments do seem irrepressible from what any of us ever
does as legal scholar, whether our study be first-order, of "law," or second-order, of "legal
thought."
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 68
AKH0772 NO ARGUMENT CAN BE NON-NORMATIVE
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1056
Other critical practitioners evidently try to abstain from commitment to any jurisprudence
and devote themselves abstemiously to excavating the hidden, mystifying, self-enclosing,
but also self-liquidating, structures they know (and so do we) they can find in every
candidate jurisprudence that comes along. We think even their practice cannot be non-
normative in the broadest sense in which some of them use the term, because (as we
explained in Parts I and II) no discursive utterance)and in particular no argument)can be
seriously entertained as non-normative in so broad a sense.
AKH0773 NORMATIVE THOUGHT IS REQUIRED BY OUR LANGUAGE
STRUCTURES
Isaiah Berlin, Professor of Social and Political Theory, Oxford, FOUR ESSAYS ON
LIBERTY, 1969, p.115
Those who are concerned with human affairs are committed to the use of moral categories
and concepts which normal language incorporates and expresses. Chemists, philologists,
logicians, even sociologists with a strong quantitative bias, by using morally neutral
technical terms, can avoid doing so. But historians can scarcely do this. They need
not)they are certainly not obliged to)moralize: but neither can they avoid the use of
normal language with all its associations and `built in' moral categories.
AKH0774 IN POSTMODERNIST UNDERSTANDING, THERE IS NO
NON-NORMATIVE UTTERANCE
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1027.
Most importantly, all of these philosophical denials are utterances bound by their own
(loosely speaking) postmodernist understandings of language, knowledge, power, value,
and their interconnections. According to these postmodernist understandings, knowledge
and power are interfused, and so are knowledge and value, knowledge and imagination,
power and value, value and imagination, imagination and power. The fusing medium is
language. There is no power-free language. There is, finally, no non-normative utterance.
There are only kinds and degrees of normativity.
AKH0775 SCHLAG'S POSITION IS RHETORICALLY FUTILE
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1022.
That ubiquity and that pertinacity, however, set rhetorical traps that we're not sure have
been avoided. The issue, we emphasize, is not logic; it is rhetoric. It is in the coin of
persuasion that the question of the "logic" of Schlag's position finally pays. In the
prevailing discourse of academics and intellectuals, "logic" functions as what Wittgenstein
calls a "philosophical superlative"; our use of the term here signifies that, try as they might,
readers will find it difficult to see Schlag's position as other than self-contradictory. What
accordingly strikes us is the rhetorical futility of argumentatively tying legal scholarship's
failures of critical self-consciousness and methodological reflectiveness to its undeniable,
but seemingly inexpungible, trait of normativity.
AKH0776 EVEN LEGAL POSITIVISM IS NORMATIVE
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1025.
In seeking to stand apart from law's normativity, the classical positivists were prompted
by desire for reform. Thus, were the critics here aspiring to be our generation's neo- (or
super-) legal positivists, they would have to notice that legal positivist aims (on our
understanding of those aims), are ultimately normative (on the critics' broad understanding
of the normative). Legal positivists contend that it will be better for us to put aside the
mythology of law's inexorable convergence on the good and the right and so we ought to
do so--not merely in the academic interest of clear thought, but in the social interest of
justice and good government. Progressive positivism expects that when we do ascertain
what a law is, we are going to exercise upon it our valuational judgment and act
accordingly.
AKH0777 SCHLAG FAILS TO ESCAPE THE MAZE OF NORMATIVITY
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.878-9.
The epistemological problems posed by modernist critical projects are only partially
answered by adding a postmodern gloss. Schlag's effort to analyze legal scholarship from
outside the maze is extremely problematic. Schlag believes that most scholars reside within
a maze characterized by "dreariness," but that a select few have found a way out, gained
perspective on the maze, and now engage in a fruitful questioning that reveals rather than
obscures the law. In sharp contrast, I reject the idea that such a dramatic escape can take
place. Just when a scholar believes that she has scaled the last wall of the maze, she will
be confronted by a boundless horizon of paths endlessly circling within the ambit of the
same maze. Hope for escape must always be dashed in the end, but this does not mean that
an individual's comportment within the maze is without ethical or political significance.
The central problem for contemporary jurisprudence is not the maze of normative legal
discourse, but the failure to recognize the maze as an unavoidable condition that is
productive of knowledge.

AKH0778 SCHLAG'S PERSPECTIVE OFFERS NO GUIDANCE FOR HOW TO
ESCAPE THE MAZE
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.881-2.
Some might argue that Schlag's approach does not mirror the paranoid style of functioning
to the extent that his picture of the postmodern legal critic ostensibly reaffirms the
importance of ethics and intellectual creativity. However, the classic paranoid personality
never espouses a bleak, total nihilism. Instead, paranoid individuals attempt to secure the
integrity of their world view against the widespread delusions that they attribute to
virtually everyone else. The paranoid believes in the possibility of providing a true
description, but also that only she and perhaps a few other people are capable of seeing this
truth. There is precious little assistance that the paranoid can offer to members of the
general populace, whose inability to see things correctly is, as Schlag asserts in the context
of legal theory, "a constitutive aspect of their very being as legal academics." The paranoid
regards her special insight as the product of "an accident or a miracle," and so there simply
is no point in trying to educate others about the error of their ways. "Like the paranoid, the
critic will see change as something foreign; as something which befalls a person and which
can be spoken about only after it has occurred." The way out of the maze cannot be
described, reports Schlag, but those lucky academics who awake one morning to find
themselves outside the maze can begin participating (with Schlag) in "an extraordinarily
exciting time in American legal thought."
AKH0779 SCHLAG RELIES ON NORMATIVE LANGUAGE
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1021
To work, in writing, at the displacement or destabilization of some named practice of
writing (like normative legal thought) is already to exemplify and thereby to commend
some different, some critically chastened, practice. Moreover, it is extremely difficult to
carry on the work of destabilization without appearing to lapse into normative modes of
discourse. Take, for example, this passage from an article by Schlag: [T]his [talk-talk
genre] simply argues that we should talk [some] new talk . . . Variations on this old
talk/new talk include the following: we should talk . . . more normatively, [or] more
contextually . . . [etc.] or in that hopeful humanist way until we figure out what the hell
we're doing up here 30,000 feet from earth arguing about how we should land.
AKH0780 SCHLAG'S ONLY SOLUTION IS A CONVERSION EXPERIENCE
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.878
As Schlag emphasizes, the way out of the maze "does not, indeed it cannot, reduce to a
prescription or a recommendation or a solution or even a criticism." Freud's psychic
architecture and Marx's historical materialism give way to the mysterious experience of a
paradigm shift, a flash of insight that does not tell us what to do because it is the act of
telling that is being put into question.
AKH0781 JUST RECOGNIZING NORMATIVITY DOESN'T PRODUCE
TRANSFORMATION
Pierre Schlag, University of Colorado Professor of Law, Cardozo Law Review, 1990,
p.1646.
Indeed, ideas, theories, etc., are not dangerous)they are not consequential)unless they can
change people's cognitive-social practices. And there is no reason to suppose the anyone's
cognitive or social practices will necessarily or even generally be transformed simply
because he or she comes to hold or mouth some new radical "substantive" idea, theory,
method, or technique. To believe that "substantive" ideas, theories, methods, etc. do have
such power is to remain caught within the pervasive ideological overstatement that
substance controls form and theory governs practice. it is to assume)in complete
accordance with the ruling ideology)that one's thoughts can control one's cognitive
practices in an automatic unproblematic sort of way.
AKH0782 ELABORATE SUSPICIOUSNESS IS A PARANOID STYLE
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.879.
I want to clarify what I mean by paranoia. The paranoid style of functioning is
characterized by "an intense, sharply perceptive but narrowly focused mode of attention"
that results in an attitude of "elaborate suspiciousness." Paranoid individuals constantly
strive to demystify appearances; they take nothing at face value because they regard reality
as an obscure dimension hidden from casual observation or participation.
AKH0783 SCHLAG'S RADICALLY CRITICAL WORLD VIEW PRODUCES A
PARANOID STYLE
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.876.
Wood's thesis is helpful in clarifying the distinction drawn in this article between being
paranoid and exhibiting a paranoid style. On one level I am arguing that Schlag
participates in a wider intellectual world view that leads to the adoption of the paranoid
style. Just as the founding fathers, steeped in the Enlightenment milieu of their day, needed
to ascribe social conditions to conscious human agency, so too contemporary postmodern
legal scholars operate on the basis of a critical world view that compels them to radically
challenge appearances and commonly held beliefs. Schlag is no more paranoid than the
founding fathers, although like them he adopts the paranoid style.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 69
AKH0784 PARANOID STYLE UNDERMINES THE CREDIBILITY OF A POSITION
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.885.
Some might argue that such detachment is not paranoid if it is warranted by the facts. In
other words, if Schlag's description is correct, he is piercing socially held delusions rather
than exhibiting paranoia. My point is this: Schlag's jurisprudential claims are analogous
to a person's assertion that he is being followed by martians who are disguised as average
human pedestrians. Although we would not consider this person to be paranoid if it turns
out that they are in fact being followed by martians, we might agree that this person
exhibits a paranoid style by virtue of his thorough-going skepticism about the apparent
reality surrounding him, and that this paranoid style draws into strong question the
accuracy of his beliefs. The paranoid style not only is a suspect strategy at the outset, it is
a strategy that feeds on itself and becomes more and more fantastic in each of its
incarnations. With an ever increasing intensity, the paranoid style co-opts the theorist and
prevents her from retrenching or revising her approach, even when the bankruptcy of the
paranoid style is manifest.
AKH0785 PARANOID STYLE HAS A GREATER AFFINITY FOR BAD CAUSES
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p. 876.
When I speak of the paranoid style, I use the term much as a historian of art might speak
of the baroque or the mannerist style. It is, above all, a way of seeing the world and of
expressing oneself.... Of course, the term "paranoid style" is pejorative, and it is meant to
be; the paranoid style has a greater affinity for bad causes than good. But nothing entirely
prevents a sound program or a sound issue from being advocated in the paranoid style, and
it is admittedly impossible to settle the merits of an argument because we think we hear in
its presentation the characteristic paranoid accents. Style has to do with the way in which
ideas are believed and advocated rather than with the truth or falsity of their content.
AKH0786 AGENCY IS PART OF OUR INTRINSIC EXPERIENCE OF LIFE
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1058
As the reconstructive moment seems ineradicable, so too does the human experience of
agency. It seems, in other words, a possibility worth considering that the problematic,
elusive, "humanist" experience of subjectivity)agency)is an historically irreversible,
inexpungible, constitutive aspect of our experience of (human) being. Part of what we do,
as concept-making strivers caught in forms of life, is think about the good)the
better)world and ourselves acting towards it. We cannot deny our own agency. (We cannot
speak the sentence of denial except as speaking subjects, affirming by speaking the
sentence what the sentence means to deny.) We can call agency into question, and we had
better, but to call into question is also to (re)affirm, (re)create, (re)construct.
AKH0787 SCHLAG'S RADICALISM DISSOLVES INTO IRRELEVANCE
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.882.
As described by Schlag, the postmodern legal critic bears an uncanny resemblance to a
paranoid individual. I have no doubts that Schlag, as a person dealing with everyday life,
is entirely free from paranoid tendencies. Why, then, does his asserted intellectual persona
assume such a counterproductive posture? Quite simply, the imperative to radicalize the
critique of foundationalism and formalism eventually carries theory, and the persona
adopted by the theorist, beyond the realm of ordinary discourse. Schlag does not engage
his readers in a shared quest for decency and happiness in an often brutal and traumatic
world, but instead challenges such a normative quest as being symptomatic of
deeper-seated problems. Schlag's radicalism is extended to the point of cannibalizing its
own presuppositions. "A collection of discourses that in their strategic maneuvering have
precluded the possibility of being discursive, have succeeded not just in being destructive,
but in being self-destructive." When the hermeneutics of suspicion is pushed to the point
of paranoia, the critical effort dissolves into a self-described irrelevance.
AKH0788 SCHLAG OVERSIMPLIFIES THE PROBLEM OF NORMATIVITY
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.879
Postmodern thought is a stimulating force, but it has been overused and abused by more
than one scholar in search of a truly radical break from the politics of normalcy. The
questions raised by the maze are much more subtle and complex than Schlag allows.
Schlag's confusion over what the maze represents, how it operates, and the consequential
function of critical theory, exemplifies the postmodern crisis in legal theory. Put
differently, Schlag's characterization of the maze, offered with a sly wink and a
conspiratorial nod to others in the know, comes off sounding just a bit paranoid.

AKH0789 TREATING NORMATIVITY AS A SINGLE THING OVERSIMPLIFIES
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1023-4
For purposes of critical insight and incision, the field of legal thought
contains)arguably)not one normativity, but many normativities. The styles of scholarly
activity that currently and colloquially fall under the heading of normative legal thought
are diverse and in some respects incompatible. A partial listing, contrived for our own
purposes here, would include the normative jurisprudences of autonomous doctrinal
elaboration ("the artificial reason" of the law), instrumentalist economics, rights and
principles, dialogism, poststructuralism, pragmatism, feminism, and critical race theory.
Rhetorically treating all these jurisprudential practices as satellites of grand theory risks
repelling or excusing too many normative practitioners from debates that ought to concern
them.
AKH0790 NORMATIVITY CRITICS IGNORE ANTI-FOUNDATIONALIST
NORMATIVITIES
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1045
New wave assaults on "normative legal thought" so far have tended to chart their
campaigns around the citadel of foundationalistic grand theory. So far, they have said
relatively little about legal scholarly normativities that have already crossed over
(professedly, at any rate) into postmodernist anti-foundationalism: not only
poststructuralism, but also pragmatism and (for the most part) feminism and critical race
theory. It's not that such normativities are placed beyond any need for critical attention. It
may rather be that on the map of legal thought mercatorized around formalistic-deductive-
prescriptive grand theory, they-re Antarctica. Only dedicated specialists visit Antarctica.
AKH0791 SCHLAG'S APPROACH IS LIKE CARTESIAN RATIONALISM IN ITS
DETACHMENT FROM COMMON SENSE
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.885.
Schlag's relentless attack on the ubiquitous presumption of the integrity of the legal subject
challenges Descartes at the most fundamental level of his philosophy, but in a very
important sense Schlag's critique carries forward the same virulent paranoid style. Thus,
although Schlag likely believes that carrying out Descartes' method is less plausible than
discovering that Elvis was abducted by martians, he proposes to overcome Cartesian
rationalism by radicalizing the gesture of distancing thinking from common-sense
assumptions about human existence.
AKH0792 SCHLAG FAILS TO TRULY REJECT ENLIGHTENMENT THOUGHT
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.885.
Schlag's theoretical posture is parasitic upon Descartes' paranoid style in a startling way.
Descartes viewed radical doubt as a tool to be utilized by an individual having free will and
autonomy, an individual created in the image of God. Schouis, supra, at 48. Every good
postmodernist now ridicules Descartes' presuppositions--and their culmination in the
Enlightenment--but rather than questioning the paranoid style on the basis of its bizarre
fruits, some postmodern thinkers conclude that Descartes is to be faulted because he was
insufficiently radical in his approach, in other words because he wasn't paranoid enough.
AKH0793 LEGAL POSITIVISM CAN ENTRENCH CONSERVATIVE VALUES
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1025-6.
Contemporary legal positivisms do not always carry the nineteenth century progressive
motivation. Today, it is often conservatism that prompts insistence on separating questions
of legal content from questions of value. For some conservative positivists, the aim is
surely sometimes that of entrenching a normatively preferred, legal-doctrinal status quo
against disruption by ideologically deviant reformist judges. For others, insistence on
law/value separation is rhetorically oriented towards the values connoted by the ideal of
the Rule of Law, values that they claim are (at least partially) independent of legal content.
Rule of Law values such as consistency, calculability, democracy, and official
accountability depend, these conservative positivists say, on habits of respect for the fixed
and "objective" character of legal content, as opposed to the variability and "subjectivity"
believed to inhere in judgments of moral value. Thus they moralize against moralistic
judges, who can subvert the Rule of Law by bringing to bear "their own subjective values"
under the guise of adjudication.
AKH0794 SCHLAG'S CRITIQUE OF NORMATIVITY INSULATES HIM FROM THE
VIEWS OF OTHERS
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.885.
By claiming that everyone else is trapped in a meaningless maze, Schlag conveniently
avoids placing himself at risk in normative dialogue. By asserting that normative legal
dialogue is irrelevant, Schlag eliminates the possibility that he might have to change his
mind in light of the force of a better argument, and he avoids an obligation to rescue the
hoi polloi from the maze. In sum, Schlag's approach insulates him from the contingent and
provisional language of social discourse.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 70
AKH0795 REJECTION OF THE NORMATIVE IS MENTAL SUICIDE
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.888
As Hilary Putnam concisely states, "the elimination of the normative is attempted mental
suicide." I would refine Putnam's observation by including paranoid distanciation within
the scope of mental suicide. Professor Schlag writes powerfully, invariably capturing my
interest and leading me to important new insights. However, his effort to distance himself
from the normative legal language that is our heritage falls short, as it must.
AKH0796 NORMATIVITY IS ESSENTIAL FOR GOOD ETHICAL AND LEGAL
REASONING
Martha C. Nussbaum, Brown Professor of Philosophy, HARVARD LAW REVIEW, 1994,
p.737-8.
To remove the beliefs about worth on which love, fear, grief, and so on are based is indeed
to remove many sources of pain, but the resulting life may seem flat and lacking in
wonder. And it may also be lacking in a type of information that is critical to good ethical
and also legal reasoning: to respond with the pain of compassion at the sight of another
person's suffering is to understand the importance of that suffering in a way no
uncommitted person could possibly do. Without the information given by such emotions
few difficult issues concerning poverty, or damages, or privacy, or mitigation, could be
well addressed.
AKH0797 REJECTING NORMATIVITY ENTRENCHES THE RULE OF FORCE
Philip E. Hesch, attorney, and Christopher J. Grabarek, Deputy Prosecutor, Porter County,
Indiana, ST. THOMAS LAW REVIEW, 1994, p.351.
Such a plurality of emotive experience, based upon a plethora of subjective experiences,
is indeed a poor substitute for reason and may, in fact, be an anodyne for the pains of
reasoning. Something that makes one person cry or stirs his heart into battle may not move
his neighbor. Emotions alone cannot serve as a valid base by which a society can evaluate
the competing ideas within any legal system. Absent a conceptual framework grounded in
absolute presuppositions (i.e., a natural law), legal decisions, as well as moral and value
judgments, are inevitably left to a political process that can only justify its outcomes by a
"might makes right" philosophy.
AKH0798 NORMATIVE ARGUMENT IS THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE TO MOB
RULE
Philip E. Hesch, attorney, and Christopher J. Grabarek, Deputy Prosecutor, Porter County,
Indiana, ST. THOMAS LAW REVIEW, 1994, p.363.
Without grounding judgments in an objective cause, nothing exists that can legitimize one
moral preference over another. Judges may make decisions based solely on political policy,
but what is there, absent mob rule, to legitimize one political preference over another? If
all political alternatives are equally valid, why should the relativists care which political
system or theory is chosen? The answer is that not all possible choices suit the relativists'
purpose. If a particular purpose, however, cannot be grounded objectively in a
transcendental cause (a natural law), then even choosing on the basis of the purpose is
inevitably in vain.
AKH0799 NORMATIVE PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENT CAN BE SUCCESSFUL
Brian Barry, Professor of Political Science, London School of Economics, PHILOSOPHY
AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Fall 1990, p.373
Rawls digs deeper and seeks to unearth widely shared post-Enlightenment ideas on which
the American polity (among others) is founded, and to show that these have subversive
implications for almost all existing forms of inequality. In judging between these
approaches, let us set aside the matter of truth (something about which Walzer frequently
expresses unease) and focus on his preferred criterion of efficacy. the Rawlsian approach
of identifying principles of broad scope and universal aspiration and using them to attack
entrenched inequalities has to its credit the success)partial but still significant)of antiracist
and antisexist movements within the past thirty years.
AKH0800 NORMATIVE LEGAL THOUGHT IS ALWAYS RELEVANT
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.885
Traditional normative legal thought ordinarily is criticized as being unhelpful because it
offers a constricted and artificial conception of legal norms, not because normative legal
thought is by nature irrelevant to legal practice. Quite the opposite seems true: every
assertion of legal power is predicated on a normative conception of politics that always is
subject to attack and reassessment.
AKH0801 REAL LAW IS A VALID NORMATIVE DIALOGUE
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.888
The theme of this essay is that the practice of law, the real practice of law that occupies the
great majority of judges and lawyers in this country, is a normative dialogue in which the
needs and interests of individuals, communities, and nation constantly are assessed and
adjudicated.

AKH0802 FURTHER NORMATIVE THOUGHT IS THE ONLY WAY TO OVERCOME
THE LIMITS OF NORMATIVE THOUGHT
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.886
Gadamer's insight has direct application to my discussion. Normative legal language,
including discussions of the rule of law, might easily become an unhelpful, rigid
schematization, but it is always within this same medium of normative discourse, in the
give-and-take form of dialogue, that the encrustations can be overcome.
AKH0803 NORMATIVITY NEEDS TO BE RENAVIGATED, NOT REJECTED
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.888
I congratulate Schlag for his skill in destroying some of the most cherished talismans in
our legal vocabulary, including the rule of law. But destruction is never total. In the wake
of destruction we inevitably chart new paths in the maze. Legal theory properly is viewed
not as an attempt to escape the maze of normative legal thought, but as an effort to develop
shared strategies for navigating through the maze. Forging a path, rather than finding an
exit, is the goal.
AKH0804 FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE IS NORMATIVE
Patricia Smith, Professor of Philosophy, University of Kentucky, FEMINIST
JURISPRUDENCE, 1993, p.10
Similarly, feminist jurisprudence challenges basic legal categories and concepts rather than
analyzing them as given. Feminist jurisprudence asks what is implied in traditional
categories, distinctions, or concepts and rejects them if they imply the subordination of
women. In this sense, feminist jurisprudence is normative and claims that traditional
jurisprudence and law are implicitly normative as well.
AKH0805 HUMANS ULTIMATELY SHAPE CIVILIZATION, NOT IMPERSONAL
FORCES
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt Prof, THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.36.
Civilization, or culture grown more varied and complex, represents a more conscious,
determined, resourceful effort to master the natural environment and set up a world of
man's own. Amid its complexities one may see only that the individual is a product of his
society, which in turn is a product of impersonal forces. Nevertheless the whole enterprise
of civilization is a rare human creation, a triumph of mind and will; and the impersonal
forces work only through the ideas and beliefs of men.
AKH0806 BELIEF IN HISTORICAL DETERMINISM EMPOWERS DICTATORS
Frederick Crews, U Cal-Berkeley English prof, SKEPTICAL ENGAGEMENTS, 1986,
p.141.
Marx's historical determinism both overlooked and abetted the freedom of leftist dictators
to put their ideology and their whims into immediate and momentous action, quite
irrespective of "means of production" or "evolution of class consciousness." By
propagating a "scientific" eschatological romance)the destined final victory of the
proletariat)Marx saddled his movement with an enduring bloody-mindedness about the
relation of means to ends. Since history was headed toward the promised goal, custodians
of the revolutionary state could conceive of their tasks as the helpful clearing away of
human impediments ("class enemies"). In addition, the idea of bringing about not only
distributive justice but also a correct form of consciousness that must be manifested by all
survivors of the revolution has opened the citizen's mind as well as his conduct to
inspection, punishment and reconstruction.
AKH0807 CONSCIOUS HUMAN ACTS MAKE HISTORY, NOT JUST IMPERSONAL
FORCES
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt Prof, The USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.35.
We cannot ignore the human agency in history, cannot escape the implication that within
limits it is a free agency. Historians have been stressing the deep, impersonal, unconscious
processes that govern social change, as in the growth of a vast industrial civilization that
nobody had planned and few understood. They have accordingly tended to minimize the
power of ideas and ideals, or even to deny this power. The complexities that make it
difficult to find the great law of history also strengthen the impression that man has no real
freedom to make his history. Yet the problems we face are clearly of man's own making.
However unplanned, the industrial revolution was a vast human effort, a conscious
exploitation of new power got by scientific ideas and ideals. `Invention is the mother of
necessity'.
AKH0808 IDEAS AREN'T DETERMINED BY MATERIAL CONDITIONS
H. Stuart Hughes, Stanford historian, CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIETY, 1977, p.104.
And it may further suggest the paradoxical fashion in which Marxist thought eventually
came full circle. In Gramsci's hands the doctrine returned to its idealist beginnings. it was
in the consciousness of intellectuals alone, he recognized, that the great social ideas had
their origin. They did not spring spontaneously from material conditions and economic
relationships. They had an irreducible autonomy of their own.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 71
AKH0809 INDIVIDUALS HELP SHAPE HISTORY
Herbert Muller, Indiana U govt prof, THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.37.
Yet the great man may indeed be epoch-making, by the decisions he makes, the direction
he gives to the forces at his disposal. Although it is clear)in retrospect)that the time was
ripe for such adventurers as Alexander, Mohammed, Jenghiz Khan, and Lenin, their
success was not clearly inevitable. Their will)even their whim)made a profound
difference in history.
AKH0810 THE REAGAN ERA PROVES THE PUBLIC CAN LIMIT BUREAUCRATIC
TRENDS
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.16-7
Recall that through the 1970s there was a near-ritual sentence in the public dialogue: "The
growth of the welfare state is inexorable." Liberals gloated about it, conservatives
grumbled about it, but almost everyone believed it. The welfare state (it was believed) had
so many constituencies that it could not be stopped. Now, I am no knee-jerk critic of
government spending. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I'm even sort of for it, less
so than at an earlier time, but still for it. We need environmental spending, federal health
research, highway spending, monetary aid to the poor. It's the "inexorable" part that makes
me think bad thoughts. The power and glory of democratic nations is that the people
believe that they control their own destiny. That means that the growth in government
services can be halted, indeed reversed. We are the sovereigns. Reagan and Thatcher, in
the eighties, tested that principle. It lives. We have learned that if we want to, we can at
least slow down the spending machine. We did. Now we can decide what to do next, in
fact pick and choose how to go about it with a clear head. Most everything is on the table,
which is as it should be in a democratic society.
AKH0811 THE STATE ISN'T COMPLETELY DETERMINED BY ECONOMICS
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.72
But it is surely plan to all, save those under the sway of historical materialism, that the
material involvements of nation-states are not governed purely by economic
considerations, real or perceived. The influence of any particular state within the global
political order is strongly conditioned by the level of its wealth (and the connection
between this and military strength). However, states derive their power from their
sovereign capabilities, as Hans J. Morgenthau emphasis. They do not operate as economic
machines, but as "actors" jealous of their territorial rights, concerned with the fostering of
national cultures, and having strategic geopolitical involvements with other states or
alliances of states.
AKH0812 THE ABILITY TO ENVISION ALTERNATIVE FUTURES GIVES US
SOME HISTORICAL CONTROL
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.154
Yet none of this means that we should, or that we can, give up in our attempts to steer the
juggernaut. The minimizing of high-consequence risks transcends all values and all
exclusionary divisions of power, "History" is not on our side, has no teleology, and
supplies us with no guarantees. But the heavily counterfactual nature of future-oriented
thought, an essential element of the reflexivity of modernity, has positive as well as
negative implications. For we can envisage alternative futures whose very propagation
might help them be realised. What is needed is the creation of models of utopian realism.
AKH0813 EMPHASIS ON IMPERSONAL FORCES BREEDS PASSIVITY
Isaiah Berlin, Professor of Social and Political Theory, Oxford, FOUR ESSAYS ON
LIBERTY, 1969, p.xxxiii-xxxiv
To frighten human beings by suggesting to them that they are in the grip of impersonal
forces over which they have little or no control is to breed myths, ostensibly in order to kill
other figments)the notion of supernatural forces, or of all-powerful individuals, or of the
hidden hand. It is to invent entities, to propagate faith in unalterable patterns of events for
which the empirical evidence is, to say the least, insufficient, and which by relieving
individuals of the burdens of personal responsibility breeds irrational passivity in some,
and no less irrational fanatical activity in others; for nothing is more inspiring than the
certainty that the stars in their courses are fighting for one's cause, that `History', or `social
forces', or `the wave of the future' are with one, bearing one aloft and forward. This way
of thinking and speaking is one which it is the great merit of modern empiricism to have
exposed.

AKH0814 HUMANS ARE KNOWLEDGEABLE AGENTS
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, PROFILES AND CRITIQUES IN
SOCIAL THEORY, 1982, p.221-2
But I do not at all accept the idea of a `subject-less history', if that term is taken to mean
that human social affairs are determined by forces of which those involved are wholly
unaware. It is precisely to counter such a view that I have developed the tenets of the
theory of structuration. Human beings, in the theory of structuration, are always and
everywhere regarded as knowledgeable agents, although acting within historically specific
bounds of the unacknowledged conditions and unintended consequences of their acts.
Foucault's `genealogical method', in my opinion, continues the confusion which
structuralism helped to introduce into French thought, between history without a
transcendental subject and history without knowledgeable human subjects. These are two
very different things, however. We must disavow the first, but recognise the cardinal
significance of the second ) that significance which Marx expressed pithily in the famous
observation that `men make history, but not in conditions of their own choosing'.
AKH0815 REJECTING INDIVIDUAL AGENCY IS SIMPLY 18TH CENTURY
MATERIALISM
Isaiah Berlin, Professor of Social and Political Theory, Oxford, FOUR ESSAYS ON
LIBERTY, 1969, p.xxv-xxvi
When Mr. E.H. Carr maintains that to attribute historical events to the acts of individuals
("biographical bias") is childish, or at any rate child-like, and that the more impersonal we
make our historical writing the more scientific, and therefore mature and valid, it will be,
he shows himself a faithful)too faithful)follower of the eighteenth century dogmatic
materialists. this doctrine no longer seemed altogether plausible even in the day of Comte
and his followers, or, for that matter, of the father of Russian Marxism, Plekhanov, who,
for all his brilliance, in his philosophy of history owed more to eighteenth-century
materialism and nineteenth-century positivism than to Hegel or the Hegelian elements in
Marx.
AKH0816 REJECTING THE SUBJECT DESTROYS RATIONALITY
Roger Trigg, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, RATIONALITY AND
SCIENCE, 1993, p.227
Questions about the nature of objective reality may appear pressing, but the metaphysical
question of the subject cannot itself be easily dismissed. Indeed the knowing subject, the
self, or whatever it is to be called, is as much a part of reality as anything it knows. The
dissolution of the subject can be disastrous, not least because it makes metaphysics itself
impossible. The disappearance of the rational knower into an ensemble of neural networks
is but one example of this process. When there is no one left to reason, rationality itself has
to be jettisoned.
AKH0817 REDUCING INDIVIDUALS TO SOCIAL FORCES IS DEHUMANIZING
REIFICATION
Isaiah Berlin, Professor of Social and Political Theory, Oxford, FOUR ESSAYS ON
LIBERTY, 1969, p.xxxiii
But to try to reduce the behavior of individuals to that of impersonal `social forces' not
further analysable into the conduct of the men who, even according to Marx, make history
is `reification' of statistics, a form of the `false consciousness' of bureaucrats and
administrators who close their eyes to all that proves incapable of quantification, and
thereby perpetrate absurdities in theory and dehumanization in practice.
AKH0818 DETERMINISM RENDERS LIFE MEANINGLESS
John William Miller, Professor of Philosophy, Williams College, THE PARADOX OF
CAUSE, 1978, p.18
In sum, the mechanistic doctrine would kill the world and all that move upon it; we are
dead men. Some there are who pretend to be alive, even as they admit that life is an illusion
and less than a dream. There is no remedy for the resulting lassitude, inertia, viciousness,
and triviality without a revision of premises.
AKH0819 DETERMINISM DESTROYS MORAL RESPONSIBILITY
Isaiah Berlin, Professor of Social and Political Theory, Oxford, FOUR ESSAYS ON
LIBERTY, 1969, p.xxxv
But when Kant said that if the laws that governed the phenomena of the external world
turned out to govern all there was, then morality)in his sense)was annihilated; and when,
in consequence, being concerned with the concept of freedom presupposed by his notion
of moral responsibility, he adopted very drastic measures in order to save it, he seems to
me, at the very least to have shown a profound grasp of what is at stake. His solution is
obscure, and perhaps untenable; but although it may have to be rejected, the problem
remains. In a causally determined system the notions of free choice and moral
responsibility, in their usual senses, vanish, or at least lack application, and the notion of
action would have to be reconsidered.
AKH0820 DETERMINATION UNDERMINES PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
Isaiah Berlin, Professor of Social and Political Theory, Oxford, FOUR ESSAYS ON
LIBERTY, 1969, p.71
If the determinist hypothesis were true, and adequately accounted for the actual world,
there is a clear sense in which, despite all the extraordinary casuistry which has been
brought to avoid this conclusion, the notion of human responsibility, as ordinarily
understood, would no longer apply to any actual, but only to imaginary or conceivable,
states of affairs.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 72
AKH0821 HUMANS POSSESS AUTONOMY BECAUSE OF THEIR CAPACITY FOR
SELF-EXAMINATION
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.100.
Only some of the portions of the physical universe have the property of being designed to
resist their own dissolution, to wage a local campaign against the inexorable trend of the
Second Law of Thermodynamics. And only some of these portions have the further
property of being caused to have reliable expectations about what will happen next, and
hence to have the capacity to control things, including themselves. And only some of these
have the further capacity of significant self-improvement (through learning). And fewer
still have the open-ended capacity (requiring a language of self-description) for "radical
self-evaluation." These portions of the world are thus loci of self-control, of talent, of
decision making. They have projects, interests, and values they create in the course of their
own self-evaluation and self-definition. How much less like a domino could a portion of
the physical world be?
AKH0822 WE'RE FREE BECAUSE WE HAVE THE ABILITY TO SUSPEND
IMMEDIATE RESPONSE
John Locke, English philosopher, aqi Daniel Dennett, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.36.
For, the mind having in most cases, as is evident in experience, a power to suspend the
execution and satisfaction of any of its desires; and so all, one after another; is at liberty
to consider the objects of them, examine them on all sides, and weight them with others.
In this lies the liberty man has; and from the not using of it right comes all that variety of
mistakes, errors, and faults which we run into in the conduct of our lives, and our
endeavours after happiness; whilst we precipitate the determination of our wills, and
engage too soon, before due examination. To prevent this, we have a power to suspend the
prosecution of this or that desire; as every one daily may experiment in himself. This
seems to me the source of all liberty.
AKH0823 FREEDOM IS THE RESULT OF OUR SOCIAL AND BIOLOGICAL
CONSTRUCTION
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.169.
What we want when we want free will is the power to decide our courses of action, and to
decide them wisely, in the light of our expectations and desires. We want to be in control
of ourselves, and not under the control of others. We want to be agents, capable of
initiating, and taking responsibility for, projects and deeds. All this is ours, I have tried to
show, as a natural product of our biological endowment, extended and enhanced by our
initiation into society.
AKH0824 FREE CHOICE IS A NECESSARY ASSUMPTION OF PRACTICAL
REASON
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt Prof, THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.37.
The scientific determinist himself must reckon with the power of beliefs, sacred traditions,
new ideas, great leaders, simply because they are among the most recognizable,
determinable causes in history. Otherwise he is forced back on a kind of mystical, inhuman
fatalism that would be fatal to the historical sense. If everything that has happened is the
only thing that could possibly have happened, we might as well close the book. The reason
we don't is that even the determinists and fatalists are always implying that there were real
alternatives, and that men made the wrong choice. Whatever we believe in theory, we
continue in practice to think and act as if we were not puppets.
AKH0825 HUMANS HAVE EFFECTIVE FREEDOM, EVEN IF THEY LACK A
METAPHYSICALLY FREE WILL
Herbert Muller, Indiana U Govt Prof, THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.35.
I feel free to waive the metaphysical problem of free will. Although it may be hard to see
just how man can go his own way in a presumably lawful universe (not to mention the
theological assumption of an omnipotent God who wills all), his freedom is less
mysterious if it is not conceived as a purely spiritual state, an ability to be utterly
unaffected by the world about him. Most plainly, it is the ability to do things in and to the
world. And this is not only compatible with lawful necessities but increased by a
knowledge of such necessities. Knowing the law of gravitation, I cannot be carefree and
jump off a cliff; but I am free to save my neck)or if I choose, to kill myself in this manner.
Science, which has fathered the doctrine of determinism, is the most striking example of
man's determination and ability to bend nature to his own purposes.
AKH0826 DETERMINISM PROVIDES NO GUIDE TO PRACTICE
Isaiah Berlin, Professor of Social and Political Theory, Oxford, FOUR ESSAYS ON
LIBERTY, 1969, p.xxviii
I know of no conclusive argument in favour of determinism. But that is not my point; it is
that the actual practice of its supporters, and their reluctance to face what unity of theory
and practice in this case would cost them, indicate that such theoretical support is not at
present to be taken too seriously, whoever may claim to provide it.

AKH0827 DETERMINISM IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ACT UPON
Isaiah Berlin, Professor of Social and Political Theory, Oxford, FOUR ESSAYS ON
LIBERTY, 1969, p.71
I do not here wish to say that determinism is necessarily false, only that we neither speak
nor think as if it could be true, and that it is difficult, and perhaps beyond our normal
powers, to conceive what our picture of the world would be if we seriously believed it; so
that to speak, as some theorists of history (and scientists with a philosophical bent) tend
to do, as if one might (in life and not only in the study) accept the determinist hypothesis,
and yet to continue to think and speak much as we do at present, is to breed intellectual
confusion. If the belief in freedom)which rests on the assumption that human beings do
occasionally choose, and that their choices are not wholly accounted for by the kind of
causal explanations which are accepted in, say, physics or biology)if this is a necessary
illusion, it is so deep and so pervasive that it is not felt as such.
AKH0828 ACTING ACCORDING TO DETERMINISTIC BELIEFS IS IMPOSSIBLE
Isaiah Berlin, Professor of Social and Political Theory, Oxford, FOUR ESSAYS ON
LIBERTY, 1969, p.72
My submission is that to make a serious attempt to adapt our thoughts and words to the
hypothesis of determinism is a fearful task, as things are now, and have been within
recorded history. The changes involved are very radical; our moral and psychological
categories are, in the end, more flexible than our physical ones, but not much more so; it
is not much easier to begin to think out in real terms, to which behaviour and speech would
correspond, what the universe of the genuine determinist would be like, that to think out,
with the minimum of indispensable concrete detail (i.e. begin to imagine) what it would
be like to be in a timeless world, or one with a seventeen-dimensional space.
AKH0829 TOTAL DETERMINISM IS USELESS FOR PRACTICAL HUMAN
AFFAIRS
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.49
The two extreme theories in this field)i that man is absolutely determined, ii that man is
absolutely free)have so far encountered grave difficulties and objections. The determinist
soon finds his determinism an insuperable handicap in dealing with any of the issues which
seem to him of importance in human affairs. The Stoics, for example, taught that the course
of a man's life was determined from the moment he was born, but also that men ought to
adopt a certain ethical system (i.e. Stoicism). But it is self-contradictory to urge men to
change their lives if their lives are absolutely determined from birth.
AKH0830 DETERMINISM ISN'T AN IMPORTANT PROBLEM FOR PRACTICAL
HUMAN LIFE
Isaiah Berlin, Professor of Social and Political Theory, Oxford, FOUR ESSAYS ON
LIBERTY, 1969, p.73
Hence the ancient controversy between free will and determinism, while it remains a
genuine problem for theologians and philosophers, need not trouble the thoughts of those
whose concern is with empirical matters)the actual lives of human beings in the space and
time of normal experience. For practising historians determinism is not, and need not be,
a serious issue.
AKH0831 DETERMINISM IS UNPROVEN
Isaiah Berlin, Professor of Social and Political Theory, Oxford, FOUR ESSAYS ON
LIBERTY, 1969, p.113
The evidence for a thoroughgoing determinism is not to hand, and if there is a persistent
tendency to believe in it in some theoretical fashion, that is surely due far more to the lure
of a `scientistic' or metaphysical ideal or to a more tendency on the part of those who
desire to change society to believe that the stars in their courses are fighting for them. Or
it may be due to a longing to lay down moral burdens, or minimize individual
responsibility and transfer it to impersonal forces which can be accused of causing all our
discontents, rather than to any increase in our powers of critical reflection or improvement
in our scientific techniques.
AKH0832 DETERMINISM ISN'T REQUIRED BY SCIENCE
Bertrand Russell, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE
EXTERNAL WORLD, 1929, p.179-80
The law of causation, according to which later events can theoretically be predicted by
means of earlier events, has often been held to be a priori, a necessity of thought, a
category without which science would be impossible. These claims seem to me excessive.
In certain directions the law has been verified empirically, and in other directions there is
no positive evidence against it. But science can use it where it has been found to be true,
without being forced into any assumption as to its truth in other fields. We cannot,
therefore, feel any a priori certainty that causation must apply to human volitions.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 73
AKH0833 DETERMINISM VIOLATES OUR EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD TOO
MUCH TO ACCEPT
Isaiah Berlin, Professor of Social and Political Theory, Oxford, FOUR ESSAYS ON
LIBERTY, 1969, p.88-9
Determinism, whether benevolent or malevolent, no less than the view that our moral
judgments are rendered absurd either because we know too much or because we know too
little, seems to point to this. It is a view that in its various forms has been held by many
civilized and sensitive thinkers, particularly in the present day. Nevertheless it rests on
beliefs about the world and about human beings which are too difficult to accept; which
are unplausible because they render illegitimate certain basic distinctions which we all
draw)distinctions which are inevitably reflected in our everyday use of words. If such
beliefs were true, too much that we accept without question would turn out to be
sensationally false. Yet these paradoxes are urged upon us, although there is no strong
factual evidence or logical argument to force us to embrace them.
AKH0834 EVEN IF DETERMINISM IS TRUE, HUMANS SHOULD ACT AS IF THEY
HAVE FREE WILL
H. Stuart Hughes, Stanford historian, CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIETY, 1977, p.133.
But in insisting on the lawfulness of mental behavior, Freud was postulating a rather
different sort of determinism from what had earlier been called by that name. He had
pushed the determining forces back from the conscious to the unconscious level. And with
the prime movers thus located beyond conscious recognition, he found it perfectly logical
for human beings to behave as though their wills were free. Indeed, in his own conduct of
life, Freud)like most philosophical determinists)acted in a highly self-confident and
responsible manner.
AKH0835 EVEN IF UNTRUE, FREE WILL IS A USEFUL ILLUSION
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.168.
This sets up a delicate position for the agnostic who is still uncertain whether all the other
conditions for free will (have we identified them all?) are met. If he can overcome or
ignore his doubts and achieve the state of mind of a frank believer in free will, he will
thereby achieve one of two states: (a) genuine free will (if free will is otherwise possible
for him), or (b) at least the illusion of free will. The former state is manifestly desirable,
but the latter, if it were the best we could hope for, might be worth wanting. It seems that
it would be a member of the familiar class of life-enabling or life-enhancing illusions: the
illusion that one is still loved by one's loved ones; the illusion that one has several more
years to live when one hasn't; the illusion that in spite of one's physical ugliness, one's
inner beauty is readily manifest to others.
AKH0836 A PERSUASIVE ARGUMENT AGAINST FREE WILL IS SELF-REFUTING
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.155.
The very decision to write a book)a traditional book like this, composed of sentences and
not, say, a bound collection of pages smeared with various jams and jellies)may seem to
beg the question in favor of free will. If so, then those who have written books and articles
denying the reality of free will are in an even more embarrassing position: they are left
advising (pretending to advise? seeming to advise?) the reader that advising is pointless.
AKH0837 EVEN IF DETERMINISM IS TRUE, PEOPLE CAN STILL BE MOTIVATED
BY REASONED ARGUMENTS
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.34.
If people's wills are determined, Hobbes is asked, "why do we represent reasons to them?"
He answers: "because thereby we think to make them have the will they have not."
(Hobbes, Works Vol V, p.52) People, normal people in any case, have the good fortune
of having wills that are determined (if they are determined) by a complicated causal
process of perception and ratiocination that often includes, as Hobbes notes, causal volleys
of communication. People often have reasons represented to them. And it often moves
them, fortunately for them.
AKH0838 DELIBERATION IS EFFECTIVE EVEN IN A DETERMINISTIC WORLD
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.106.
Deliberation is (in general) effective in a deterministic but nonfatalistic world. How could
you rationally conclude that it was futile to deliberate in a circumstance in which you have
every reason to believe that if the outcome of your deliberation is a decision to do A, the
A is what you will do, and if the outcome of your deliberation is a decision to do B, then
B is what you will do, and, moreover, the outcome of your deliberation is more likely than
not to be the rational think to do under the circumstances?
AKH0839 MANY EVENTS ARE DETERMINED BY OUR DELIBERATIONS
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.127-8.
Berlin (1954) does a fine debunking of the pernicious idea of historical inevitability, but
he does not get entirely clear on the distinction between inexorable historical forces (like
our comet, or a tidal wave), forces that might sweep aside any agent's deliberations and
projects in a temporary onslaught of local fatalism, and forces that determine historical
events by operating through the deliberations of the agents involved. He seems not to see
that he need have no quarrel with the latter supposition, which is consistent with his
vigorous dismissal of the pernicious form of historical determinism: historical inevitability.

AKH0840 EVEN A DETERMINISTIC FUTURE CAN BE OPEN IN THE SENSE OF
DELIBERATELY CHOSEN
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.139.
If we let go of that fantasy and ask what we really, soberly want, we find a more modest
hope: while there are indeed times when we would give anything to be able to go back and
undo something in the past, we recognize that the past is closed for us, and we would
gladly settle for an "open future." But what would an open future be? A future in which
our deliberation is effective: a future in which if I decide to do A then I will do A, and if
I decide to do B then I will do B; a future in which ) since only one future is possible )
the only possible thing that can happen is the thing I decide in the end to do.
AKH0841 EVEN IN A DETERMINISTIC WORLD, DELIBERATION IS ONE OF THE
DETERMINANTS
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.102-3.
Even in a perfectly determined world there is plenty of room for a distinction between
bouts of deliberation that contribute importantly to the causation of an event deliberated
about and bouts of deliberation that are without important issue. The prisoner who spends
his days and nights concocting vengeful schemes but dies in his chains has engaged in
deliberations whose only effects are, let us say, to deepen the furrows in his brow and to
exacerbate his high blood pressure. His cellmate engages in similar deliberations, and
acting on them, escapes his cell and puts all his plans into tumultuous effect. If this is what
"making a difference" comes to, then some of the deliberation in a deterministic world will
make a big difference and some of it will not. There will be cases of premeditated murder,
for instance, of which one can truly say: had the premeditation not occurred, the victim
would still be alive.
AKH0842 FREEDOM EXISTS IN THE CONSCIOUS RECOGNITION OF OUR
MOTIVES
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.36-7.
When we become conscious of our reasons, we recognize them (unlike Sphex who merely
behaves as if she recognizes her reasons). So the capacity for conscious recognition of
motivation is apparently a necessary condition of real freedom. Strawson describes the case
of a psychoanalyst who successfully treats a patient and notes that we "may and do
naturally speak" of the psychoanalyst's "restoring the agent's freedom. But here the
restoring of freedom means bringing it about that the agent's behaviour shall be intelligible
in terms of conscious purposes rather than in terms only of unconscious purposes."
AKH0843 DETERMINISM DOESN'T DENY SELF-CONTROL
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.72.
Contrary to the familiar vision that opened this chapter, determinism does not in itself
"erode control." The Viking spacecraft is as deterministic a device as any clock, but this
does not prevent it from being able to control itself. Fancier deterministic devices can not
only control themselves; they can evade the attempts to other self-controllers to control
them. If we are also deterministic devices, we need not on that account fear that we cannot
be in control of ourselves and our destinies.
AKH0844 WE CAN TRANSCEND CRUDE DETERMINISM THROUGH
REFLECTION
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.45-6.
So although we arrive on this planet with a built-in, biologically endorsed set of biases,
although we innately prefer certain states of affairs to others, we can nevertheless build
lives from this base that overthrow those innate preferences. We can tame and rescind and
(if need be) repress those preferences in favor of "higher" preferences, which are no less
real for not being directly biologically (that is, genetically) endorsed. (The "specter" of
sociobiology looms only for those who fail to see this really quite obvious fact, and who
think the only way biology could contribute to the understanding of the birth of morality
would be by "reducing" all moral norms to some dimly imagined genetic imperatives. They
fear "biological" explanations for the same reason they fear "psychological" explanations
of their choices; they have an impoverished sense of what a biological or psychological
explanation of a phenomenon might be.) It is our communal activity of mutual persuasion,
reflection, and evaluation that creates the values that then take precedence over the cruder
interests of our ancestors.
AKH0845 DETERMINISM DOESN'T IMPLY FATALISM
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.104.
Our second pass, the claim that determinism implied the causal impotence of deliberation,
was seen to be a manifest error)it is in fact the error of confusing determinism with
fatalism. Fatalism is the rather mystical and superstitious view that at certain checkpoints
in our lives, we will necessarily find ourselves in particular circumstances (the
circumstances "fate" has decreed) no matter what the intervening vagaries of our personal
trajectories. (Remember the parents of Oedipus, whose very efforts to elude their
prophesied fate created the circumstances that "sealed" it.) It is widely agreed that this sort
of fatalism has absolutely nothing to recommend it)aside from its considerable power to
create creepy effects in literature. Determinism does not imply fatalism, and there are no
reasons from other quarters for thinking fatalism to be true in general.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 74
AKH0846 SKINNER'S ASSUMPTION THAT ALL BEHAVIOR IS CAUSED IS
UNSCIENTIFIC
Leslie Stevenson, University of St. Andrews Philosopher, SEVEN THEORIES OF
HUMAN NATURE, 1974, p.97.
Firstly, do we have to assume that all human behavior is governed by causal laws, if we
are to study that behavior scientifically? There is no reason to assume this than there is for
Marx to maintain that if we are to study history scientifically there must be laws which
determine everything which happens. Universal determinism is not a necessary
presupposition of science, although the search for causal laws is central to science.
Admittedly, it would be rather disappointing if psychology could not proceed beyond the
mere reporting of particular events and statistical regularities. But whether there are causal
laws governing behavior is something which we must leave psychology to discover. That
all behavior is governed by such laws is a `metaphysical' assumption which ill befits a
supposedly strict empiricist such as Skinner.
AKH0847 SKINNER EXAGGERATES THE ROLE OF THE ENVIRONMENT
Leslie Stevenson, University of St. Andrews Philosopher, SEVEN THEORIES OF
HUMAN NATURE, 1974, p.98.
The more specific assumption that all behavior is a function of environmental variables is
even more dubious. What it means, in detail, is that for any piece of behavior, there is a
finite set of environmental conditions (past or present) such that it is a causal law that
anyone to whom all those conditions apply will perform that behavior. This is reminiscent
of Watson's claim that he could take any infant at random and make of it anything he liked,
given only the appropriate environment. It entails a denial that inherited factors make any
difference to the behavior of human beings. So that, for instance, any healthy infant could
be trained to become a four-minute miler, a nuclear physicist or anything else. In its full
generality, this claim seems fairly obviously false. The fact that the differences in ability
between identical twins brought up apart are much less than the average range of ability
in the whole population is evidence against it. Heredity does play some part, though this
is not to deny the huge importance of environment. To attribute all to environment is
another assumption which Skinner does not submit to empirical test.
AKH0848 SKINNER EXTRAPOLATES TOO MUCH FROM RATS
Leslie Stevenson, University of St. Andrews Philosopher, SEVEN THEORIES OF
HUMAN NATURE, 1974, p.99.
Skinner's experimental work is impressive and unimpugnable, but what we can and must
criticize here is his extrapolation from it to human behavior in general. In Science and
Human Behavior he outlines the understanding of behavior that he has gained from his
animal experiments (mainly with rats and pigeons) and then goes on to apply these
conceptions to human individuals and institutions ) government, religion, psychotherapy,
economics and education. But it is quite possible that Skinner's discoveries about rats and
pigeons apply only to those species (and perhaps related ones), but not to more complex
animals and especially not to men. Although he rightly points out that we cannot assume
that human behavior is different in kind from animal behavior, his whole approach seems
to make the equally unjustified assumption that what applies to laboratory animals will
apply (with only a difference of complexity) to men.
AKH0849 SKINNER MISUNDERSTANDS HUMAN LANGUAGE
Leslie Stevenson, University of St. Andrews Philosopher, SEVEN THEORIES OF
HUMAN NATURE, 1974, p.99-100.
The crucial defects in Skinner's account of language have been pointed out by Chomsky,
whose work has given new direction to research in linguistics and psychology in the last
decade. Chomsky argues that although Skinner has tried to describe how language is
learned, his account is a little value because he pays no attention to the question of what
it is that our native tongue. Clearly, we can hardly ask how we learn X unless we first
know what X is; we must have a criterion for someone having succeeded in learning X.
Now human language is a very different sort of phenomenon from rats' pressing of levers.
Skinner could hardly deny this, but would suggest that the differences are only a matter of
degree of complexity. But Chomsky suggests that the creative and structural features of
human language)the way in which we can all speak and understand sentences we have
never heard before, just by our knowledge of the vocabulary and grammar of our
language)make it quite different in kind from any known kind of animal behavior. If the
attempt to analyse human speech in terms derived from the behavior of lower animals
would seem to be doomed from the start. And the same would apply to other distinctively
human forms of behavior.
AKH0850 IF SKINNER CAN'T EXPLAIN SPEECH-HIS GENERAL THEORY FAILS
Leslie Stevenson, University of St. Andrews Philosopher, SEVEN THEORIES OF
HUMAN NATURE, 1974, p.101.
Speech is of course not the only human activity. But it is especially important as a
representative of the `higher' human mental abilities. So if Skinner's theories fail to explain
it adequately we must conclude that even if they explain some human behavior they cannot
give a true account of human nature in general. There remains the possibility that other
important aspects of human behavior are not learned from the environment but are
generally innate.

AKH0851 SKINNER IMPROPERLY DISMISSES FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY
Leslie Stevenson, University of St. Andrews Philosopher, SEVEN THEORIES OF
HUMAN NATURE, 1974, p.102.
This diagnosis of the `unhappy condition of the world' seems very dubious. Admittedly
there are important practical problems about deciding the extent of responsibility, and
these are closely connected with deep theoretical and philosophical questions about the
concept of freedom. But Skinner's dismissal of the concept is an inadequate and unargued
response to these problems. In his latest book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, he seems to
be saying that just as it was the mistake of animism to treat inanimate things as if they were
people and attribute thoughts and intentions to them, so it is a mistake to treat people as
people and attribute desires and decisions to them! Of course this is absurd.
AKH0852 EVEN DETERMINISM LEAVES SOME ROOM FOR CHOICE
Leslie Stevenson, University of St. Andrews Philosopher, SEVEN THEORIES OF
HUMAN NATURE, 1974, p.102.
The thesis of universal determinism is that every event (including all human choices) has
a set of sufficient preceding causes. Now even if this thesis is true (and remember that
Skinner has given us no reason to believe it), we are not precluded from picking out as
`free' those human actions which include among their causes the choice of the person.
They concept of a free action surely does not imply that it has no causes at all (that would
make it random), but that it is a result of the agent's choice. We could still hold people
responsible for the actions they choose, even if those choices themselves have causes.
AKH0853 SKINNER'S POLITICS RISK DESPOTISM
Leslie Stevenson, University of St. Andrews Philosopher, SEVEN THEORIES OF
HUMAN NATURE, 1974, p.103.
This vague program sounds optimistic and yet rather sinister in its jaunty dismissal of
individual freedom. What Skinner has in mind comes out a little more clearly in his novel
Walden Two, in which his ideal community combines the culture-vulture atmosphere of
an adult education summer school with the political system of Plato's Republic (for there
is a wise designer of the community who has arranged everything on `correct' behaviourist
principles from the start!). But Skinner's utopia is open to much the same objections as
Plato's. On what basis are the designers of a culture to decide what is best for everyone?
How can misuse of their power be prevented? Despite his mention of safeguards against
despotism, Skinner seems politically very naive.
AKH0854 THE FREE WILL QUESTION IS MEANINGLESS METAPHYSICS
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.44
Now consider one of the grand metaphysical problems: for example, "Has man freewill?"
Is either of the two possible answers to this question—"Man has freewill" and "Man has
not freewill"—an empirical proposition? No, for neither can be confirmed or refuted by
observation or experiment. Is either of them an analytic proposition? No, for the negative
of neither is self-contradictory—i.e. the concept "free-will" is not contained in the concept
"man". Since they are neither empirical nor analytic propositions they are not meaningful,
and therefore the whole "problem" is meaningless.
AKH0855 THE FREE WILL-DETERMINISM PROBLEM IS IRRESOLVABLE
R.J. Hollingdale, philosopher, WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION, 1979,
p.52
Consider the question of "freewill and determinism". The phenomena involved in this issue
are sensations associated with actions: whether any or all of my cations are "free", or
whether none of them is, is a problem beyond my capacity to solve, since I have no data
other than the above-mentioned phenomena of sensation—I have no way of knowing
whether the sensation of "freedom of will" is a product of free will or a consequence of the
completest determinism. The distinction "free or determined" is thus also one I cannot
make.
AKH0856 AUTONOMY IS NOW MORE VIABLE THAN EVER
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973, p.46.
The faith in retributive justice is all but dead. what are the causes of its death? The answer
to this question will also show why today, for the first time in human history, autonomy
has become a live option for millions.
AKH0857 AUTONOMY IS THE GOAL OF HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973,
p.180.
I introduced autonomy, saying that is consists of making with our eyes open the decisions
that govern our lives; and I added: "Choosing responsibility means that one weighs
alternatives. (This theme will be developed further in the chapter on 'The New Integrity.')"
Then I concentrated on the strategies of decidophobia. Now autonomy appears as the goal
of a historical development: the autonomous man is the modern counterpart of "the just
man" of the ancient Greeks and Hebrews. He does not bow to authority; he decides for
himself.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 75
AKH0858 WITH SUBSTANTIAL EFFORT ONE CAN ESCAPE CULTURAL
DETERMINISM
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973,
p.223.
Autonomy involves reflection on alternatives. It requires a sustained effort to liberate
oneself from the cultural determination that sticks to youth as eggshell does to a young
bird. In this fight for liberation nothing helps more than reading and discussion. What is
needed is exposure to different views—not merely to one "devil's advocate" but to a
genuine variety of points of view and of ways of experiencing the world.
AKH0859 AUTONOMY IS POSSIBLE AND CAN BE ENCOURAGED
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973,
p.233.
Those who have found autonomy have been few indeed, but for an intelligent and well-
read person today there are fewer excuses than there have ever been. Some social
conditions facilitate the development of autonomy, others inhibit it. Solzhenitsyn, to be
sure, attained it under Stalin's regime, in the camps, but the odds are overwhelmingly
against such triumphs, for they require not only extraordinary strength of character but also
a great deal of luck. After all, every attempt was made to root out signs of building
autonomy and to kill those who gave promise of attaining it.
AKH0860 SOLZENITSYN DISPLAYED AUTONOMY
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973, p.34.
My final example exhibits the most awesome courage: Solzhenitsyn. Rarely has it been so
difficult for any man to stand alone, utterly alone, without any prop of any kind. The First
Circle, Cancer Ward, Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record, and August 1914 show how
he succeeded in resisting all ten temptations, making one fateful decision after another
against seemingly insuperable odds. His life is autonomy in action.
AKH0861 NIETZSCHE DEMONSTRATES THAT AUTONOMY IS POSSIBLE
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973, p.33.
The autonomous individual does not treat his own conclusions and decisions as
authoritative but chooses with his eyes open, and then keeps his eyes open. He has the
courage to admit that he may have been wrong even about matters of the greatest
importance. He objects to the ten strategies not on account of their putative psychological
origins but because they preclude uninhibited self-criticism. There is no need here to
recapitulate my interpretation of Nietzsche as a man of this type or to show that he did get
around to drawing conclusions and taking stands. My disagreements with him are legion,
but his books reveal a truly liberated spirit. It will suffice here to quote a single epigram
from his notebooks: "A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather
it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions!!!"
AKH0862 ELEANOR ROOSEVELT DISPLAYED AUTONOMY
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973, p.34.
Coming to our own time, Eleanor Roosevelt was an autonomous woman but did not come
fully into her own until after her husband's death. In some ways, being a President's wife
offers a woman exceptional opportunities; but it is also confining because she must always
consider how her words and actions will affect the President. This helps to explain why no
other President's wife played a comparable role. It is harder to understand why others did
not use their experience and prestige for the good of humanity once their husbands were
out of office or dead, especially in cases in which widespread sympathy and admiration
would have made it relatively easy. But the women who marry extraordinarily ambitious
men are rarely looking for autonomy; they are much more likely to use marriage as a
decidophobic strategy, perhaps even along the religion and allegiance to a party. Moreover,
years in the limelight, in which every move must be scrutinized lest it undercut the
husband's career, must be crushing. All this makes Eleanor Roosevelt's achievement even
more imposing. She did not allow her difficult marriage to one of the strongest
personalities in the world destroy her own will and spirit, and she never simply accepted
his political or moral views, nor those of the Democratic Party. She kept her own counsel
and after his death showed all the world what it means to be autonomous, using every
resource at her command for the benefit of those who needed help.
AKH0863 THE AUTONOMOUS INDIVIDUAL IS KEY TO HUMAN PROGRESS
Herbert Muller, Indiana U govt prof, THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.363-4.
Social scientists have referred to the individual as a 'discredited hypothesis,' defining him
as a mere cell of the social organism, while dictators have discredited him in fact or put
him in cells. Yet there is no doing away with him, or without him. the great creative
individual, as John Stuart Mill said, not only personifies but initiates all the wise and noble
things that the race has done. In everyday life we are a dependent on free relations with the
ordinary decent person. We may best appreciate him in a time of crisis, for he is capable
of more wisdom and virtue than collective man ever can be. He is often superior to the best
institutions—the greatest States and Churches—which repeatedly fall short of the integrity
and the decency we can count on in private life.

AKH0864 AUTONOMY IS THE ONLY CURE TO TYRANNY
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973,
preface
To those whose minds are not liberated, wars, revolutions, and radical movements will
never bring freedom but only an exchange of one kind of slavery for another. That is one
of the most tragic lessons of the twentieth century. Liberation of the mind is no panacea,
but without it angry rhetoric and cruel bloodbaths are of no avail, and tyranny endures.
Most of those who see themselves as radicals and revolutionaries still cling to decrepit
ideas like justice and equality and depend on guilt and fear, as our fathers and mothers did.
What we need is a new, autonomous morality.
AKH0865 AUTONOMY PROVIDES THE BASIS FOR RESISTING
TOTALITARIANISM
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973,
p.182.
In sum, an integrated human being with the classical integrity could follow Hitler or Stalin,
but one could not follow either of them with new integrity. for the person who lives by the
canon does not accept an irrational book like Mien Kampf, or a man like Hitler of Stalin,
or any man or any book, as an authority; he makes decisions for himself—he is
autonomous.
AKH0866 PEOPLE UNIVERSALLY VALUE FREEDOM
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973, p.7.
There is no case on record in which the voters chose a government because it offered them
less freedom. Where people did opt for rulers who took away their liberties, something
seemed to be drastically wrong with all alternatives, and the men who were chosen did not
make clear to the voters how their freedom would be curtailed. Men do not crave slavery
or concentration camps. On the contrary, such images evoke the will to fight and even to
risk one's life for freedom. Nor are there two types of people; those who love freedom and
those who prefer slavery.
AKH0867 CREATIVE AUTONOMY IS THE HIGHEST GOOD
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973,
p.236.
Guilt is mired in the past, as is retributive justice. Distributive justice is stuck in the
present, but by the time it has figured out how to cope with that, it is dated. We must move
beyond guilt and justice. We must give up the pleasant notion that we can have all good
things at once. What is best is not things at all but creative autonomy.
AKH0868 SUBTLETY OF MORAL CHOICE REQUIRES AUTONOMY
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973, p.95-
6.
We know neither God nor the devil; we are beset by an endless number of devils—"No
worst, there is none." To fight evil without the illusion that it is the greatest ever, to choose
the lesser evil without the faith that it is surely the least evil, to endure darkness without
the boast that none could be blacker, and to create more light without the comfort of
excessive hopes—that requires courage and autonomy.
AKH0869 AUTONOMY IS COMPATIBLE WITH HAPPINESS
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973,
p.215.
The autonomous life is demanding and requires one to stand alone at crucial moments, but
this does not mean that one's life has to be miserable. Not only might one seek one's
happiness in a strenuous life, but autonomy is compatible with ways of life that large
numbers of admirable people have desired in the past and still desire.
AKH0870 SACRIFICING AUTONOMY DOESN'T PRODUCE HAPPINESS
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973,
p.213.
Cloudless contentment is not open to man, and if he trades his freedom and integrity for
it, the time will come when he feels cheated. This does not mean that he will openly regret
the bargain. Most people have failed to cultivate their critical perception of their own
present position and of the alternatives they might have chosen; precisely this is the trade
they made; this is what they gave up for comfort and contentment. Now they feel cheated
without knowing how and when and why. What they feel is a diffuse and free-floating
resentment in search of an object. Having an autonomy for happiness, they have missed
out on both. This strategy does not work. Merely renouncing freedom does not spell the
end of all frustration and all discontent; to achieve that aim one must also deprive people
of much of their human potential. Hence the strategy considered here is often
supplemented with alcohol, tranquilizers, or other drugs; but what people find is merely
relief, not lasting happiness.
AKH0871 AUTONOMY DOESN'T IMPLY LACK OF CONCERN FOR OTHERS
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973,
p.235-6.
the autonomous life does not involve a lack of concern for others. The questions is what
one desires for others. Some elitists might say: What I want for myself is autonomy, but
what the masses need is bread and circuses or, in other words, the proper distribution of
possessions and amusements. it is less inegalitarian to say: I desire autonomy—for myself
and for others.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 76
AKH0872 THE ATTACK OF AUTONOMY DERIVES FROM XENOPHOBIC
RESENTMENT
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, WITHOUT GUILT AND JUSTICE, 1973,
p.171-2.
In the discussion of decidophobia, I showed how any confrontation with fateful
alternatives engenders dread, and how the "craving for community of worship" is
prompted by the craving to eliminate such confrontations. The stronger is an incarnate
alternative. That goes not only for the Jew or heretic in a Christian society but also for the
alienated individual in an community. Indeed, the herd man finds it easier to tolerate the
nonconformists who are members of another, smaller herd than to suffer those who stand
alone. The autonomous man is a living provocation. Usually he is forgiven only after he
is dead.
AKH0873 THERE'S NO "TRUE" SYSTEM OF MORALS—WE CAN ONLY LOOK AT
WHAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY VALUE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.112
There cannot be such a thing as ethical science, if by ethical science one means the
elaboration of a "true" system of morals. For we have seen that, as ethical judgements are
mere expressions of feelings, there can be no way of determining the validity of any ethical
system, and, indeed, no sense in asking whether any such system is true. All that one may
legitimately enquire in this connections is, What are the moral habits of a given person or
group of people, and what causes them to have precisely those habits and feelings? and this
enquiry falls wholly within the scope of the existing social sciences.
AKH0874 ARGUMENT REQUIRES THAT SOME VALUES ARE ASSUMED
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.111-12
In short, we find that argument is possible on moral questions only if some system of
values is presupposed. If our opponent concurs with us in expressing moral disapproval
of all actions of a given type t, then we may get him to condemn a particular action A, by
bringing forward arguments to show that A is of type t. For the question whether A does
or does not belong to that type is a plain question of fact. Given that a man has certain
moral principles, we argue that he must, in order to be consistent, react morally to certain
things in a certain way. What we do not and cannot argue about is the validity of these
moral principles. We merely praise or condemn them in the light of our own feelings.
AKH0875 TRUE VALUE ARGUMENT IS IMPOSSIBLE
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.110-11
For we hold that one really never does dispute about questions of value. This may seem,
at first sight, to be a very paradoxical assertion. for we certainly do engage in disputes
which are ordinarily regarded as disputes about questions of value. But, in all such cases,
we find, if we consider the matter closely, that the dispute is not really about a question of
value, but about a question of fact. When someone disagrees with us about the moral value
of a certain action or type of action, we do admittedly resort to argument in order to win
him over to our way of thinking. But we do not attempt to show by our arguments that he
has the "wrong" ethical feeling towards a situation whose nature he has correctly
apprehended. What we attempt to show is that he is mistaken about the facts of the case.
We argue that he has misconceived the agent's motive: or that he has misjudged the effects
of the action, or its probable effects in view of the agent's knowledge; or that he has failed
to take into account the special circumstances in which the agent was placed.
AKH0876 DISPUTE OVER FUNDAMENTAL VALUES IS BEYOND THE SCOPE OF
ARGUMENT
A.J. Ayer, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, LANGUAGE, TRUTH
AND LOGIC, 1946, p.111
But if our opponent happens to have undergone a different process of moral "conditioning"
from ourselves, so that, even when he acknowledges all the facts, he still disagrees with
us about the moral value of the actions under discussion, then we abandon the attempt to
convince him by argument. We say that it is impossible to argue with him because he has
a distorted or undeveloped moral sense; which signifies merely that he employs a different
set of values from our own. We feel that our own system of values is superior, and
therefore speak in such derogatory terms of his. But we cannot bring forward any
arguments to show that our system is superior. For our judgement that it is so is itself a
judgement of value, and accordingly outside the scope of argument. It is because argument
fails us when we come to deal with pure questions of value, as distinct from questions of
fact, that we finally resort to mere abuse.

AKH0877 ULTIMATE ENDS CAN'T BE PROVEN
G.E. Moore, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge University, PRINCIPIA ETHICA, 1903,
p.65
He has already told us (p.6) that 'Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct
proof. Whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to
something admitted to be good without proof.' With this, I perfectly agree: indeed the chief
object of my first chapter was to shew that this is so. Anything which is good as an end
must be admitted to be good without proof. We are agreed so far. Mill even uses the same
examples which I used in my second chapter. 'How,' he says, 'is it possible to prove that
health is good?' 'What proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good?' Well, in Chapter
IV, in which he deals with the proof of his Utilitarian principle, Mill repeats the above
statement in these words: 'It has already,' he says, 'been remarked, that questions of
ultimate ends do not admit of proof, in the ordinary acceptation of the term' (p. 52).
'Questions about ends,' he goes on in this same passage, 'are, in other words, questions
what things are desirable.'
AKH0878 VALUES CAN'T BE DEMONSTRATED IN THE SAME WAY AS FACTS
Will Kymlicka, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto, CONTEMPORARY
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p.132
It is true that our claims about natural duties are not observable or testable, but different
kinds of objectivity apply to different areas of knowledge, and there is no reason to expect
or desire that moral duties have the same kind of objectivity as the physical sciences. As
Nagel says, 'if any values are objective, they are objective values, not objective anything
else.'
AKH0879 DESIRE IS THE ONLY PROOF OF DESIRABILITY
John Stuart Mill, British Philosopher, as quoted in PRINCIPIA ETHICA, 1903, p.66.
'The only proof capable of being given that a thing is visible, is that people actually see it.
The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it; and so of the other sources
of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce
that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian
doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end,
nothing could ever convince any person that it was so. No reason can be given why the
general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be
attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being the fact, we have not only all
the proof which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness
is a good: that each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness,
therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons. Happiness has made out its title as one
of the ends of conduct, and consequently one of the criteria of morality.'
AKH0880 THE IDEA THAT SOMETHING MATTERS IS A NECESSARY BUT
UNPROVABLE PREMISE
Daniel Dennett, Tufts Philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.156.
Since there could be nothing better to do, we might just as well affirm our confidence in
our starting point. We may assume that something matters, and that we are rational enough
so that there can be a point to our attempts to understand the world. I do not see how those
assumptions could be coherently criticized—which is not to say that they must be true.
AKH0881 PHILOSOPHY CAN'T OFFER FORMAL PROOFS
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.49.
Nozick (1981) urges philosophers to consider abandoning formal proof in favor of a
particular sort of philosophical explanation, in which we bring ourselves to see how
something we want to believe in could be possible. this is excellent advice, in my opinion,
and I take my project in this chapter (and indeed in the entire book) to be an exercise in
Nozick's brand of explanation.
AKH0882 MORAL STATEMENTS CAN'T BE PROVEN FACTUALLY TRUE
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956, p.55.
Hume pointed out that moral statements—statements which tell us how men should
behave—cannot possibly be proved by pure logic or by an appeal to facts alone. It is also
necessary to appeal to human emotions, and particularly to the sentiment of fellow-feeling
and sympathy. Moral principles, therefore, cannot be "true" in the way that arithmetic can
be true or physics can be true.
AKH0883 NIHILISM IS A SELF-NEGATING POSITION
Daniel Dennett, Tufts philosopher, ELBOW ROOM, 1984, p.156.
Nevertheless, we may assume that nihilism is false. How can I make that complacent (or
cavalier) claim? Shouldn't we even stop to consider carefully the prospect that it might be
true? Well, if it were true that we ought to take the possibility of nihilism that seriously,
then nihilism would be false, for if we ought to do anything nihilism is false. But then we
may as well assume that it is false, since either it is false or, if it isn't, nothing matters and
we may do whatever we want. Nihilism is, quite literally, a negligible position.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 77
AKH0884 THE QUESTIONING OF VALUE ASSERTS VALUE
John William Miller, Professor of Philosophy, Williams College, THE PARADOX OF
CAUSE, 1978, p.27
The intellectual fallacy derives from the very attempt to ask the question about the reality
of value. There is no possible way of deciding that question by looking about one in the
world. for after all the decision rests with the inquirer, and since, by hypothesis, he has
never encountered any actual value, he cannot very well know what he is looking for. But
if he should claim that he knows what value is, but not whether there is any in fact, one
might ask him why he is inquiring. For the inquiry could occupy him only in so far as it
was worth his while. his inquiry is itself an assertion of value, and there is no finding it
elsewhere. Without our taking a stand, values could not occur to us, but if we do stand,
then we have asserted the actuality of value.
AKH0885 VALUES ULTIMATELY REST ON PERSONAL PREFERENCE
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956, p.54-5.
Since the early part of the nineteenth century, it is unquestionable that most philosophies
of a liberal bent have been, to use the current expression, "relativistic" in their approach
to all moral codes and social systems. They have denied, that is to say, that there are any
eternal moral principles which are unquestionable, or any immutable standards by which
all men and all societies can be judged. In any system of values, for a philosophical
"relativist," there is an element of simple preference of interest which cannot be eliminated
by argument; and so in any moral system there is always something accidental or personal
or limited, something wholly a-rational, which is "relative" to a man's taste or to the special
historical circumstances of a specific place or time. So there cannot be any single system
of morals or politics which holds good for everyone; and there cannot be any special group
of experts who can lay down the infallible last word on questions of value.
AKH0886 HUMANS MUST ULTIMATELY CHOOSE THEIR OWN VALUES
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956, p.64.
There is, in short, no way around the fact that it is human beings who write their own
moral tickets, and that we act on our own responsibility when we choose the values on
which we stake our lives. The demand for total justification of our values is only an
expression of the human desire, as insistent as it is pathetic, to have the benefits of free
choice with none of its troubles and risks. "It was the woman who made me," said Adam.
"It was the serpent," said the woman. "I am one of God's creatures," whispers the serpent.
AKH0887 HUMANS MAKE THEIR OWN MORAL STANDARDS
Charles Frankel, Columbia philosopher, THE CASE FOR MODERN MAN, 1956, p.56.
The relativistic philosophy which has resulted from these developments, it is unarguable,
has dominated liberal intellectual circles for at least a century. Values have not been
regarded as eternal verities about which human beings have no choice. They are the
expressions of human preferences, and have a psychological and social setting and an
historical career. If there are any moral standards, according to this philosophy, it is human
beings who make them.
AKH0888 JUDGING THE VALUE OF LIFE WOULD REQUIRE A POSITION
OUTSIDE OF LIFE
Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher, TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS (in THE
PORTABLE NIETZSCHE), 1888, p.490
One would require position outside of life, and yet have to know it as well as one, as many,
as all who have lived it, in order to be permitted even to touch the problem of the value of
life: reasons enough to comprehend that this problem is for us an unapproachable problem.
AKH0889 IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO ESTIMATE THE VALUE OF LIFE
Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher, TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS (in THE
PORTABLE NIETZSCHE), 1888, p.474
Judgments, judgments of value, concerning life, for it or against it, can, in the end, never
be true: they have value only as symptoms, they are worthy of consideration only as
symptoms; in themselves such judgments are stupidities. one must by all means stretch out
one's fingers and make the attempt to grasp this amazing finesse, that the value of life
cannot be estimated. Not by the living, for they are an interested party, even a bone of
contention, and not judges; not by the dead, for a different reason. for a philosopher to see
a problem in the value of life is thus an objection to him, a question mark concerning his
wisdom, an un-wisdom.
AKH0890 LIFE IS GOOD IN ITSELF
Herbert Muller, Indiana U govt prof, THE USES OF THE PAST, 1952, p.372.
Ultimately, only men can make life worth living. Normally they just find it so, through
animal faith or the will to live. All may know the elemental goods, such as physical well-
being, sport, comradeliness, love, the enjoyment of beauty, the enjoyment of growing,
making, or knowing things—goods that are good in themselves, and may be good enough
whether or not they make any difference to the universe.

AKH0891 NORMATIVE STATEMENTS ARE MEANINGFUL
Risieri Frondizi, Professor of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University, THE
ABDICATION OF PHILOSOPHY, Eugene Freeman, ed., 1976, p.230
Since Ayer is making value judgments all the time, defends them with reasons and fights
for them, they cannot be completely meaningless. They are meaningless according to a
narrow epistemology which leads to restricted criteria of verification. If value propositions
have no place in that type of epistemology, so much the worse for it. We have to change
the epistemological and methodological attitude, not drop something that is clearly there,
everyday, in every human being.
AKH0892 SCHLAG'S CRITIQUE RELIES ON DECONSTRUCTION
Pierre Schlag, Professor of Law, University of Colorado, University of Pennsylvania Law
Review, 1991, p.890
Deconstruction, as a postmodern phenomenon, thus arrives on these shores in opposition
to liberal humanism and its centerpiece, the sovereign individual subject. Derrida's own
description of deconstruction proclaims as much: "Deconstruction does not consist in
passing from one concept to another, but in overturning and displacing a conceptual order,
as well as the nonconceptual order with which the conceptual order is articulated." Given
this radical project of displacing and overturning not just the conceptual order, but the
nonconceptual order within which the conceptual order is articulated, it would seem
particularly appropriate for deconstruction as it is imported into American legal thought,
to examine the scene in which it is operating—or rather, to displace and overturn the
conceptual and non conceptual matrices and forces within which it is received. He might
expect deconstruction, for instance, to attempt to displace the legal advocacy mentality so
prevalent in academic legal thought, as well as to displace and overturn the authority
structures of legal thought. We might expect a displacement of the sovereign legal author,
the matrices of his thought, or the like. Little of this has occurred.
AKH0893 THE KRITIK OF NORMATIVITY RESTS ON POSTMODERN IDEAS
Jon Brody, University of Texas debater, "The Praxis of Kritiks," 1994, Harvex, p.20
The kritik of normativity is easily one of the most challenging and controversial kritiks.
The kritik of normativity takes the lessons of postmodernism to their limits, and in so
doing questions the very way we practice debate. First, the kritik of normativity
incorporates much of the theoretical work of Part I, where it was featured, and may
effectively communicate the important links between the emergence of postmodernism in
the academic world and the emergence of kritik in debate.
AKH0894 ANARCHY LEADS TO CHAOS AND VIOLENCE—LOCKE AND NOZICK
BOTH SUPPORT
Jonathan Wolff, philosopher, ROBERT NOZICK, 1991, p.38.
In a Nozickian anarchy, or Lockean state of nature, we have rights to life, liberty and
property, and the right to enforce those rights. Yet an obvious thought is that even if, from
a moral point of view, we have those rights in the state of nature, it is not until they are
supported by an institutional framework of law, and a machinery of law enforcement, that
we will be respected. So, it may be urged, even if we do have these rights, formally
speaking, in anarchy, they will be worthless as we will not have the power to enjoy them.
We will be subject to the constant fears of murder, enslavement, and theft. This is a
familiar argument against anarchism: it leads to anarchy, in the popular sense of chaos and
violence.
AKH0895 THE STATE INEVITABLY EVOLVES OUT OF THE STATE OF NATURE
Robert Nozick, Harvard Philosopher, ANARCHY, STATE, AND UTOPIA, 1974, p.52
We argue that the first transition, from a system of private protective agencies to an
ultraminimal state, will occur by an invisible-hand process in a morally permissible way
that violates no one's rights. Secondly, we argue that the transition from an ultraminimal
state to a minimal state morally must occur. It would be morally impermissible for persons
to maintain the monopoly in the ultraminimal state without providing protective services
for all, even if this requires specific "redistribution."
AKH0896 FULFILLMENT OF HUMAN NATURE REQUIRES
POLITICS—CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY SUPPORTS
Leo Strauss, Political Theorist, University of Chicago, NATURAL RIGHT AND
HISTORY, 1953, p.135-6
In order to reach his highest stature, man must live in the best kind of society, in the kind
of society that is most conducive to human excellence. The classics called the best society
the best politeia. By this expression they indicated, first of all, that, in order to be good,
society must be civil or political society, a society in which there exists government or men
and not merely administration of things.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 78
AKH0897 EVOLUTIONARY THEORY PROVES IRRATIONAL HOSTILITY A BASIC
HUMAN TRAIT
E.O. Wilson, Harvard Biologist, ON HUMAN NATURE, 1978, p.108.
The clear perception of human aggressive behavior as a structured, predictable pattern of
interaction between genes and environment is consistent with evolutionary theory. It
should satisfy both camps in the venerable nature-nurture controversy. On the one hand
it is true that aggressive behavior, especially in its more dangerous forms of military action
and criminal assault, is learned. But the learning is prepared, in the sense explained in
Chapter 3; we are strongly predisposed to slide into deep, irrational hostility under certain
definable conditions. With dangerous ease hostility feeds on itself and ignites runaway
reactions that can swiftly progress to alienation and violence.
AKH0898 HUMANS ARE INNATELY AGGRESSIVE—EVERY SOCIETY
SUPPORTS
E.O. Wilson, Harvard Biologist, ON HUMAN NATURE, 1978, p.101.
Are human beings innately aggressive? This is a favorite question of college seminars and
cocktail party conversations, and one that raises emotion in political ideologues of all
stripes. the answer to it is yes. Throughout history, warfare, representing only the most
organized technique of aggression, has been endemic to every form of society, from
hunter-gatherer bands to industrial states. During the past three centuries a majority of the
countries of Europe have been engaged in war during approximately half of all the years;
few have ever seen a century of continuous peace.
AKH0899 WITHOUT GOVERNMENT NO DECENT SOCIAL ORDER COULD EXIST
Walter Berns, Professor of Government, Georgetown, FREEDOM AND VIRTUE, George
Carey, ed., 1984, p.27-8.
I do not share what appears to be the libertarians' view of the nature of man. this means
that I must disagree with professor Hayek, for instance, when he says it is "conceivable
that the spontaneous order which we call society may exist without government." I do not
believe it. I do not believe that without government there can be any order, and certainly
not a decent order, one in which he and I would care to live. I do not believe it because,
like Thomas Hobbes, I think that life in a society that is not governed, that lacks the
authority of power of a government, will be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."
AKH0900 RESPECT FOR RIGHTS REQUIRES A STATE
Jonathan Wolff, philosopher, ROBERT NOZICK, 1991, p.38.
Yet an obvious thought that even if, from a moral point of view, we have those rights in
the state of nature, it is not until they are supposed by an institutional framework of law,
and a machinery of law enforcement, that they will be respected. So, it may be urged, even
if we do have these rights, formally speaking, in anarchy, they will be worthless as we will
not have the power to enjoy them. We will be subject to the constant fears of murder,
enslavement, and theft. This is a familiar argument against anarchism: it leads to anarchy,
in the popular sense of chaos and violence.
AKH0901 THE NATION STATE SYSTEM IS SOLVING WAR
THE FUTURIST, September/October 1991. p. 12.
The world will be a more peaceful and prosperous place in the 1990's than it has been in
the decades since World War II, because the premise by which it operates has changed. In
the coming years, it will no longer be influenced by the needs of ideological and military
competition, but instead by the need to promote international trade and the well-being of
the trading nations. Major military conflicts will be all but unthinkable, because they are
contrary to the mutual interests of nations that are interdependent in the global economy.
Wars will not suddenly disappear, but they will be primarily small and regional in nature.
These conflicts will stem from local antagonisms and the ambitions of Third World rulers,
and peace will be restored by the joint effort of the entire world community. This
fundamental change will be the guiding theme of the 1990's.
AKH0902 QUESTIONING THE STATE ISN'T USEFUL
Bernard Williams, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey
Paul, ed., 1981, p.27
Why is there a state at all? Or, rather, why should there be a state at all? What is the
justification of the state? The sense that these are real questions has come and gone and
come again at various times; when the sense is present, the questions step in as the basic
or first questions of political philosophy. It is not obvious that they are real questions, that
the demand for justification is a sound one. For one thing, one might be prepared to spend
time on the justification only if one had an idea of some alternative to the state, and it is
reasonable to feel that there are, at least now, no real candidates for that.
AKH0903 GOVERNMENT HAS ACHIEVED NUMEROUS SUCCESSES
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.142
But our man on the moon was sent there by the government. Atomic power was created
by our government. The cancer cures we're beginning to see were stimulated by
government-funded research. Our rivers were made navigable by the government.
Ironically, the great American symbol of achievement that kept Reagan in the political
spotlight in the 1976 presidential primaries was built by our government: the Panama
Canal. And when you come to think of it, the soaring cathedrals of Europe were not built
by private entrepreneurs but by churches, kings, dukes, communities and, yes, by
governments.

AKH0904 WARRING STATES ARE IN A STATE OF NATURE
Jonathan Wolff, philosopher, ROBERT NOZICK, 1991, p.39.
In fact, Bertrand Russell used exactly this observation as an argument against anarchy.
Princes, or at least governments, in the state of nature, he pointed out, led to the First
World War, from which he concluded, first, that human beings could not live happily in
an anarchic state, and second a single world government was necessary for world peace.
AKH0905 GOVERNMENT LIMITS HUMAN VIOLENCE
E.O. Wilson, Harvard Biologist, ON HUMAN NATURE, 1978, p.102.
In fact, the matter is even more clear-cut than this qualification implies. the most peaceful
tribes of today were often the ravagers of yesteryear and will probably again produce
soldiers and murderers in the future. Among contemporary "Kung San violence in adults
is almost unknown; Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has correctly named them the "harmless
people." But as recently as fifty years ago, when these "Bushman" populations were denser
and less rigidly controlled by the central government, their homicide rate per capita
equalled that of Detroit and Houston.
AKH0906 ANARCHISM DIED BECAUSE IT COULDN'T COPE WITH FASCIST
FORCE
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.473-4.
As for Fascism and Nazism, those crude and primitive manifestations of the centralist urge
that marks our age, the anarchist movement showed itself powerless to combat them
effectively in the countries which they dominated and invaded, though individual
anarchists often asserted themselves with self-sacrificing heroism. Only in Spain did
organized anarchism put up a determined resistance, and even there, despite its enormous
following, it collapsed with dramatic suddenness on the day George Yaguë and his column
marched into Barcelona without a single factory going on strike and without a single
barricade being raised in the streets. This was the last, greatest defeat of the historical
anarchist movement. On that day it virtually ceased to exist as a living cause.
AKH0907 HUMANS ARE BY NATURE POLITICAL ANIMALS
Leo Strauss, Political Theorist, University of Chicago, NATURAL RIGHT AND
HISTORY, 1953, p.156.
This much, however, can safely be said: accordingly to Aristotle, there is no fundamental
disproportion between natural right and the requirements of political society, or there is
no essential need for the dilution of natural right. In this, as well as in many other respects,
Aristotle opposes the divine madness of Plato and, by anticipation, the paradoxes of the
Stoics, in the spirit of his unrivaled sobriety. A right which necessarily transcends political
society, he gives us to understand, cannot be the right natural to man, who is by nature a
political animal.
AKH0908 INSTINCT, NOT RATIONALITY, SUBSTANTIALLY DICTATES HUMAN
BEHAVIOR
E.O. Wilson, Harvard Biologist, ON HUMAN NATURE, 1978, p.6.
Like everyone else, philosophers measure their personal emotional responses to various
alternatives as though consulting a hidden oracle. That oracle resides in the deep emotional
centers of the brain, most probably within the limbic system, a complex array of neurons
and hormone-secreting cells located just beneath the "thinking" portion of the cerebral
cortex. Human emotional responses and the more general ethical practices based on them
have been programmed to a substantial degree by natural selection over thousands of
generations.
AKH0909 RATIONALITY IS POWERLESS TO CONTROL HUMAN CONFLICT
Leslie Stevenson, Philosopher, University of St. Andrew's, SEVEN THEORIES OF
HUMAN NATURE, 1974, p.113.
Appeals to rationality and moral responsibility have been notoriously ineffective in
controlling human conflict. Lorenz explains this by his theory that aggression is innate to
us—like the instincts in the Freudian id, it must find an outlet in one way or another.
Reason alone is powerless, it can only devise means to ends decided on in other ways, and
it can only exert control over our behaviour when it is backed by some instinctual
motivation.
AKH0910 EXISTENTIALISM REFUTES ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM
William Barrett, NYU Philosopher, IRRATIONAL MAN, 1958, p.22.
Both Marxism and Positivism are, intellectually speaking, relics of the nineteenth-century
Enlightenment that have not yet come to terms with the shadow side of human life as
grasped even by some of the nineteenth-century thinkers themselves. The Marxist and
Positivist picture of man, consequently, is thin and oversimplified. Existential philosophy,
as a revolt against such oversimplification, attempts to grasp the image of the whole man,
even where this involves bringing consciousness all that is dark and questionable in his
existence. And in just this respect it is a much more authentic expression of our own
contemporary experience.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 79
AKH0911 EXISTENTIALISM PROVES THE LIMITS OF HUMAN RATIONALITY
William Barrett, NYU Philosopher, IRRATIONAL MAN, 1958, p.279.
All the values that have been produced in the course of the long evolution of
reason—everything that goes under the heading of liberalism, intelligence, a decent and
reasonable view of life—we wish desperately to preserve and enlarge, in the turmoil of
modern life. But do we need to be persuaded now, after all that has happened in this
twentieth century, how precariously situated these reasonable ideas are in relation to the
subterranean forces of life, and how small a segment of the whole and concrete man they
actually represent? We have to establish a working pact between that segment and the
whole of us; but a pact requires compromise, in which both sides concede something, and
in this case particularly the rationalism of the Enlightenment will have to recognize that
at the very heart of its light there is also a darkness. It would be the final error of
reason—the point at which it succumbs to its own hubris and passes over into its
demoniacal opposite, unreason—to deny that the Furies exist, or to strive to manipulate
them out of existence. Nothing can be accomplished by denying that man is an essentially
troubled being, except to make more trouble.
AKH0912 MODERN THOUGHT REJECTS THE RATIONALISTIC VIEW OF
HUMANS
H. Stuart Hughes, Harvard Historian, CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIETY, 1977, p.3-4
For Marx the important thing to know about it was the character of the regime of
production that inexorably conditioned human life: for the great social thinkers of the next
generation the crucial concern was the irrational, virtually unchanging nature of human
sentiments—what Freud usually referred to as "drives" and what Pareto rather awkwardly
termed "residues." However radically these thinkers differed from Marx, they at least
agreed with him that what was "deepest" in human conduct for the most part fell into a
pattern of mere repetition. Or, to put the matter in moral terms, they agreed that the basic
characteristic of human experience was the limited nature of its freedom. Men were
masters of their fate, they argued, only for limited periods and in strictly limited segments
of their activity. The eighteenth- or earlier nineteenth-century image of man as a self-
consciously rational being freely selecting among properly weighed alternatives they
dismissed as an antiquated illusion. Some such conviction of the inevitable limitations on
human freedom—whether by physical circumstance or through emotional
conditioning—has become the unstated major premise of contemporary social science.
Sociologists and anthropologists, economists and psychologists are at one in confining
within narrow limits the realm of conscious choice.
AKH0913 RATIONALITY MERELY MASKS THE WILL TO POWER
James Ogilvie, Philosopher, MANY DIMENSIONAL MAN, p.281
The suggestion that the Enlightenment rationality must deal with superstition in its
demystified form carries with it the insight developed by Hegel and Nietzsche in the
nineteenth century and revived by Horkheimer and Adorno in the twentieth, namely that
the rationality of the enlightenment is but one of several equally coherent manifestations
of the will to power. This rationality needs to debunk its rivals, not simply from a noble
devotion to truths that are violated by superstition. Rather, the need stems from a desire
for control, a desire that is thwarted by the picture of a universe in which man is ever at the
mercy of alien spirits of which he has very little and perhaps cannot have more knowledge.
Ever since Bacon and Descartes the ideal of Enlightenment rationality has been knowledge
as mastery over the environment, a much higher and more demanding ideal than the
supposedly primitive will to adapt or accommodate oneself to the environment by honoring
or placating a plurality of partly unknowable gods.
AKH0914 FREUD SUPPORTS THE BASIC HUMAN INSTINCT TO AGGRESSION
Leslie Stevenson, Philosopher, University of St. Andrew's, SEVEN THEORIES OF
HUMAN NATURE, 1974, p.67.
But Freud always held that there was at least one other basic instinct or group of instincts.
In his early work he talked of the self-preservative instincts such as hunger, and contrasted
these with the erotic instincts, one unusual aggressive manifestation of which was sadism.
But in his later work from about 1920 onwards he changed the classification, putting erotic
and self-preservative instincts into one basic 'Life' instinct (Eros), and referring sadism,
aggression, self-destruction, etc., to a basic 'Death' instinct (Thanatos).
AKH0915 ONLY INNATE AGGRESSIVENESS EXPLAINS THE PERVASIVE
VIOLENCE OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Leslie Stevenson, Philosopher, University of St. Andrew's, 1974, SEVEN THEORIES OF
HUMAN NATURE, p.112.
The crucial point of Lorenz's view of human nature is the theory that like many other
animals we have an innate drive to aggressive behaviour towards our own species. He
thinks that this is the only possible explanation of the conflicts and wars throughout all
human history, of the continuing unreasonable behaviour of supposedly reasonable beings
(pp. 203-4). He suggests that Freud's theory of the death instinct is an interpretation of the
same fundamental fact of human nature.

AKH0916 HUMANS ARE BIOLOGICALLY CONDITIONED TO IRRATIONAL
AGGRESSION
E.O. Wilson, Harvard Biologist, ON HUMAN NATURE, 1978, p.122-3.
Human beings are strongly predisposed to respond with unreasoning hatred to external
threats and to escalate their hostility sufficiently to overwhelm the source of the threat by
a respectably wide margin of safety. Our brains do appear to be programmed to the
following extent: we are inclined to partition other people into friends and aliens, in the
same sense that birds are inclined to learn territorial songs and to navigate by the polar
constellations. We tend to fear deeply the actions of strangers and to solve conflict by
aggression. These learning rules are most likely to have evolved during the past hundreds
of thousands of years of human evolution and, thus, to have conferred a biological
advantage on those who conformed to them with the greatest fidelity.
AKH0917 HUMANITY'S AGGRESSIVENESS IS GROUNDED IN EVOLUTION
Leslie Stevenson, Philosopher, University of St. Andrew's, SEVEN THEORIES OF
HUMAN NATURE, 1974, p.112.
Lorenz seeks an evolutionary explanation for our innate aggressiveness, and for its
peculiarly communal nature (for the most destructive fighting is not between individuals
but between groups). He speculates that at a certain stage of the evolution of our ancestors,
they had more or less mastered the dangers of their non-human environment, and the main
danger came from other human groups. So the competition between neighboring hostile
tribes would be the main factor in natural selection, and accordingly there would be a
survival value in the 'warrior virtues'.
AKH0918 BIOLOGY CREATES AN INNATE TENDENCY TO AGGRESSION
E.O. Wilson, Harvard Biologist, ON HUMAN NATURE, 1978, p.117.
The particular forms of organized violence are not inherited. No genes differentiate the
practice of platform torture from pole and stake torture, headhunting from cannibalism, the
duel of champions from genocide. instead there is an innate predisposition to manufacture
the cultural apparatus of aggression, in a way that separates the conscious mind from the
raw biological processes that the genes encode. Culture gives a particular form to the
aggression and sanctifies the uniformity of its practice by all members of the tribe.
AKH0919 HISTORY REFUTES THE BELIEF IN MANKIND'S INNATE GOODNESS
H. Stuart Hughes, Harvard Historian, CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIETY, 1977, p.28.
Obviously it is our privilege—and duty—to accept as our own the nineteenth- and
twentieth-century criticisms that have corrected the epistemology and psychology of the
Enlightenment to the extent that they actually were shallow and mechanistic. And after the
horrors of the past four decades it would be difficult to retain the full eighteenth-century
confidence in man's potentialities for good.
AKH0920 HISTORY PROVES THAT CRUELTY IS CENTRAL TO HUMAN NATURE
Philip Hallie, Professor of Philosophy, Wesleyan, CRUELTY, 1982, p.xv.
If history is a nightmare, it is because there is so much cruelty in it. In peace as in war
members of our species are cruel to one another, and human progress seems to consist not
so much in diminishing that cruelty as in finding more impersonal and more efficient ways
of crushing and grinding one another. Perhaps it is a long way from a cave man torturing
his enemy or his woman to a Heinrich Himmler advising the leader of the SS in a 1943
speech to be "decent" and "hard" in "exterminating a bacillus," the Jewish people. Still,
across the changes those who need to understand the nightmare with better conceptual
apparatus than the anecdotal sensationalism of a journalist feel the need to grasp the family
resemblances between the various cruelties that make up so much of human history. Some
of us need to see what it is that keeps recurring in the nightmare.
AKH0921 THE FEW PEACEFUL SOCIETIES DON'T DISPROVE HUMAN
AGGRESSIVENESS
E.O. Wilson, Harvard Biologist, ON HUMAN NATURE, 1978, p.102.
Theoreticians who wish to exonerate the genes and blame human aggressiveness wholly
on perversities of the environment point to the tiny minority of societies that appear to be
nearly or entirely pacific. They forget that innateness refers to the measurable probability
that a trait will develop in a specified set of environments, not to the certainty that the trait
will develop in all environments. By this criterion human beings have a marked hereditary
predisposition to aggressive behavior.
AKH0922 THE WILL TO POWER EXPLAINS MORE THAN ANY THEORY
Walter Kaufman, Princeton Philosopher, DISCOVERING THE MIND: NIETZSCHE,
HEIDEGGER, AND BUBER, 1980, p.114.
What makes Neitzsche's proposal to explain human behavior in terms of the will to power
a major contribution to the discovery of the mind is that no previous hypothesis and none
since, with the possible exception of Freud's early psychological monism or his later
dualism, illuminates so much of our behavior.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 80
AKH0923 THE WILL TO POWER EXPLAINS A VAST RANGE OF HUMAN
BEHAVIOR
Walter Kaufman, Princeton Philosopher, DISCOVERING THE MIND: NIETZSCHE,
HEIDEGGER, AND BUBER, 1980, p.106.
It is astonishing how much human behavior Nietzsche's theory of the will to power
explains and illuminates, provided only that we do not understand explanation in the
reductionist sense. Why do young people take up smoking? It makes them feel grownup
and big and powerful. Why do so many people light a cigarette when they feel threatened
in one way or another—for example, but by no means only, when they are waiting to board
a plane; or when the pilot announces that the plane cannot land yet and will have to circle
for a while; or in the course of an argument? it gives them a specious sense of being in
control. Instead of wringing their hands, they are doing something with their hands that
actually strikes them as very adult and sophisticated. Money, positions, creative work all
confer a sense of power.
AKH0924 ETHNOCENTRISM IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF WAR
E.O. Wilson, Harvard Biologist, ON HUMAN NATURE, 1978, p.113-14.
We can be defined as the violent rupture of the intricate and powerful fabric of the
territorial taboos observed by social groups. The force behind most warlike policies is
ethnocentrism, the irrationally exaggerated allegiance of individuals to their kin and fellow
tribesmen. In general, primitive men divide the world into two tangible parts, the near
environment of homes, local villages, kin, friends, tame animals, and witches, and the more
distant universe of neighboring villages, intertribal allies, enemies, wild animals, and
ghosts. This elemental topography makes easier the distinction between enemies who can
be attracted and killed and friends who cannot. the contrast is heightened by reducing
enemies to frightful and even sub-human status.
AKH0925 SOCIETIES WHICH REJECT WAR ARE DESTROYED BY THE MORE
AGGRESSIVE
E.O. Wilson, Harvard Biologist, ON HUMAN NATURE, 1978, p.119-20.
The practice of war is a straightforward example of a hypertrophied biological
predisposition. Primitive men cleaved their universe into friends and enemies and
responded with quick, deep emotion to even the mildest threats emanating from outside
the arbitrary boundary. With the rise of chiefdoms and states, this tendency became
institutionalized, war was adopted as an instrument of policy of some of the new societies,
and those that employed it best became—tragically—the most successful. The evolution
of warfare was an autocatalytic reaction that could not be halted by any people, because
to attempt to reverse the process unilaterally was to fall victim. A new mode of natural
selection was operating at the level of entire societies. In his pioneering work on the
subject Quincy Wright wrote: Out of the warlike peoples arose civilization, while the
peaceful collectors and hunters were driven to the ends of the earth, where they are
gradually being exterminated or absorbed, with only the dubious satisfaction of observing
the nations which had wielded war so effectively to destroy them and to become great, now
victimized by their own instrument.
AKH0926 GOVERNMENT IS NECESSARY FOR INDIVIDUALS TO PURSUE
CIVILIZED LIFE
John Hospers, Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California, THE
LIBERTARIAN ALTERNATIVE, Tibor Machan, ed., 1974, p.12
If each individual had constantly to defend himself against possible aggressors, he would
have to spend a considerable portion of his life in target practice, karate exercises, and
other means of self-defenses, and even so he would probably be helpless against groups
of individuals who might try to kill, maim, or rob him. He would have little time for
cultivating those qualities which are essential to civilized life, nor would improvements
in science, medicine, and the arts be likely to occur. the function of government is to take
this responsibility off his shoulders: the government undertakes to defend him against
aggressors and to punish them if they attack him. When the government is effective in
doing this, it enables the citizen to go about his business unmolested and without constant
fear of his life.
AKH0927 THE STATE IS JUSTIFIED BECAUSE IT WOULD DEVELOP BY
MORALLY PERMISSIBLE MEANS
Robert Nozick, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard, ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA,
1974, p.114-5.
We have discharged our task of explaining how a state would arise from a state of nature
without anyone's rights being violated. The moral objections of the individualist anarchist
to the minimal state are overcome. It is not an unjust imposition of a monopoly; the de
facto monopoly grows by an invisible-hand process and by morally permissible means,
without anyone's rights being violated and without any claims being made to a special right
that others do not possess. And requiring the clients of the de facto monopoly to pay for
the protection of those they prohibit from self-help enforcement against them, far from
being immoral, is normally required by the principle of compensation.

AKH0928 THE STATE IS LEGITIMATE BECAUSE IT WOULD ARISE BY NON-
COERCIVE MEANS
Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey
Paul, ed., 1981, p.39
The arguments of Part I are directed mainly against the anarchist who objects to any state
at all. Nozick does not say that a state is a good thing and we are all better off with a state
than we would be without one. This obvious procedure for dealing with the anarchist
would be foreign to Nozick's entire approach and would set a precedent subversive to his
aim in the second part. Instead he maintains that we can get from a state of nature to a
minimal state without violating anyone's rights, so that there is no point at which anyone
can claim that the state has assumed authority illegitimately.
AKH0929 NOZICK PLAUSIBLY DERIVES THE VOLUNTARY EVOLUTION OF
THE STATE
Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey
Paul, ed., 1981, p.39-40
Nozick's minimal state, or "state-lie entity" as he sometimes calls it, is a kind of protection
agency to which people in the state of nature pay a fee for protection from assault, robbery,
and so on. Nozick argues plausibly that clients of the agency would give up to the agency
their rights to punish violations of their rights, and that one protective association, or
federation of protective associations, would become dominant in each geographical
territory. So, without any express agreements of over-all intention on anyone's part, people
in the state of nature would find themselves with a body that satisfies two fundamental
conditions for being a state: it has a monopoly of force in its territory, and it protects the
rights of everyone within the territory.
AKH0930 LONG TERM SOCIAL TRENDS ARE ANTI-WAR
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.169
Yet there is a strong element of realism in the anticipation of a world without war. such a
world is immanent in the very process of the industrialization of war, as well as in the
altered position of nation-states in the global arena. As was mentioned earlier, Clausewitz's
dictum becomes substantially obsolete with the spread of industrialized weaponry; and
where the borders between nations have mostly been fixed and nation-states cover virtually
the whole of earth's surface, territorial aggrandizement loses the meaning it once had.
Finally, growing interdependence on a global level increases the range of situations in
which similar interests are shared by all states. To envisage a world without war is clearly
utopian, but is by no means wholly lacking in realism.
AKH0931 UTOPIANISM LEADS TO TYRANNY
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.215
Yet it is true that utopian fancies that flow from an unjustified esteem for the power of
reason can also breed monsters of violence, vengefulness, and tyranny, monster the equals
of those overthrown in reason's name.
AKH0932 UTOPIANISM LEADS TO DISASTER
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.20
The disastrous failure of the French Revolution and the aftermath of that failure is, of
course, perhaps the most ringing example of the triumph of inadvertence over intention in
human history. It instilled in Western thinkers a full measure of skepticism concerning
utopian systems and schemes for universal reform. Even before that, during the headiest
moments of early republicanism, the canny Burke had already put his finger on the
weaknesses of abstract philosophizing as a guide to the attainment of social perfection.
AKH0933 INCREMENTAL REFORM IS MORE VALUABLE THAN UTOPIAN
SPECULATION
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.178
To us, it is self-evident that a 1 percent improvement in the efficiency of photo-voltaic
cells, say, is, in environmental terms, worth substantially more than all the utopian eco-
babble ever published. In this sense, we are unabashed technocrats, unashamed of the
instrumentalism behind such assertions. An accomplishment of this kind will almost
certainly not come from the ranks of the ecoradicals, most of whom would, no doubt,
denounce it with scorn as a "techno-fix."
AKH0934 UTOPIA IS INHERENTLY OPPRESSIVE
John William Miller, Professor of Philosophy, Williams College, THE PARADOX OF
CAUSE, 1978, p.38
In a sense, all static utopias are a sign of decadence, and of abdication. We do not describe
the scene of patient progress where minds must be met and convinced. They allow for no
tolerance because they have no instruments for converting conflict into agreement. They
offer only an absolute choice between complete acquiescence or none, and really between
acquiescence and death, or at best exile. For Plato exiled the artists, just as Stalin sent
dissenters to Siberia, and Hitler took them into protective arrest or else performed a blood-
purge. Finished utopias can od nothing else. They must deny the will, except the subjective
will of the autocrat.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 81
AKH0935 POSTMODERN UTOPIANISM ULTIMATELY REACTIONARY
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.250
Back-door utopianism, so characteristic of academic-leftist critics of science, is a sad and,
ultimately, a woefully impatient business. Behind it stands a Romantic discontent that
echoes perilously certain sentiments that were once recognized as reactionary. How much
it will add, in the end, to the burden of outright superstition and ignorance that has always
plagued the American democratic experiment is difficult to say. It is plain, however, that
the underlying disaffection os hostile to enlightenment as such,and not just to the
Enlightenment. What is chiefly discouraging about its new ascendancy in academic life is
the evidence it provides of a tradition of egalitarianism falling under the sway of
obscurantism and muddle. We do not need to convict the paladins of the postmodern left
of any particular superstitious foolishness, in the ordinary sense, to notice that they have
an appalling tendency to condone such foolishness with a relativist not and a
deconstructionist wink.
AKH0936 ANARCHIST IDEAS ARE UTOPIAN
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.472-3.
Another disturbing feature of the anarchist future was that its achievement was indefinitely
postponed until the millennial day of reckoning; it was a kind of revolutionary
pie-in-the-sky, and one was expected to fast until mealtime. For the anarchists who
followed Bakunin and Kropotkin were political and social absolutists, and they displayed
an infinite and consistent contempt for piecemeal reform or for the kind of improvements
in working conditions and wages which trade unions sought and benevolent employers
offered. They believed that all such gains must be temporary and illusory, and that only in
the anarchist millennium would the poor really better themselves. Many of the poor
thought otherwise, and followed the reformists. How right they were-and how wrong the
anarchists-in purely material terms has been shown by the radical change in character of
modern capitalism, which has led to a remarkable broadening in the standard of living and
the scope of leisure in the Western world, and also to the appearance of the welfare state
with its insidious dulling of the edge of resentment.
AKH0937 VAGUENESS OF SOLUTIONS DOOMS ANARCHISM
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.472.
Linked to the failure of the anarchist as revolutionary actionists was the weakness of their
practical proposals for the society that would follow their hypothetical revolution. There
was much honesty in their refusal to make elaborate blueprints of the new world they
hoped to create, but their disinclination to attempt specific proposals led to their producing
a vague and vapid vision of an idyllic society where the instinct of mutual aid would
enable men to create a variety of co-operative relationships unimaginable in the enslaved
present. Primitive and evangelically minded people like the Andalusian peasants could
accept this vision and give it life by their own millenarian longings for the earthly
Kingdom of God where all men would live in simple brotherhood. Intellectuals and artists
could also accept it as a kind of working myth around which their own fantasies and
speculations might crystallize. But ordinary working- and middle-class people, influenced
by nineteenth-century factualism, rejected the anarchist vision because, unlike the
prophetic imaginings of H.G. Wells, it lacked the reassuring concreteness and precision
they desired.
AKH0938 KROPOTKIN'S ANARCHISM LACKED SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIVITY
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.220.
Kropotkin himself might have claimed-though he would have done so in all humility-that
his contribution to the anarchist tradition was the application of the scientific approach to
its practical problems. But his irrepressible optimism, his exaggerated respect for the
nineteenth-century cult of evolution, his irrational faith in the men of the people, deprived
him of true scientific objectivity. His approach, as he sometimes recognized, was as much
intuitive as intellectual, and his compassionate emotion always overcame his cold
reasoning.
AKH0939 PRIVATE ARMIES WOULD UNDERMINE ANARCHY
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, PROPOSED ROADS TO FREEDOM, 1919,
p.123-4.
The third class of difficulties is much the most serious and involves much the most drastic
interference with liberty. I do not see how a private army could be tolerated within an
Anarchist community, and I do not see how it could be prevented except by a general
prohibition of carrying arms. If there were no such prohibition, rival parties would
organize rival forces, and civil war would result. Yet, if there is such a prohibition, it
cannot well be carried out without a very considerable interference with individual liberty.
No doubt, after a time, the idea of using violence to achieve a political object might die
down, as the practice of duelling has done. But such changes of habit and outlook are
facilitated by legal prohibition, and would hardly come about without it. I shall not speak
yet of the international aspect of this same problem, for I propose to deal with that in the
next chapter, but it is clear that the same considerations apply with even greater force to
the relations between nations.

AKH0940 THE EMERGENCE OF PRIVATE ARMIES WOULD EVENTUALLY
DESTROY ANARCHY
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, PROPOSED ROADS TO FREEDOM, 1919,
p.120-1.
Apart from such cases, there would be the very real danger of an organized attempt to
destroy Anarchism and revive ancient oppressions. Is it to be supposed, for example, that
Napoleon, if he had been born into such a community as Kropotkin advocates, would have
acquiesced tamely in a world where his genius could find no scope? I cannot see what
should prevent a combination of ambitious men forming themselves into a private army,
manufacturing their own munitions, and at last enslaving the defenseless citizens, who had
relied upon the inherent attractiveness of liberty. It would not be consistent with the
principles of Anarchism for the community to interfere with the drilling of a private army,
no matter what its objects might be (though, of course, an opposing private army might be
formed by men with different views). Indeed, Kropotkin instances the old volunteers in
Great Britain as an example of a movement on Anarchist lines. Even if a predatory army
were not formed from within, it might easily come from a neighboring nation, or from
races on the borderland of civilization. So long as the love of power exists, I do not see
how it can be prevented from finding an outlet in oppression except by means of the
organized force of the community.
AKH0941 CONFLICT AMONG COMPETING PROTECTION AGENCIES WOULD
INEVITABLY LEAD TO THE STATE
Michael Taylor, Reader in Government, University of Essex, COMMUNITY, ANARCHY,
AND LIBERTY, 1982, p.62.
Other libertarians are less sanguine about the likely outcome of competition between
protection agencies, and admit that the prospect of violence between them (and other
problems peculiar to the provision of order and defense) make necessary a minimal state
whose sole function is the provision of internal and external security; or they argue, as
Robert Nozick has done in Anarchy, State and Utopia, that the upshot of competition
between protection agencies would be the emergence in each area of a single dominant
protection agency (a proto-state, in effect, but not a state), since every individual, if he
wanted to buy protection at all, would gravitate towards the largest firm, for this would
tend to come out on top in disputes with smaller firms.
AKH0942 ANARCHISM CAN'T EFFECTIVELY COUNTER TOTALITARIANISM
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.473-4.
As for Fascism and Nazism, those crude and primitive manifestations of the centralist urge
that marks our age, the anarchist movement showed itself powerless to combat them
effectively in the countries which they dominated and invaded, though individual
anarchists often asserted themselves with self-sacrificing heroism. Only in Spain did
organized anarchism put up a determined resistance, and even there, despite its enormous
following, it collapsed with dramatic suddenness on the day General Yague and his column
marched into Barcelona without a single factory going on strike and without a single
barricade being raised in the streets. This was the last, greatest defeat of the historical
anarchist movement. On that day it virtually ceased to exist as a living cause.
AKH0943 MODERN WAR INEVITABLY DESTROYS ANARCHISM
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.393.
But to point out that there were anarchists in Spain who kept rigorously to their ideals is
not to suggest that even they would have found a way to create and conserve an anarchist
society in the middle of an event so antithetical to libertarian principles and practice as a
modern war. Given the situation, the problem seems to have been insoluble in anarchist
terms. The anarchists in Spain in fact failed both militarily and politically because they
could not remain anarchists and take part in governments and total war. By compromising
they did not make their failure less certain; they merely made it more humiliating.
AKH0944 ANARCHY CAN'T SURVIVE IN THE FACE OF OTHER STATES
Michael Taylor, Reader in Government, University of Essex, COMMUNITY, ANARCHY,
AND LIBERTY, 1982, p.139.
Most state formations, as I noted earlier, are secondary. They owe their development at
least in part to the direct or indirect influence of already formed states. If they are not
actually subjugated, colonized or absorbed by other states, the reactions of these societies
to the presence of states is likely to be the same as the reactions to external threats of the
societies which gave birth to the primary states. That this reaction should have been so
common is little to be wondered at; but insofar as any lessons for the future can be drawn
from this account of how anarchic communities first gave way to (primary or secondary)
states, we can say that it inspires little optimism about the viability of anarchy in a crowded
world and even less optimism about the prospects for the emergence and durability of an
anarchy set in a sea of states.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 82
AKH0945 ANARCHY WOULD HAVE TO BE UNIVERSAL TO SUCCEED
Michael Taylor, Reader in Government, University of Essex, COMMUNITY, ANARCHY,
AND LIBERTY, 1982, p.168-9.
This history of the vulnerability of the anarchic community in the face of societies with
greater political centralisation and concentration of force gives little ground for optimism
about the survival and even the emergence of any substantial region of anarchic
communities. How far the process of building small enclaves of quasi-anarchic community
(such as the present communes) and developing various forms of partial community can
go, it is difficult to say; but the prospects for a sweeping success seem not too bright unless
the movement towards community and anarchy in any area or sphere, at least in its later
stages, is simultaneously matched by similar movements everywhere.
AKH0946 ANARCHISM MUST SUCCEED EVERYWHERE TO SUCCEED
ANYWHERE
Richard Falk, Professor of Political science, Princeton, ANARCHISM, J. Rowland
Pennock and John Chapman, eds., 1978, p.72-3.
The great anarchist success stories have been episodic, short-lived (e.g the Paris Commune
of 1871, the anarchist collectives in parts of Spain during the 1930s, the May uprising in
Paris in 1968) Nowhere have anarchists enjoyed a period of sustained success. Generally,
anarchist success has generated an overpowering reaction of repression, as when the
mercenary soldiery of Versailles crushed and massacred the Paris Communards in May
1871 only weeks after their extraordinary triumph. Anarchists view such failures as
inevitable "first attempts"; Kropotkin calls "the Commune of Paris, the child of a period
of transition . . . doomed to perish" but "the forerunner of social revolution." Murray
Bookchin and Daniel Guerin make a similar assessment of the Paris uprising of 1968,
regarding its occurrence as proof of the anarchist critique, its collapse as evidence that "the
molecular movement below that prepares the condition for revolution" had not yet carried
far enough. On a deeper level, anarchists understand that the prerequisite for anarchist
success anywhere is its success everywhere. It is this vital precondition that is at once so
convincing and so formidable as to call into question whether the anarchist position can
in fact be taken seriously as a progressive alternative to state socialism.
AKH0947 ANARCHY CAN'T ENDURE
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, PROPOSED ROADS TO FREEDOM, 1919, p.211.
On the other hand, Anarchism, which avoids the dangers of State Socialism, has dangers
and difficulties of its own, which make it probable that, within any reasonable period of
time, it could not last long even if it were established. Nevertheless, it remains an ideal to
which we should wish to approach as nearly as possible, and which, in some distant age,
we hope may be reached completely. Syndicalism shares many of the defects of
Anarchism, and, like it, would prove unstable, since the need of a central government
would make itself felt almost at once.
AKH0948 ANARCHISTS HAVE GREAT DIFFICULTY HOLDING POWER
Richard Falk, Professor of Political science, Princeton, ANARCHISM, J. Rowland
Pennock and John Chapman, eds., 1978, p.73.
In essence, not only is it difficult for anarchists to attain power, but once they manage to
do so their "organic institutions" seem incapable of holding it. Their movements will be
liquidated ruthlessly by statists of "the left" or "the right." Given such vulnerability, it may
even be a betrayal of one's followers to expose them to slaughter by mounting a challenge
against the entrenched forces of statism in the absence of either the will or the capabilities
to protect the challengers.
AKH0949 DISORGANIZATION DOOMS ANARCHIST MOVEMENTS
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.471-2.
It is true that in Spain something like a revolutionary situation did exist after the anarchists
and their allies of the C.N.T. had defeated the uprising of the generals in Catalonia and
Levante at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. But the event was thrust upon the
anarchists, not created by them, and their lack of organizational coherence prevented them
from retaining the advantages they had gained; within a few months the revolution had
slipped from their hands. Everywhere, in fact, the anarchists showed themselves to be
highly individualistic amateur rebels, and in this role they were sometimes successful, but
on no occasion did they demonstrate any capacity for the sustained effort that wins and
consolidates a revolution.
AKH0950 ANARCHIST UTOPIANISM RESULTS IN FASCISM
Kenneth Dolbeare, University of Massachusetts, AMERICAN IDEOLOGIES, 1976,
p.154.
Marxists charge anarchism with having no real sense of how fundamental change can or
should be accomplished, only a hazy utopianism that attracts people and then frustrates
them and defeats the cause of revolution. Capitalism has not prepared people for
communism; extensive re-education in the concepts of fraternity, community, mutual
dependency etc. will be necessary. To try to build a new social order while people are still
trapped in capitalist-liberal consciousness will inevitably fail. The danger is that such
potential opponents to the capitalist-liberal regime will give up, turn terrorist in their
frustration, or even rally to the support of a fascist order that falsely promises
socialist-sounding change.

AKH0951 ANARCHISM IS INAPPROPRIATE IN MODERN SOCIETY
David Miller, Oxford, ANARCHISM, 1984, p.181-2.
Should we then simply consign anarchism to the historical dustbin as one of the more
bizarre offshoots of nineteenth century liberal and socialist ideologies? It is hard to believe
that a mass anarchist movement could now be created in the advanced societies of the
West, or, indeed, that if such a movement were to be created it would provide a realistic
alternative to the major ideologies now on offer. The problems that we currently face seem
to underline ever more emphatically our dependence upon one another both within
societies and increasingly between them; and much as we may regret the steady growth of
state regulation of social life and look for ways of counteracting it, the idea of abolishing
the state entirely must strike us as utopian. We have come a very long way from the largely
self-sufficient village community where anarchism found its natural home.
AKH0952 ANARCHISM FAILS IN ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.470.
In the same way, the countries and regions where anarchism was strongest were those in
which industry was least developed and in which the poor were poorest. As progress
engulfed the classic fatherlands of anarchism, as the factory workers replaced the
hand-craftsmen, as the aristocrats became detached from the land and absorbed into the
new plutocracy, anarchism began to lose the main sources of its support.
AKH0953 TRENDS IN MODERN HISTORY ARE CONTRARY TO ANARCHISM
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.469.
The anarchists have always regarded themselves as revolutionaries, and so they are in
theory. In practice, however, organized anarchism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
was really a movement of rebellion rather than a movement of revolution. It was a protest,
a dedicated resistance to the worldwide trend since the middle of the eighteenth century
toward political and economic centralization, with all it implies in terms of the replacement
of personal values by collective values, of the subordination of the individual to the state.
The real social revolution of the modern age has in fact been this process of centralization,
toward which every development of scientific and technological progress has contributed,
which. has welded nations out of regions and which today is creating a single world where
the fundamental differences between regions and peoples and classes are being leveled in
uniformity. The anarchists protested against this revolution in the name of human dignity
and individuality, and their protest was necessary; it was perhaps their greatest
achievement. But it placed them in a line of opposition to the dominant trend in modern
history.
AKH0954 CONDITIONS FOR ANARCHY ARE STILL SEVERAL DECADES AWAY
Richard Falk, Professor of Political science, Princeton, ANARCHISM, J. Rowland
Pennock and John Chapman, eds., 1978, p.76.
Obviously, the objective conditions which require such a reassessment of political forms
are not by themselves sufficient to effect a transformation. Indeed, the very relevance of
these ideas may lead their powerful opponents to regard them as even more dangerous now
than in the past. Prudence and patience are essential in these circumstances. The crisis of
the state system may yet require several decades to develop to the point where eruptions
of spontaneous anarchistic energies would not unleash a variety of devastating backlashes.
AKH0955 TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES DON'T PROVIDE A VIABLE MODEL FOR
MODERN SOCIETIES
David Miller, Oxford, ANARCHISM, 1984, p.155.
The second difficulty is, if anything, still more serious. The traditional societies I have
referred to embodied a world-view which has been irreversibly shattered by the transition
to modern society. They were held together, in large measure, by a set of customary
beliefs, taken on trust by each generation and characteristically backed up by religion.
Such a world-view cannot be recreated at will, even if one should want to. Modern
anarchism has to start with individuals whose outlook has been formed by the sceptical
questioning of modern science and the moral pluralism of an open and fluid society. It has
to solve the problem of social order without presupposing, at the outset, a strong set of
shared beliefs about how life ought to be lived. For that reason it is much more revealing
to look at anarchist experiments carried out under modern conditions than to delve into
vanished forms of life, interesting though the latter may be from a scientific point of view.
AKH0956 SPANISH ANARCHY ISN'T A USEFUL MODEL
Michael Taylor, Reader in Government, University of Essex, COMMUNITY, ANARCHY,
AND LIBERTY, 1982, p.37-8.
One category of putative internal anarchies which do not provide very useful information
relevant to the arguments in this book are the communities and collectives set up by
anarchists themselves in revolutionary situations, most notably those agrarian collectives
of the Spanish Revolution which best approximated total communities. The problem with
these is that, apart from being short-lived (as indeed were some of the intentional
communities referred to in the last paragraph), they were made possible by and existed
precariously in most unusual circumstances, so that they cannot be reliably used as a basis
for generalisations about such things as the maintenance of stateless social order or the
compatibility of community and liberty.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 83
AKH0957 LIMITED ANARCHIST SUCCESSES DON'T PROVE ITS OVERALL
VIABILITY
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.474.
But such scattered examples of constructive anarchist efforts offer suggestions; they do no
more. They do not prove that a complete anarchist society such as Kropotkin, for example,
envisaged can come into existence or that it would work if it did. They merely show that
in certain limited and favorable circumstances voluntary methods of organizing economic
and industrial relations turned out to be at least as practical as authoritarian methods.
AKH0958 ANARCHISM IS GENERALLY INEFFECTIVE IN PRACTICE
David Miller, Oxford, ANARCHISM, 1984, p.181.
We have reached a pessimistic conclusion about the prospects of anarchism as an ideology.
Anarchists have been signally unsuccessful in translating their ideals into a coherent
programme of change. Either they have relied on rational persuasion, and found very few
listeners willing to take them seriously; or they have taken the path of revolution, and
found a seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the organization and methods needed to
carry through a revolution successfully and the kind of society that they hope to see
emerging in its aftermath. On those few occasions when they have been given a chance to
apply their ideals constructively, they have had some unexpected successes, but they have
also encountered intractable problems, particularly the problem of coordinating the
activities of many independent social units without recourse to central authority Finally the
critical questions I have raised in this chapter suggest some serious deficiencies in
anarchism from a theoretical point of view.
AKH0959 ANARCHISM HAS FAILED AS A MOVEMENT
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.468.
Clearly, as a movement, anarchism has failed. In almost a century of effort it has not even
approached the fulfillment of its great aim to destroy the state and build Jerusalem in its
ruins. During the past forty years the influence it once established has dwindled, by defeat
after defeat and by the slow draining of hope, almost to nothing. Nor is there any
reasonable likelihood of a renaissance of anarchism as we have known it since the
foundation of the First International in 1864; history suggests that movements which fail
to take the chances it offers them are never born again.
AKH0960 ANARCHY WOULD RESULT IN CHAOS
James Buchanan, Professor of Economics, Virginia Polytechnic, ANARCHISM, J.
Rowland Pennock and John Chapman, eds., 1978, p.40-1.
The constitutional-contractarian, who looks to his stage two set of ideals, and who adopts
at least some variant of the Hobbesian assumption about human nature, views anarchy, as
an institution, with horror. To remove all laws, all institutions of order, in a world peopled
by Hobbesian men would produce chaos. The contractarian must hold fast to a normative
vision that is not nearly so simplistic as that which is possible either for the libertarian
anarchist or for the collectivist. The contractarian seeks "ordered anarchy," that is, a
situation described as one that offers maximal freedom for individuals within a minimal
set of formalized rules and constraints on behavior. He takes from classical economics the
important idea that the independent actions of many persons can be spontaneously
coordinated through marketlike institutions so as to produce mutually desirable outcomes
without detailed and direct interferences of the state. But he insists, with Adam Smith, that
this coordination can be effective only if individual actions are limited by laws that cannot
themselves spontaneously emerge.
AKH0961 ANARCHY WOULD UNLEASH A FLOOD OF PRIVATE CRIME
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, PROPOSED ROADS TO FREEDOM, 1919,
p.118-20.
Let us begin with the question of private crime. Anarchists maintain that the criminal is
manufactured by bad social conditions and would disappear in such a world as they aim
at creating. No doubt there is a great measure of truth in this view. There would be little
motive to robbery, for example, in an Anarchist world, unless it were organized on a large
scale by a body of men bent on upsetting the Anarchist regime. It may also be conceded
that impulses toward criminal violence could be very largely eliminated by a better
education. But all such contentions, it seems to me, have their limitations. To take an
extreme case, we cannot suppose that there would be no lunatics in an Anarchist
community, and some of these lunatics would, no doubt, be homicidal. Probably no one
would argue that they ought to be left at liberty. But there are no sharp lines in nature; from
the homicidal lunatic to the sane man of violent passions there is a continuous gradation.
Even in the most perfect community there will be men and women, otherwise sane, who
will feel an impulse to commit murder from jealousy, These are now usually restrained by
the fear of punishment, but if this fear were removed, such murders would probably
become much more common, as may be seen from the present behavior of certain soldiers
on leave.
AKH0962 ANARCHY WOULD INCREASE CRIMES OF VIOLENCE
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, PROPOSED ROADS TO FREEDOM, 1919,
p.122-3.
Cruelty to children, crimes of jealousy, rape, and so forth, are almost certain to occur in
any society to some extent. The prevention of such acts is essential to the existence of
freedom for the weak. If nothing were done to hinder them, it is to be feared that the
customs of a society would gradually become rougher, and that acts which are now rare
would cease to be so.

AKH0963 ONLY PUBLIC AUTHORITY CAN LIMIT THE REIGN OF VIOLENCE
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, PROPOSED ROADS TO FREEDOM, 1919,
p.199-200.
The reign of violence in human affairs, whether within a country or in its external
relations, can only be prevented, if we have not been mistaken, by an authority able to
declare all use of force except by itself illegal, and strong enough to be obviously capable
of making all other use of force futile, except when it could secure the support of public
opinion as a defense of freedom or a resistance to injustice. Such an authority exists within
a country: it is the state.
AKH0964 NON-LEGAL SOCIAL CONTROL PROCEDURES ARE TOO
UNPREDICTABLE
David Miller, Oxford, ANARCHISM, 1984, p.176.
What might be said against such informal procedures for sanctioning deviant behaviour?
One problem is that people may not know where they stand. In the absence of a uniform
body of rules, they may be unsure which activities are permitted and which are not. Take
first the individualists' proposal for enforcing justice through voluntary agencies. Even if
there is overall agreement about which personal rights should be protected, there may well
be substantial disagreement about how precisely these rights are to be construed, and about
how compensation is to be assessed. Each time that I find myself in dispute with another
person, the uncertainty starts afresh, because I have no way of knowing what practices the
agencies he favours will follow. There is no reason to believe that the agencies will
spontaneously converge on a uniform set of rules; they are supposed to be competitors, and
they may decide to follow different practices in order to appeal to particular kinds of client.
AKH0965 ANARCHY WOULD PRODUCE ECONOMIC CHAOS
Robert Paul Wolff, Professor of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, IN DEFENSE
OF ANARCHISM, 1970, p.81-2.
Only extreme economic decentralization could permit the sort of voluntary economic
coordination consistent with the ideals of anarchism and affluence. At the present time, of
course, such decentralization would produce economic chaos, but if we possessed a cheap,
local source of power and an advanced technology of small-scale production, and if we
were in addition willing to accept a high level of economic waste, we might be able to
break the American economy down into regional and subregional units of manageable size.
The exchanges between the units would be inefficient and costly-very large inventory
levels, inelasticities of supply and demand, considerable waste, and so forth. But in return
for this price, men would have increasing freedom to act autonomously. In effect, such a
society would enable all men to be autonomous agents, whereas in our present society, the
relatively few autonomous men are-as it were-parasitic upon the obedient, authority
respecting masses.
AKH0966 MALTHUSIAN LIMITS UNDERMINE UTOPIAN ANARCHISM
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.213.
Godwin's conception of universal benevolence was not dissimilar to Kropotkin's idea of
mutual aid, and on it he based his contentions that if men behaved rationally, did their due
share of socially useful work, eliminated wasteful activities, and exploited scientific
discoveries for the general benefit, all could enjoy well-being and still have leisure for
developing their spiritual selves. The resemblance of these arguments to those developed
in The Conquest of Bread is evident. In reply to Godwin, T. R. Malthus brought forward
in 1798 his celebrated theory that there is a natural tendency for population to increase in
a higher ratio than the available supply of food, and that the balance is only preserved by
such phenomena as disease, famine, war, and the general struggle for life in which the
weak are eliminated. Godwin's suggestions, if put into practice, would merely upset the
natural limitation of population, and would thus be self-defeating, since population would
again increase more rapidly than available supplies of food, and famine would restore the
natural balance; hence all talk of a fundamental improvement in human conditions is
merely chimerical.
AKH0967 ANARCHISM LACKS AN ADEQUATE ECONOMIC THEORY
David Miller, Oxford, ANARCHISM, 1984, p.172.
We may say, in short, that neither of the major schools of anarchism has developed an
adequate economic theory. The individualists are stymied by the public goods problem,
the communists by the problem of co-ordination. Proudhon's mutualism, representing a
compromise of sorts between market and communitarian ideals, is perhaps the most
plausible of anarchist theories from an economic point of view; but even here it is
necessary to ask whether the system proposed does not require the support of the state at
a number of crucial points.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 84
AKH0968 AN EFFECTIVE MARKET REQUIRES THE STATE
David Miller, Oxford, ANARCHISM, 1984, p.170.
Market transactions presuppose a number of background features whose very familiarity
makes us inclined to take them for granted. Among these are an agreed definition of
property rights (so that each person knows precisely which goods are his to dispose of),
a set of rules governing contracts (for instance rules prohibiting fraudulent descriptions of
commodities), a common currency (to enable non-simultaneous exchanges to occur) and
general protection against invasion, assault and theft. Without these features we would not
have a market, but something more akin to a Hobbesian war of all against all. But can their
emergence be explained without reference to the state? They are all to some degree public
goods: goods which benefit everyone but which no individual has a private incentive to
provide. From each separate participant's point of view, the best state of affairs is for others
to contribute to the cost of providing the goods, while he merely enjoys the benefits they
create. The question, then, is whether such goods can be provided in the absence of an
agency which compels people to contribute to their cost.
AKH0969 ANARCHIST COMMUNISM WOULD PROVIDE INSUFFICIENT WORK
INCENTIVES
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, PROPOSED ROADS TO FREEDOM, 1919,
p.105-6.
But as regards the second proposal, that there should be no obligation to work, and no
economic reward for work, the matter is much more doubtful. Anarchists always assume
that if their schemes were put into operation practically everyone would work; but
although there is very much more to be said for this view than most people would concede
at first sight, yet it is questionable whether there is enough to be said to make it true for
practical purposes. Perhaps, in a community where industry had become habitual through
economic pressure, public opinion might be sufficiently powerful to compel most men to
work; but it is always doubtful how far such a state of things would be permanent. If public
opinion is to be really effective, it will be necessary to have some method of dividing the
community into small groups, and to allow each group to consume only the equivalent of
what it produces. This will make the economic motive operative upon the group, which,
since we are supposing it small, will feel that its collective share is appreciably diminished
by each idle individual. Such a system might be feasible, but it would be contrary to the
whole spirit of Anarchism and would destroy the main lines of its economic system.
AKH0970 DESTRUCTION OF GOVERNMENT WOULD DESTROY FREEDOM
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, PROPOSED ROADS TO FREEDOM, 1919,
p.111-12.
Respect for the liberty of others is not a natural impulse with most men: envy and love of
power lead ordinary human nature to find pleasure in interferences with the lives of others.
If all men's actions were wholly unchecked by external authority, we should not obtain a
world in which all men would be free. The strong would oppress the weak, or the majority
would oppress the minority, or the lovers of violence would oppress the more peaceable
people.
AKH0971 ANARCHY WOULD RESULT IN PRIVATE TYRANNY
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, PROPOSED ROADS TO FREEDOM, 1919,
p.112-3.
And apart from the love of political power, there is the love of power over individuals. If
threats and terrorism were not prevented by law, it can hardly be doubted that cruelty
would be rife in the relations of men and women, and of parents and children. It is true that
the habits of a community can make such cruelty rare, but these habits, I fear, are only to
be produced through the prolonged reign of law. Experience of backwoods communities,
mining camps and other such places seems to show that under near conditions men easily
revert to a more barbarous attitude and practice. It would seem, therefore, that, while
human nature remains as it is, there will be more liberty for all in a community where some
acts of tyranny by individuals are forbidden, than in a community where the law leaves
each individual free to follow his every impulse.
AKH0972 THERE MAY BE LESS FREEDOM IN A STATELESS WORLD
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.216-7.
The major flaw of Mutual Aid is that it does not acknowledge the tyrannies of custom and
habit as it does those of government and regulation. Once again, Kropotkin shows that he
is willing to accept moral compulsion, whether it is the rule of custom in a primitive tribe
or that of public opinion in an anarchist society, without admitting how far this force also
negates the freedom of the individual. A taboo-ridden native of the primitive Congo had
in reality far less freedom of action than a citizen of the England in which Kropotkin
himself lived with such slight interference. A stateless society, in other words, may be very
far from a free society so far as the personal lives of its members are concerned. This
possibility Kropotkin was never willing to consider seriously.

AKH0973 ANARCHISM RISKS A MORAL TYRANNY IN PLACE OF PHYSICAL
TYRANNY
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.84-5.
The anarchists accept much too uncritically the idea of an active public opinion as an easy
way out of the problem of dealing with antisocial tendencies. Few of them have given
sufficient thought to the danger of a moral tyranny replacing a physical one, and the frown
of the man next door becoming as much a thing to fear as the sentence of the judge. And
some of them have undoubtedly been positively attracted by the idea of radiating moral
authority; anarchism has had its Pharisees like every other movement for human
regeneration.
AKH0974 ANARCHY CAN LEAD TO THE TOTALITARIANISM OF PUBLIC
OPINION
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.84.
In this connection, George Orwell once wrote an essay on Swift (a writer; incidentally,
much admired by Godwin),. in which he pointed out that in the anarchistic society of the
Houyhnhnms in Gulliver's Travels, "exhortation" was as powerful as compulsion in any
other society. Orwell continued: This illustrates very well the totalitarian tendency which
is implicit in the anarchist or pacifist vision of Society. In a Society where there is no law,
and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public
opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less
tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not," the
individual can practice a certain amount of eccentricity; when they are supposedly
governed by "love" and "reason," he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and
think in exactly the same way as everyone does.
AKH0975 SOCIAL CONTROL UNDER ANARCHY UNDERMINES FREEDOM
David Miller, Oxford, ANARCHISM, 1984, p.174-5.
The anarchist view that social order can largely be achieved through moral self-regulation
therefore looks most plausible when considered in the context of a small, stable community
- the kind of community, in fact, that has characteristically been eroded by the
liberalization and industrialization of society. Now whatever virtues such communities
may have led, personal freedom was not prominent among them. To be more specific, the
freedom which is crucially lacking in such a community is the freedom to withdraw from
an established pattern of life and to create a new one in association with others whom one
finds congenial and sympathetic. This is not a freedom which has always been valued, but
it is widely valued nowadays, not least by anarchists who often contrast the 'free
associations' and 'affinity groups' that would form in a stateless society with the rigid
organizations that exist in the present one.
AKH0976 INFORMAL SOCIAL PRESSURES LIMIT FREEDOM AS MUCH AS THE
STATE
David Miller, Oxford, ANARCHISM, 1984, p.154-5.
There are two difficulties with this evidence. First, although the evidence referred to does
indeed show that the state is not a necessary condition for maintaining social order and so
forth, it is much less clear that the methods of social control which are practised in these
societies are compatible with anarchist ideals. The main point of contrast with the modern
state is that, instead of a concentrated and formal system for enforcing social rules, there
is a diffuse and informal system. The sanctions faced by potential rule-breakers include the
threat of private retaliation, the threat to withhold cooperation in future, various kinds of
social pressure (gossip, shaming and so forth), and the threat of supernatural punishment.
Anarchists may perhaps find these less obnoxious than the mechanical processes of law.
Nevertheless it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that members of these societies have
their freedom seriously restricted, both in the sense that many actions they might otherwise
consider performing are rendered ineligible, and in the sense that the range of choices they
might make about how to live their lives is drastically narrowed by the power of custom
and tradition.
AKH0977 ANARCHY UNDERMINES THE PREDICTABILITY NEEDED TO FORM
LIFE PLANS
David Miller, Oxford, ANARCHISM, 1984, p.177.
Anarchists may retort that the certainty I am talking about is valued only by people who
have been brought up in a law-ridden society. Why should predictability matter if I can be
assured that any case in which I am involved will be settled fairly? I agree that (in contrast
to some of the other critical issues raised in this chapter) certainty about the future is not
a value to which anarchists themselves attach much weight. It is, nonetheless, an important
consideration for most people, because such predictability makes it possible to plan one's
life and one's projects knowing that they will not be interfered with. A regime of legal
rights, harsh though it may be in some of its effects, does give this assurance.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 85
AKH0978 THE STATE LIMITS SOME FREEDOMS TO PRESERVE MORE
IMPORTANT ONES
William Ophuls, former Professor of Political Science, Northwestern and A. Stephen
Boyan, Professor of Political Science, University of Maryland, ECOLOGY AND THE
POLITICS OF SCARCITY REVISITED, 1992, p.195-6.
Beyond telling us that the answer to the tragedy is "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon
by the majority of the people affected"-by which he means social restraint, not naked
force-Hardin avoids political prescription. However, he does suggest that unrestrained
exercise of our liberties does not bring us real freedom: "Individuals locked into the logic
of the commons are free only to bring on universal ruin; once they see the necessity of
mutual coercion, they become free to pursue other goals." By recognizing the necessity to
abandon many natural freedoms we now believe we possess, we avoid tragedy and
"preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms." There are obvious dangers in
a regime of "mutual coercion," but without restraints on individuals, the collective
selfishness and irresponsibility generated by the logic of the commons will destroy the
spaceship, so that any sacrifice of freedom by the crew members is clearly the lesser evil.
After all, says Hardin, "injustice is preferable to total ruin," so that "an alternative to the
commons need not be perfectly just to be preferable" (Hardin 1968,pp.1247-1248).
AKH0979 AN OPEN AND FLUID SOCIETY REQUIRES RULE OF LAW
David Miller, Oxford, ANARCHISM, 1984, p.178-9.
I have offered, in effect, a defence of the rule of law (as this notion has traditionally been
understood) against the anarchist idea that disputes can be settled by informally arranged
arbitration and discipline. One further point may be worth adding. The informal method
seems most likely to be successful in those small and stable communities where (as I
argued earlier) moral self-regulation will in any case be most effective. For in such
communities, the decisions that are reached in contested cases may amount, over time, to
a kind of common law which can then be applied to new cases as they arise. This is likely
to happen, in particular, because there will be substantial agreement about the principles
to be applied in each case. In an open and fluid society such agreement is unlikely to
emerge; so there will be no basis on which case law can be built up. In such a society, the
advantages of authoritative legislation which is then enforced as impartially as possible by
professional judges seem very striking.
AKH0980 HUMANS MUST BE FORCED TO BE FREE
William Ophuls, former Professor of Political Science, Northwestern and A. Stephen
Boyan, Professor of Political Science, University of Maryland, ECOLOGY AND THE
POLITICS OF SCARCITY REVISITED, 1992, p.199.
The tragedy of the commons also exemplifies the political problem that agitated the
eighteenth-century French political philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, who made a
crucial distinction between the "general will" and the "will of all." The former is what
reasonable people, leaving aside their self-interest and having the community's interests
at heart, would regard as the right and proper course of action. The latter is the mere
addition of the particular wills of the individuals forming the polity, based not on a
conception of the common good but only on what serves their own self-interest. The
tragedy of the commons is simply a particularly vicious instance of the way in which the
"will of all" falls short of the true common interest. In essence, Rousseau's answer to this
crucial problem in The Social Contract is not much different from Hobbes's: Man must be
"forced to be free"-that is, protected from the consequences of his own selfishness and
shortsightedness by being made obedient to the common good or "general will," which
represents his real self-interest. Rousseau thus wants political institutions that will make
people virtuous.
AKH0981 EVEN IF FREEDOM IS THE GREATEST SOCIAL GOOD, ANARCHY
ISN'T JUSTIFIED
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, PROPOSED ROADS TO FREEDOM, 1919, p.111.
Government and Law, in their very essence, consist of restrictions on freedom, and
freedom is the greatest of political goods. A hasty reasoner might conclude without further
ado that Law and government are evils which must be abolished if freedom is our goal. But
this consequence, true or false, cannot be proved so simply. In this chapter we shall
examine the arguments of Anarchists against law and the State. We shall proceed on the
assumption that freedom is the supreme aim of a good social system; but on this very basis
we shall find the Anarchist contentions very questionable.
AKH0982 ANARCHIST COMMUNITIES WOULD DESTROY INDIVIDUALISM
David Miller, Oxford, ANARCHISM, 1984, p.160.
This strongly suggests that communities can only remain stable, under modern conditions,
by structuring themselves in a way that anarchists would find repugnant. The virus of
individualism has taken a deep hold. To eradicate it requires a stringent method of
subjecting the individual to group discipline. Anarchists will protest, of course, that the
freedom they value is not the freedom of the willful individualist who turns his back on
his social obligations, but the freedom which manifests itself in social solidarity. As
Kropotkin put it, their goal is 'the individuality which attains the greatest individual
development possible through practising the highest communist sociability in what
concerns both its primordial needs and its relationship with others in general'. But this
development is supposed to occur spontaneously through ordinary contact between person
and person, not to be brought about deliberately through a set of conditioning mechanisms.

AKH0983 ANARCHY UNDERMINES INDIVIDUALISM
Gerald Gaus and John Chapman, Professors of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh,
ANARCHISM, J. Rowland Pennock and John Chapman, eds., 1978, p.xxii-iii.
Donald McIntosh says that anarchism is "inherently collectivistic," and so is in basic
agreement with Wieck on this point. However, McIntosh presents an entirely different
interpretation of the emotional and moral climate of an anarchist society. Anarchism is not
the outcome of deep respect for individual independence and freedom. Rather, according
to McIntosh a "passion for equality" inspires anarchist morality. This passion determines
attitudes toward authority. "The core of anarchism is the rejection of all political authority
whatsoever." But the egalitarian mentality does sanction intense "peer authority" to induce
both unanimity and conformity. "The psychological prototype of the anarchist community
is an adolescent gang. . ." Hence anarchism is not rightly conceived as a radical form of
liberalism. "Those who have espoused anarchism on individualistic grounds are in error."
Rather, McIntosh concludes, it is a species of moral collectivism, peculiar to which is
"government without politics," based on an absence of personal independence, coupled
with revulsion against hierarchical authority. These are the psychodynamics that McIntosh
discerns at the heart of the anarchist quest for fraternal unanimity.
AKH0984 ANARCHISM REJECTS THE AUTONOMOUS INDIVIDUAL
Kenneth Dolbeare, University of Massachusetts, AMERICAN IDEOLOGIES, 1976,
p.145-6.
True anarchism is communitarian in character, and stresses the fulfillment of the individual
through development of close personal relations with other individuals in a new, sharing,
mutually-dependent community. True anarchism involves the integration of the individual
in a new society more congenial to humankind's true nature. In effect, anarchism redefines
what being an "individual" means. It emphatically does not endorse the isolation and
autonomy that American individualism insists upon.
AKH0985 ANARCHY UNDERMINES BOTH JUSTICE AND INDIVIDUAL SAFETY
George Woodcock, University of Washington, ANARCHISM, 1962, p.10-11.
The Girondin Brissot, for example, demanding the suppression of the Enrages, whom he
called anarchists, declared in 1793, "it is necessary to define this anarchy." He went on to
do so: Laws that are not carried into effect, authorities without force and despised, crime
unpunished, property attacked, the safety of the individual violated, the morality of the
people corrupted, no constitution, no government, no justice, these are the features of
anarchy.
AKH0986 JUSTICE COULDN'T BE EFFECTIVELY ADMINISTERED UNDER
ANARCHY
David Miller, Oxford, ANARCHISM, 1984, p.178.
The anarcho-communist idea of administering justice by general assembly faces a rather
different problem. The danger here is that discussion of a particular case may be distorted
by disagreements of a more general kind. Suppose, for instance, that a community is
divided into two sections, one favouring longer hours of work and a higher standard of
living and the other favouring shorter hours and a lower standard. Suppose that a
prominent member of the second section is called before the assembly on the grounds that
he is workshy. In his defence he may argue that he is working as hard as he thinks that he
should, and that if others would follow his example everyone would be better off as a
result. It is clearly impossible here to disentangle the culpability of the person concerned
from the general issue at stake. The problem arises because no distinction has been made
between legislation - laying down general rules to cover all cases - and adjudication -
applying the rules to a particular case. It is theoretically possible, of course, for a body
made up of the same people to act at one time as a legislative body and at another time as
a judicial body; but such a separation will clearly be difficult to maintain in practice, and
it is no accident that those who have favoured the separation of powers have also argued
that the powers in question should be divided between several independent bodies.
AKH0987 THE NATION STATE PROVIDES A NEEDED SENSE OF PERSONAL
IDENTITY
David Miller, Oxford, ANARCHISM, 1984, p.180.
The first response reveals something of the narrowness of the anarchist view of human
nature. It is true that a great deal that is mythical may be incorporated into the idea of
national identity: history may be rewritten to emphasize the past glories of the nation; old
legends and folklore may be artificially revived and embellished; and so forth. But none
of this would be possible if the idea did not answer a deep-seated human need: the need
to see oneself as part of a larger whole with an identity, a history, and quite possibly a
mission to the future as well. This need can be met by means other than nationality: by
religion, for instance, or by ethnic identity (though the latter often turns in due course into
a form of nationalism). The anarchist, however, offers nothing to replace the nation: his
ideal society is devoid of any features which might serve as a focus of identity.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 86
AKH0988 ANARCHY VIOLATES THE SENSE OF NATIONAL IDENTITY
David Miller, Oxford, ANARCHISM, 1984, p.181.
Anarchists have seen only the repressive aspects of the state: they have seen it as an enemy
of personal freedom and as an upholder of economic exploitation. Consequently they have
been amazed to discover that it could attract the loyalty even of those subjects who profit
from it least; in particular they have been bewildered at the ease with which national
loyalties have displaced class loyalties in time of war. Faced with this evidence, their only
response has been to point to the vast propaganda machine that the state has at its disposal
fog whipping up nationalistic fervour. What they fail to see is that the tune can only evoke
such a reaction because it strikes a sympathetic chord in the heart of the hearer. National
sensibilities can be artificially inflamed, but they cannot be created out of nothing. Their
blindness to this fact and its political implications may be a major factor in explaining the
anarchists' failure to win many converts among the masses of modern Europe and America.
AKH0989 ANARCHY WOULD MASSIVELY INCREASE DRUG USE
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, PROPOSED ROADS TO FREEDOM, 1919, p.137.
The State, in spite of what Anarchists urge, seems a necessary institution for certain
purposes. Peace and war, tariffs, regulation of sanitary conditions and of the sale of
noxious drugs, the preservation of a just system of distribution: these, among others, are
functions which could hardly be performed in a community in which there was no central
government. Take, for example, the liquor traffic, or the opium traffic in China. If alcohol
could be obtained at cost price without taxation, still more if it could be obtained for
nothing, as Anarchists presumably desire, can we believe that there would not be a great
and disastrous increase of drunkenness? China was brought to the verge of ruin by opium,
and every patriotic Chinaman desired to see the traffic in opium restricted. In such matters
freedom is not a panacea, and some degree of legal restriction seems imperative for the
national health.
AKH0990 ANTI-GOVERNMENT RHETORIC ENCOURAGES TERRORISM
CQ RESEARCHER, July 21, 1995, p.641.
Some observers say that all the anti-government rhetoric unleashed since the early 1980s
has the potential to legitimize the paranoid, anti-government feelings some people have
and spur them to commit violent acts against government bureaucrats, as in Oklahoma
City. "This . . . is certainly not what House Speaker Newt Gingrich [R-Ga.] had in mind
in his denunciations of the national government," writes historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
"But the speaker blamed the murder by a South Carolina woman of her two children on the
poisoning of the culture by liberal Democrats, and his own logic must indict the
anti-government demagogues as unwitting accomplices in the Oklahoma City outrage. Is
it too much to hope that this will encourage the speaker in rhetorical restraint? (Answer:
Yes, it is probably too much to hope.)"
AKH0991 THE GREAT SOCIETY MADE MAJOR ADVANCES
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.77
In the wake of the environmental programs, pollution levels in the nation's air were
generally reversed, and pollution of the nation's waters was checked. A single generation
of Americans realized these accomplishments, enough perhaps for any generation to leave
as its legacy. Notwithstanding the crescendo of criticism that ushered out the decade of the
1970s, the post Eisenhower era was in fact an age of distinguished public achievement.
AKH0992 THERE'S NO ALTERNATIVE TO GOVERNMENT
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.77
Nor could such advances have been brought about without large-scale governmental
programs. And this is the very crux of the matter. A key lesson of the post-Eisenhower era
is that the government's domestic programs grew to be large because no other plan of
action could have worked. This is as true of the fight to reduce poverty as it is of the
struggle against environmental pollution.
AKH0993 GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS HAVE REDUCED THE POVERTY RATE
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.122
The "net" poverty rate—that is the poverty rate including "non-cash" items like food
stamps—was down to 6 percent in 1979. But the rate was nearly 30 percent back in 1950
(Murray's estimate). It was 22 percent in 1960, and 12 percent in 1970. That's a decrease,
not an increase, and a portion of the decrease is surely ascribable to "the programs."
AKH0994 GOVERNMENT POLICY HAS MASSIVELY REDUCED ELDERLY
POVERTY
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.122
Net poverty for the elderly in Murray's time frame went down from about 40 percent to
about 4 percent. But this decline happened largely due to what Murray condemns, namely,
American social policy—which includes Social Security increases, and the advent of
Medicare and Supplemental Security Income.

AKH0995 MAJOR REDUCTIONS IN POVERTY WERE DUE TO GOVERNMENT
PROGRAMS
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.123-4
If you take the broad picture from 1959 to 1984, you are talking about a drop in poverty
from 22 percent to 8 or 9 percent. That's a drop of two-thirds. That is not a failure. It would
seem to me that would be characterized as a partial success. It leaves twenty million people
in poverty; that's a lot of people in poverty. I personally think the government has a role
and a duty to try to get those people out of poverty. Why did this happen? It seems to be
fairly elemental: it happened because the government threw money at problems. If you
give poor people money or the equivalent of money, and then you try to measure it, you
are going to find that fewer people are poor.
AKH0996 GOVERNMENT SUBSTANTIALLY LESSENS INCOME INEQUALITY
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.135
Inequality is also substantially lessened when all money is counted. as officially measured,
the poorest fifth of American households gets only 3.8 percent of aggregate income. But
under the adjusted, and more accurate, formula they get 4.9 percent. (That is an increase
of 29 percent.) Is the government responsible for this upgrading? Yes. Without
government money transfers, the poverty rate would be 21 percent—40 percent for blacks.
Without government money, the poorest fifty would only get 1.1 percent of the income pie.
Heartening. Whether you like the idea or not, at least the government seems to be doing
what it set out to do.
AKH0997 THE WAR ON POVERTY WAS SUCCESSFUL
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.126
In some important ways, the "war on poverty" has been successful. In 1959, the poverty
rate for the elderly was 35 percent. In 1986 it was 12 percent, or somewhere between 3
percent and 8 percent if you count in (properly) the "non-cash" benefits. Poverty among
married-couple families has declined from 19 percent in 1959 to 7 percent in 1986, or 5
percent, counting "non-cash."
AKH0998 GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IN THE 60S REDUCED POVERTY 60%
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.32-3
Perhaps the best overall indicator of the substantial progress made by the nation in the
battle against poverty after 1960 is that by the second half of the 1970s only 4 to 8 percent
of the American public remained beneath the poverty level compared with the 18 percent
in 1960. these figures take into account the income Americans received from every source,
including income from all private economic activities and the private sector as well as from
governmental programs. In the space of one generations, the economic growth of the items
combined with the government's programs had reduced poverty among Americans by
about 60 percent.
AKH0999 GOVERNMENT ANTI-POVERTY EFFORTS ARE GENERALLY
EFFECTIVE
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.57
Third, the government's programs to attach poverty, though at times seriously flawed,
frequently were effective. They reduced poverty by more than half. they alleviated some
of the grimmest conditions attendant to poverty, and they did so across the whole range of
human needs pertaining to serious malnutrition, inadequate medical care, and overcrowded
housing. In providing job training, they raised the economic fortunes of thousands of
Americans. In providing early education to low-income children, they increased the
potential of a great number of these children for success in both school and later
employment.
AKH1000 POVERTY REDUCTION HAS BEEN ALMOST ENTIRELY DUE TO
GOVERNMENT
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.58
In 1980, one in fifteen Americans faced the desperation of poverty, compared with about
one in five americans just a generation earlier. This was accomplished, almost entirely, by
the government.
AKH1001 GOVERNMENT WAS FAR MORE EFFECTIVE THAN GROWTH IN
REDUCING POVERTY
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.35
Obviously, the economy's growth during these highly prosperous years alleviated poverty
only marginally. In contrast to private economic performance, consider the performance
of the programs of government. As a result of the government's programs, more than half
of the remaining 19 percent of impoverished Americans rose above the poverty line,
leaving about 9 percent of the American people below the poverty line by 1972; and by the
late 1970s that figure was further reduced to between 7 and 8 percent, and possibly even
lower.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 87
AKH1002 GOVERNMENT IS FAR BETTER THAN THE MARKET IN REDUCING
POVERTY
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.43-4
Despite these circumstances, the government programs of the post-Eisenhower era reduced
the percentage of Americans living in poverty by more than half, greatly surpassing the
impact of even a substantial expansion of the private economy, which itself reduced
poverty by about 10 percent. Moreover, the private economy concentrated its smaller
contribution on helping those Americans who were in the strongest economic position. The
government's programs made their far larger contribution by reaching, and reducing
poverty within, the economically less-competitive groups of American people, groups of
Americans whose situations had generally been ignored by the vigorous expansion of the
private sector.
AKH1003 REDUCTIONS IN POVERTY WEREN'T JUST DUE TO GROWTH
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.34-5
When one takes all income except that transferred to individuals through governmental
programs, census evidence for 1965 indicates that about 21.3 percent of the public would
have been living in poverty; in 1972, again considering all sources of income except that
received from governmental programs, census figures show that about 19.2 percent of the
public would have been living in poverty, about one-tenth less than in 1965. Thus, the
private sector, in these times of substantial economic growth, reduced the percentage of
Americans living in poverty by about one in every ten Americans' and exclusive of
governmental programs, even by 1972 almost one in five Americans would still have been
living in poverty.
AKH1004 GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IS NEEDED TO REDUCE POVERTY
IN DISADVANTAGED GROUPS
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.39
The circumstances of the 1960s and early 1970s demonstrate that while a prosperous
economy may benefit the stronger economic groups, its impact on weaker groups can
equally be nonexistent, reducing some to even more dire situations. The government's
programs were vital in fighting poverty precisely because the private sector was itself
incapable of making more than a marginal dent in poverty among the many millions of
Americans who remained trapped within the weaker economic groups, either too old to get
work or channeled into dead-end jobs that often paid little more than half-time wages for
full-time work. Including their dependents more than 30 million Americans lived in such
families.
AKH1005 THE PRIVATE SECTOR CAN'T SOLVE POVERTY
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.57
First, poverty in America cannot always be overcome by working continuously full time.
To this reality, more than 5 million members of American families can testify even today.
Second, vigorous economic growth in the private sector does not necessarily reduce
poverty more than marginally. The years of some of the greatest sustained peacetime
economic growth in many generations)the economic growth of the middle years of the
post-Eisenhower era)powerfully attest to this point.
AKH1006 ONLY DIRECT ASSISTANCE CAN RAISE MANY FROM POVERTY
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.51.
Sometimes we forget, however, that full-time employment is not always feasible for large
numbers of people: for the elderly, for the permanently ill or disabled, and possibly also
for most single heads of families with very young children. Many millions of impoverished
Americans are members of these groups. The manpower programs were relevant to
comparatively few of these people. To enable these Americans to rise out of poverty, the
various direct assistance and in-kind programs of government constitute the only realistic
help that could have been made available. Nothing else would substitute.
AKH1007 GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS IMPROVED HEALTH AMONG THE POOR
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.47-8.
The best single index of a community's general health is reputed to be its infant mortality
rate. From 1965 to 1975, the overall infant mortality rate among the poor fell by fully 33
percent. Gains among blacks were particularly evident. Between 1950 and 1965, before
the great expansion in the federal medical and nutritional programs, the infant mortality
rate among blacks barely fell, from 44.5 per 1,000 births in 1950 to 40.3 in 1965.
Following the expansion of the programs, the rate of black infant mortality declined
quickly, from 40.3 in 1965 to 30.9 in 1970, and to 24.2 in 1975. There thus occurred about
a fivefold increase in the speed of decline in the black infant mortality rate after 1965, a
change about twice as pronounced as that occurring in the non-minority population. Other
examples of the impact of poverty programs on the mortality rates among lower-income
Americans abound. The infant mortality rates in some impoverished geographical areas
were reduced by 50 percent within three to four years following the introduction of
government-initiated nutritional and medical programs.

AKH1008 MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SUBSTANTIALLY INCREASED DOCTOR
VISITS
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.46-7.
Inequality describes the situation encountered by the medical programs and the programs
for the elderly that were enacted in the middle of the 1960s. By 1970, only five years later,
notable changes had already taken place, positive changes that were to continue into the
1970s. By 1970, the percentage of people living in poverty who had never visited a
physician was reduced from 19 percent in 1963 to 8 percent. The percentage of
impoverished persons seeing a doctor at least once a year approached that of high-income
persons. The numbers of prenatal visits to physicians made by impoverished pregnant
women rose dramatically. Also, the numbers of visits made to general physicians by
impoverished persons increased. Reflecting the substantially higher rate of illness and
disease among impoverished people, the number of visits to general physicians grew to
average 4.9 a year per individual among impoverished persons by 1970, as compared with
3.8 visits a year per individual among middle- and high-income persons.
AKH1009 GOVERNMENT INCREASED ACCESS OF THE POOR TO MEDICAL
CARE
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.47.
Indeed, there can be little question that between 1963 and 1970 lower-income Americans
gained increased access to medical care, an increase that is closely associated with the
introduction of the federal medical programs. The accomplishments of the nutritional and
the medical components of the poverty programs were associated, in turn, with substantial
improvements in the health of impoverished people.
AKH1010 BEFORE MEDICAID MANY POOR HAD NO MEDICAL CARE AT ALL
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.46.
A similar conclusion pertains to the results of governmental programs in the medical
sphere. In 1963, before the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid, fully one in five of
those Americans living beneath the poverty level had never been examined by a physician,
at least not within their memory. In many respects, use of medical care was significantly
lower among low-income people as compared with middle- and high-income groups,
despite the higher incidence of illness and disease among impoverished persons.
AKH1011 FOOD STAMPS ALMOST COMPLETELY ELIMINATED
MALNUTRITION
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.45-6.
The Field Foundation's observations suggest that the government's nutritional programs
were almost fully effective in reducing flagrant malnutrition among Americans in locales
of concentrated poverty across the nation, among both adults and children. It must be
understood that 83 percent of the food-stamp benefits went to persons whose income
would otherwise have fallen below the poverty level. Dr. Gordon Harper, another member
of the Field Foundation team, observed that since 1967 there had been "a striking decrease
in the number of grossly visible signs of malnutrition. Food stamps have made a critical
difference."
AKH1012 GOVERNMENT EFFORTS DECREASED OVERCROWDED HOUSING
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.49.
Although the government played only a part, the combination of these forces accomplished
much. In 1940, 20.2 percent of American households lived in overcrowded housing
conditions (housing occupied by more than one person per room); twice as many, or 40
percent of black and other minority households, lived in overcrowded housing. Gradually,
overcrowded housing has been reduced. In 1950,16 percent of American households lived
in overcrowded housing; by 1960 the figure was about 12 percent, by 1970 about 9
percent, and by 1976 less than 5 percent of all American households lived in overcrowded
housing. The figure for black and minority families residing in overcrowded housing was
reduced by more than 50 percent between 1940 and 1970.
AKH1013 GOVERNMENT JOB TRAINING WAS EFFECTIVE
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.52-3
The most thorough study on the results of governmental programs over the long term
concerns the effects of job training and job creation under the Comprehensive Employment
and Training Act. This study, the first of its kind, examined the employment careers of
people for the five years subsequent to their CETA employment, covering the histories of
1,136 workers in and around the Baltimore area form 1973 through 1978. Most of the
CETA participants were members of groups traditionally hard hit by unemployment: 60
percent were black. The study, carried out by Johns Hopkins University, took seven years
to complete. The Johns Hopkins team discovered that the employment of CETA
participants jumped significantly following participation in the CETA program and that
it continued to improve over the long term.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 88
AKH1014 GOVERNMENT JOB PROGRAMS INCREASED WAS LEVELS
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.53
The findings of the Baltimore study also show a significant increase in the wage levels of
the CETA participants. Comparing the wages of the participants employed before entering
CETA with the real wages (after discounting for inflation) earned by the same participants
after completing the program indicates an increase 15 percent. Starting at 70 percent of the
average wage in the Baltimore area, CETA participants had advanced to 89 percent of the
average wage by 1978. The results of the only long-term analysis of a public jobs program
suggest that the program was quite successful and that the program's impact did not
diminish.
AKH1015 COST-EFFECTIVENESS STUDIES SUPPORT JOB TRAINING
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.55
Most studies have discovered that the results of on-the-job training programs are even
superior to those of the in-house or institutional programs. In short, the great majority of
cost-effectiveness studies on the manpower training programs suggest that these programs
benefitted not only hundreds of thousands of participants but also the nation and the
taxpayers.
AKH1016 JOB TRAINING IS COST-EFFECTIVE
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.54.
Analyses of the federal government's job-training programs under the earlier Manpower
Development and Training Act have found, even more uniformly, that these programs
produced effective results. By 1965, seven of ten graduates of MDTA training programs
had been placed in the type of job for which they had been trained, including 94 percent
of the participants completing on-the-job training. The overall dropout rate was less than
that of the nation's high schools. Some estimates indicated that the taxes paid by the newly
employed MDTA graduates would repay the costs of their training in five years. Nearly
every study of the Manpower Training and Development Act programs published after
1965 through to the establishment of CETA found similar results. Of the assessments using
cost-benefit analysis, the total benefits arising from the programs exceeded total costs in
almost every case, at times surpassing an excess benefit over cost by more than 100
percent.
AKH1017 HEAD START IS EFFECTIVE
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.56.
In comparing children who participated in Head Start with those who did not, the study
found that children who participated before the age of 6 were about 60 percent less likely
to be assigned to special education classes in grade school or high school (thereby
producing a savings for their school systems); were about 45 percent less likely to be held
back a grade (again producing a substantial savings to the schools); exhibited a 7-point
increase in their IQ scores as an immediate result of the program, with a long-term increase
on average of about half that; had more favorable perceptions of the quality of their
schoolwork when in high school than did their non-Head Start cohorts: and were more
likely to want to pursue higher education at a college or university. Needless to say, the
parents of the Head Start children were practically unanimous in their enthusiasm for the
program, a feeling that remained even among those parents who were interviewed almost
a decade later.
AKH1018 HEAD START IS COST EFFECTIVE
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.56.
Did the benefits exceed the costs? In reducing the number of children who otherwise
would have been held back in grade or who would have required special education later
and other such benefits, one study estimates that the benefits of Head Start have amounted
to approximately double the costs.
AKH1019 GOVERNMENT ACTION DECREASED AIR AND WATER POLLUTION
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.68.
The nation thus experienced an absolute reversal in air pollution trends during the 1960s
and 1970s, it also avoided further deterioration of its waters, the area in which
governmental regulation was most confined. As with progress against poverty, these
accomplishments are well worth attention, though certainly they remain some distance
from perfection.
AKH1020 THE CLEAN AIR ACT DECREASED AIR POLLUTION
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.65-6.
Progress is also reflected in the improving emission records of new automobiles. The 1970
amendments to the Clean Air Act called for significant reductions in emissions by new
automobiles on pain of stiff Fines for offending vehicles. By 1978, the emission of
hydrocarbons by new automobiles had declined by more than two-thirds and that of carbon
monoxide and nitrogen oxides had declined by half and one-third, respectively.

AKH1021 GOVERNMENT POLLUTION REDUCTION WAS COST EFFECTIVE
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.68.
Although it is difficult to measure the total costs and benefits of pollution control with
great precision, an attempt to do so was made by the Council on Environmental Quality
in a report that consolidated the findings of a series of independent 1978 studies that had
separately attempted to calculate costs and benefits. The report found that in 1978 the
benefits of air-pollution controls with respect to health and other concerns could be
reasonably estimated at about $21.4 billion. The costs borne by government to administer
air-pollution controls, and by the private sector to purchase and install pollution controls,
totaled about $16.6 billion. A similar estimate for the 1970s for the water-pollution control
programs is not available.
AKH1022 GOVERNMENT WASTE IS MUCH EXAGGERATED
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.70.
Waste, abuse, extravagance, and fraud-exactly how serious were these four components
of government inefficiency? "I call [theml the four horsemen of the budget apocalypse.
Actually, they are tired old nags that have been trotted out by every presidential challenger.
No more than $4 billion could be saved that way," according to one respected economist,
Walter Heller, professor of economics at the University of Minnesota and former chairman
of the Council of Economic Advisers.
AKH1023 WASTE IN DOMESTIC PROGRAMS IS RELATIVELY LOW
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.71.
Few noticed that about half the waste identified in the report came, amazingly, not from
the domestic areas at all but from the foreign and defense areas. All the domestic programs
taken together were responsible for only about half. Also, the span of time the report
covered was not a year but eighteen months. When adjusted for these considerations, the
report had actually divulged a yearly total of $11.8 billion in waste in the functioning of
the domestic programs-not a spindly sum, to be sure, but nevertheless a great distance from
the created impression of more than $30 billion of waste annually in the domestic realm.
Since overall domestic spending totaled approximately $370 billion in 1979, the
inefficiencies in the domestic realm attributed by the special report to the four horsemen
of the budget apocalypse amounted to about 3 percent.
AKH1024 FRAUD AND WASTE ARE MUCH GREATER IN BUSINESS THAN
GOVERNMENT
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.74-5.
Nor should one ignore the fraud and abuse that occurs in private businesses. In the middle
of the 1970s the United States Chamber of Commerce calculated that fraud, embezzlement,
and other forms of white-collar crime totaled as much as $40 billion a year in private
business and industry, costs that (like the top salaries and the showcase headquarters) are
largely passed on to the consumer. Forty billion dollars represented at the time about 4
percent of all business revenue annually; this is somewhat greater than the percentage
alleged to occur in all forms of loss (waste as well as fraud and abuse) in the federal
government's domestic programs, as reported by either the staff of the Republican Study
Committee or President Reagan's council.
AKH1025 GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS CAUSE LITTLE DEPENDENCY
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.39-40.
The economic experience of the 1960s and 1970s equally belies a second familiar belief,
that is, that welfare programs substantially reduce the incentive to work. True, some effect
is possible; it is most likely to be experienced by those Americans who remain at or near
the poverty level even when holding down full-time jobs. Nevertheless, neither the
expansion of the poverty programs in the 1960s and 1970s, nor the decisive contribution
they made to reducing poverty, seems to have come at the cost of much reduction in the
incentive of Americans to become a part of the work force and earn a living. To help set
the context, consider that the numbers of people seeking work and taking jobs increased
at historically high rates during these years, by 35 percent in 1965-80 alone. Employment
climbed at a far faster pace during and after the great acceleration of the poverty and
welfare programs in 1965 80 than during the preceding fifteen-year period (employment
during 1950-65 rose by 21 percent.
AKH1026 AFDC DOESN'T PRODUCE LONG TERM DEPENDENCY
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.42.
Critics contend that long-term welfare dependency frequently develops in these families.
However, because having very young children to care for is so often a crucial factor, and
because the total number of children in AFDC families is small (just over two children per
family on average), AFDC actually experiences a high turnover. One study reports that 75
percent of all AFDC cases close within three years; another puts the figure at 60 percent.
Since participation in AFDC is commonly a relatively transitional experience, it becomes
plausible that the most extensive exploration of family situations in America during the
late 1960s and the 1970s would find no significant evidence that children from welfare
families have themselves been disproportionately likely to go on welfare when they
subsequently set up their own households.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 89
AKH1027 THE WORK ETHIC IS STRONG DESPITE WELFARE
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.42.
The work ethic continues to prevail in the United States. For the majority of AFDC
recipients, the use of the federal government's major welfare program has been transitory,
except when family heads are disabled. There exist few better indicators of the survival of
the work ethic than to note the special kinds of situations that have commonly led families
to turn to AFDC assistance and the relatively high turnover of the majority of families on
welfare.
AKH1028 EMPLOYMENT INCREASED WITH THE WELFARE STATE
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.40-1.
Another point, too, helps place matters in perspective. Following 1965, even as the
government's poverty and welfare programs experienced their most rapid enlargement, the
rate of increase in unemployment in the United States rose less than it did in most other
major Western nations. The vast expansion in the number of employed people after 1965,
an increase diminished hardly at all by the welfare programs, and the comparatively slow
rate of growth in the nation's unemployment make it apparent that the expansion of the
government's attempts to attack poverty had very little effect on the number of Americans
with the desire and incentive to work.
AKH1029 CLS IS NIHILISTIC
Bork, ex-Yale Law Prof, TEMPTING OF AMERICA, 1990, p.207.
Harvard law school is also a stronghold of Critical Legal Studies, a nihilistic neo-Marxist
movement that views all law as oppressive and political. It is nihilistic because its members
typically demand a destruction of current doctrine and hierarchies as illegitimate, but they
acknowledge that they have no notion of what is to replace this society.
AKH1030 CLS IS ABSURDLY UTOPIAN
Bork, ex-Yale Law Prof, TEMPTING OF AMERICA, 1990, p.207-8.
Another leader of the movement at Harvard is Professor Duncan Kennedy. He states that
he is against illegitimate hierarchy, domination, and oppression. What he is for is utopian
speculation concerning an impossible Eden which aspires to a "shared vision of a social
harmony so complete as to obviate the need for any rules at all." He has described his
philosophy as a "utopian fragment" that is "very egalitarian" and "somewhat erotic and
aesthetic." That, presumably, is why he has suggested that Harvard abolish all salary
differences so that janitors and deans would be paid the same. Each member of the school
should rotate through different jobs, janitors to teach sometimes and professors to mop
floors. Tenure should be abolished, admission to law school should be by lot, with quotas
within the lottery for minority, female, and working-class students. The purpose of the
lottery device is to eliminate notions of merit and of better and poorer law schools.
AKH1031 THE CLS CRITIQUE DOESN'T JUSTIFY REJECTING LAW
Stanley Fish, Duke English and Law Prof, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE
SPEECH, 1994, p.21-2.
By regarding the rhetorical and legerdemain of the law as an achievement (as an "amazing
trick") rather than as the matter of scandal, I forestall the call to reform that often
accompanies CLS analyses. In these analyses, the direction of reform is said to follow from
the debunking of objectivist claims: since we now see that the vocabulary of legal
reasoning is circular, question begging, and endlessly manipulable, we should either
abandon it for something more answerable to the demands of justice or employ it "under
erasure," that is, with a tentativeness and reserve in keeping with our knowledge of its lack
of an independent justification. But if we were to abandon the vocabulary of law for
something else, then we would have that something else and we would no longer have law;
and as for retaining the vocabulary while at every moment questioning its legitimacy, the
result would not be an improved legal practice but the obstruction of legal practice, since
in the process the goals of legal practice—the rendering of decisions and the giving of
remedies—would have been forever deferred.
AKH1032 LIBERTY DEMOCRACY IS CLEARLY PREFERABLE TO ITS
ALTERNATIVES
Fukuyama, Rand, THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN, 1992, p.284.
For virtually everybody in the developed world today, it is reasonably clear that liberal
democracy is vastly preferable to its major competitors, fascism and communism.
AKH1033 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SYSTEM IS GENERALLY EFFECTIVE
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.119
Viewed broadly, our recent experiments in political economy each sort of work. At least
for a while. The conservative welfare state, alluded to earlier, seems to be working pretty
well now. Of course, so too did the LBJ-style liberal welfare state. That leads one toward
a position that it is America that works well. Typically, when things do get out of joint,
both our economics and our politics change sufficiently to make the boo-boo better.

AKH1034 CURRENT SOCIAL MOVEMENTS OFFER NO HOPE OF RADICAL
CHANGE
Christopher Lasch, Professor of History, University of Rochester, THE REVOLT OF THE
ELITES, 1995, p.27
Any sense that the masses are riding the wave of history has long since departed. the
radical movements that disturbed the peace of the twentieth century have failed one by one,
and no successors have appeared on the horizon. the industrial working class, once the
mainstay of the socialist movement, has become a pitiful remnant of itself. the hope that
"new social movements" would take its place in the struggle against capitalism, which
briefly sustained the left in the late seventies and early eighties, has come to nothing. Not
only do the new social movements—feminism, gay rights, welfare rights, agitation against
racial discrimination—have nothing in common, but their only coherent demand aims at
inclusion in the dominant structures rather than at a revolutionary transformation of social
relations.
AKH1035 APPEAL TO RIGHTS CAN FORCE DOMINANT GROUPS TO
RECOGNIZE THEIR INCONSISTENCIES
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1039
The knowledge of peoples of color, for example, has been that it is not just legal
consciousness but racial consciousness that supports (among whites) the prevailing power
dispensations in American society. In the experience of peoples of color, the universalistic
idea of rights, indeed the very formalism of the idea, can become reconstructive. It can
serve as a probe to the feeling—or if not to the feeling then to the nerve, to the
motivation—of dominant group members who do not feel the "substantive" force of
expostulations of need, or calls for reparation, coming from people they have learned to
see as different and subordinate. The trick is to make dominant society confront itself in
the mirror of its own most idealistic professions. Pragmatist critical practice here means
seeing the possible effects, in practice and in context, of the formalism that is hallmark of
the jurisprudence of rights.
AKH1036 THE RULE OF LAW IS CRITICAL TO JUSTICE AND EQUALITY
Walter Williams, George Mason University John M. Olin distinguished Professor of
Economics, GEORGETOWN LAW REVIEW, August 1991, p.1777.
If there is to be justice and civility in a society, there must be a semblance of rule of law.
rule of law means that the law is abstract, applying equally to everyone. Referring to the
Latin term for law, there is rule by leges, as opposed to rule by privileges (private law).
Moreover, rule of law means that, with the exception of minor instances, a person's status
characteristics such as race, sex, religion, and origin of birth are immaterial in the eyes of
the law.
AKH1037 HISTORY HAS PROVIDED LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC CAPITALISM THE
BEST SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
Fukuyama, Rand, THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN, 1992, p.46.
We who live in stable, long-standing liberal democracies face an unusual situation. In our
grandparents' time, many reasonable people could foresee a radiant socialist future in
which private property and capitalism had been abolished, and in which politics itself was
somehow overcome. today, by contrast, we have trouble imagining a world that is radically
better than our own, or a future that is not essentially democratic and capitalist. Within that
framework, of course, many things could be improved: we could house the homeless,
guarantee opportunity for minorities and women, improve competitiveness, and create new
jobs. We can also imagine future worlds that are significantly worse than what we know
now, in which national, racial, or religious intolerance makes a comeback, or in which we
are overwhelmed by war or environmental collapse. but we cannot picture to ourselves a
world that is essentially different from the present one, and at the same time better. Other,
less reflective ages also thought of themselves as the best, but we arrived at this conclusion
exhausted, as it were, from the pursuit of alternatives we felt had to be better than liberal
democracy.
AKH1038 CONSENSUS SUPPORTS LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
Fukuyama, Rand, THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN, 1992, p.211-2.
At the end of history, there are no serious ideological competitors left to liberal democracy.
In the past, people rejected liberal democracy because they believed that it was inferior to
monarchy, aristocracy, theocracy, fascism, communist totalitarianism, or whatever
ideology they happen to believe in. But now, outside the Islamic world, there appears to
be a general consensus that accepts liberal democracy's claims to be the most rational form
of government, that is, the state that realizes most fully either rational desire or rational
recognition.
AKH1039 THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT WAS EFFECTIVE
John Schwarz, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, AMERICA'S
HIDDEN SUCCESS, 1983, p.60
When Rachael Carson's Silent Spring was published in 1962, it ignited the environmental
movement. Between 1963 and 1980, Congress adopted legislation intended to bring air and
water pollution under control, foster coastal zone and other land-use planning, control strip
mining, protect Alaskan lands, and regulate toxic wastes.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 90
AKH1040 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SYSTEM IS THE MOST LEGITIMATE IN
THE WORLD
George Kateb, Amherst political scientist, DISSENT, Spring 1986, p.165.
The American political system, as specified by the Constitution, is thus one case of
political legitimacy. or, at least, the rules and procedures specified in the Constitution
accord perfectly with the principles of legitimacy, even if the American actuality, for one
sort of large reason or other, shows only an imperfect, even though substantial, legitimacy.
I believe that the specifications and the actuality, in fact, show a closer approximation of
legitimacy than any other political system in the world.
AKH1041 AMERICA'S GROSS INEQUALITIES HAVE BEEN REMEDIED
Robert Nisbet, Columbia Sociologist, THE PRESENT AGE, 1988, p.116-7.
The major contributions of the Supreme Court and the Congress have been in the direction
of equality—for women, for ethnic minorities, for workers, and other groups. There is not
the slightest question that even as late as the end of World War II there was much work in
this direction that badly needed doing. Women, for one, had won the vote at the end of the
First World War, but little of an economic character followed from that needed reform. In
many states, married women were still virtually barred from control, or even voice in, the
finances they may have brought to their marriage. Discrimination in the marketplace, in
the office and the factory, was notorious. There was much to do, and in the egalitarian
climate of opinion that has prevailed, a fair amount has been done. To compare the status
of gender, race, religion, and social class today with what was commonplace at the
beginning of the present age is to envisage some very large social changes. it is not too
much to say that in the respects just cited, most of the grosser forms of political and
economic inequality have been met if not actually remedied in detail.
AKH1042 AMERICA HAS MADE SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS ON RACE AND
GENDER
Amitai Etzioni, GW Govt Prof, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p.29.
There is less discrimination now against minorities and women than there was thirty years
ago, not to mention compared with earlier periods. Instead of deliberate discrimination and
disenfranchisement to the point of lynching, there are scores upon scores of black elected
officials, and sheriffs, even in the Deep South. American males are learning that rate is a
crime of violence and not something that women subconsciously ask for; they are even
becoming more aware of the meaning of sexual harassment.
AKH1043 LAW'S MASKING TENDENCIES DON'T MAKE IT A FORM OF ELITIST
OPPRESSION
Stanley Fish, Duke English and Law Prof, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE
SPEECH, 1994, p.21.
I refuse the conclusion to which my examples seem to be pointing, the CLS-style
conclusion that the law is a sham or an elitist conspiracy, and assert instead that these very
features of the law, even though they are in tension with the law's "official story," are what
enables the law to perform its task, the task of advertising its actions as following faithfully
from general principles of justice, due process, impartiality, and so on while at the same
time tailoring and remaking those principles in accordance with the pressures exerted by
present-day exigencies. the law, in short, is always in the business of constructing the
foundations on which it claims to rest and in the business too of effacing all signs of that
construction so that its outcomes can be described as the end products of an inexorable and
rule-based necessity.
AKH1044 CLASS DISPARITIES REFLECT DIFFERENCES IN EDUCATION, NOT
ELITE OPPRESSION
Fukuyama, Rand, THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN, 1992, p.116.
The class differences that exist in the contemporary United States, for example, are due
primarily to differences in education. There are few obstacles to the advancement of a
person with the proper educational credentials. Inequality creeps into the system as a result
of unequal access to education; lack of education is the surest condemnation to second-
class citizenship.
AKH1045 AMERICA'S RACIAL DISPARITIES ARE DUE TO CULTURE, NOT
INSTITUTIONAL FLAWS
Fukuyama, Rand, THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN, 1992, p.224.
In the United States, Thomas Sowell has pointed to the sharp differences in income and
education between the descendants of blacks who voluntarily immigrated from the West
Indies, and those who were brought directly to the country from Africa as slaves. Such
differences suggest that economic performance is related not exclusively to environmental
conditions, like the presence or absence of economic opportunity, but to differences in
culture of the ethnic groups themselves as well.
AKH1046 CAPITALISM IS RELATIVELY EGALITARIAN
Fukuyama, Rand, THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN, 1992, p.290.
All truly liberal societies are in principle dedicated to the elimination of conventional
sources of inequality. In addition, the dynamism of capitalist economics tends to break
down many conventional and cultural barriers to equality through its continually changing
demand for labor. A century of Marxist thought has accustomed us to think of capitalist
societies as highly inegalitarian, but the truth is that they are far more egalitarian in their
social effects than the agricultural societies they replaced. Capitalism is a dynamic force
which constantly attacks purely conventional social relationships, replacing inherited
privilege with new stratifications based on skill and education.

AKH1047 REMAINING INEQUALITIES ARE RELATIVELY SMALL
Fukuyama, Rand, THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN, 1992, p.295.
Thus while the liberal project has been largely successful over the past four hundred years
in excluding the more visible forms of megalothymia from political life, our society will
continue to remain preoccupied with questions of equalizing dignity. Today in democratic
America there is a host of people who devote their lives to the total and complete
elimination of any vestiges of inequality, making sure that no little girl should have to pay
more to have her locks cut than a little boy, that no Boy Scout troop be closed to
homosexual scoutmasters, that no building be built without a concrete wheelchair ramp
going up to the front door. These passions exist in American society because of, and not
despite, the smallness of its actual remaining inequalities.
AKH1048 THE SALARY GAP BETWEEN GENDERS IS BEING CLOSED
Cathy Young, NYT BOOK REVIEW, Aug 21, 1994, p.26.
Upper-middle-class teen-age girls sit around griping about "getting a bad deal" (unaware
that, for instance, the wage gap they lament has almost closed for young women.
AKH1049 AMERICA TODAY IS A RELATIVELY CLASSLESS SOCIETY
Fukuyama, Rand, THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN, 1992, p.291.
Middle-class societies will remain highly inegalitarian in certain respects, but the sources
of inequality will increasingly be attributable to the natural inequality of talents, the
economically necessary division of labor, and to culture. We may interpret Kojeve's
remark that postwar America had in effect achieved Marx's "classless society" in these
terms: not that all social inequality was eliminated, but that those barriers which remained
were in some respect "necessary and ineradicable," due to the nature of things rather than
the will of man. Within those limits, such a society could be said to have achieved Marx's
"realm of freedom" by effectively abolishing natural need, and by permitting people to
appropriate what they wanted in return for a minimum (by any historical standard) amount
of work.
AKH1050 RACISM HAS BEEN SUBSTANTIALLY REDUCED
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.90-1
But whether it springs from self-righteousness or panic or a mixture of the two, the
assumption that most Americans remain racist at heart cannot stand up to close
examination. The improvement of racial attitudes is one of the few positive developments
of recent decades. Not that racial conflict has subsided, but it is a serious mistake to
interpret every conflict as evidence of the retrograde outlook of ordinary Americans, as a
revival of the historic intolerance that has played so large a part in our country's history.
The new racism is reactive rather than residual, let alone resurgent. It is a response,
however inappropriate and offensive, to a double standard of racial justice that strikes most
Americans as unreasonable and unfair.
AKH1051 BLACKS HAVE MADE MAJOR ADVANCES
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.14
The black community is clearly a troubled one. But blacks, too, have made enormous
headway. The blacks involved in the Labor Day altercation at Virginia Beach in 1989 were
primarily college students. By one count there were an estimated 100,000 involved in that
one situation, almost as many as the total number of black college students in 1950. There
has been a geometric progression in the total number of black college graduates in
America. There were about 125,000 in 1950, double that in 1960, double that in 1970,
double that in 1980, double that in 1990, to a total of more than two million.
AKH1052 OPPORTUNITIES FOR BLACKS ARE IMPROVING
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.69
To add to the confusion, the poll shows solid majorities of whites and solid pluralities of
blacks believing that opportunities for blacks have improved in the last 10 years and will
continue to improve in the next 10.
AKH1053 BLACKS ARE MAKING SUBSTANTIAL GAINS
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.71
With progress in medicine and health-care coverage, black health has improved. Life
expectancy at birth climbed for blacks by 5.6 years to 69.7 from 1970 to 1987. Infant
mortality improved from 1970 to 1986, falling from 32.6 deaths per thousand to 18.
Education reform may be paying off. The dropout rate is at a historic low. From 1980 to
1988, the rate of young blacks completing high school rose from 75 percent to 80 percent.
The white rate stayed at 87 percent. The number of blacks who completed college climbed
from 1.1 million in 1980, 4.5 percent of all graduates, to an estimated 2.1 million in 1990,
6.3 percent of the total. However, the rate of increase of black male highschool graduates
entering college has now stalled. Still, blacks are moving into better jobs. About half are
now in the higher-salaried categories (white-collar and precision crafts), compared with
70 percent of whites. And the number of black elected officials climbed from 1,469 in
1970 to 7,226 in 1989.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 91
AKH1054 SOCIAL IMPROVEMENTS ARE OCCURRING IN THE BLACK
COMMUNITY
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.72
There may be evidence that change is beginning. Out-of-wedlock birth rates have
plateaued for blacks. Black violent-crime rates were falling before the crack epidemic hit.
Now, although too high, drug abuse is falling for both races. And today there is a model
of a successful black middle class that can motivate and assist the personal upward
mobility of blacks.
AKH1055 BLACKS NOW HAVE SUBSTANTIAL OPPORTUNITIES
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.62
Some NRC scholars (by no means all) understand that Kerner was misguided. Professor
Glen Loury of Harvard, an NRC panelist, states: "By saying that implacable white racism
brought about poor conditions, Kerner posed the situation as a white problem, not a black
problem. That is a harmful notion for blacks." Loury, who is black, is right. Efforts to root
out racial discrimination must continue. But the doors of opportunity are open. Loury
believes blacks are better served by focusing on open doors rather than blaming their
situation on racism.
AKH1056 THE MILITARY IS THE MOST INTEGRATED INSTITUTION IN
AMERICA
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.63
There is a fascinating article—mixing sociology, race and politics—in May's edition of the
Atlantic magazine. The piece is "Success Story: Blacks in the Army," by Dr. Charles C.
Moskow, a Northwestern University sociologist who specializes in race relations in the
U.S. military. To begin, Moskos believes this: The U.S. military is the most successfully
integrated institution in America. Consider: There are 400,000 blacks in the U.S. armed
forces. That's almost 20 percent of the entire force, while blacks make up only about 12
percent of the total population. In the Army, which Moskos has studied with particular
care, 30 percent of the personnel are black. Blacks, says Moskos, do pretty well in the
Army. About 30 percent of the Army's non-commissioned officers are now black. That's
almost 100,000 black sergeants! It doesn't stop with NCOs: Fully 10 percent of the Army's
officers are black, and the rate is rising. One in five of the Army's new ROTC graduate
officers are black. the proportion of blacks in the incoming West Point class has gone up
tenfold in one generation. Of the active generals in the Army today, 7 percent are black.
More are on the way.
AKH1057 INTEGRATION OF THE MILITARY WILL SPREAD ELSEWHERE
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.64
Moskos points to another heartening fact: Each year about 5,000 black officers and NCOs
reach the young military retirement age and return to civilian work. This number will be
growing as the decades roll on. These are productive, disciplined people. They have been
bossed by whites. And they have bossed whites. In the years to come, one may expect that
these veterans will play a large roll in making integration more successful in the rest of
America.
AKH1058 NUTRITION AND LIFE EXPECTANCY ARE IMPROVING GLOBALLY
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.154
Ehrlich exploded on the scene with his 1968 book, The Population Bomb. It said that the
American people were a "cancer on the planet," and that we would have to consider putting
contraceptive chemicals in the water supply to control population. He said that the world
would soon see famines because of overpopulation, that longevity would diminish, that
India was a dead duck, and that more people would cause more wars. Twenty years later,
no famines caused by overpopulation and caloric intake in the poor nations is up; longevity
is way up, India is flourishing, and peace is breaking out everywhere.
AKH1059 MEASUREMENTS SHOW GENERAL ENVIRONMENTAL
IMPROVEMENT
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.156
Next, in terms of what has been measured by the Environmental Protection Agency, the
environment is healthier than it used to be by far. Pollution has diminished in fairly direct
proportion to the amount of money spent to diminish it. That's not something that can be
said for every crisis.
AKH1060 AIR AND WATER POLLUTION ARE DOWN
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.150.
New air-quality data from the EPA show that the enormous investments in clean air have
been paying off. The EPA also says some forms of water pollution are down significantly.
And studies by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service indicate that populations of many game
species in North America, such as deer, have increased.

AKH1061 POPULATION HAS MINIMAL HEALTH EFFECTS
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.156
Moreover, near as can be figured, environmental pollution has not been very harmful.
Elizabeth Whalen, of the American Council of Science and Health, says that of the 1
million annual preventable deaths in America, more are due to smoking and alcohol. Those
due to pesticides or chemicals in the food supply, she says, account (by the best scientific
estimate) for zero. And, she says, air pollution as a general cause of illness or death
"provides an extremely minor or hypothetical contribution."
AKH1062 THE WORLD IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY DEMOCRATIC
Anthony Giddens, Professor of Sociology, Cambridge, THE CONSEQUENCES OF
MODERNITY, 1990, p.167-8
Within nation-states the intensifying of surveillance activities leads to increasing pressures
for democratic participation (although not without pronounced countertrends). It is hardly
accidental that there are virtually no states in the world today which do not call themselves
"democratic," although clearly the range of specific governmental systems covered by this
term is wide. Nor is this just rhetoric. States which label themselves as democratic always
have some procedures for involving the citizenry in procedures of government, however
minimal such involvement may be in practice. Why? Because the rulers of modern states
discover that effective government demands the active acquiescence of subject populations
in ways that were neither possible nor necessary in pre-modern states." Trends towards
polyarchy, defined as "the continuing responsiveness of the government to the preferences
of its citizens considered as political equals," however, tend at the moment to be
concentrated at the level of the nation-state.
AKH1063 THE MASSES ARE MORE CONSERVATIVE THAN THE ELITES
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.27
It is not just that the masses have lost interest in revolution; their political instincts are
demonstrably more conservative than those of their self-appointed spokesmen and would-
be liberators. It is the working and lower middle classes, after all, that favor limits on
abortion, cling to the two-parent family as a source of stability in a turbulent world, resist
experiments with "alternative lifestyles," and harbor deep reservations about affirmative
action and other ventures in large-scale social engineering.
AKH1064 INDETERMINACY AND SKEPTICISM DON'T UNDERMINE RULE OF
LAW
YALE LAW JOURNAL, January 1994, p.1029-1030.
But the truth in skepticism need not leave us in the whirlpool of doubt. Reason, argument,
and justification are compatible with uncertainty and indeterminacy. Indeed, our
willingness to tolerate reasoned dissent and divergence is a measure of our commitment
to reason's place in the public sphere. Reason is still secure for the rule of law, as long as
the law is properly understood as a forum for argument and criticism and not for
determinate conclusions. We may agree with Joseph Singer that outrage is necessary to the
struggle for social and individual justice, but we should never give up attempting to
convince other that they, too, should be outraged. We should acknowledge the kernel of
truth in the skeptical critique and exploit the wider array of arguments available in an
undetermined legal world, not shield our political and social order from rational scrutiny.
AKH1065 THE RULE OF LAW DOES NOT CONSIST OF BLIND OBEDIENCE
Walter Williams, George Mason University, John M. Olin distinguished Professor of
Economics, GEORGETOWN LAW REVIEW, August 1991, p.1777.
The principal of the rule of law does not mean blind obedience to legislative whims. Laws
written under the rule of law serve primarily to protect, not grant, those self-evident
inalienable rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. the function of the laws
to protect these rights from violation. Equality under general rules of law is the only kind
of equality that can be secured without destroying liberty.
AKH1066 THE IDEA OF RULE OF LAW NEEDS REFORM, NOT REJECTION
Francis Mootz, Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law,
HOUSTON LAW REVIEW, Fall 1994, p.884-5
The extent of critical detachment presumed by Schlag's total rejection of the usefulness of
discussing the rule of law is quite fantastic. An individual who truly could achieve this
detachment would be exhibiting the paranoid style. I wholeheartedly share Schlag's
assessment that the justificatory efforts of judges and scholars alike to define the rule of
law has been framed by the unhelpful polarity of justify and redeem and constrain and
control strategies. Yet the recognition in past formulations no longer suffice leads me to
attempt to articulate a new conception of the rule of law that accords with our experience.
It is possible to destroy rigid conceptions of the rule of law without embracing endless
deconstruction that renders further discussion moot.
AKH1067 RULE OF LAW IS KEY TO GUARANTEEING FAIRNESS
H.N. Hirsch, U of Cal, San Diego Political Scientist, POLITICAL THEORY, August 1986,
p.432.
Surely there must be some fixed rules even in a strong community. The impartiality of the
law—the substitution of explicit and general rules for discrete decisions based upon the
status of circumstances of particular individuals—is, after all, one of the greatest
achievements of liberalism, and one of its principal methods of guaranteeing fairness.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 92
AKH1068 RULE OF LAW IS ESSENTIAL TO MORAL ORDER
Amitai Etzioni, GW Govt Prof, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p.48.
Third, the law as a deterrent has its place in any moral order. Morality rests on intricate
interactions among three factors: individual conscience, the moral voice of the community,
and the state. Each one helps to sustain the others. Hence, while it is best to build up
individual consciences and community voices, communities must on occasion fall back to
the law. Without punishing those who do serious injury to our commonly held
values—child abusers, toxic polluters, fathers who renege on child support, corporations
who market unsafe drugs—no moral order can be sustained. We do not have to have the
coercive side of the law, but we cannot fail to recognize its place as a last resort.
AKH1069 OCCASIONAL ABUSES DON'T UNDERMINE THE VALUE OF RULE OF
LAW
Amitai Etzioni, GW Govt Prof, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p.49.
I do not dispute that authorities sometimes get carried away and impose laws in an
authoritarian, even brutal, manner; the clubbing of Rodney King comes to mind. We need
to be vigilant to protect one and all from such excesses. We cannot, however, oppose the
rule of law because it is sometimes absurd, any more than we can oppose government-
subsidized school lunches just because people are sometimes force-fed.
AKH1070 DEMOCRATIC CONSENSUS FAVORS RULE OF LAW
Susan Estrich, former Harvard Law Prof, USA TODAY, Nov 3,1994, p.13A
But make no mistake: Whatever the margins on Tuesday, there is a broad consensus among
the people here, if not among the commentators and advocates, that supports the rule of
law. That, too, is part of the American dream.
AKH1071 RULE OF LAW IS KEY TO LIBERTY
Justice Fortas, CONCERNING DISSENT AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, 1968, p.117-8
The achievement of liberty is man's indispensable condition of living; and yet, liberty
cannot exist unless it is restrained and restricted. The instrument of balancing these two
conflicting factors is the law. So we must end as we began, with an acknowledgement that
the rule of law is the essential condition of individual liberty as it is of the existence of the
state.
AKH1072 REJECTING RULE OF LAW LEADS TO DICTATORSHIP
Ian Buruma, NYT BOOK REVIEW, September 18, 1994, p.13.
The issue, then, as far as China is concerned, is precisely the one brought up by Ms.
WuDunn. Will there be the rule of law, or government by shim? If it is the former, there
has to be more democracy, for dictators are above the law. That is what makes them
dictators. And without the rule of law, whim is all there is left.
AKH1073 CHINA PROVES REJECTING RULE OF LAW LEADS TO TYRANNY
Ian Buruma, NYT BOOK REVIEW, September 18, 1994, p.13.
In fact, the weight of arbitrary, often petty tyranny falls heaviest on the people who are in
no position to fend the authorities off through bribery or other means. as Mr. Kristof and
Ms. WuDunn say, life in China hinges on one's contacts, or guanxi, in high places. China
is a bit like a massive prison camp, where order is based on a Darwinian hierarchy in
which the strong always bully the weak. Ms. WuDunn points out that China is ruled by
individuals (renzhi), instead of by law (fazji). This is why corruption thrives on every step
of the social, political or economic ladder you will meet someone who demands his or her
cut. Ms. WuDunn quite rightly calls this system "government by whim." And correctly she
observes that "one of China's biggest challenges in the years ahead will be to build a fazhi,
a system of laws, so that democracy and a market economy can take firmer root.
Otherwise, tomorrow's democrats may simply turn into the following day's autocrats.
AKH1074 RULE OF LAW IS THE BEST SAFEGUARD AGAINST FASCISM
Walter Kaufmann, Princeton philosopher, FROM SHAKESPEARE TO
EXISTENTIALISM, 1980, p.111-2.
It is no wonder that the Nazis found small comfort in a book that is based on the conviction
that "the hatred of law, of right made determinate by law, is the shibboleth which reveals,
and permits us to recognize infallibly, fanaticism, feeblemindedness, and the hypocrisy of
good intentions, however they may disguise themselves." In his Preface, too, Hegel called
the law "the best shibboleth to distinguish the false brothers and friends of the so-called
people." One may agree with Herbert Marcuse when he says in Reason and Revolution:
Hegel and the rise of Social Theory: "There is no concept less compatible with fascist
ideology than that which founds the state on a universal and rational law that safeguards
the interests of every individual, whatever the contingencies of his natural social status."
AKH1075 RULE OF LAW IS CRITICAL TO U.S. MODEL OF DEMOCRACY.
Larry Diamond, Hoover Institute Senior Research Fellow, FOREIGN POLICY, Summer,
1992, p.29.
What distinguishes America most as a people and a nation is its commitment to political
and economic freedom, to openness, pluralism, democracy, and the rule of law. for that
reason millions of people want to immigrate to the United States, and U.S. universities and
research centers are bursting with foreign-born talent. That commitment is why America
is so widely admired around the world, and why the products of American culture are
everywhere in demand. Just as much as U.S. military and economic power, the U.S.
commitment to freedom and democracy is the reason so many countries and peoples
continue to look to America for international leadership.

AKH1076 RULE OF LAW IS KEY TO RIGHTS OF MINORITIES
Fukuyama, Rand, THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN, 1992, p.44.
It is also possible for a country to be democratic without being liberal, that is, without
protecting the rights of individuals and minorities. A good example of this is the
contemporary Islamic Republic of Iran, which has held regular elections that were
reasonably fair by Third World standards, making the country more democratic than it was
in the time of the Shah. Islamic Iran, however, is not a liberal state; there are no guarantees
of free speech, assembly, and, above all, of religion. The most elementary rights of Iranian
citizens are not protected by the rule of law, a situation that is worse for Iran's ethnic and
religious minorities.
AKH1077 RULE OF LAW UNIQUELY CHECKS DISCRETIONARY BIASES
YALE LAW JOURNAL, January 1994, p.1022.
In fact to the extent that the crucial liberal norm of publicity is emphasized, the rule of law
contains resources for avoiding the problem on discretionary bias, resources that are
unavailable in modes of informal decisionmaking.
AKH1078 RULE OF LAW IS NEEDED TO CHECK VIGILANTE VIOLENCE
THE WASHINGTON POST, December 21, 1990, p.(Lexis).
Dean said Babayan's decision to grab a gun and chase Shelton down the street was a
"vigilante response: from an outraged victim. Although some people might sympathize
with Babyan, Dean told the jury, "the sanctity of the rule of law keeps civilization from
chaos. don't let the law of the jungle get a toehold here."
AKH1079 RULE OF LAW ENCOURAGES ECONOMIC GROWTH
FINANCIAL TIMES, May 6, 1994, p.(Lexis).
Mr. Zedillo said that the absence of a strong legal system not only affected the
administration of justice but was an impediment to economic efficiency. I believe that one
of the essential conditions of sustainable economic growth is that a rule of law prevails.
I am sure that respect for the law will lend to more investment.
AKH1080 PROCEDURE IS KEY TO FREEDOM, DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL
SURVIVAL
Justice Fortas, CONCERNING DISSENT AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, 1968, p.120.
Procedure is the bone structure of a democratic society; and the quality of procedural
standards which meet general acceptance—the quality of which is tolerable and
permissible and acceptable conduct—determines the durability of the society and the
survival possibilities of freedom within the society.
AKH1081 MINORITY PROTECTION REQUIRES FAIR PROCEDURE
Black, Yale Law Prof, PERSPECTIVES IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, 1963, p.111.
In practice, the guarantee of fair procedure is an adjunct to the guarantee against
discrimination on racial and other irrational grounds; harsh and arbitrary procedures have
their maximum impact on minority groups, and the setting of minimum standards for all
gives most help to those most disadvantaged.
AKH1082 FAIR PROCEDURE IS KEY TO PROTECTING INDIVIDUALS
Black, Yale Law Prof, PERSPECTIVES IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, 1963, p.111.
If all men were either criminals or angels, and if only angels were concerned in the
administration of law, we would need no cannons of fair procedure; these exist to
neutralize, as far as may be, three factors, often working together: (1) The over-zeal of
police and prosecutors; (2) the prejudices of the community; (3) the poverty and
helplessness of most defendants—indeed of nearly all defendants, relative to the vast
resources of the state.
AKH1083 FREEDOM REQUIRE FAIR PROCEDURE
Black, Yale Law Prof, PERSPECTIVES IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, 1963, p.111.
Just as courage is the condition of every other virtue, fair procedure is a condition to every
freedom. If men could be convicted of burglary without pretense of fairness, it would be
simple to deal with people who uttered unpopular opinions as though they were burglars.
AKH1084 PROCEDURAL STANDARDS CAN REDUCE GOVERNMENT ABUSE
Black, Yale Law Prof, PERSPECTIVES IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, 1963, p.107.
Constitutional law, enunciated by the Court, cannot produce thorough-going procedural
regularity and fairness. Most unlawful police procedures are lost in the poverty of the
victims; most irregularity and bias is probably masked behind the plea of "guilty" and the
silent departure for prison. A practice may be judicially condemned in a dramatic, hard-
fought case; this does not mean that it is generally abandoned. Still, the enforcement of
standards in cases where they can be invoked probably has some good effect. guidance is
given to those law-enforcement officers (hopefully the majority) who want to work within
the law. Those otherwise minded—and they are certainly numerous—are put on notice that
conviction may be imperiled if minimum standards are disregarded.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 93
AKH1085 REJECTING FORMAL PROCEDURES LEADS TO TYRANNY
Fukuyama, Rand, THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN, 1992, p.43.
Democratic procedures can be manipulated by elites, and do not always accurately reflect
the will or true self-interests of the people, but once we move away from a formal
definition, we open up the possibility of infinite abuse of the democratic principle. In this
century, the greatest enemies of democracy have attacked "formal" democracy in the name
of "substantive" democracy. This was the justification used by Linin and the Bolshevik
party to close down the russian Constituent Assembly and proclaim a party dictatorship,
which was to achieve substantive democracy "in the name of the people." Formal
democracy, on the other hand, provides real institutional safeguards against dictatorship,
and is much more likely to produce "substantive" democracy in the end.
AKH1086 ACT UTILITARIANISM FAILS; SOME RULES ARE NECESSARY
William Frankena, U of Michigan Philosopher, ETHICS, 1973, p.36.
Against pure AU, which would not allow us to use any rules or generalizations from past
experience but would insist that each and every time we calculate anew the effects of all
the actions open to us on the general welfare, it seems enough to reply that this is simply
impracticable and that we must have rules of some kind—as we saw before in discussing
act-deonotological theories.
AKH1087 MORAL JUDGMENTS ARE INHERENTLY UNIVERSAL
William Frankena, U of Michigan Philosopher, ETHICS, 1973, p.25.
The fact is that when one makes a moral judgment in a particular situation, one implicitly
commits oneself to making the same judgment in any similar situation, even if the second
situation occurs at a different time or place, or involves another agent. Moral and value
predicates as such that if we belong to an action or object, they also belong to any other
action or object which has the same properties. If I say I ought to serve my country, I imply
that everyone ought to serve his country. The point involved here is called the Principle
of Universalizability: if one judges that X is right or good, then one is committed to
judging that anything exactly like X, or like X in relevant respects, is right or good.
Otherwise he has no business using these words.
AKH1088 LIMITS ON DECISION TIME MAKE MORAL RULES ESSENTIAL
William Frankena, U of Michigan Philosopher, ETHICS, 1973, p.24
On the other side, two lines of argument may be advanced against act-deontological
theories. The first counts most against the more extreme ones, the other against them all.
The first is that it is practically impossible for us to do without rules. For one thing, we
cannot always put in the time and effort required to judge each situation anew.
AKH1089 MORAL RULES ARE NEEDED TO AVOID BIAS
William Frankena, U of Michigan Philosopher, ETHICS, 1973, p.40
If we ask why we should be RUs rather than AUs, the RUs may answer, as berkeley did,
by pointing to the difficulties (difficulties die to ignorance, bias, passion, carelessness, lack
of time, etc.) that would arise if, on each occasion of action, everyone were permitted to
decide for himself what he should do, even if he had the help of such rules of thumb as the
modified AU offers. The RU may then argue that it is for the greatest general good to have
everyone acting wholly or at least largely on rules of the always-acting type instead of
always making decisions on an AU basis. this would be a utilitarian argument for RU; and,
as an argument, it has some plausibility.
AKH1090 MORAL EDUCATION REQUIRES RULES
William Frankena, U of Michigan Philosopher, ETHICS, 1973, p.24
For another thing, rules are needed in the process of moral education. As R.M. Hare has
said, ...to learn to do anything is never to learn to do an individual act; it is always to learn
to do acts of a certain kind in a certain kind of situation; and this is to learn a
principle...without principles we could not learn anything whatever from our elders...every
generation would have to start from scratch and teach itself. But...self-teaching like all
other teaching, is the teaching of principles.
AKH1091 ACT UTILITARIANISM CAUSES WIDESPREAD INJUSTICE
William Frankena, U of Michigan Philosopher, ETHICS, 1973, p.37
Much of the same point has, in fact, been made recently both by deontologists and
utilitarians, for example, by A.C. Ewing and r.B. Brandt. They contend that many actions
that are and are ordinarily regarded as wrong would be right on an AU view consistently
applied. To show this they cite cases of a poor man stealing from a rich one to feed his
family, a busy citizen not going to the polls on election day, a student crossing a university
lawn, a society "punishing" an innocent person to prevent panic, or a woman breaking an
agreement to pay a boy for work done because she has a better use for her money. In such
cases, properly hedged about, it seems clear that the act in question may produce at least
as great a balance of good over evil in general as any alternative open to the agent, and that
an AU must therefore judge it to be right. As Ewing puts it, It is indeed difficult to
maintain that it cannot under any circumstances be right to lie, etc., on (act) utilitarian
grounds, e.g., to save life, but it seems to me pretty clear that (act) utilitarian principles,
logically carried out, would result in far more cheating, lying, and unfair action than any
good man would tolerate.

AKH1092 RULES OF JUSTICE ARE EASIER TO UPHOLD THAN GENERAL
UTILITY
J.L. Mackie, Oxford Philosopher, ETHICS, 1977, p.136.
Conscientious feelings can attach themselves far more readily and more firmly to such
specific rules as those of justice—for example, rules against invading what are recognized
in a particular society as someone's rights, to keeping agreements, of not punishing the
innocent, and in general of making judicial and other analogous decisions impartially, by
reference to relevant considerations alone. There are, then, good reasons why such specific
rules, rather than a general utilitarian principle, should form the core of morality in the
narrow sense.
AKH1093 ACT UTILITARIANISM IS AN IMPOSSIBLE PRINCIPLE TO LIVE BY
J.L. Mackie, Oxford Philosopher, ETHICS, 1977, p.129.
However, even if all the difficulties and indeterminacies mentioned in the last section were
resolved, by argument or by decision, there would still be a fatal objection to the resulting
act utilitarian system. It would be wholly impracticable. The system can, indeed, be looked
at in several different ways, but this charge can be sustained against each interpretation in
turn. Suppose, first, that it is considered as a morality in the broad sense, as an all-inclusive
theory of conduct. Then, when utility or the general happiness is proposed as the
immediate criterion of right action, it is intended that each agent should take the happiness
of all as his goal? This, surely, is too much to expect.
AKH1094 DENYING RIGHTS TRIVIALIZES BLACK EXPERIENCE
Patricia Williams, Professor of Law, Columbia, CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard
Delgado, ed., 1995, p.89.
For blacks, therefore, the battle is not deconstructing rights, in a world of no rights; nor of
constructing statements of need, in a world of abundantly apparent need. Rather, the goal
is to find a political mechanism that can confront the denial of need. The argument that
rights are disutile, even harmful, trivializes this aspect of black experience specifically, as
well as that of any person or group whose genuine vulnerability has been protected by that
measure of actual entitlement which rights provide.
AKH1095 RIGHTS HAVE THE GREATEST MEANING FOR THE POWERLESS
Eileen Boris, Professor of History, Howard University, JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S
HISTORY, Summer 1994, p.113.
But legal history is not merely composed of judicial decisions or case law. Other
understandings of rights coexisted with the dominant one that upheld individuality and the
private sphere and rejected state protection as paternalistic. What Ellen Carol DuBois has
noted about this contested conception of rights in the nineteenth-century women's
movement can be extended to the African-American freedom struggle as well: as
something to be won and exercised collectively rather than individually; as the object of
political struggle as much as of judicial resolution; as that which government affirmatively
establishes rather than negatively shields; and above all as that which has greatest meaning
not to the powerful, who already enjoy their entitlements, but to the powerless, who have
yet to have their full place in society recognized. Her historical reconstruction of rights talk
within a freedom movement parallels the arguments made by critical race theorists.
AKH1096 THE CLS RIGHTS CRITIQUE IGNORES RACIAL ISSUES
Eileen Boris, Professor of History, Howard University, JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S
HISTORY, Summer 1994, p.112.
Critical race theorists have offered an alternative deconstruction of rights talk that
challenges the one offered by white, and mostly male, critical legal scholars (the crits), the
law school equivalent to the new left-derived, radical history wing of our profession.
Critical race theorists argue that inattention to racism has flawed the crits' critique of rights.
AKH1097 THE CLS RIGHTS CRITIQUE IGNORES BLACK EXPERIENCE
Patricia Williams, Professor of Law, Columbia, CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard
Delgado, ed., 1995, p.89.
To me, therefore, one of the most troubling positions advanced by some in CLS is that of
rights' actual disutility in political advancement. That position seems to discount entirely
the voice and the experiences of blacks in this country, for whom politically effective
action has occurred mainly in connection with asserting or extending rights.
AKH1098 FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE IGNORES RACE
Eileen Boris, Professor of History, Howard University, JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S
HISTORY, Summer 1994, p.115.
Feminist jurisprudence, like critical race theory, has sought to unmask the apparent
neutrality of legal rules and norms. Critical race theorists have also attempted to expose
the ways that critiques by feminists have ignored 'race': their own as well as the
experiences and perspectives of racial/ethnic women. In her powerful critique of
essentialism in feminist thought, Angela Harris argues that "the self of a woman of color
is not primarily a female self or a colored self, but a both-and self." Indeed, she reminds
us, gender may not be the most salient category for a woman in a given situation.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 94
AKH1099 RIGHTS RHETORIC HAS BEEN EFFECTIVE FOR BLACKS
Patricia Williams, Professor of Law, Columbia, CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard
Delgado, ed., 1995, p.88.
While rights may not be ends in themselves, it remains that rights rhetoric has been and
continues to be an effective form of discourse for blacks. The vocabulary of rights speaks
to an establishment that values the guise of stability, and from whom social change for the
better must come (whether it is given, taken, or smuggled). Change argued for in the
sheep's clothing of stability (i.e., 'rights') can be effective, even as it destabilizes certain
other establishment values (i.e., segregation). The subtlety of rights' real instability thus
does not render unusable their persona of stability.
AKH1100 RIGHTS APPEALS HAVE PROMOTED EQUALITY
Eileen Boris, Professor of History, Howard University, JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S
HISTORY, Summer 1994, p.120.
ln demanding that they not be kicked around, in asserting their identity as mothers and not
only laborers, African-American women drew upon rights talk to break through the
expectations, the cultural and economic constructs, of those in power. As historians we
need to listen to them. Through the voices of the past, we can hear multiple and complex
understandings of rights, rights talk that breaks through scholarly categories and
constitutional discourse to compose a powerful demand for equality.
AKH1101 RIGHTS TALK EMPIRICALLY PRODUCES SOCIAL ADVANCE
Eileen Boris, Professor of History, Howard University, JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S
HISTORY, Summer 1994, p.116.
Such perspectives on 'race', gender, and rights can help us read the texts of the past. I will
illustrate this approach through three series of documents that come from preliminary
research on a project now entitled, "Disparate Equality: Race, Gender, and Federal
Employment Policy from World War II to the Present." In these examples, we witness the
use of rights talk by African-American women to gain better jobs during World War II.
AKH1102 RIGHTS ARE ISLANDS OF EMPOWERMENT
Eileen Boris, Professor of History, Howard University, JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S
HISTORY, Summer 1994, p.114.
Similarly, Patricia Williams claims: "In the law, rights are islands of empowerment. To be
unrighted is to be disempowered, and the line between rights and no-rights is most often
the line between dominators and oppressors. Rights contain images of power, and
manipulating those images, either visually or linguistically, is central in the making and
maintenance of rights. In principle, therefore, the more dizzying diverse the images that
are propagated, the more empowered we will be as a society."
AKH1103 RIGHTS RHETORIC CONTRIBUTES TO RADICAL
CONSTITUTIONALISM
Eileen Boris, Professor of History, Howard University, JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S
HISTORY, Summer 1994, p.114.
Mari Matsuda draws on W. E. B. Du Bois to contend that "applying the double
consciousness concept of rights rhetoric allows us to see that the victim of racism can have
a mainstream consciousness of the Bill of Rights, as well as a victim's consciousness.
These two viewpoints can combine powerfully to create a radical constitutionalism that is
true to the radical roots of this country."
AKH1104 RIGHTS TALK ALLOWS OUTSIDERS TO BE HEARD
Eileen Boris, Professor of History, Howard University, JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S
HISTORY, Summer 1994, p.113-4.
Critical race theorists recognize the problematics of rights talk but emphasize how rights
talk allows outsiders to be heard in the U.S. constitutional and legal system. It provides a
language for protest. Lumbee Indian tribe member Robert Williams, Jr. explains that
"minority people committed themselves to these struggles, not to attain some
hegemonically functioning reification leading to false consciousness, but a seat in the front
of the bus, repatriation of treaty-guaranteed sacred lands, or a union card to carry into the
grape vineyards." He has called 'rights discourse' "the most effective of the insurrectionist
discourses utilized in the struggles of people of color" because rights were not supposed
to apply to such people, because such a discourse challenges mythologies about race and
power in the United States.
AKH1105 THE DEMAND FOR RIGHTS HISTORICALLY BENEFITED BLACKS
Eileen Boris, Professor of History, Howard University, JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S
HISTORY, Summer 1994, p.111.
Historians of Reconstruction, like Eric Foner, have documented the African-American
quest for "rights." Indeed, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments appear as responses
to a bottom-up movement on the part of freed women and men whose daily actions
demanded "citizens' rights." The formerly enslaved, Foner argues, "challenged the nation
to live up to the full implications of its democratic creed and helped set in motion events
that fundamentally altered the definition of citizenship for all Americans." In the modern
civil rights movement, we again witness African Americans taking advantage of the gap
between the promise of America and its reality.

AKH1106 RIGHTS HELP CHECK RACISM
Eileen Boris, Professor of History, Howard University, JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S
HISTORY, Summer 1994, p.111.
As Williams explains, " 'Rights' feels new in the mouths of most black people. It is still
deliciously empowering to say.... The concept of rights, both positive and negative, is the
marker of our citizenship, our relation to others." In suggesting that the concept of rights
can empower the oppressed rather than merely coopt them, Williams asks that we
reconsider the relationship between gender, race, and rights. Just like activist
African-American club women in the early twentieth century, she suggests that legal rights
need not obliterate racial identity. The absence of rights gives a green light to racism.
AKH1107 BLACKS, RIGHTS AREN'T REIFIED ABSTRACTIONS
Patricia Williams, Professor of Law, Columbia, CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard
Delgado, ed., 1995, p.91.
To say that blacks never fully believed in rights is true; yet it is also true that blacks
believed in them so much and so hard that we gave them life where there was none before.
We held onto them, put the hope of them into our wombs, and mothered them--not just the
notion of them. We nurtured rights and gave rights life. And this was not the dry process
of reification, from which life is drained and reality fades as the cement of conceptual
determinism hardens round--but its opposite. This was the resurrection of life from
400-year-old ashes; the Parthenon genesis of unfertilized hope.
AKH1108 EXPANDING RIGHTS UNLOCKS THEM FROM REIFICATION
Patricia Williams, Professor of Law, Columbia, CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard
Delgado, ed., 1995, p.92-3.
In discarding rights altogether, one discards a symbol too deeply enmeshed in the psyche
of the oppressed to lose without trauma and much resistance. Instead, society must give
them away. Unlock them from reification by giving them to slaves. Give them to trees.
Give them to cows. Give them to history. Give them to rivers and rocks. Give to all of
society objects and untouchables the rights of privacy, integrity, and self-assertion; give
them distance and respect. Flood them with the animating spirit which rights-mythology
fires in this country's most oppressed psyches, and wash away the shrouds of inanimate
object status, so that we may say not that we own gold, but that a luminous golden spirit
owns us.
AKH1109 FOR BLACKS, RIGHTS ASSERTION PRODUCES SOLIDARITY AND
FREEDOM
Patricia Williams, Professor of Law, Columbia, CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard
Delgado, ed., 1995, p.89.
For most blacks, on the other hand, running the risk--as well as having the power--of
'stereo-typing' (a misuse of the naming process; a reduction of considered dimension rather
than an expansion) is a lesser historical evil than having been unnamed altogether. The
black experience of anonymity, the estrangement of being without a name, has been one
of living in the oblivion of society's inverse, beyond the dimension of any consideration
at all. Thus, the experience of rights-assertion has been one of both solidarity and freedom,
of empowerment of an internal and very personal sort; it has been a process of finding the
self.
AKH1110 RIGHTS ARE AN ESSENTIAL MARKER OF CITIZENSHIP
Patricia Williams, Professor of Law, Columbia, CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard
Delgado, ed., 1995, p.92.
And 'without boundary' for blacks has meant not untrammelled vistas of possibility, but
the crushing weight of totalistic--bodily and spiritual--intrusion. 'Rights' feels so new in
the mouths of most black people. It is still so deliciously empowering to say. It is a sign
for and a gift of selfhood that is very hard to contemplate reconstructing (deconstruction
is too awful to think about!) at this point in history. It is the magic wand of visibility and
invisibility, of inclusion and exclusion, of power and no-power. The concept of rights, both
positive and negative, is the marker of our citizenship, our participatoriness, our relation
to others.
AKH1111 SUBSTITUTING NEEDS FOR RIGHTS REPRESENTS NO RHETORICAL
ADVANCE
Patricia Williams, Professor of Law, Columbia, CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard
Delgado, ed., 1995, p.88.
Similarly, while the goals of CLS and of the direct victims of racism may be very much
the same, what is too often missing from CLS works is the acknowledgment that our
experiences of the same circumstances may be very, very different; the same symbol may
mean different things to each of us. At this level, for example, the insistence of Mark
Tushnet, Alan Freeman, and others that the 'needs' of the oppressed should be emphasized
rather than their 'rights' amounts to no more than a word game. It merely says that the
choice has been made to put 'reeds' in the mouth of a rights discourse--thus transforming
'need' into a new form of right. 'Need' then joins 'right' in the pantheon of reified
representations of what it is that you, I, and we want from ourselves and from society.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 95
AKH1112 RIGHTS NEED TO BE EXTENDED, NOT ABANDONED
Patricia Williams, Professor of Law, Columbia, CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard
Delgado, ed., 1995, p.92.
The task for CLS, therefore, is not to discard rights, but to see through or past them so that
they reflect a larger definition of privacy, and of property: so that privacy is fumed from
exclusion based on self-regard into regard for another's fragile, mysterious autonomy; and
so that property regains its ancient connotation of being a reflection of that part of the self
which by virtue of its very externalization is universal. The task is to expand private
property rights into a conception of civil rights, into the right to expect civility from others.
AKH1113 WOMEN ARE ADVANCING RAPIDLY
Ben Wattenberg, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL
NATION, 1991, p.14
Does anyone in this day and age not know that women are productive workers? Women
are doing well, very well, in the labor force. They are moving into better jobs, to better
levels of employment, and with higher pay ratios relative to men—with a speed that must
surprise even the most vigorous feminists (when they are not publicly complaining in order
the keep the heat on).
AKH1114 THE FEMINIST REVOLUTION IS IRREVERSIBLE
Patricia Smith, Professor of Philosophy, University of Kentucky, FEMINIST
JURISPRUDENCE, 1993, p.11
Thus, cultural revolutions should not be confused with political revolutions, which are not
necessarily internal and not inevitable. Hostility to political revolutions makes sense.
Hostility to cultural revolutions is understandable but relatively useless. To return to my
analogy, it really did not to do the Catholic church any good at all to reject Martin Luther
when the rest of the world was ready for him. At a certain point in time, certain ideas
become part of history, and they cannot be reversed. They can be affected, sometimes
revised or modestly changed, possibly guided or directed, but not reversed or erased. This
is now the status of the women's movement and feminist thought. I cannot be reversed or
erased. The bridges have been burned. This can easily be seen by comparing the lives of
women today with those of one hundred years ago. Some of the biggest steps in the
revolution have already been taken, as is illustrated by the legal changes in the status of
women, which recognize them as independent individuals and equal citizens. Whether the
legal system fashions the future from cooperative endeavor or hammers it out of the
adversarial system, it will respond to the requirement of social change.
AKH1115 HISTORY PROVES REASON IMPROVES THE STATUS OF WOMEN
Martha Nussbaum, prof of philosophy, Brown, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct
20, 1994, p.60.
Nor do they consider the historical analysis forcefully put forward by J. S. Mill in The
Subjection of Women, according to which women's situation becomes far worse in eras
mistrustful of reason and argument. It is hard enough at any time, Mill writes, to convince
people of something that goes against their deeply entrenched interests and threatens their
power. It is impossible to do so when they spurn the very mechanisms of reasoned
persuasion.
AKH1116 DECONSTRUCTION HURTS WOMEN BY MAKING POWER THE ONLY
NORM
Martha Nussbaum, prof of philosophy, Brown, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct
20, 1994, p.60.
Why, then, have they not done so? Why is the assault on reason so attractive to some
feminist thinkers? Four reasons, I believe, can be offered for the trend. First, these
feminists, like many other critical social thinkers, have been influenced by French theorists
such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, and by their criticisms of reason. To my
mind perversely, they believe that these positions, which try to reduce reasons for a
conviction to causes of that conviction and claim that arguments merely reflect the play of
social and political forces, have in them something liberating and politically progressive.
But one might reflect that if argument is to depend on the play of forces, the weaker will
always lose. What the weak seem to require is a situation in which reason prevails over
force, and is given special respect. The deconstructionist might now reply that, as a matter
of fact, this never happens, and it is liberating at least to recognize this fact. To this one
should say that the descriptive claim seems false)and that to make such dire claims as if
they reflected inevitable truth is likely to make them come true, by leading people to relax
their vigilance about standards of argument.

AKH1117 THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE ONLY APPLIES TO A LIBERATARIAN
THEORY OF RIGHTS
Will Kymlicka, U of Toronto philosopher, CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p.275.
One central difference, according to Gilligan, is that accepting responsibility for others
requires some positive concern for their welfare, whereas rights are essentially self-
protection mechanisms that can be respected by simply leaving other people alone. Thus
she equates talk about rights with individualism and selfishness, and says that rights-based
duties to others are limited to reciprocal non-interference (Gilligan 1982: 22, 136, 147; cf.
Meyers 1987: 146). But this only holds for libertarian theories of rights. All of the other
theories I have examined recognize positive duties concerning the welfare of others. So
while the justice framework emphasizes people's rights, it is quite appropriate to say that
these rights impose responsibilities on others. And indeed that is how some of Gilligan's
respondents describe their ethic of care. For example, one woman says that `People suffer,
and that gives them certain rights, and that gives you a certain responsibility'.
AKH1118 FEMINIST FUNDAMENTALISM IS AN ANTI-RATIONAL DOGMA
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.111
Of course these remarks violate the feminist metaphysics according to which every
institution of this society is irremediably sexist, and every male, even the most
sympathetic, ineradicably guilty by association with it. Some positions, even among
persons brought up in the logophallocentric West, are well beyond the reach of rational
argument. Feminist fundamentalism shares that distinction with other dogmatisms, such
as religious fundamentalism; and when all is said and done, similar mentalities give rise
to both.
AKH1119 FEMINISM ISN'T A METHOD OF SCIENCE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.25
Science does not work the way the critics say it works, and the program of reforms mooted
by the critics will turn it into something other, and less than, science. Enthusiastic recruits
to the cause of "feminist" science will have to face this contradiction sooner or later)most
likely sooner. They may then come to take the view, shared by most women scientists of
our acquaintance, that feminism, whatever its strengths as a moral stance and a social
program, is not a methodology for doing science: it does not offer any privileged insights
into scientific questions.
AKH1120 WOMEN ARE MAKING LEADERSHIP GAINS
USA TODAY, Nov 9, 1994, p.7A
Female candidates were on their way to some historic ) though modest ) gains in races
nationwide Tuesday, but they also were racking up losses after a campaign season when
"women's issues" were rarely spotlighted. The election of Maine's Olympia Snowe to the
Senate and the re-election of Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison set a GOP record: three
female senators, including Kansas' Nancy Kassebaum.
AKH1121 WOMEN ARE MAKING SOLID PROGRESS IS POLITICS
USA TODAY, Nov 9, 1994, p.7A
"I'm impatient too ) I want to see it happen faster," said Ruth Mandel of the Center for
American Women in Politics. "But in a way, the pace of progress for women is solid and
healthy, because it's not a flash in the pan."
AKH1122 WOMEN AND MINORITIES ARE INCREASINGLY REPRESENTED IN
THE JUDICIARY
USA TODAY, Nov 4, 1994, p.13A
Clinton has appointed more blacks to key spots in his administration and put more women
and black judges on the federal bench than any past president . Of Clinton's 129 judicial
appointments, 60% are women or people of color.
AKH1123 WOMEN MADE MAJOR POLITICAL GAINS IN 92
USA TODAY, Nov 9, 1994, p.7A
Overall, women did not fare as well as they did in 1992, dubbed the "Year of the Woman"
in the wake of the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas sexual harassment hearings. That year, the
number of women in the Senate jumped to seven from two, and a record 24 new women
were elected to the House bringing the House total to 47. This year's likely gains looked
modest by comparison.
AKH1124 MOST AMERICAN'S FAVOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS
Christopher Lasch, Professor of History, University of Rochester, THE REVOLT OF THE
ELITES, 1995, p.110
There is a good deal of evidence, however)though Etzioni does not avail himself of it)that
Americans agree even about concrete issues, the very issues, prominent in recent years as
a source of bitter ideological conflict, on which agreement is allegedly impossible. Public
opinion polls show that large majorities favor the expansion of economic opportunities for
women. A Gallup poll conducted in 1987, moreover, found that 66 percent rejected the
proposition that "women should return to their traditional role in society."
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 96
AKH1125 THOUGHT ABOUT GENDER RELATIONS HAS BEEN
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED
Patricia Smith, Professor of Philosophy, University of Kentucky, FEMINIST
JURISPRUDENCE, 1993, p.15
This is a question that literally could not have been asked less than thirty years ago. In
1971 the Oxford English Dictionary defined sexism as an archaic seventeenth-century term
referring to a run of six cards in a game. In other words, sexism as we understand it today
was not a word just thirty years ago. In those days (and notice what a short time that is)
sexism could not be thought by ordinary people. Sexism could not be objected to because
it could not be spoken; it certainly could not be a legal cause of action. But by 1980 all
dictionaries recognized sexism as referring to prejudice against women. The appearance
of the word is significant, for it means that new questions can be asked, new issues can be
raised, and new objections can be formulated. Asking new questions demonstrates true
progress of human thought, and shows that the biggest step in the feminist revolution has
already been taken. Human thought has already changed. This is not to say, however, that
no work is left to be done. The project now is to determine all the implications of that
change.
AKH1126 CULTURAL REVOLUTIONS FOLLOW INEVITABLY FROM CHANGES
IN WORLD VIEW
Patricia Smith, Professor of Philosophy, University of Kentucky, FEMINIST
JURISPRUDENCE, 1993, p.11
Cultural revolutions are profound but not violent. Cultural revolution is the discovery
(usually after the fact) that everyone or almost everyone has joined a new order (usually
without realizing it). It is internally developed rather than externally imposed. When
women and men no longer think of women first and foremost as mothers, and secondarily
as anything else, then the world will have changed. When women are thought of and think
of themselves as primarily self-supporting and not as dependent, the world will have
changed. In sum when women and men actually think of themselves as equals, the world
will have changed. In a cultural revolution, what changes is what people think, their basic
assumptions about what is normal. So, cultural revolutions are inevitable because they
follow from a change of worldview.
AKH1127 OBJECTIVE REASON IS WOMEN'S BEST TOOL AGAINST SEXIST
PREJUDICE
Martha Nussbaum, Prof of Philosophy, Brown, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct
20, 1994, p.59.
Convention and habit are women's enemies here, and reason their ally. Habit decrees that
what seems strange is impossible and "unnatural"; reason looks head on at the strange,
refusing to assume that the current status quo is either immutable or in any normative sense
"natural." The appeal to reason and objectivity amounts to a request that the observer
refuse to be intimidated by habit, and look for cogent arguments based on evidence that
has been carefully sifted for bias.
AKH1128 CONTEMPORARY WOMEN EFFECTIVELY APPEAL TO OBJECTIVE
REASON
Martha Nussbaum, Prof of Philosophy Brown, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct
20, 1994, p.59.
In our own society the arguments of feminists make such appeals to reason and objectivity
all the time, and in a manner that closely resembles Platonic arguments. We no demand,
with Plato, that reproductive differences between men and women not be taken to be
relevant to hiring unless it can be shown that these differences affect job performance, as
it rarely can. We point out that these differences are not disabilities until law and custom
treat them in certain ways; and we expect to be heard.
AKH1129 ARISTOTELIAN REASON IS HIGHLY COMPATIBLE WITH FEMINISM
Martha Nussbaum, prof of philosophy, Brown, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct
20, 1994, p.61.
Unlike some modern pictures of reason prevalent in economics and elsewhere, the
Aristotelian view, Homiak argues, does not neglect the role of emotions in practical
reasoning, nor does it neglect the importance of attachment and affiliation in a complete
rational life. On the other hand, it insists that this life of affiliation)marriage, friendship,
citizenship)be lived in accordance with a plan endorsed through reflection; in this way it
provides a model for feminists eager to endorse the emotions while also affirming the
values of self-respect and self-determination.
AKH1130 CARTESIAN RATIONALISM SUPPORTS FEMINISM
Martha Nussbaum, prof of philosophy, Brown, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct
20, 1994, p.62.
And yet Margaret Atherton convincingly argues that Descarte's arguments for a genderless
reason separated from and not determined by the nature of the body were in fact sources
of strength for women aspiring to equality. On the whole, the rationalist idea of a fixed
human essence, far from promoting women's oppression, helped to advance their equality.
For if we are not more than what we are made to be by society, and women appear to be
different, then they are different; but if we all have an inalienable rational core, then that
core may be seen to exert moral claims even on those who would deny its presence. This
is the very argument in favor of Cartesian rationalism that was long ago made by Noam
Chomsky, who might have been mentioned in this connection. Atherton gives the
argument a firmer historical basis, and shows its continued appeal.

AKH1131 HUME'S THEORY OF REASON SUPPORTS FEMINIST GOALS
Martha Nussbaum, prof of philosophy, Brown, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct
20, 1994, p.61-2.
A similar demonstration of the richness of the "canon" is to be found in Annette Baier's
article on Hume, which argues that Hume's idea of reason as a natural embodied faculty
can help us investigate some of the interesting questions feminists have asked about
traditional ideas of intellectual detachment. According to Baier, Hume argues that reason
is not a quasi-divine faculty, but a natural embodied capacity that human beings share with
other creatures who learn from experience. He anticipates the modern feminist argument
that human "norms, including norms for acquiring language, are social in their genesis as
well as in their intended scope." Later in the book, Helen Longino, a philosopher of
science, develops with very line of argument (though without reference to Hume),
emphasizing the importance of social context and shared standards in acquiring scientific
knowledge. Baier's claim for Hume's relevance to current feminist projects thus receives
strong support.
AKH1132 FALSE CLAIMS OF OBJECTIVITY ARE THE FOE OF WOMEN, NOT
REAL OBJECTIVITY
Martha Nussbaum, Prof of Philosophy, Brown, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct
20, 1994, p.59.
The claim of objectivity had been used as a screen to mask mere prejudice against the new
and strange. Critical to the case was this distinction between a pretense of objectivity and
real objectivity. And so, at Brown as in Athens: "the appearance of absurdity ebbed away
under the influence of reason's judgment about the best."
AKH1133 MALE ABUSES OF OBJECTIVITY ARE THE PROBLEM, NOT
OBJECTIVITY ITSELF
Martha Nussbaum, prof of philosophy, Brown, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct
20, 1994, p.60-1.
Third, feminists note that males who wish to justify the oppression of women have
frequently made a pretense of objectivity and of freedom from bias in sifting evidence, and
have used the claim of objectivity to protect their biased judgments from rational scrutiny.
More than a little perversely, some feminists have blamed this behavior on the norm of
objectivity itself, rather than on its abusers.
AKH1134 THEIR COEXISTENCE DOESN'T PROVE OBJECTIVE REASON CAUSED
PATRIARCHY
Martha Nussbaum, prof of philosophy, Brown, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct
20, 1994, p.60.
Second, feminists working in philosophy note that the philosophical tradition has existed
alongside patriarchal and oppressive institutions. Then, in a fallacious for of argument that
one might designate cum hoc, ergo propter hoc, they blame the philosophical tradition for
these abuses)even though some of the philosophers in the tradition were social radicals
who argued vehemently against them, and still others provided in their thought the bases
for a critical assault on unjust practices.
AKH1135 REJECTING OBJECTIVITY AND REASON DAMAGES WOMEN
Martha Nussbaum, prof of philosophy, Brown, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct
20, 1994, p.60.
What I am claiming is that the opposition to women's equality, whether in secular or in
religious dress, derives support from the claim that traditional norms of objectivity are
merely a parochial liberal ideology. Women in philosophy have, it seems, good reasons,
both theoretical and urgently practical, to hold fast to standards of reason and objectivity.
AKH1136 REJECTION OF OBJECTIVE STANDARDS HURTS WOMEN
Martha Nussbaum, Prof of philosophy, Brown, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct
20, 1994, p.60.
It seems unwise for a feminist to ally herself with McConnell's position on reason and
truth, since this position could all too easily be used to defend the firing of women who
criticize the position of their church on feminist issues. Yet by espousing deconstructionist
ideas, many feminist academics have zealously denied that objective standards can be
defended. If those ideas were convincing on other grounds, one might have to put up with
these difficult practical consequences. But one certainly should not favor them for the sake
of their practical consequences)as frequently happens, I believe, in feminist debate.
AKH1137 THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF REASON IS SELF-DEFEATING
Martha Nussbaum, Prof of Philosophy, Brown, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct
20, 1994, p.59.
The feminist assault on reason is troubling because the arguments in its favor are for the
most part weak, as I shall shortly argue, and because these arguments uphold a picture of
women that feminists have worked for centuries to overturn. Nor do these weak arguments
advance the political goals for which some feminists may favor them. For a mirror image
of the assault on traditional conceptions of objectivity has recently been mounted by some
conservative thinkers against the very norms of academic freedom and academic
objectivity to which women in today's academy must look for the defense of their
employment.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 97
AKH1138 UNIVERSAL NORMS ARE NEEDED TO MAKE MACKINNON'S
NORMATIVE APPEALS COHERENT
Martha Nussbaum, Prof of philosophy, Brown, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct
20, 1994, p.62.
But Rapaport should, with MacKinnon, go further: we need not only a concept of woman,
but also a universal concept of the human being in order to say clearly what women need
and what has been denied them. MacKinnon's well-known statement that "being a woman
is not yet a way of being a human being" ) i.e., that women are not granted the status of
human beings ) derives its argumentative force from a rather Kantian (or Platonic) notion
of a common humanity that underlies gender and gives rise to claims of equal rights.
"Being a tree is not yet a way of being a human being" has no moral force; it is only
against a background assumption that women are indeed human (have needs, capacities,
and rights similar to those of men) that the claim that their way of life is not fully human
has moral force.
AKH1139 NORMS OF OBJECTIVITY STRENGTHEN THE CASE FOR WOMEN'S
EQUALITY
Martha Nussbaum, prof of philosophy, Brown, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Oct
20, 1994, p.63.
She then makes the equally obvious point (which still bears repeating) that the old norm
of objectivity was in a sense more attractive for feminists than the norms that feminists
now defend. For if we could get to the real truth by purifying ourselves of all social and
historical influences, and if this were a project that had any real hope of being achieved,
then arguments in favor of women's equality and dignity would be, at least in principle,
easy to assess. If, on the other hand, we grant (persuaded by the arguments of W.V. Quine,
Nelson Goodman, and others as well) that history, culture, and human interests always
color inquiry in one way or another, we saddle ourselves with the much more subtle and
tricky task of demarcating, in any inquiry, between the legitimate and valuable historical
and cultural influences and those that are not so valuable. We run the risk that many will
despair of accomplishing the task; they may suppose that the search for knowledge really
is nothing else but a kind of power-seeking, in which ideology in effect displaces
epistemology.
AKH1140 FEMINIST REJECTION OF RULES CAN BE DISABLING
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1049
In response to classical doctrinalism and certain traditional forms of rights theory, many
feminists have strongly doubted the value of a priori, rule-like normative structures as
compared with situated decisionmaking and acknowledgment of the contingencies of
context. Like their pragmatist neighbors, feminists can be tempted into disabling radical
particularism. Moreover, radical particularism can become especially tempting when
feminists adopt too rigid a rule that rule-like structures are masculine (to be rejected) and
non-like procedures are feminine (to be adopted).
AKH1141 THE FEMINIST DISTINCTION BETWEEN RIGHTS AND DUTIES
COLLAPSES
Will Kymlicka, U of Toronto philosopher, CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p.275-6.
Once we abandon the libertarian construal of rights as non-interference, the whole contrast
between responsibilities and rights threatens to collapse (Okin 1990: 157). As Broughton
puts it, `Gilligan and her subjects seem to presuppose something like "the right of all to
respect as a person", "the right to be treated sympathetically and as an equal", and "the duty
to respect and not to hurt others"'. Hence `it is difficult to see in what way she is not here
recommending more or less binding rights and duties or perhaps even "principles" of
personal welfare and benevolent concern.'
AKH1142 THE ETHIC OF CARE ISN'T FUNDAMENTALLY DISTINCT FROM THE
ETHIC OF JUSTICE
Will Kymlicka, U of Toronto philosopher, CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p.276.
And while Gilligan insists that the two ethics are fundamentally different,she herself seems
undecided about their relationship. She `shifts between the ideas that the two ethics are
incompatible alternatives to each other but are both adequate from a normative point of
view; that they are complements of one another involved in some sort of tense interplay;
and that each is deficient without the other and thus ought to be integrated' (Flanagan and
Jackson 1987: 628). These shifts should not be surprising if, as I have argued, the key
concepts Gilligan uses to distinguish the two ethics do not define genuine contrasts.

AKH1143 RAWLSIAN LIBERALISM WOULD REJECT SEXISM
Will Kymlicka, U of Toronto philosopher, CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p.246-7.
Liberalism's commitment to autonomy and equal opportunity, and to an ambition-sensitive,
endowment-insensitive distribution of resources, rules out traditional gender divisions.
There seems to be no reason why the gender-bias of existing social roles would not be
recognized by the contractors in Rawls's original position as a source of injustice. While
Rawls himself says nothing about how his contractors would interpret sex equality, others
have argued that the logic of Rawls's construction)i.e. the commitment to eliminating
undeserved inequalities, and to the freedom to choose our ends)requires radical reform.
For example, Karne Green argues that the contractors' interest in equal liberty requires
redistributing domestic labour (green 1986: 31-5). And Susan Okin argues that Rawls's
contractors would insist on a more complete attack on the system of gender differentiation,
eliminating both the unequal domestic division of labour and sexual objectification (Okin
1987: 67-8). Similar conclusions about the injustice of traditional gender-roles can be
reached if we ask whether these roles pass Dworkin's test of fairness.
AKH1144 THERE'S NO UNIQUELY FEMALE EPISTEMOLOGY
Christina Sommers, Professor of Philosophy, Clark University, WHO STOLE
FEMINISM?, 1994, p.75
What do mainstream philosophers make of the idea of "standpoint theories"? Professor
Susan Haack of the University of Miami is one of the most respected epistemologists in
the country. She is also an equity feminist. In December 1992 she participated in a
symposium on feminist philosophy at meetings of the American Philosophical Association.
It was a unique event. For once, someone outside the insular little world of gender
feminism was asked to comment on gender feminist theories of knowledge. Watching
Professor Haack critique the "standpoint theorists" was a little like watching a chess
grandmaster defeat all opponents in a simultaneous exhibition, blindfolded. Haack told the
audience that she finds the idea of "female ways of knowing" as puzzling as the idea of a
Republican epistemology or a senior citizens' epistemology. Some of her arguments are
too technical to review here. I cite only a few of her criticisms: I am not convinced that
there are any distinctively female "ways of knowing." All any human being has to go on,
in figuring out how things are, is his or her sensory and introspective experience, and the
explanatory theorizing he or she devises to accommodate it; and differences in cognitive
style, like differences in handwriting, seem more individual than gender-determined.
AKH1145 THE ETHIC OF CARE REINFORCES OPPRESSION
Margaret Radin and Frank Michelman, Professors of Law, Stanford and Harvard,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1991, p.1050
The pragmatist-feminist objects that this essentializing stance excludes women from a
moral tradition that has its redemptive side; and, moreover, that this exclusion may
excessively inhibit any aspirationally inclusive society from trafficking at all with that
tradition. Perhaps more importantly, the pragmatist-feminist continues, the essentializing
stance tends to entrench a current cultural understanding of women's limited nature, a
cultural understanding that many women and men find injurious and want to dissolve.
Feminism would thus put itself at odds with its own pragmatic doubt that current cultural
constructions of feminine "nature" are separable from the detritus of an oppressive
ideology of gender. Worthy and precious as it is, the ethic of care as we know it may also
be a cultural complex of traits useful to a group existing under oppression. Without
conceding the indefinite continuation of women's oppression, we cannot regard such a
complex as essential or peculiar to women.
AKH1146 RADICAL FEMINISM IS A TOTALIZING IDEOLOGY
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.226-7
Leaving aside the vanity of sociologists, which, on the scale of human folly, is hardly
worse than that of physicists, the totalizing instinct is found to be firmly embedded in some
current modes of radical thought which in other respects have put themselves at a distance
from traditional Marxism. Feminism, at its most aggressive and confrontational, is
obviously one such system of thought. As totalizers, radical feminist theorists are easily
a match for the most rigid Marxist. The lurking idea behind this presumptuousness seems
to be that the situation of women in society cannot be viewed merely as a "problem,"
susceptible to pragmatic amelioration. Rather, it must be seen as foundational, as having
cosmic dimensions, and thus it can be redeemed only by a wholesale reconstitution of the
entire social fabric. Radical feminism in this vein not only makes a claim on received
notions of equity and justice but appropriates the whole notion of justice to itself. It
demands to be recognized as morally omnicopetent. It follows that no institution of the
existing order may be viewed as free of the original sin of sexism, for to exempt anything
from the surveillance of the feminist ethic is to deny the absolute priority of feminist
values.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 98
AKH1147 TOTALISM VIEWS ALL PHENOMENA THROUGH AN IDEOLOGICAL
LENS
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.225-6
Totalism, as we would define it, is the impulse to bring the entire range of human
phenomena within the rubric of a favored doctrinal system. It erects ideological categories
which are viewed as primary, privileged, and comprehensive. Totalism of this kind has
been the historic tendency of organized religion as we have known it since the end of
classical paganism. Religion, however, has no monopoly in this respect. Marxism, to take
one inevitable example, is just such a totalizing system, especially as amplified and
interpreted by a monomaniacal thinker such as Lenin. Hard-core Marxists assume that all
history and culture, all social phenomena in fact, are to be explained by the so-called laws
of historical development set forth by Marx and elaborated by certain privileged
successors. Marxists assert that the economic order of society, as reflected in class
relations, underlies everything and that all other aspects of social life)morals, law, art,
political principles, and all the rest)are derivative, mere epiphenomena. The exact sciences
too are subject to this scheme.
AKH1148 SCIENCE ISN'T' GENDER BIASED)IT WORKS AS WELL FOR
EVERYONE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.141
There are no developments in the history and philosophy of science that prove a social
(masculinist, ideological) construction of the final product of empirical science. The best
evidence of such a negative is the set of plain truths that science (in the guise of, say
penicillin) works just as well for Australian aborigines (male and female) as it does on
Englishmen (and women); or that certain fundamentalist Christians, firmly convinced in
their social conditioning that the world is just a few thousand years old, may nevertheless
die in earthquakes, whose underlying tectonic processes require intervals thousands of
times that long.
AKH1149 THERE ARE NO EXAMPLES OF UNIQUELY FEMINIST SCIENCE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.111-12
Recent feminist theorizing about the sciences therefore contains heavy doses of dogma.
The claims are immensely strong and usually counterintuitive; it would seem that a
correspondingly powerful case, built upon incontrovertible evidence and bound together
with iron logic, would be required to make them credible. We would have to be shown that
there are palpable defects, due to the inadequacies of a male perspective, in heretofore
solid-looking science and that the flawed theories can be repaired or replaced by feminist
insights. The issue before us is knowledge, scientific knowledge specifically, and the
extent to which the prevalent feminist critique, as agent of methodological or conceptual
change, is relevant to its advance. To examine the issue we need (and are led by feminist
authors to expect) not just stories of past or present discrimination, but examples of
scientific knowledge informed, reformed, enhanced by feminism. As far as we are aware,
there are as yet no examples. It's that simple.
AKH1150 THE WORK OF FEMALE SCIENTISTS DOESN'T DIFFER FROM MALE
SCIENTISTS
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.141-2
And finally, McClintock's splendid work was (almost, but not quite) overlooked for some
years, but there is no convincing closeness to the experimental material, her willingness
to "listen to it," is characteristic of the work of some scientists and less so of others. There
are no data suggesting that women scientists display the characteristic, in general, more
often than do men. Moreover there is no lack of abstraction in McClintock's work: it is
solidly grounded in the abstractions of formal genetics. She simply saw things that others
didn't see. Her finest work supports the still-powerful Popperian idea that good science
consists in framing hypotheses so that they are refutable and then designing experiments
to do just that.
AKH1151 THE FEMINIST KRITIK FOCUSES ON THE LANGUAGE NOT THE
SUBSTANCE OF SCIENCE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.112
Not surprisingly, given the academic backgrounds or venues of many of its champions, the
feminist critique is overwhelmingly concerned with metaphor, rather than with the logical
content and analysis of scientific results. But scientific results, we must insist, are not
simply metaphors. If they survive, they do so because they work, for a large number of
people of hugely varied backgrounds and interests, that is, they function as distinctly more
than images or figures of speech, and their values are, likewise, more than merely
figurative. What we learn from the critiques is unexceptional and also not in the least
surprising: that men have traditionally dominated the upper reaches of science (and nearly
everything else); that their idiom, especially in informal speech, has reflected that
dominance.

AKH1152 MOST OF THE FEMINIST SCIENCE KRITIK SIMPLY CONCERNS
INCIDENTAL LANGUAGE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.123
There is always much ado among feminist science-critics, as must now be clear, about
tendentious interpretive language. These critics are governed by the impulse to take
language very seriously, even when it is clearly metaphorical or simply whimsical. Their
censoriousness applies just as strongly to the offhand self-deprecations of the late, brilliant
Richard Feynman as to the turgid metaphors of Francis Bacon (who did little of scientific
value and goes unread by the vast majority of scientists). The temptation to construe
colloquialisms as tokens of deep epistemological error has been a ceaseless element of
feminist criticism, and one of the most fatuous.
AKH1153 ITS METAPHORS AREN'T IMPORTANT TO THE SUBSTANCE OF
SCIENCE
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.126.
Let us not pretend, though, that masculinism prevails any longer in the metaphors, let alone
in the substance, of science. That substance, we are forced to report, seems stubbornly
resistant to spin applied in either direction. You may choose to see spermatozoa as a
mindless mob, each one a chromosome set strapped to a hotrod; or you may see them as
streamlined engines of delivery for the indispensable paternal genes, without which there
can be none of the combinatorial advantages of sex. The less of such ''seeing," the better
the science. Neither trope matters in the slightest when serious scientific issues are on the
line. What matters is the evolutionary consequence of sex in reproduction, from microbial
to human. What matter are the remarkable details of devices for sexual genetic
recombination. What matters is the physics, the chemistry, and the information content of
the sperm and of the egg, and what happens when all those become the property of a new,
single, diploid cell-the zygote, the beginning of an individual multicellular life.
AKH1154 SEXISM IS MINIMAL IN ACADEMIA
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, University of Virginia Professor of Life Sciences and
Rutgers University Professor of Mathematics, HIGHER SUPERSTITION, 1994, p.110.
What are the realities of discrimination against women in science today, at least in the
American universities. We take a position that is not likely, in the climate described, to
endear us to a majority of our colleagues in or out of the sciences, or to the political and
administrative avant-garde. It is that sexist discrimination, while certainly not vanished
into history, is largely vestigial in the universities; that the only widespread, obvious
discrimination today is against white males. These days, nearly half of all medical students
are women, and the ratio is accurately reflected in the proportion of women among
residents in training and among younger practitioners. A similar situation is found in
biomedical research. The numbers are comparable, furthermore, in psychology and
anthropology In the "harder" sciences- mathematics, physics, chemistry, computer
science-the proportion of women is much smaller, but it is growing.
AKH1155 PROPONENTS OF NARRATIVE OVERSTATE THEIR EFFECTIVENESS
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.826.
The claim, then, is only that racial or gender attitudes of "insiders" can be powerfully
transformed by exposure to stories. However, even this limited claim about the effect of
stories seems implausible. Some advocates of storytelling place excessive confidence in
the ability of language to change fundamental beliefs; one scholar goes so far as to call
rhetoric "a magical thing . . . [that] transforms things into their opposites" and makes
"[d]ifficult choices become obvious." Although we agree that stories can sometimes
significantly affect their audiences, these writers seem to have markedly unrealistic
expectations about the magnitude of the effects.
AKH1156 NARRATIVES ARE POLITICALLY INEFFECTIVE
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.826-7.
Despite the many general assertions about how narratives can transform the political
perspective of "insiders," conversion stories are notably scarce. As storytelling advocates
admit--and as cognitive psychologists would predict--responses by "insiders" are typically
defensive or dismissive."' Stories undoubtedly can have beneficial effects, at least at the
margin, on public attitudes, yet current storytelling seems ill-conceived for creating such
an effect. Effective communication requires bridging the gap between the viewpoints of
speaker and listener, rather than simply presenting the speaker's views without regard to
the standpoint of the listener. But in our extensive reading of the storytelling literature, we
have found few efforts to connect the events in the stories with the experiences of white
or male readers. Thus, whatever potential storytelling might have to change attitudes is
unlikely to be realized by the current generation of efforts.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 99
AKH1157 STORIES CAN'T CORRECT SOCIAL BIAS
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.828.
Moreover, behavior that is widespread may seem trivial to members of a dominant group
but quite significant to members of subordinated groups. Because legal analysis is often
based on informal experience and folk wisdom rather than rigorous social science, these
problems may lead to mistaken policy recommendations. Legal storytelling is unlikely to
correct these forms of bias because the problems themselves stem from broader social
conditions. More effective solutions include integration and affirmative action, both of
which attack the problem directly by broadening the personal contacts of the individuals
involved.
AKH1158 STORIES CAN'T TRANSCEND ESSENTIALLY DIFFERENT WORLD
VIEWS
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.825-6.
One possible interpretation of Delgado's statements is that groups have radically different
ways of thinking about the world, which can be effectively bridged through stories. This
is a strong claim, possibly stronger than he intends to make. In any event, it is a position
that we find untenable. In Part 1, we called into question the assumption that the "different
voices" of subordinated groups reflect radically different ways of thought. Moreover, if
whites did inhabit a socially constructed reality wholly distinct from people of color, it
would be difficult to understand how communication across this gulf could take place. Any
sentence uttered by a person of color, under this assumption, would be connected with one
coherent world-view in the mind of the speaker, but a white listener could only understand
the sentence within her own, equally coherent but quite different, world-view. In essence,
the speaker would be using one language and the hearer would be listening to a completely
different one, even though the words of both languages would sound identical. Thus this
view calls into question the enterprise of storytelling itself as a means of communication.
AKH1159 LEGAL NARRATIVES ARE INFERIOR TO OTHER NARRATIVE FORMS
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.828.
And to the extent that vicarious contacts through stories can be used to supplement these
direct solutions, there is little reason to think that the publication of stories in law reviews
is the best solution. For example, novels can provide much more textured versions of
individual experiences, while movies and television have greater dramatic impact and
reach far larger audiences than law review prose. Moreover, there is reason to question
whether the personal stories of middle-class law professors can accurately convey the
perspectives of the truly disadvantaged.
AKH1160 NARRATIVE DOESN'T UNIQUELY EMPOWER MINORITIES
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard Delgado, ed., 1995, p.287.
These efforts to link stories with the voice of color are problematic. White men clearly do
tell stories. In fact, many European cultures have rich storytelling traditions. Moreover, a
number of critical race theorists themselves assert that dominant groups, as well as
conservative members of minority groups, tell their own stories, and that the difference
between their stories and those of outsiders is simply that the former are more readily
accepted.
AKH1161 THERE IS NO UNIQUE VOICE OF COLOR
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard Delgado, ed., 1995, p.288-9
Because critical race theorists have not articulated their claims as fully as feminists have,
their theories are more difficult to evaluate. Without a clearer conception of the "voice of
color," it is difficult to assess the arguments on behalf of its existence. If those who argue
the existence of fundamental cognitive differences between races or genders have the
burden of proof, they clearly have failed to carry that burden. Even if they do not bear the
burden of proof, we think there are sound reasons to reject such claims. If radical
differences did exist, we would expect that empirical studies or at least everyday
observations would consistently reveal some differences, even if the results were not all
of the magnitude predicted by the theory. Moreover, the most clearly articulated claim of
the proponents, that different voices are characterized by contextuality and concreteness,
may well be true as a description of overlapping bell curves, but is clearly false if those
traits are claimed to be the sole property of any single group. Finally, the argument for a
unique voice of color is undermined by the inability of the proponents to agree on its
attributes or on paradigm cases. For these reasons, the claim for fundamental group
difference is not only unproven but implausible.

AKH1162 IDEOLOGY DETERMINES VOICE MORE THAN RACE OR CLASS
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard Delgado, ed., 1995, p.288.
As Alex Johnson notes, critical race theorists may conflate race and socioeconomic class:
"If one substitutes the word 'poor' or 'oppressed' for 'color' in much of the literature
advocating the existence of the voice of color, or claiming to speak in that voice of color,
the content of that literature would be, by and large, unchanged." Ideology, then, may be
as important as race or class in defining the speaker's "voice." For instance, many of the
stories that feminists and critical race theorists tell about the hiring and promotion practices
of law schools are similar to those told by white male critical legal scholars.
AKH1163 THERE ISN'T A DISTINCTIVE VOICE OF COLOR
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard Delgado, ed., 1995, p.287.
These rather vague descriptions fail to identify the content of a distinct voice of color.
Because the few examples offered focus on racially charged issues such as affirmative
action and hate speech regulations, they provide little insight into any broad differences
between voices of color and supportive white voices. Indeed, Mari Matsuda suggests that
"multiple consciousness," her term for the perspective of women of color, is accessible to
everyone. And Patricia Williams, a feminist often cited as one of the foremost voices of
color, seemingly implies that the voice of color has at least entered into that of western
humanity generally when she argues that "people of color have always been part of
Western Civilization." A recent book by an African scholar suggests that the commonality
of African cultures is a white myth invented to dominate blacks. Of course, the difficulty
in describing the voice of color does not disprove its existence, but it does make analysis
more difficult.
AKH1164 DISTINCTIVE MINORITY PERSPECTIVES HAVEN'T BEEN CLEARLY
ARTICULATED
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard Delgado, ed., 1995, p.286-7.
The best evidence supporting the existence of a voice of color is said to be that minority
"scholarship raises new perspectives--the perspectives of [minority] groups." Thus far,
however, there has been no demonstration of how those new perspectives differ from the
various perspectives underlying traditional scholarship.
AKH1165 NO EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE SUPPORTS A DISTINCTIVE "VOICE OF
COLOR"
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard Delgado, ed., 1995, p.286.
Because the feminist version of different voice theory is older and therefore better
developed than the critical race theory version, we found arguments regarding the voice
of color particularly difficult to evaluate. However debatable Gilligan's conclusions
regarding women's different voice may be, critical race theory has not yet established a
comparable empirical foundation. We know of no work on critical race theory that
discusses psychological or other social science studies supporting the existence of a voice
of color. Most critical race theorists simply postulate the existence of a difference, often
citing feminist scholarship for support, and thus implicitly equate a male voice with a
white voice.
AKH1166 NARRATIVES AREN'T NECESSARY TO UNDERSTAND OPPRESSED
GROUPS
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.835.
Robin West has recently acknowledged the difficulty of assessing the truthfulness of
personalized accounts, but she argues nonetheless that the only way to understand the
situations of oppressed groups is "the inclusion of just such personalized, subjective
accounts. West, supra note 7, at 1781 (reviewing WILLIAMS, supra note 6). There would
appear to be a wide range of other possible methods, however, including comparing the
accounts with journalistic studies of disadvantaged individuals and common social science
techniques. Necessity does not seem an adequate justification for relying on sources that
can be characterized, as West herself puts it, as "nonfalsifiable, overly idiosyncratic,
discomfittingly moralistic, nonuniversalizable."
AKH1167 SETTING DIFFERENT STANDARDS FOR MINORITY SCHOLARS IS
DEMEANING
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.841-2.
These arguments assume that the work of women and minority scholars is different--so
different that it cannot be judged by conventional standards of merit. As noted earlier,
available evidence does not support such a strong claim about "different voices." The
critique of traditional standards as biased appears to be based largely on the fact that the
works of some outsider scholars have not fared well under those standards. As Randall
Kennedy points out, however, this might be because those specific works lacked merit. The
arguments also assume that people of color cannot meet the traditional standards of merit,
a suggestion that many scholars of color naturally find demeaning, and for which no
evidence exists. Thus, we find little support for the general claim that traditional standards
are inherently unfair to work by women and minorities.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 100
AKH1168 STRESSING THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF WOMEN'S VOICES FURTHERS
THEIR MARGINALIZATION
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard Delgado, ed., 1995, p.285.
Some feminist legal scholars have condemned suggestions about women's different voice
as both unsound and unwise, because they are likely to lead to further marginalization of
women in economic and political spheres. Others whom Robin West describes as "radical"
as opposed to "cultural" feminists, attribute women's different voice to the male foot on
women's throats, suggesting that "women's connection to others is the source of women's
misery, not a source of value worth celebrating." And any claim that women think
differently is subject to a charge of "gender essentialism," which ascribes a unitary voice
to women.
AKH1169 THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF MALE AND FEMALE VOICES HAS BEEN
EXAGGERATED
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
CRITICAL RACE THEORY, Richard Delgado, ed., 1995, p.285.
Despite the widespread invocation of different voice theories, the existence of such a voice
and its connection to legal storytelling are matters of dispute even within the feminist legal
community. Gilligan's work is highly controversial within her own discipline, and Gilligan
herself rejects extreme claims of differences between men and women. Her later work
suggests that the moral approaches of men and women form overlapping bell curves, and
that fully mature individuals of either sex should be able to use both "voices." Other
researchers in the field have been unable to duplicate Gilligan's original findings, and
many have criticized her methodology. If male and female styles of thought were radically
different, one would expect more consistent empirical evidence of gender differences.
AKH1170 RELIANCE ON NARRATIVE IS ANTI-RATIONAL
William Henry, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, IN DEFENSE OF ELITISM, 1994, p.67.
On one level, the rhetoric is reminiscent of the words of the Bush-era appointee to the
"glass ceiling" commission who said her foremost task was to accumulate "stories." It is
a tenet in many of the more politically charged circles of multiculturalism that the "voices"
are not to be examined too closely, certainly not subjected to analytic scrutiny, but rather
are to be respected as pure cultural artifacts whose very importance lies in their lack of
intermediation with conventional hierarchical elitist culture. This emphasis on the
testimonial element is evocative of black churches and of women's empowerment sessions.
What is most important is the act of speaking, not what is being said. It goes without
saying that this posture is profoundly anti-intellectual and anti-rational. It provides
multiculturalists a pedagogical and cultural basis for the argument that jobs and other
positions of responsibility ought to be apportioned by gender and ethnicity rather than
credentials or performance. In the civil service as in the classroom, the voices of the
previously unheard are presumed to legitimize things merely by their testimonial presence.
AKH1171 PERSONAL NARRATIVES FAIL AS SCHOLARSHIP BECAUSE THEY
AREN'T SUBJECT TO COUNTER-ARGUMENTS
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.850-1.
Because scholarship is an interactive activity, the reader must be able to disagree with the
author and dispute her ideas. What we propose here is a weaker version of the scientific
doctrine of falsifiability--something cannot be scholarship if it cannot be disputed.
Persuasion, the ultimate goal of all scholarship, requires the active participation of the
reader and thus must admit some form of counter-argument. Personal narratives devoid of
analysis generally do not satisfy this requirement because it will often be impossible to
make counter-arguments to them.
AKH1172 STORIES UNDERMINE RIGOROUS QUESTIONING
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.852.
Early in this article, we defined legal scholarship as an effort to improve our understanding
of the law. Although a story that merely dramatizes some preconceived theory of law may
be a useful rhetorical device, it does not teach the reader anything new. It is specifically
the risk that the example may not fit our preconceived theories that opens up the possibility
of learning something new. A scholar who refuses to take that risk is not engaged in
genuine research. In particular, a failure to confront available contrary evidence, or at least
to present that evidence to the reader, is dishonest. One form of dishonesty is for the
narrator to apply unconventional principles to select examples without notifying the reader.
A related form of intellectual dishonesty is to delete facts that undermine the scholar's
thesis. Inclusion of such facts will often indicate good scholarship, for it demonstrates that
the author has grappled seriously with contrary arguments. If a story is presented without
any methodological discussion or effort to connect it to a thesis, both the author and the
reader are more likely to allow it to slide by without rigorous questioning.

AKH1173 NARRATIVE ISN'T SUBJECT TO NORMAL REFUTATION
Richard Epstein, Professor of Law, University of Chicago, STANFORD LAW REVIEW,
July 1993, p.1619.
Because narrative adopts the perspective and voice of a single author, it cannot be easily
refuted by the usual forms of social science evidence. Other authors have different voices
and perspectives, and there is no contradiction between the proposition that "A believes
X," and "B believes not-X," even if there is a contradiction between X and not-X. The
author can hint that in his view the narrative does express some larger truth entitled to
respect in its own right. Yet by the same token, his narrative does not lend itself to
refutation by the forms of evidence and argument that can be raised against more
traditional forms of scholarly discussion. When the going gets tough, the narrative
becomes an art form, an exercise of literary imagination. When the waters are calm, it is
transformed into an idealized account of a widespread social problem. Either way, the
narrative adds its strength to the politics of exclusion by presenting a moving target to
more traditional practitioners of the academic art.
AKH1174 NARRATIVE PROPONENTS SEEK TO MAKE THEM IMMUNE FROM
ATTACK
Richard Epstein, Professor of Law, University of Chicago, STANFORD LAW REVIEW,
July 1993, p.1620.
Moreover, this philosophical approach implies that every narrative--including that of the
white male, or even the fringe lunatic--should be exempt from outside scrutiny. But no one
is entitled to the comfort of a risk-free position in public discourse. The diversity of
experience and the distinctiveness of perceptions is both an opportunity for understanding
and an obstacle to it. Nevertheless, the usual requirements of coherence in argument,
articulation of theory, and the marshalling and evaluation of evidence must remain intact
if the academic mission of a university or law school is to be fulfilled.
AKH1175 NARRATIVE UNDERMINES ARGUMENT BY BLURRING FACT AND
FICTION
Richard Epstein, Professor of Law, University of Chicago, STANFORD LAW REVIEW,
July 1993, p.1678-9.
The second thing, of course, is that fact and fiction always blend to the extent that you
engage in narrative. It turns out that if the true narrative is not quite compelling enough we
embellish it so, on the one hand, when somebody calls you on the facts you say that it is
a matter of literary invention and, on the other hand, when somebody says, "Geepers, isn't
this wonderful," you say that it is perfectly representative of the way the world goes. So
that to some extent you plead literature when somebody attacks, and you claim veracity at
the time that you wish to attack or to claim something with respect to other individuals. All
in all, I think that it is extremely important in legal argument to be dull under many
circumstances, to try and have a systematic, prosaic view of the world.
AKH1176 FICTIONAL NARRATIVE CREATES SPURIOUS AUTHORITY
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.832.
The more fictionalized the story, however, the more troublesome its use as empirical
evidence becomes. Relying on fiction as evidence is rather like an episode recounted by
Patricia Williams: "An image that comes to mind is that of movie star Jessica Lange, who
testified to Congress about the condition of farms in the United States because she had
played a farmers wife. What on earth does 'testimony' mean in that context?" As this
example suggests, a convincing fictional portrayal risks creating a spurious aura of
empirical authority. This risk is compounded when the author of the fiction is a scholar,
publishing in a scholarly journal, because the audience is unsure whether the author is
speaking as a scholar or solely as an artist.
AKH1177 STORIES ARE DISTORTED BY POLITICAL BIASES
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.836.
Even third-party accounts of victimhood raise serious problems. In criticizing conservative
stories about "political correctness," Mark Tushnet has quite aptly pointed out these
problems in connection with a particular story: The Christian Science Monitor's off-hand
summary of [the story] is unfortunately typical of the reporting on political correctness. Its
most characteristic feature, in fact, is that it relies on no reporting whatsoever. The victim's
account of the incident is the only source of evidence. The reports never note that victims
have a perfectly understandable desire to present what happened to them in a way that
makes them appear best. When the reports are offered by people with a political ax to
grind, one can fairly wonder exactly what happened. The proper conclusion, I think, is that
accounts offered by politically interested people drawn almost entirely from the victim's
side of the story almost certainly overstate the extent to which something called political
correctness came into play. The point is well taken, and applies to stories about
discrimination just as much as to stories about political correctness.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 101
AKH1178 FIRST PERSON NARRATIVE SHOULD BE REJECTED BECAUSE IT
ISN'T VERIFIABLY TRUE
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.835-6.
A major difficulty with storytelling is verifying the truthfulness of the stories told. One
genre of storytelling for which challenging accuracy is particularly troublesome is the
"first-person agony narrative" in which the author's experience of pain is used to criticize
a social practice. Just as lawyers normally are not allowed to offer testimony at trial, or to
vouch for witnesses, scholars should not be readily allowed to offer their own experiences
as evidence. The norms of academic civility hamper readers from challenging the accuracy
of the researcher's account; it would be rather difficult, for example, to criticize a law
review article by questioning the author's emotional stability or veracity.
AKH1179 RELIANCE ON FACTUALLY UNTRUE NARRATIVE IS DISASTROUS
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.833-4.
It would be especially undesirable to foster doubts about whether statements by women or
people of color imply the same notions of truth as those of white males. One of the staples
of feminist literature is that women's assertions are treated as presumptively unreliable and
lacking in credibility. Patricia Williams has made the same point about African Americans.
It would be disastrous to reinforce the idea that women and people of color do not adhere
to the same standards of "truthfulness" as white men. Because the issue is one of honesty,
we also reject Kathryn Abrams' argument that it would be untroubling, at least with respect
to narratives that are presented as factual, if they were to turn out "not to track the life
experiences of their narrators in all particulars" or to be composites. As a general matter,
we do not believe that deliberate, material changes in the factual content of narratives
should be acceptable. In a narrative that purports to be a rendition of actual events,
misrepresentation of these events can come perilously close to what is known in other
fields as research fraud: doctoring data to fit your thesis.
AKH1180 STORIES ARE OFTEN DECEPTIVE
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.852-3.
Stories can also be deceptive subtler ways. As a form of rhetoric, stories can "tak[e] the
other in, deflecting her on unacknowledged, perhaps deliberately hidden grounds." Often
this is the unintentional result of using first-person narratives. Gordon Wood recognizes
that "participants [do not] have a privileged access to knowledge of the events they are
involved in." Thus, the accounts may be mistaken or distorted. Stories also tend to "favor
those who are near at hand," ignoring more distant voices. Sometimes the deception,
whether intentional or not, is the result of treating complex human dramas as morality
plays.
AKH1181 PEOPLE ARE POOR JUDGES OF THE VALIDITY OF STORIES
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.837-8.
The ultimate problem with Abrams' argument, however, is that it relies on our intuitive
ability to determine whether a person is telling the truth. Unfortunately, the substantial
body of social psychology research on this subject has very discomfiting conclusions.
Human beings are actually extremely poor at determining whether a person is lying, even
in face-to-face contexts. For this very reason, disciplines such as anthropology and history
that rely on informants or documents have evolved rigorous methodological standards for
the use of such evidence. It is an error to think that skepticism of witnesses is typical of
"white male thinking." On the contrary, these standards are a relatively late development
in intellectual history. Like other groups, white males are all too willing to credit stories
without critical examination. Individuals overcome this proclivity only through rigorous
training.
AKH1182 NO GOOD STANDARDS EXIST FOR DETERMINING A STORY'S
VALIDITY
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.836-7.
Assessments of truth are made more difficult by the impracticability of independent
investigation. Kathryn Abrams argues that stories may carry their own indicia of truth by
providing "a complex, highly particularized account of an experience unfamiliar to many
readers"' or by creating a "flash of recognition." She is not alone in believing that a high
level of detail provides internal evidence of veracity: The Supreme Court has said exactly
the same thing in holding that detailed but unverified accounts by anonymous informants
may constitute probable cause. The argument is no more convincing when offered by
feminists than it is from Chief Justice Rehnquist. The "flash of recognition" argument is
also troubling, creating the risk that the author gains credibility by appealing to the reader's
preconceptions and biases.

AKH1183 SOLIDARITY EFFECTS DON'T ESTABLISH THE VALIDITY OF
NARRATIVES
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.824.
One frequent claim on behalf of storytelling is that stories build solidarity among the
members of an oppressed group, thereby providing psychological support and
strengthening community. We have no reason to question these effects, or to dismiss them
as negligible. Nevertheless, we do not believe that these effects in themselves are sufficient
to validate the stories as scholarship. As Kathryn Abrams says, "It seems reasonable to ask
of narrators who are, in fact, legal scholars that their stories be framed in such a way as to
shed light on legal questions." The crucial test of scholarly writing must be whether it
provides an increased understanding of some issue relating to law. Community-building
may be valuable, but it is an enterprise quite distinct from increasing understanding of the
law.
AKH1184 NARRATIVE DEALS WITH EXTREMES, NOT NORMAL CASES
Richard Epstein, Professor of Law, University of Chicago, STANFORD LAW REVIEW,
July 1993, p.1678.
So that if you were to try and understand the way in which supermarkets work you would
not want to take the one case out of a thousand where somebody gets in a fight with a cash
register operator over the price of a good. You would rather first want to understand how
it is that somebody organizes these lines so as to get as many people through as. quickly
as possible with a minimum of personal interaction. There will be no glory under these
circumstances in which somebody says, "I will only take your money if it turns out that
you could explain to me that you are a worthy person when you seek to buy these goods
from my humble establishment." That is not the way in which the game is going to be
played and what literature and narrative do is get you way out there on the fringes.
AKH1185 NARRATIVE OFFERS AN UNREPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE
Richard Epstein, Professor of Law, University of Chicago, STANFORD LAW REVIEW,
July 1993, p.1678.
What is it about narrative that leads me to be extraordinarily troubled? Well there are two
things about it. One is a sampling problem. To the extent that one takes a single illustration
. . . and at enormous lengths elaborates what is going on, what you have done in social
science is take one element out of a huge sample, given it enormous importance, and
suppressed everything else. The capacity of narrative to inflame, inform, or excite depends
on its ability to take you away from the peak of the distribution to see what some
extraordinary novel and different circumstance is and indeed that is exactly why we call
these things novel because of the way in which they take you away from the core. But if
you are trying to understand the way in which social reality works then the important thing
to remember is that the prosaic and the boring is often far more important in the way in
which the world organizes itself than is the exotic and profane.
AKH1186 HUMANS TEND TO OVER-RELY ON ATYPICAL EXAMPLES
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.839.
Studies by cognitive psychologists demonstrate that humans tend to overrely on atypical
examples. Because individuals assume that dramatic or easily remembered events are
typical, they often overestimate the likelihood of such events. Even when they correctly
appraise a trait as typical, they overestimate its prevalence, assuming that more members
of the group possess the trait than really do. In other words, people frequently engage in
what we commonly call stereotyping. Finally, people are too quick to assume the presence
of a pattern from a small number of cases. Like the careful treatment of narrative sources,
the use of modern empirical techniques to correct for these misperceptions and distortions
is not the natural outgrowth of "white male thinking." If formal empirical techniques were
inherent in white male culture, they would have developed much earlier, and would be
much easier to teach to white men than they actually are. Instead, such techniques are
painfully developed methods of avoiding genuine errors. We have already made clear our
view that these methods can be significantly supplemented by individual case studies, but
we must always be vigilant when doing so.
AKH1187 PUBLIC POLICY SHOULDN'T JUST RELY ON ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.838-9.
Owen Fiss has cogently argued that when the Supreme Court "lays down a rule for a
nation...[it] necessarily must concern itself with the fate of millions of people ....
Accordingly, the Court's perspective must be systematic, not anecdotal...."
AKH1188 STORIES MUST BE TYPICAL TO BE A BASIS FOR POLICY
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.838.
Even if a story is true, it may be atypical of real world experiences. The importance of
typicality depends partly on the use of a particular story. If the story is being used to
suggest a hypothesis or a possible causal mechanism, then a prior showing of typicality is
unnecessary. On the other hand, if the story is being used as the-basis for recommending
policy changes, it should be typical of the experiences of those affected by the policy.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 102
AKH1189 ATYPICAL STORIES SILENCE OTHER PERSPECTIVES
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.839-40.
It bears repeating that typicality is unrelated to any commitment to "objectivity" as a
philosophical position. Instead, we are merely asking, "If we checked with more people
in the same situation, how many of them would tell similar stories?" If most of their stories
would be different, then the informational value of the particular story selected by the
author is limited. Moreover, to ignore the typicality concern would be to allow an
unrepresentative individual to speak for a group, in effect silencing other members.
AKH1190 FICTIONAL NARRATIVE IS DISTINCT FROM LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.844-5.
Whether or not stories about the law, written by lawyers, can serve this function is
somewhat beside the point. Nussbaum is not arguing, after all, that Henry James should
have published his short stories in philosophy journals, or that he should have been given
tenure in a philosophy department. Thus, such work might fail to be good legal
scholarship, not because it falls short of particular criteria, but because it transcends the
scholarly enterprise. While Crime and Punishment may increase our knowledge of the
legal system, so too do the Federalist Papers have a narrative structure. But to call
Dostoevsky a legal scholar may be just as misleading as calling James Madison a novelist.
Without denigrating the abilities of legal storytellers, we see no reason to expect them to
produce great literary works of the caliber of a Dostoevsky (or a Virginia Woolf or a Toni
Morrison, for that matter.
AKH1191 FICTIONAL NARRATIVE UNDERMINES LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.845.
In rejecting the creation of literature as a form of legal scholarship, we are admittedly
indulging a mild presumption in favor of institutional specialization. While works of
literature may well be a source of important insights for lawyers, we contend that creating
literature has little nexus with the specific institutional traits of law schools, and seems far
more congenial to other settings such as creative writing departments or traditional
communities of writers and artists. Thus, we do not believe that the production of literature
ought to be considered part of the mission of law schools. t98 Just because something is
worthwhile does not mean that it should take place under a law school umbrella. Indeed,
to the extent that fictional or fictionalized accounts purport to be scholarship, they
jeopardize the credibility of legal scholarship.
AKH1192 LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP SHOULDN'T MIMIC OTHER COMMUNICATION
FORMS
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.809.
Here, we suggest that legal scholarship should help the reader understand law, and that
legal scholarship should comport with the goals and attributes of the academy rather than
mimic other forms of communication.
AKH1193 TO BE USEFUL, STORIES MUST BE LINKED TO GENERAL THEORIES
AND STANDARDS
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.822.
The literature of cognitive psychology thus seems to support the existence of practical
reason and suggests that it is linked with storytelling. Pragmatism accommodates
storytelling by stressing that "reason" can include informal and nonalgorithmic forms of
thought, and by viewing concrete situations as useful for understanding more general rules
or principles. In contrast, foundationalism and formalism leave little room for "stories" as
a useful intellectual exercise, emphasizing instead abstract theory and highly rigorous
empirical research. But while practical reason involves the interplay between the general
and concrete, it may require greater connections with general theories and standards than
some legal storytellers wish to make.
AKH1194 NARRATIVES MUST BE LINKED TO LEGAL ANALYSIS
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.847-8.
The Ashe article also implicates a broader question about comprehensibility. Part of the
problem for Abrams, and presumably for most readers, is that Ashe does not effectively
link her narratives to her legal analysis. What, then, of articles that contain virtually no
legal analysis at all? While the stories themselves may be comprehensible, the reason for
publishing them in law journals is not. The criterion of comprehensibility, which is simple
and uncontroversial when limited to questions about misuse of the English language,
becomes much more difficult as it shades into questions about how readers understand the
law-related point of the story. Thus, although we treat the need for analysis as a separate
issue because of its controversial nature, it might also be considered a more nuanced aspect
of comprehensibility.

AKH1195 TO BE EFFECTIVE, NARRATIVE MUST BE COMBINED WITH
REASONED ANALYSIS
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.849.
As noted earlier, research has shown that we are most likely to believe and understand
stories that resonate with something we have experienced. The irony is that if the pain of
discrimination is similar to what we have experienced, the stories may teach us little we
do not already know if it is dissimilar, stories that simply describe the pain can't teach us
about it. A more effective format for outsider scholars would be a combination of narrative
and more traditional scholarship that draws analogies among different legal problems, or
scholarship that proposes new legal solutions to the problems of discrimination. As with
the criterion of comprehensibility then, requiring scholarship to contribute to knowledge
becomes problematic when applied to stories that convey no analysis or reasoned
arguments.
AKH1196 REASON AND ANALYSIS ARE THE HALLMARK OF GOOD LEGAL
SCHOLARSHIP
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.849.
Reason and analysis are the traditional hallmarks not only of legal scholarship, but of
scholarship in general. According to one scholar, neither exercise of power nor "strategic
arguments designed to persuade by their emotional effect on the listener" are acceptable
scholarly techniques. The new storytellers, however, challenge this view of scholarship as
overly narrow and culturally biased. Consequently, the standards they propose for
evaluating stories do not consider analysis or reasoned arguments essential to good
scholarship. Rather, the emotive force of the stories is seen as their primary appeal. In our
view, however, emotive appeal is not enough to qualify as good scholarship.
AKH1197 REASONED ANALYSIS IS NEEDED TO TEMPER ANECDOTAL
EVIDENCE
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.851.
Reasoned argument also helps to counteract the peculiar dangers of anecdotal evidence.
The value of grappling with concrete examples is lost if we allow ourselves to move away
from rigorous standards of honesty and completeness. Maintenance of those standards
requires that the author not only resent the story but explain why it was selected and how
it was verified.
AKH1198 THOSE WHO USE NARRATIVES MUST DRAW REASONED
CONCLUSIONS FROM THEM
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.851.
Unadorned narratives generally fail to perform the mediating function. If the reader must
perform the mediating function, this supports our claim that reason and analysis are
necessary to legal scholarship. The moment we begin to draw conclusions from the
narrative--which even the storytellers apparently want us to do, given their goal of
consciousness-raising--we are essentially doing the author's work for her. It is one thing
to be inspired by a work to ponder great ideas; it is quite another to be required to supply
the work with ideas.
AKH1199 ABSENT ANALYSIS STORYTELLING IS AUTHORITARIAN AND
INEFFECTIVE
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.851.
The best scholarship not only adds to the reader's knowledge directly but inspires further
thought beyond the text. This reflection may take the form of elaboration or disagreement,
but ultimately those engaged in scholarship will enter into an ongoing dialogue about their
common project. Without reasoned arguments, neither understanding nor dialogue are
likely to flourish. Robin West refers to the "unequivocal shock of recognition" upon
reading certain articles, and Kathryn Abrams believes Patricia Williams' stories because
they "resonate" with her experiences. But for those readers who neither resonate nor
recognize, and for those who passionately disagree, there is no way to enter the dialogue.
Thus, as Gerald Torres says, unless augmented by analysis, storytelling may "function as
an authoritarian conversation-ending move."
AKH1200 REASONED ANALYSIS IS NEEDED TO ESTABLISH THE RELEVANCE
OF STORIES
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.853.
Occasionally, it stems from willful ignorance. Reasoned argument and critical analysis
might evoke more awareness of the limitations of the genre. As we argued earlier, a valid
exercise in storytelling must involve efforts to assure the truthfulness and typicality of the
story. Because these attributes are not self-documenting, the author must present some
analysis to show that the story is credible and representative. This is similar to how a
historian must defend her credibility judgments about historical sources and the inferences
she has made from the historical record.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 103
AKH1201 TO BE USEFUL STORIES MUST BE SUPPLEMENTED WITH REASON
AND ANALYSIS
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.853.
To the extent that a narrative merely conveys a concrete experience, it only partially
achieves the purposes of legal scholarship. This conclusion flows from our belief in
practical reason as a mediation between the concrete and the abstract; the purely concrete
narrative remains fixated at one of these poles rather than mediating between them. Stories
are best suited, in our view, for enriching legal scholarship with concreteness, but they
need to be supplemented with reason and analysis.
AKH1202 STORIES NEED TO BE SUPPLEMENTED WITH ANALYTIC
CONCLUSIONS
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.854.
Unlike some advocates of storytelling, however, we see no reason to retreat from
conventional standards of truthfulness and typicality in assessing stories. Nor do we see
any reason to abandon the expectation that legal scholarship contain reason and analysis,
as well as narrative. A legal story without analysis is much like a judicial opinion with
"Findings of Fact" but no "Conclusions of Law."
AKH1203 STORIES MUST BE VALID TO BE USEFUL
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.831.
Evaluating scholarship, particularly scholarship of a new type, raises two separate issues.
The first is the question of validity: When should a story be considered a valid source of
insight? One might view this as the question of whether the raw "data" of the stories
themselves are sufficiently reliable that they can be put to further use, regardless of
whether the information is new or important. Just because a text contains valid material,
however, does not necessarily mean that it is good scholarship.
AKH1204 NARRATIVES SHOULD CLEARLY SUPPORT THE POINT THEY
ATTEMPT TO MAKE
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.847.
Almost everyone would agree that a work of scholarship should be comprehensible to its
audience, say something new, and demonstrate familiarity with the relevant literature.
Despite their vagueness, these standards can still help expose some stories as not very good
scholarship. For example, a much-cited article by Marie Ashe exemplifies one form of
feminist narrative that would not constitute good scholarship under our definition. It
contains a "torrent of physical detail" about her own reproductive experiences (including
graphic descriptions of the births of her children), with some brief and cryptic suggestions
about law interspersed among the stories. Even Kathryn Abrams, who praises storytelling
in general and some aspects of Ashe's piece in particular, notes that "[g]rasping the relation
between her narratives and her prescriptions is . . . truly strenuous." In fact, Abrams had
to read the article three times before she even "began to suspect" that the point of the
article was to urge the deregulation of reproduction. Clearly, an article whose thesis a
knowledgeable and sympathetic reader can barely understand on the third try fails the
requirement of comprehensibility.
AKH1205 THE "SILENCING" METAPHOR IS EXAGGERATED
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, professors of Law, University of Minnesota,
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April 1993, p.827.
The metaphor of "silencing" is powerful but elusive. In what respect, for instance, is losing
a lawsuit the same as being gagged? Losers are in fact often very vocal, perhaps more so
than victors (who seem just as likely to enjoy their victory in smug silence). In part, the
"silencing" metaphor invokes some broader concepts about the relationship between power
and truth, but it does not elucidate that relationship.
AKH1206 IF VIOLENCE IS WRONG, THEN IT'S RIGHT TO RESIST IT
Jan Narveson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, ETHICS, July 1965,
p.269.
We often think of pacifists as being gentle and idealistic souls, which in its way is true
enough. What I have been concerned to show is that they are also confused. If they attempt
to formulate their position using our standard concepts of rights, their position involves
a contradiction: Violence is wrong, and it is wrong to resist it. But the right to resist is
precisely what having a right of safety of person is, if it is anything at all.
AKH1207 DENYING A RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE OFFENDS BASIC MORAL
INTUITIONS
Tom Regan, Professor of Philosophy, North Carolina State, CANADIAN JOURNAL OF
PHILOSOPHY, September 1972, p.86.
To regard the use of force as irredeemably evil does, I believe, save pacifism from the
charge of inconsistency. But any view that would require that we judge, say, a woman who
uses what physical power she has to attempt to free herself from an aspiring rapist, as
having done, not, what might sometimes be the case, a foolish thing, but instead, and
necessarily, an irredeemably evil act, must, I believe, shock and offend the moral
sensibilities of rational men.

AKH1208 VIOLENCE IN SELF-DEFENSE IS CLEARLY JUSTIFIED
Hannah Arendt, political philosopher, ON VIOLENCE, 1970, p.52.
Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate. Its justification loses in
plausibility the farther its intended end recedes into the future. No one questions the use
of violence in self-defense, because the danger is not only clear but also present, and the
end justifying the means is immediate.
AKH1209 PACIFISM IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY
Jan Narveson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, ETHICS, July 1965,
p.267-8
What this all adds up to, then, is that if we have any rights at all, we have a right to use
force to prevent the deprivation of the thing to which we are said to have a right. But the
pacifist, of all l people, is the one most concerned to insist that we do have some rights,
namely, the right not to have violence done to us. This is logically implied in asserting it
to be a duty on everyone's part to avoid violence. And this is why the pacifist's position is
self-contradictory. In saying that violence is wrong, one is at the same time saying that
people have a right to its prevention, by force if necessary. Whether and to what extent it
may be necessary is a question of fact, but, since it is a question of fact only, the moral
right to use force on some possible occasions is established.
AKH1210 RATIONAL PERSUASION ISN'T AN ALTERNATIVE TO FORCE
Jan Narveson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, ETHICS, July 1965,
p.267.
But it is inconsistent, I suggest, to argue that rational persuasion is the only morally
permissible method of preventing violence. A pragmatic reason for this is easy enough to
point to: Violent people are too busy being violent to be reasonable. We cannot engage in
rational persuasion unless the enemy is willing to sit down and talk; but what if he isn't.
AKH1211 NOT ALL VIOLENCE SHOULD BE CATEGORICALLY REJECTED
Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, PRACTICAL ETHICS, 1993,
p.313.
Violence is not easy to justify, even if it is violence against property rather than against
sentient beings, or violence against a dictator rather than indiscriminate violence against
the general public. Nevertheless, the differences between kinds of violence are important,
because only by observing them can we condemn one kind of violence - the terrorist kind
- in virtually absolute terms. The differences are blurred by sweeping condemnations of
everything that falls under the general heading 'violence'.
AKH1212 COMPLETE NON-VIOLENCE ASSUMES A DEONTOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE
Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, PRACTICAL ETHICS, 1993,
p.307.
Opposition to the use of violence can be on the basis of an absolute rule, or an assessment
of its consequences. Pacifists have usually regarded the use of violence as absolutely
wrong, irrespective of its consequences. This, like other 'no matter what' prohibitions,
assumes the validity of the distinction between acts and omissions. Without this
distinction, pacifists who refuse to use violence when it is the only means of preventing
greater violence would be responsible for the greater violence they fail to prevent.
AKH1213 DEFENSIVE VIOLENCE CAN BE JUSTIFIED ON KANTIAN GROUNDS
Douglas Lackey, Professor of Philosophy, City College of New York, THE ETHICS OF
WAR AND PEACE, 1989, p.13.
A deeper problem with Tolstoy's argument is that "resist not evil" is not the only rule that
would yield paradise if everyone obeyed it. Suppose that everyone in the world subscribed
to the principle "Use violence, but only in self-defense." If everyone used violence only
in self-defense, the same consequences would follow as would arise from universal
acceptance of the rule "Never use violence." Consequently, pacifism cannot be shown to
be superior to nonpacifism by noting the good consequences that would undeniably ensue
if everyone were a pacifist.
AKH1214 PACIFISTS SACRIFICE PRESENT LIVES FOR POTENTIAL FUTURE
BENEFITS
Robert Phillips, WAR AND JUSTICE, 1984, p.105-6.
It is a trait of "idealistic" theories generally that they are willing to mortgage the present
to the future. In line with this, the pacifist is willing to sacrifice lives to aggression as a
means of breaking the circle of recurring warfare. He has to believe that ultimately his
teaching methods will work. Since peoples lives are being put on the line for this belief,
it might be expected that pacifists would be prepared to say at what point nonviolent
resistance would have to be abandoned. That is, how much killing would have to take
place to cause the pacifist to give up his belief in a common human nature responsive at
some point in history to pacifist methods? In fact, pacifists tend to be unclear on this point.
In discussing the consequences of noncooperation with an aggressor nation, Gordon Zahn
admits that the casualties which pacifists would suffer initially may be expected to be
considerable.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 104
AKH1215 VIOLENCE CAN BE JUSTIFIED IN CONSEQUENTIALIST TERMS
Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, PRACTICAL ETHICS, 1993,
p.311.
There are other kinds of violence that cannot be ruled out so convincingly. There is, for
instance, the assassination of a murderous tyrant. Here, provided the murderous policies
are an expression of the tyrant's personality rather than part of the institutions he
commands, the violence is strictly limited, the aim is the end of much greater violence,
success from a single violent act may be highly probable, and there may be no other way
of ending the tyrant's rule. It would be implausible for a consequentialist to maintain that
committing violence in these circumstances would have a corrupting effect, or that more,
rather than less, violence would result from the assassination.
AKH1216 THE CONCEPT OF A RIGHT TO LIFE REFUTES PACIFISM
Douglas Lackey, Professor of Philosophy, City College of New York, THE ETHICS OF
WAR AND PEACE, 1989, p.10-11.
A discussion of the logic of rights in general and the right to life in particular is beyond the
scope of this book. But a number of students of this subject are prepared to argue that the
possession of any right implies the permissibility of defending that right against
aggression: if this were not so, what would be the point of asserting the existence of rights?
But if the possession of a right to life implies the permissibility of defending that right
against aggression--a defense that may require killing the aggressor--then the existence of
a right to life cannot by itself imply the impermissibility of killing. On this view, the right
to life implies the right to self-defense, including violent self-defense. It does not imply
pacifism.
AKH1217 ABSOLUTE PACIFISM IS GENERALLY REJECTED
Duane Cady, Professor of Philosophy, Hamline University, FROM WARISM TO
PACIFISM, 1989, p.59-60.
Absolute pacifism, understood as the position that any use of force between people is
always and everywhere immoral, is widely regarded as "bizarre and vaguely ludicrous."
Objections to the view, popular and academic, tend to be moral objections. For example,
Tom Regan argues: Any view that would require that we judge, say, a woman who uses
what physical power she has to attempt to free herself from an aspiring rapist, as having
done, not, what might sometimes be the case, a foolish thing, but instead, and necessarily,
an irredeemably evil act, must, I believe shock and offend the moral sensibilities of rational
men. Regan concludes, "A person committed to an extreme pacifism . . . lacks a fully
developed moral sensitivity to the vagaries and complexities of human existence."
AKH1218 PACIFISTS REJECT WAR, NOT LAW ENFORCEMENT
Barrie Paskins and Michael Dockrill, philosopher and historian, King's College, London,
THE ETHICS OF WAR, 1979, p.118.
It is law enforcement that Miss Anscombe is defending against the pacifist, with war as a
special case. But the pacifist of scruple, for his own good reasons, does not see war as a
special case of anything else. It is an ancient thing, sui generic, in which for good or ill all
men with the conceivable exceptions of such as Napoleon or Frederick the Great
systematically resign moral evaluation of their own actions. Maybe the world is less of a
jungle because of law and law enforcement, but few will feel so confident that the world
is less of a jungle with war than it would have been without.
AKH1219 RESISTING CRIMINAL ATTACK IS CONSISTENT WITH PACIFISM
Duane Cady, Professor of Philosophy, Hamline University, FROM WARISM TO
PACIFISM, 1989, p.62.
Clearly the infamous "thug in the alley" attempt to reduce all pacifism to absurdity falls
far short of its objective. A woman may be a pacifist (morally opposed to all war) yet use
physical strength to resist abuse (our thug in the alley) without contradicting or
compromising her principles. Depending on her variant of pacifism she may or may not
compromise her principles by intending to injure her assailant. There are degrees of moral
justifiability for the use of physical means to fend off attack.
AKH1220 PURE PACIFISM WOULD ABOLISH THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
Jan Narveson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, ETHICS, July 1965,
p.264.
It appears, then, that to hold the pacifist position as a genuine, fullblooded moral principle
is to hold that nobody has a right to fight back when attacked, that fighting back is
inherently evil, as such. It means that we are all mistaken in supposing that we have a right
of self-protection. And, of course, this is an extreme and extraordinary position in any case.
It appears to mean, for instance, that we have no right to punish criminals, that all of our
machinery of criminal justice is, in fact, unjust. Robbers, murderers, rapists, and
miscellaneous delinquents ought, on this theory, to be let loose.
AKH1221 SUPPRESSING CRIMINALITY CONTRIBUTES TO THE COMMON
GOOD
Elizabeth Anscombe, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, WAR AND MORALITY,
Richard Wasserstrom, ed., 1970, p.43-4.
Further, there being such a thing as the common good of mankind, and visible criminality
against it, how can we doubt the excellence of such a proceeding as that violent
suppression of the man-stealing business which the British government took it into its head
to engage in under Palmerston? The present-day conception of "aggression," like so many
strongly influential conceptions, is a bad one. Why must it be wrong to strike the first blow
in a struggle? The only question is, who is in the right.

AKH1222 SOCIETY IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT COERCIVE POWER
Elizabeth Anscombe, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, WAR AND MORALITY,
Richard Wasserstrom, ed., 1970, p.43.
To think that society's coercive authority is evil is akin to thinking the flesh evil and family
life evil. These things belong to the present constitution of mankind; and if the exercise of
coercive power is a manifestation of evil, and not the just means of restraining it, then
human nature is totally depraved in a manner never taught by Christianity. For society is
essential to human good; and society without coercive power is generally impossible.
AKH1223 COERCIVE POWER IS NEEDED TO PRESERVE SOCIAL ORDER
Elizabeth Anscombe, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, WAR AND MORALITY,
Richard Wasserstrom, ed., 1970, p.42.
It is so clear that the world is less of a jungle because of rulers and laws, and that the
exercise of coercive power is essential to these institutions as they are now--all this is so
obvious, that probably only Tennysonian conceptions of progress enable people who do
not wish to separate themselves from the world to think that nevertheless such violence is
objectionable, that some day, in this present dispensation, we shall do without it, and that
the pacifist is the man who sees and tries to follow the ideal course, which future
civilization must one day pursue. It is an illusion, which would be fantastic if it were not
so familiar.
AKH1224 THREAT OF VIOLENT COERCION IS ESSENTIAL TO HUMAN SOCIETY
Elizabeth Anscombe, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, WAR AND MORALITY,
Richard Wasserstrom, ed., 1970, p.45.
The right to attack with a view to killing is something that belongs only to rulers and those
whom they command to do it. I have argued that it does belong to rulers precisely because
of that threat of violent coercion exercised by those in authority which is essential to the
existence of human societies.
AKH1225 THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM MINIMIZES THE NEED TO EMPLOY
VIOLENCE
Jan Narveson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, ETHICS, July 1965,
p.268-9.
The existence of laws, police, courts, and more or less civilized modes of behavior on the
part of most of the populace naturally affects the answer to the question of how much force
is necessary. One of the purposes of a legal system of justice is surely to make the use of
force by individuals very much less necessary than it would otherwise be. If we try to think
back to a "state of nature' situation, we shall have much less difficulty envisaging the need
for large amounts of force to prevent small threats of violence. Here Hobbes's contention
that in such a state every man has a right to the life of every other becomes understandable.
He was I suggest, relying on the same principle as I have argued for here: that one has a
right to use as much force as necessary to defend one's rights, which include the right of
safety of person.
AKH1226 MILITARY DEFENSE IS A LOGICAL EXTENSION OF POLICE POWER
Elizabeth Anscombe, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, WAR AND MORALITY,
Richard Wasserstrom, ed., 1970, p.43.
The same authority which puts down internal dissension, which promulgates laws and
restrains those who break them if it can, must equally oppose external enemies. These do
not merely comprise those who attack the borders of the people ruled by the authority; but
also, for example, pirates and desert bandits, and, generally, those beyond the confines of
the country ruled whose activities are viciously harmful to it.
AKH1227 NON-VIOLENCE DOESN'T NECESSARILY HAVE GOOD OUTCOMES
Robert Phillips, WAR AND JUSTICE, 1984, p.111.
We may conclude, then, that pacifism of both forms is unsatisfactory. Intrinsicalism cannot
make the claim that it is always wrong to use force compatible with the right not to have
violence done to oneself. Tactical pacifism may be morally required under some limited
circumstances. If civil disobedience is ever justified in a democratic setting, then there are
good reasons for thinking that it ought to be nonviolent. But there are no good reasons for
thinking that nonviolent resistance will always have ethically good consequences,
particularly when it entails a temporal appearance of human perfection.
AKH1228 VIOLENCE CAN SOMETIMES PREVENT GREATER VIOLENCE
Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, PRACTICAL ETHICS, 1993,
p.308.
Suppose we have an opportunity to assassinate a tyrant who is systematically murdering
his opponents and anyone else he dislikes. We know that if the tyrant dies he will be
replaced by a popular opposition leader, now in exile who will restore the rule of law. If
we say that violence is always wrong and refuse to carry out the assassination, mustn't we
bear some responsibility for the tyrant's future murders? If the objections made to the acts
and omissions distinction in Chapter 7 were sound those who do not use violence to
prevent greater violence have to take responsibility for the violence they could have
prevented, Thus the rejection of the acts and omissions distinction makes a crucial
difference to the discussion of violence, for it opens the door to a plausible argument in
defence of violence.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 105
AKH1229 USING VIOLENCE CAN SOMETIMES PREVENT WORSE VIOLENCE
Jan Narveson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, ETHICS, January 1968,
p.149
I agree entirely with the pacifist who would maintain that violence is never justified merely
in order to bring about a good. But is it ever justified in order to avoid evil, namely, the
evil of more violence? Given that it is violence as such, rather than violence as employed
by the pacifist himself, which is being held to be supremely evil, then it would seem that
the only way to avoid inconsistency here would be to deny that the quantity of violence
prevented by a given act of violence was ever greater than the quantity of violence inherent
in the act aimed at preventing it. But, here again, it is surely not possible to discuss this on
purely a priori grounds. It cannot be maintained that it is logically impossible for a given
violent act to prevent more violence. (What if the assassination attempt on Hitler in July,
1944, had succeeded? All the evidence indicates that the government which would then
have taken over Germany would have stopped the war immediately, stopped the
crematoriums, and so forth.)
AKH1230 PACIFISM CAN INTENSIFY VIOLENCE
Jan Narveson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, ETHICS, July 1965, p.
263.
It is not part of my intention to discuss matters of fact, as such, but it is worthwhile to point
out that the general history of the human race certainly offers no support for the
supposition that turning the other cheek always produces good effects on the aggressor.
Some aggressors, such as the Nazis, were apparently just "egged on" by the "pacifist"
attitude of their victims Some of the S.S. men apparently be came curious to see just how
much torture the victim would put up with before he began to resist. Furthermore, there
is the possibility that, while pacifism might work against some people (one might cite the
British, against whom pacifism in India was apparently rather successful--but the British
are comparatively nice people), it might fail against others (e.g., the Nazis).
AKH1231 SOMETIMES NOT USING FORCE SACRIFICES MANY LIVES
Robert Phillips, WAR AND JUSTICE, 1984, p.107.
That is, the pacifist will reject as meaningless any attempt to escape culpability for murder
by distinguishing between intention and foreknowledge--anyone taking up arms in a war
has perfectly clear foreknowledge that his actions will result in the death of many people.
Now, if the pacifist does make this argument, then surely he is open to his own criticism.
For in a war between pacifists and ruthless aggressors, such as the Nazis or the Soviets. the
pacifists would also have perfectly clear foreknowledge that their refusal to bear arms
would result in the deaths of a great many people who could have been saved if they had
been prepared to use force to save them. The difference seems to be that the pacifist will
not "dirty his hands" by countering force with force.
AKH1232 PACIFISM MAY STRENGTHEN OPPOSITION
Robert Phillips, WAR AND JUSTICE, 1984, p.107.
There is another sense in which pacifism might be said to have undesirable consequences.
Zahn speaks of "breaking" the totalitarian automaton. This is symptomatic of the tendency
of pacifism to convert war from a trial of strength to a trial of will. Pacifism, that is, has
a tendency to make conflict total by targeting the will of the adversary. If this works, then
the aggressor will be converted, and all will be well. But a failure to convert him may well
make his response more severe than if he had been opposed by force to arms.
AKH1233 MILITARY PREPAREDNESS CAN PREVENT WAR
H.O.J. Brown and George Mavrodes, Professor of Theology, Trinity Divinity School and
Professor of Philosophy, University of Michigan, WAR AND HUMAN NATURE, David
Bender and Bruno Leone, eds., 1983, p.91.
Fortunately, Soviet Union rulers seem intent not on causing a nuclear war but on getting
all they can short of it. For this reason one can at least hope that a high level of military
preparedness, coupled with a willingness to fight even a nuclear war, offers at least some
prospects of preserving freedom and avoiding universal destruction.
AKH1234 MILITARY FORCE CAN DETER WAR
Kenneth Kantzer, Professor of Philsophy, Trinity College, WAR AND HUMAN
NATURE, David Bender and Bruno Leone, eds., 1983, p.82.
Some object that a limited nuclear deterrent will simply not deter. But it has! As Churchill
wisely noted, atomic weapons have brought us a measure of peace. That peace has now
stretched out for over 30 years. Under God, such a deterrent has alone kept the peace. Pray
Cod that it may buy us time while we work sincerely and desperately for a more firm basis
for peace. Moreover, a similar situation worked in the Second World War. Each side
possessed a huge stockpile of poison gas. Neither side employed it because each knew that
the other side would certainly reply in kind. Even in his final days Hitler was not able
effectively to turn to gas warfare as a last desperate recourse.

AKH1235 MILITARY STRENGTH COULD HAVE PREVENTED WORLD WAR II
Ed Fredericks, State Department political officer, WAR AND HUMAN NATURE, David
Bender and Bruno Leone, eds., 1983, p.155.
Had the free world not been so mesmerized by Hitler's cries for peace, World War II would
have been stopped cold, and tens of millions of lives saved. "The 48 hours after the march
into the Rhineland" someone heard Hitler say, "were the most nerve-racking in my life. If
the French had then marched into the Rhineland. we would have had to withdraw with our
tails between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly
inadequate for even a moderate resistance." Shirer wrote: "In March 1936 the two western
democracies were given their last chance to halt, without the risk of a serious war, the rise
of a militarized, aggressive, totalitarian Germany and in fact--as we have seen Hitler
admitting--bring the Nazi dictator and his regime tumbling down. They let the chance slip
by."
AKH1236 NON-VIOLENCE PAVED THE WAY FOR HITLER
John Silber, President, Boston College, quoted in, WAR AND HUMAN NATURE, David
Bender and Bruno Leone, eds., 1983, p.156.
The prehistory of the Second World War is extremely instructive about the objective
consequences of peace movements: the horrors of the First World War were followed by
a vigorous and superficially successful peace movement.... The advocates of "peace" so
prevailed in the democracies that at every turn, Hitler's demands were satisfied without
firing a shot. And just twenty-one years after the guns fell silent, Europe was at war again.
AKH1237 NON-VIOLENCE ASSUMES EFFECTIVE RULES OF WAR
Michael Walzer, political philosopher, Princeton, JUST AND UNJUST WARS, 1977,
p.334.
Nonviolent defense depends upon noncombatant immunity. For this reason, it is no service
to the cause to ridicule the rules of war or to insist (as Tolstoy did) that violence is always
and necessarily unrestrained. When one wages a "war without weapons," one appeals for
restraint from men with weapons. It is not likely that these men, soldiers subject to military
discipline, are going to be converted to the creed of nonviolence.
AKH1238 PACIFISM DESTROYS THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN GUILT AND
INNOCENCE
Elizabeth Anscombe, Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge, WAR AND MORALITY,
Richard Wasserstrom, ed., 1970, p.49.
Now pacifism teaches people to make no distinction between the shedding of innocent
blood and the shedding of any human blood. And in this way pacifism has corrupted
enormous numbers of people who will not act according to its tenets. They become
convinced that a number of things are wicked which are not; hence, seeing no way of
avoiding "wickedness," they set no limits to it.
AKH1239 PACIFISM UNDERMINES THE LOGIC OF LIMITED WAR
Robert Phillips, WAR AND JUSTICE, 1984, p.108-9.
These remarks once again reflect a curious similarity between pacifism and various forms
of realpolitik. The pacifist can see no difference between wars which are fought in
self-defense and wars of brutal and blatant conquest. The practical effect of this is that in
an actual war he is unprepared to offer any suggestion on how the conflict might be
limited. Anscombe's point is just that insofar as pacifism is regarded as an ideal for the
mass of men, it is an ideal short of which they will inevitably fall. But the damage will
have been done. Having dirtied their hands by resorting to evil means, there is no reason
not to go all the way and fight war `a outrance as a means of securing victory. If the use
of force is evil, why limit ourselves once we have chosen to fight? The evil is done by the
first act of violence; to embark upon war is to place oneself outside the moral sphere, so
what is to be gained by attending to moral niceties while killing the enemy? If we are to
sin, let us sin well and truly.
AKH1240 VIOLENCE IS SOMETIMES A NECESSARY INSTRUMENT OF REFORM
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Professor of Letters, Wesleyan, HANNAH ARENDT: FOR
LOVE OF THE WORLD, 1982, p.415.
Hannah Arendt held fast to her side of the argument with Tom Hayden, but she shifted her
stance somewhat after reflection on a point made by Conor Cruise O'Brien, who came to
the meeting still stiff from a bit of police violence that had come his way at a
demonstration. O'Brien quoted a remark made by one of his Irish countrymen: Sometimes
"violence is the only way of ensuring a hearing for moderation." When Hannah Arendt
wrote her "Reflections on Violence" in 1969, she cited this remark approvingly: "Violence
does not promote causes, neither history nor revolution, neither progress nor reaction; but
it can serve to dramatize grievances and bring them to public attention " She acknowledged
that ghetto violence might do this. But she was careful to suggest that "violence, contrary
to what its prophets try to tell us, is more the weapon of reform than revolution." The
student riots in France had brought only reform of the university system, she noted, and
the riots at Columbia University had brought only a study of that university's policies.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 106
AKH1241 WILLINGNESS TO FIGHT IS NECESSARY TO PREVENT
TOTALITARIAN DOMINATION
H.O.J. Brown and George Mavrodes, Professor of Theology, Trinity Divinity School and
Professor of Philosophy, University of Michigan, WAR AND HUMAN NATURE, David
Bender and Bruno Leone, eds., 1983, p.91.
A war between the United States and the Soviet Union, with or without the involvement
of Communist China, would be terribly destructive and might actually eradicate human
civilization or human life itself. Yet failure to resist the Soviet Union might subjugate the
entire world to the most odious of tyrannies. In a fallen world, and confronting a
determined adversary such as the Soviet Union, our nation's only hope of remaining free
is to be prepared to go to war to defend itself, even at the risk of being destroyed. The
monstrous evil of totalitarian Communism must indeed be frightful--as it is--for us to risk
annihilation rather than submit to it. Frankly, I agree with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and will
risk annihilation for myself and for my country to defend our freedom.
AKH1242 NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE NEEDED TO AVOID SURRENDER OR
UNIVERSAL CONSCRIPTION
Kenneth Kantzer, Professor of Philsophy, Trinity College, WAR AND HUMAN
NATURE, David Bender and Bruno Leone, eds., 1983, p.81-2.
Fact is, the free world has inadequate nonnuclear deterrents to Soviet expansionism. To
renounce all use of nuclear weapons, therefore, is to leave just two options: (1) "The Great
Surrender," involving absolute capitulation, or (2) immediate universal conscription and
the buildup of conventional arms and enormous expense that would transform the United
States into a military state more like the Soviet Union. This could be done. The Swiss
people have done it for many decades. They allocate over a third of their national budget
for military expenses and support universal conscription with regular military stints each
year required of all males to the age of 47.
AKH1243 NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE HAS NEVER DEFEATED AN INVADER
Michael Walzer, political philosopher, Princeton, JUST AND UNJUST WARS, 1977,
p.330.
I want to stress that it is not war but civilian resistance that has usually been regarded as
a last resort, because war holds out at least the possibility of avoiding the occupation that
evokes or requires the resistance. But we might reverse this ordering were we to decide
that resistance is as likely to end the occupation as military action is to prevent it, and at
a much lower cost in human lives. There is as yet no evidence that that proposition is true,
"no cases in which . . . civilian defense has caused an invader to withdraw."
AKH1244 NON-VIOLENCE CAN'T EFFECTIVELY COUNTER POLITICAL TERROR
Michael Walzer, political philosopher, Princeton, JUST AND UNJUST WARS, 1977,
p.331-2.
While nonviolence by itself replaces aggressive war with political struggle, it cannot by
itself determine the means of struggle. The invading army can always adopt the common
methods of domestic tyrants, which go well beyond curfews, fines, and jail sentences; and
its leaders, though they are soldiers, may well be tempted to do that for the sake of a quick
"victory." Tyrants will not, of course, lay siege to their own cities or bomb or bombard
them; nor will invaders who encounter no armed opposition. But there are other, probably
more efficient, ways of terrorizing a people whose country one controls, and of breaking
their resistance.
AKH1245 NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE IS LIKELY TO BREAK DOWN
Michael Walzer, political philosopher, Princeton, JUST AND UNJUST WARS, 1977,
p.334.
Nonviolent resistance, on the other hand, is possible on a significant scale only if civilians
are already mobilized and prepared to act together. The resistance is simply the physical
expression of that mobilization, directly, in the streets, or indirectly, through economic
slowdowns and political passivity. Now the coercion and killing of civilians is likely to
break the solidarity of the resistance, spreading terror through the country and eventually
producing a dulled acquiescence.
AKH1246 NON-VIOLENCE IS SIMPLY COVERT SURRENDER
Michael Walzer, political philosopher, Princeton, JUST AND UNJUST WARS, 1977,
p.333.
When one cannot count on the moral code, nonviolence is either a disguised form of
surrender or a minimalist way of upholding communal values after a military defeat. I don't
want to underestimate the importance of the second of these. Though civilian resistance
evokes no moral recognition among the invading soldiers, it can still be important for its
practitioners. It expresses the communal will to survive; and though the expression is brief,
as in Czechoslovakia in 1968, it is likely to be long remembered. The heroism of civilians
is even more heartening than that of soldiers. On the other hand, one should not expect
much more from civilians confronted with a terrorist or potentially terrorist army than brief
or sporadic resistance.

AKH1247 NON-VIOLENCE CAN ONLY WORK WITH COMMON MORAL
STANDARDS AMONG ADVERSARIES
Michael Walzer, political philosopher, Princeton, JUST AND UNJUST WARS, 1977,
p.333.
As Liddell Hart has argued, however, these effects have only been possible against
opponents whose code of morality was fundamentally similar [to that of the civilian
defenders], and whose ruthlessness was thereby restrained. It is very doubtful whether
non-violent resistance would have availed against a Tartar conqueror in the past, or against
a Stalin in more recent times. We only impression it seems to have made on Hitler was to
excite his impulse to trample on what, to his mind, was contemptible weakness--although
there is evidence that it did embarrass many of his generals, brought up in a better code.
AKH1248 NON-VIOLENCE MEANS ULTIMATE DEFEAT
Michael Walzer, political philosopher, Princeton, JUST AND UNJUST WARS, 1977,
p.332.
If one faces an enemy like the Nazis, and if armed resistance is impossible, it is virtually
certain that the men and women of the occupied country--those who have been marked out
for survival, at any rate, and perhaps even those who have been marked out for death--will
yield to their new masters and obey their decrees. The country will grow silent. Resistance
will be a matter of individual heroism or of the heroism of small groups, but not of
collective struggle.
AKH1249 NON-VIOLENCE FAILED IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Hannah Arendt, political philosopher, ON VIOLENCE, 1970, p.52-3.
The head-on clash between Russian tanks and the entirely nonviolent resistance of the
Czechoslovak people is a textbook case of a confrontation between violence and power in
their pure states. But while domination in such an instance is difficult to achieve, it is not
impossible. Violence, we must remember, does not depend on numbers or opinions, but
on implements, and the implements of violence, as I mentioned before, like all other tools,
increase and multiply human strength. Those who oppose violence with mere power will
soon find that they are confronted not by men but by men's artifacts, whose inhumanity and
destructive effectiveness increase in proportion to the distance separating the opponents.
Violence can always destroy power; out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective
command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience.
AKH1250 GANDHI WOULD HAVE FAILED IF CONFRONTED WITH A TRULY
EVIL ADVERSARY
Hannah Arendt, political philosopher, ON VIOLENCE, 1970, p.53.
In a head-on clash between violence and power, the outcome is hardly in doubt. If Gandhi's
enormously powerful and successful strategy of nonviolent resistance had met with a
different enemy--Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, even prewar Japan, instead of
England--the outcome would not have been decolonization, but massacre and submission.
AKH1251 GANDHI WOULD HAVE FAILED IN THE FACE OF TOTALITARIANISM
Michael Walzer, political philosopher, Princeton, JUST AND UNJUST WARS, 1977,
p.332.
Win his "Reflections on Gandhi," George Orwell points out the importance of exemplary
leadership and wide publicity in a nonviolent campaign and wonders whether such a
campaign would even be possible in a totalitarian state. "It is difficult to see how Gandhi's
methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the
middle of the night and are never heard from again." Nor would civilian resistance work
well against invaders who sent out squads of soldiers to kill civilian leaders, who arrested
and tortured suspects, established concentration camps, and exiled large numbers of people
from areas where the resistance was strong to distant and desolate parts of the country.
Nonviolent defense is no defense at all against tyrants or conquerors ready to adopt such
measures. Gandhi demonstrated this truth, I think by the perverse advice he gave to the
Jews of Germany: that they should commit suicide rather than fight back against Nazi
tyranny. Here nonviolence, under extreme conditions, collapses into violence directed at
oneself rather than at one's murderers, though why it should take that direction I cannot
understand.
AKH1252 EVEN GANDHI WAS FORCED TO RELY ON COERCION
Douglas Lackey, Professor of Philosophy, City College of New York, THE ETHICS OF
WAR AND PEACE, 1989, p.15.
Another problem for Gandhi concerns the relationship between violence and coercion. To
coerce people is to make them act against their will, for fear of the consequences they will
suffer if they do not obey. Coercion, then, is a kind of spiritual violence, directed against
the imagination and will of the victim. The "violence" most conspicuously rejected by
Gandhi-- pushing, shoving, striking with hands, the use of weapons, the placing of bombs
and explosives--is essentially physical violence, directed against the bodies of opponents.
But if physical violence against bodies is spiritually corrupting, psychological violence
directed at the will of opponents must be even more corrupting. In his writings Gandhi
condemned coercion. Yet in practice he can hardly be said to have renounced
psychological coercion.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 107
AKH1253 GANDHIAN NON-VIOLENCE FAILS EVEN IN SPIRITUAL TERMS
Douglas Lackey, Professor of Philosophy, City College of New York, THE ETHICS OF
WAR AND PEACE, 1989, p.15.
India did not adopt the creed of nonviolence after the British left in 1948, and it is hardly
likely that any modern nation-state will organize its international affairs along Gandhian
lines. But none of this affects the validity of Gandhi's arguments, which indicate how
things ought to be, not how they are. We have seen that Gandhi's principles do not falter
in the face of situations in which taking one life can save lives on balance. But what of
situations in which the sacrifice of spiritual purity by one will prevent the corruption of
many souls? Suppose, for example, that a Gandhian believes (on good evidence) that a
well-timed commando raid will prevent a nation from embarking on an aggressive war, a
war that would inflame whole populations with hatred for the enemy. Wouldn't a concern
with one's own spiritual purity in such a situation show an immoral lack of concern for the
souls of one's fellow men?
AKH1254 GANDHIAN SPIRITUAL PURITY CAN BE SACRIFICED TO OTHER
VALUES
Douglas Lackey, Professor of Philosophy, City College of New York, THE ETHICS OF
WAR AND PEACE, 1989, p.16.
In addition to these technical problems, many people will be inclined to reject the system
of values from which Gandhi's deductions flow. Many will concede that good character
is important and that helping others to develop moral virtues is an important task. But few
agree with Gandhi that the development of moral purity is the supreme human good, and
that other goods, like the preservation of human life, or progress in the arts and sciences,
have little or no value in comparison. If even a little value is conceded to these other
things, then on occasion it will be necessary to put aside the project of developing spiritual
purity in order to preserve other values. These acts of preservation may require physical
violence, and those who use violence to defend life or beauty or liberty may indeed be
corrupting their souls. But it is hard to believe that an occasional and necessary act of
violence on behalf of these values will totally and permanently corrupt the soul, and those
who use violence judiciously may be right in thinking that the saving of life or beauty or
liberty may be worth a small or temporary spiritual loss.
AKH1255 PACIFISM IS MORALLY UTOPIAN
Jan Narveson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, ETHICS, January 1968,
p.150.
This, I think, is the pacifist's dilemma. He would like to live in a world utterly at peace. So
would most of us. But we do not, and so the question is, what to do about it? The pacifist's
way is, as it were, to make Munich the cornerstone of our moral lives. We will act (or is
that the right word here?) as if there were no violence anywhere, and then, hopefully, there
will come a time when magic prevails and there is no more of it. By that time, the circle
will no doubt also have been squared and infinity encompassed. But the rest of us,
meanwhile, will wonder what has become of that supposed right to peace which we
thought the pacifist was allowing us when we see him standing by, protesting at the top of
his lungs, to be sure, but not doing anything about it, in the presence of violence by others.
AKH1256 EXTREME PACIFISM IS MORALLY SIMPLISTIC
Tom Regan, Professor of Philosophy, North Carolina State, CANADIAN JOURNAL OF
PHILOSOPHY, September 1972, p.86.
It remains true, nonetheless, that the strongest objections to an extreme pacifism of the
kind discussed are moral, not logical ones. A person committed to an extreme pacifism,
though he need make no logical mistake, yet lacks a fully developed moral sensitivity to
the vagaries and complexities of human existence. To regard the pacifist's belief as 'bizarre
and vaguely ludicrous" is, perhaps, to put it mildly.
AKH1257 TOTAL NON-VIOLENCE IS MORALLY SIMPLISTIC
Joseph Fletcher, Professor of Ethics, University of Virginia, SITUATION ETHICS, 1966,
p.83-4.
Absolute negatives absolute affirmatives alike have this neurotic character of falsifying
complex realities. Albert Schweitzer is quite right to say that "the good conscience is an
invention of the devil." Classical pacifism is an example; it holds the use of violence to be
always wrong regardless of the situation. This is a legalism, even though many pacifists
would be unhappy to think of it as such. The subtlety here is this: the pacifist knows that
if, as in the "just war" doctrine, it is possible that some wars are just and some are not, the
pacifist with his absolute prohibition is bound to be ethically right some of the time,
whereas the situationist could be wrong every time, failing to recognize when a war is just
and trying to justify one when it is not justifiable. The pacifist is safe ethically in a way,
as all legalists are, whereas the situationist is always vulnerable to error in any
decision-making situation. Nevertheless, we must favor a casuistry in which every man is
his own casuist when the decision-making chips are down. Decision is "a risk rooted in the
courage of being" free.
AKH1258 PACIFISM IS A SIMPLISTIC SOLUTION TO WAR
Risiri Frondizi, Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas, THE CRITIQUE OF WAR,
Robert Ginsberg, ed., 1969, p.79.
War is a complex phenomenon. We will not avoid it with simplistic solutions. Pacifism,
with all the sympathy that it might inspire, is a clear example of naivete and
oversimplification in solving a complex problem that cannot be solved by wishful thinking
and goodwill. Goodwill can contribute to the solution of a problem when the latter is due
to bad will, but not when it falls outside the field of volition.

AKH1259 HISTORY DOESN'T VALIDATE CULTURAL RELATIVISM
Allan Bloom, Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago, THE CLOSING OF THE
AMERICAN MIND, 1987, p.39.
It is important to emphasize that the lesson the students are drawing from their studies is
simply untrue. History and the study of cultures do not teach or prove that values or
cultures are relative. All to the contrary, that is a philosophical premise that we now bring
to our study of them. This premise is unproven and dogmatically asserted for what are
largely political reasons. History and culture are interpreted in the light of it, and then are
said to prove the premise. Yet the fact that there have been different opinions about good
and bad in different times and places in no way proves that none is true or superior to
others. To say that it does so prove is as absurd as to say that the diversity of points of view
expressed in a college bull session proves there is no truth. On the face of it, the difference
of opinion would seem to raise the question as to which is true or right rather than to
banish it. The natural reaction is to try to resolve the difference, to examine the claims and
reasons for each opinion.
AKH1260 REASON CAN OVERCOME ETHNOCENTRIC PREJUDICE
Allan Bloom, Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago, THE CLOSING OF THE
AMERICAN MIND, 1987, p.40.
I know that men are likely to bring what are only their prejudices to the judgment of alien
peoples. Avoiding that is one of the main purposes of education. But trying to prevent it
by removing the authority of men's reason is to render ineffective the instrument that can
correct their prejudices. True openness is the accompaniment of the desire to know, hence
of the awareness of ignorance. To deny the possibility of knowing good and bad is to
suppress true openness.
AKH1261 THE VALUES OF MODERNITY ARE KEY TO THE NON-WESTERN
WORLD
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.111.
For Said, on the contrary, it is a melancholy fact that this retreat from the emancipatory
values of modernity should be occurring both among Western intellectuals (or
'consequential metropolitan theorists') and those elsewhere who have everything to gain
by conserving what is best in that tradition. 'We can and indeed must speculate', he writes,
as to why there has been a practice of self-confinement of the libertarian theoretical capital
produced in the west, and why at the same time, in the formerly colonial world, the
prospect for a culture with strongly liberationist components has rarely seemed dimmer.
AKH1262 NOT ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL
William Henry, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, IN DEFENSE OF ELITISM, 1994, p.14.
Every corner of the human race may have something to contribute. That does not mean that
all contributions are equal. We may find romantic appeal, aesthetic power, and even
political insight in cultures that never achieved modern technological sophistication. That
does not mean we should equate them with our own. It is scarcely the same thing to put a
man on the moon as to put a bone in your nose. And even were all cultures equal, that
would not mean they made equal contributions in the specific shaping of the American
ideal.
AKH1263 SUPERIOR CULTURES, PRESERVE FREEDOM
William Henry, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, IN DEFENSE OF ELITISM, 1994, p.29.
First and foremost, a superior culture preserves the liberty of its citizens. A society may
be disadvantaged in this quest by reasons of geography, economics, size relative to its
neighbors, and so on. But in essence, a culture that maintains autonomy is superior. One
that fails to fend off invaders, or that permits large numbers of its inhabitants to be taken
into slavery, is on its face inferior. Whatever moral or spiritual or other virtues a conquered
culture may offer, they cannot redeem the loss of freedom.
AKH1264 SUPERIOR CULTURES PROVIDE MATERIAL WELFARE
William Henry, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, IN DEFENSE OF ELITISM, 1994, p.29.
Second, a superior culture provides a comfortable life, relatively free from want, for the
plupart of its citizens. It would be foolish to draw a straight line equation on this principle.
The accident of oil wealth should not by itself make Kuwait rank as superior to, say, Italy,
or even India. But in general a valid culture will lift its people above a subsistence
economy and afford the merits of trade and entrepreneurship.
AKH1265 SUPERIOR CULTURES PROMOTE HEALTH AND WELFARE
William Henry, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, IN DEFENSE OF ELITISM, 1994, p.29-30.
Third, a superior culture promotes modern science, medicine, and hygiene and otherwise
maximizes the health, comfort, and longevity of its citizens. By medicine I mean Western
medicine, pending persuasive non-anecdotal research into the merits of any other kind. By
science I emphatically do not mean numerology, mysticism, astrology, ESP, or any of the
new age crapola that beguiles second-rate minds (and that is normally, and correctly,
identified as foreign to mainstream Western culture). By hygiene I mean not only the use
of toilets and the preservation of potage drinking water but a rational acceptance of birth
control and an attitude neither phobic nor reckless toward sex.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 108
AKH1266 SUPERIOR CULTURES PRODUCE ENDURING ART
William Henry, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, IN DEFENSE OF ELITISM, 1994, p.30.
Fourth, a superior culture produces permanent artifacts that express aesthetic and
humanistic principles appreciated by other cultures. In general, the bigger and more
numerous these artifacts are, and the more sophisticated and varied the craftsmanship they
manifest, the better. Hence Chartres Cathedral is superior to any tribal mask or religious
totem, not because it is European or Christian, but because it evidences greater human
ingenuity and invention. The permanence of such artifacts is admittedly a matter of chance.
Sheer antiquity diminishes the number and quality of cultural remnants. Much of the
Parthenon's sculpture is eroded or outright gone, and most of Greek drama is lost, although
in both cases what survives is breathtaking. Similarly, the cultures that wind up as
conservators of a region's patrimony are often inferior enough that they fail to protect their
heritage (along with, more often than not, the liberty of their citizens). One can hardly
blame classical Indian culture, for example, for the disgraceful way that vast carpets,
exquisite little Mogul miniature paintings, and gossamer-grand palaces are left to rot
unprotected in humid and polluted modern air in, for example, the once-regal city of
Jaipur. But by and large, the greater the culture, the more of a legacy it leaves, so that even
the ravages of time cannot erase its memory.
AKH1267 SUPERIOR CULTURES PROVIDE GENERAL EDUCATION
William Henry, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, IN DEFENSE OF ELITISM, 1994, p.30.
Fifth, a superior culture provides widespread, rigorous general education and ensures an
essentially meritocratic admissions system, so that the chief talents of each generation will
be fully exploited. A culture that leaves its people in agrarian ignorance, or that educates
only a priestly or partisan elite, must be judged inferior, whether it exhibits the moral
dignity of Tibet or the moral squalor of Libya.
AKH1268 SUPERIOR CULTURES SPREAD IN INFLUENCE
William Henry, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, IN DEFENSE OF ELITISM, 1994, p.30-1.
Sixth, a superior culture expands, by trade or cultural imperialism or conquest or all of the
above, and will find its tenets embraced by the erstwhile captives even when the era of
expansion is over. Think of the Mongols in China (though scarcely a trace remains of them
in the West), the Moors in Iberia, the Spanish in South America.
AKH1269 SUPERIOR CULTURES ALLOW INDIVIDUAL OPPORTUNITIES
William Henry, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, IN DEFENSE OF ELITISM, 1994, p.31.
Seventh, a superior culture organizes itself hierarchically, tends toward central authority,
and overcomes tribal and regional divisions, all without suppressing the individual
opportunity for self-expression and advancement. A culture that allows an individual the
opportunity to paint on a larger canvas, as it were, is patently superior to one that compels
him to think no further than his clan or valley.
AKH1270 INSISTING ON THE EQUALITY OF ALL CULTURES IS
CONDESCENDINGLY RACIST
William Henry, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, IN DEFENSE OF ELITISM, 1994, p.14.
lt is not necessarily a conspiracy of silence that the historical record is so thin in detailing
women painters and writers of the early Renaissance or black nuclear physicists and
Hispanic political leaders of the early twentieth century. Sometimes the record is thin
because the accomplishments were too. I expect many people will reflexively find these
observations racist. But I am not asserting that, say, people of African descent cannot
compete equally only that their ancestral culture did not give them the tools and
opportunity to do so. To me the real racism lies in the condescending assumption that we
must equate all cultures to assuage African Americans, or any other minorities, instead of
challenging them to compete with; and equal, the best in the culture where they live now.
AKH1271 CULTURES DON'T HAVE A RIGHT TO SURVIVAL
Jurgen Habermas, Professor of Philosophy, University of Frankfurt,
MULTICULTURALISM, Amy Gutmann, ed., 1994, p.130.
To this extent coexistence with equal rights for different ethnic groups and their cultural
forms of life does not need to be safeguarded through the sort of collective rights that
would overtax a theory of rights tailored to individual persons. Even if such group rights
could be granted in the democratic constitutional state, they would be not only unnecessary
but questionable from a normative point of view. For in the last analysis the protection of
forms of life and traditions in which identities are formed is supposed to serve the
recognition of their members; it does not represent a kind of preservation of species by
administrative means. The ecological perspective on species conservation cannot be
transferred to cultures. Cultural heritages and the forms of life articulated in them normally
reproduce themselves by convincing those whose personality structures they shape, that
is, by motivating them to appropriate productively and continue the traditions. The
constitutional state can make this hermeneutic achievement of the cultural reproduction of
lifeworlds possible, but it cannot guarantee it. For to guarantee survival would necessarily
rob the members of the very freedom to say yes or no that is necessary if they are to
appropriate and preserve their cultural heritage.

AKH1272 CULTURES DON'T HAVE AN INTRINSIC RIGHT TO SURVIVE
Amy Gutmann, Professor of Politics, Princeton, MULTICULTURALISM, 1994, p.x.
Constitutional democracy dedicates itself to this distinction by granting members of
minority cultures "equal rights of coexistence" with majority cultures. Are these group
rights or individual rights? Habermas maintains that they are individual rights of free
association and nondiscrimination, which therefore do not guarantee survival for any
culture. The political project of preserving cultures as if they were endangered species
deprives cultures of their vitality and individuals of their freedom to revise and even to
reject their inherited cultural identities. Constitutional democracies respect a broad range
of cultural identities, but they guarantee survival to none.
AKH1273 RELATIVISM LEADS TO TOLERATION OF SLAVERY AND ETHNIC
CLEANSING
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.27.
It is the same pluralist outlook (often adopted, one should add, with the best moral and
political intentions) which enjoins us to respect the diversity of beliefs within and across
cultures, and not to use terms like 'fundamentalist', 'reactionary', 'illiberal' and the like as
if they possessed a validity transcending such localized differences of view., But what shall
we then say of practices - like slavery, clitoridectomy, or widow-burning - that no doubt
make sense by the lights of some past or present cultural life-form, but which must surely
give pause to anyone who takes this liberal-pluralist line? Or again: what arguments could
we muster against those who are currently engaged in genocidal campaigns (or large-scale
programmes of 'ethnic cleansing') which undeniably enjoy wide support among members
of their own language-group or cultural community? It seems hardly enough to deplore
such practices and then enter the standard pluralist caveat: 'but, of course, that is just how
we happen to view things, given our local habits of belief'.
AKH1274 RELATIVISM WOULD ALLOW NO CRITIQUE OF SEXISM
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.27.
Indeed it is hard to see how any limit could be drawn to this principle of treating each and
every language-game (along with its associated life-form) as intelligible solely on the
terms laid down by its own immanent criteria. In which case even the most (to us)
objectionable of sexist or socially retrograde practices would be wholly exempt from
criticism just so long as they were shown to make sense - or to claim some degree of
consensual warrant - within this or that interpretive community.
AKH1275 CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS A FORM ETHNOCENTRISM
Allan Bloom, Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago, THE CLOSING OF THE
AMERICAN MIND, 1987, p.33.
Only in the Western nations, i.e., those influenced by Greek philosophy, is there some
willingness to doubt the identification of the good with one's own way. One should
conclude from the study of non-Western cultures that not only to prefer one's own way but
to believe it best, superior to all others, is primary and even natural--exactly the opposite
of what is intended by requiring students to study these cultures. What we are really doing
is applying a Western prejudice--which we covertly take to indicate the superiority of our
culture--and deforming the evidence.of those other cultures to attest to its validity. The
scientific study of other cultures is almost exclusively a Western phenomenon, and in its
origin was obviously connected with the search for new and better ways, or at least for
validation of the hope that our own culture really is the better way, a validation for which
there is no felt need in other cultures. If we are to learn from those cultures, we must
wonder whether such scientific study is a good idea. Consistency would seem to require
professors of openness to respect the ethnocentrism or closedness they find everywhere
else. However, in attacking ethnocentrism, what they actually do is to assert unawares the
superiority of their scientific understanding and-the inferiority of the other cultures which
do not recognize it at the same time that they reject all such claims to superiority.
AKH1276 ALL CULTURES ARE ETHNOCENTRIC
Allan Bloom, Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago, THE CLOSING OF THE
AMERICAN MIND, 1987, p.36.
But if the students were really to learn something of the minds of any of these non-Western
cultures which they do not--they would find that each and every one of these cultures is
ethnocentric. All of them think their way is the best way, and all others are inferior.
Herodotus tells us that the Persians thought that they were the best, that those nations
bordering on them were next best, that those nations bordering on the nations bordering
on them were third best, and so on, their worth declining as the concentric circles were
farther from the Persian center. This is the very definition of ethnocentrism. Something
like this is as ubiquitous as the prohibition against incest between mother and son.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 109
AKH1277 NO VERSION OF THE ORIENT, INCLUDING SAID'S, IS OBJECTIVELY
TRUE
Janet Ainsworth, Professor of Law, University of Puget Sound, North Carolina Law
Review, June 1991, p.1088.
Edward Said's Orientalism, E. SAID, ORIENTALISM (1978), is a classic of constructivist
history. Said's central thesis is that European culture systematically created the idea of the
Orient and imposed this constructed reality for its own political ends. He explicitly warns
the reader, however, that he neither "suggest[s] that there is such a thing as a real or true
Orient" nor "make[s] an assertion about the necessary privilege of an 'insider' perspective
over an 'outsider' one." Id. at 322. Rather, his truly constructivist move is to claim that all
versions of "the Orient," including indigenous ones, are equally constructed; none are
objective depictions of some supposed external reality.
AKH1278 SAID RECOGNIZES THE IMPORTANCE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
THOUGHT
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.110.
Edward Said argues to similar effect when he remarks, in Culture and Imperialism, that it
is difficult nowadays for clued-up Western intellectuals to offer any statement about
history without first acknowledging Hayden White's thesis 'that all historical writing is
writing and delivers figural language and representational tropes, be they in the modes of
metonymy, metaphor, allegory, or irony'. Meanwhile, altogether elsewhere, historians and
scholars in the ex-colonial nations have a rather more urgent task to perform, one that
leaves them no room for such luxuries of hyperinduced sceptical doubt. 'In the main', as
Said concludes, 'the breach between these consequential metropolitan theorists and either
the ongoing or the historical imperial experience is truly vast.' Nor is this very remarkable
if one considers the interests and priorities that such theorizing typically involves. For it
is a capital irony, one not lost upon Said, that at a time when Western avant-garde theorists
are busily rubbishing the Enlightenment and all its works, those same values should
assume such importance for 'third-world' thinkers and activists striving to reclaim a history
occluded by the hegemonic discourses of Western power.
AKH1279 SAID NOW RECOGNIZES THE SELF-CORRECTING CAPACITIES OF
ENLIGHTENMENT THOUGHT
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.75.
It is in this context, I suggest, that we should interpret Said's very marked change of
outlook with regard to the 'discourse' of Enlightenment critique. For whatever its manifest
shortcomings and failures to date--failures that Said has done much as anyone to document
- still it is the case that Enlightenment provides the only adequate resources (conceptual,
ethical, and political) for reflecting on that same history.
AKH1280 SAID NOW EMBRACES ENLIGHTENMENT VALUES
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.69.
Not that this charge-sheet had in any way diminished by the time Said completed his work
toward Culture and Imperialism. But in two respects at least - historical and ethico-political
- that work bears witness to a real transformation of attitude. The first (as shown by the
passage on Toussaint, cited above) is Said's willingness to extend 'Enlightenment' as a
historical term beyond its original European context to those other emancipatory
movements - like the Santo Domingo revolt- that were able to invoke kindred ideas of
universal liberty, justice, and human rights. From which it follows that such ideas are not
simply (as Foucault would have it) a product of the omnipresent will-to-truth that translates
into a hegemonic will-to-power. Nor are they - in the current textualist idiom - mere
'representations' (or strategies for shaping the narrative-discursive field) which possess no
validity outside or beyond the moment of encounter between critic and text. The result of
such thinking is a form of methodological solipsism, one that Said could never have
embraced on account of his ethical commitment to the victims of injustice, untruth, and
misrepresentation, but which he is now (with good reason) more anxious to repudiate.
AKH1281 THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE ARE VACUOUS
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.119.
Nor are the current alternatives very much better when, as often happens, they start out
from this same a priori persuasion--that is to say, from some variant of the linguistic or
textualist turn - and seek to pass 'beyond' it while leaving its major premises firmly in
place. Such are those vacuous appeals to an ethics or a politics of radical 'difference' which
- whether couched in Levinasian or in New Historicist terms - always end up by
constructing the 'other' as an empty, unthinkably alien position within discourse whose
lineaments can only be descried in the image of the theorist's own concerns.

AKH1282 FETISHIZING DIFFERENCE PRODUCES A RHETORIC OF CULTURAL
APARTHEID
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.105.
What might be involved, in the last analysis, is extending to the notion of foreigner the
right of respecting our own foreignness and, in short, of the "privacy" that ensures freedom
in democracies.' But we shall not achieve this wished-for condition by fetishizing
'difference' to the point where it becomes a ne plus ultra of radical theory, a term whose
indiscriminate usage very often brings it close to the active false logic of
persecution-mania and a rhetoric of cultural Apartheid.
AKH1283 THE RHETORIC OF OTHERNESS LEADS TO ETHNIC HATRED
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.104.
That she cites this passage twice over- on both occasions without the least hint of parodic
or negative intent - is sufficient indication of the distance that Kristeva has travelled since
a work like The Revolution in Poetic Language. In part this has to do with her vivid
perception of the harms brought about by a rhetoric of cultural otherness, difference, or
alterity that so easily translates into forms of ethnic hatred and racist paranoia. But it also
goes along with a profound revaluation of the ethical resources - the potential for reflecting
on our current sorry state of world-political affairs -held out by that tradition of
liberal-enlightenment thought whose representative voices she assembles in Strangers to
Ourselves. And if this means abandoning some of the main tenets of post-structuralist
belief - the demise of truth, the dissolution of the subject, the raising of difference (or
heterogeneity) to a high point of radical doctrine then clearly it is a price that Kristeva is
willing to pay.
AKH1284 STRESS ON OTHERNESS LEADS TO MASS MURDER
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.99-100.
Small wonder that Kristeva - like Said - has undergone a sharp conversion from this way
of thinking when confronted with the testimony of recent events in Yugoslavia, Palestine,
the ex-Soviet Republics, and elsewhere. What these events demonstrate with chilling
regularity is the peril - the potential for human catastrophe in the slide from an ethic of
shared humanity across cultural differences to a notion of 'otherness' that easily translates
into forms of rampant xenophobia. So it is that mixed communities of Serbs, Croats, and
Muslims can be one week living peaceably as neighbours in the same village, and the next
week conducting unspeakable campaigns of 'ethnic cleansing', mass-murder, and
systematic rape. Indeed, this presents the most telling example of the way that seemingly
'abstract' issues are mirrored, enacted, or called to account by turns of real-world historical
event. If there is one such episode that should give pause to the proponents of 'difference'
and cultural particularism it is the tragedy that has engulfed ax-Yugoslavia and which also
- as I write - threatens to attend the break-up of other federalist states in Eastern Europe.
And if there is one lesson to be learned from all this it is the lesson that Kristeva so
eloquently draws in Strangers to Ourselves and Nations Without Nationalism.
AKH1285 STRESSING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SELF AND OTHER LEADS
TO ETHNIC CLEANSING
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.89.
Most importantly, it centres on that complex of themes - self and other, identity and
difference, the claims of universalist ('enlightenment') reason vis-a-vis the claims of
linguistic, cultural, or ethnic alterity which post-structuralism treats as binary terms in a
strictly nonnegotiable, antagonist relation. And from here, as I have argued, it is no great
distance to the hideous rhetoric of 'ethnic cleansing' and the various strains of revived
nationalist fervour that also ride high on the current wave of reactive
counter-enlightenment thought.
AKH1286 STRESSING DIFFERENCE CAN LEAD TO RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.74.
That this model has been extended so far beyond its legitimate (structural-synchronic)
domain is a major cause of the confusions rife in present-day critical theory. But those
confusions take on a much wider (and more ominous) import if one considers their
meaning - their practical significance--in light of current world-political events. For if there
is one harsh lesson that theorists should have learned from simply reading their daily
newspapers over the past few years it is the fatal ease with which notions of ethnic and
cultural 'difference' can be turned around and used to promote forms of racist or
xenophobic sentiment.
AKH1287 DIFFERENCE HAS BECOME A MYSTIFIED DOGMA
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.72-3.
And the third lesson, inseparable from these, is that we need to keep faith with what
Habermas calls the 'unfinished project of modernity', since it is only by thinking such
issues through with the greatest possible lucidity and care that theory can avoid the
constant danger of reverting to forms of unreflective pre-critical prejudice. In his view -
to which I would very largely subscribe - this charge can be brought against many of those
thinkers in the post-structuralist and affiliated camps who have raised the thematics of
difference and alterity into a high point of mystified dogma.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 110
AKH1288 EMPHASIS ON THE RADICALLY OTHER PRODUCES EXCLUSION
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.58.
To treat the other as radically and absolutely other would amount, he argues, to a kind of
empiricist (or phenomenalist) reduction, a gesture that goes so far towards acknowledging
his or her claims to autonomous being that it ends up by repeating philosophy's oldest,
most spontaneous gesture of exclusion. Such, we recall, is 'the dream of a purely
heterological thought, a pure thought of pure difference . . . We say the dream because it
must vanish at daybreak, as soon as language reawakens.'
AKH1289 VIEWING THE OTHER AS RADICALLY DISTINCT JUSTIFIES
EXTERMINATION
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.57.
One need only consider the events unfolding, as I write, in ex-Yugoslavia and portions of
the erstwhile Soviet bloc to see how easily such thinking can translate into the worst forms
of ethnic prejudice and collective paranoia. For it is no great distance, whether in
philosophic or in psychological terms, from the attitude that on principle renounces all
claim to know or comprehend the other to the attitude that views otherness as a threat - an
absolute since radically alien threat-to its own very being and life-world.
AKH1290 RESPECTING THE OTHER'S DIFFERENCE IS ULTIMATELY
REPRESSIVE
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.49.
In fact - as Derrida notes in his essay on Levinas - there is a risk that such thinking will
reproduce the most traditional of philosophic gestures. That is to say, it treats the other
(like Foucault's 'madness') as a discourse of absolute alterity which for that very reason -
by virtue of its intransigent otherness - becomes more an object of philosophic scrutiny
than an instance of subjectively intelligible language. And so it transpires, through this
most ironic of reversals, that the attempt to do justice to the other by acknowledging his
or her unconditional difference produces what amounts to a gesture of containment, a
move whereby that other is envisaged as the mute, non-signifying matter of philosophic
discourse.
AKH1291 ETHICAL THOUGHT REQUIRES TREATING THE OTHER AS A
SUBJECT
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.81.
Most important here is Kristeva's marked change of attitude with regard to the role of
Enlightenment ('cosmopolitan') thinking as a crucial phase in the coming-to-terms with
issues of cultural alterity and difference. Like Derrida, she sees that any genuinely
other-regarding ethics or politics must always be prepared to recognize the other as in
some sense an alter ego, a subject - or person - whose being could exert no claim upon
one's moral conscience if thought of as somehow existing in a realm of absolute,
intransigent otherness.
AKH1292 NUCLEARISM INVOLVES WORSHIPING NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Helen Caldicott, doctor of medicine and peace activist, MISSILE ENVY, 1986, p.258.
Robert Lifton has coined the word "nuclearism" to describe the process of fascination and
near worship that some scientists, military people, politicians, and others have with the
nuclear bomb. These people worship at the feet of the bombs and deify them, rationalizing
that because of their potential for damage, they must be blessed with some innate
goodness.
AKH1293 THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR EXTINCTION COULD REEMERGE
George Kateb, political theorist, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 1992, p.106.
Besides, who knows whether the threat of extinction may not again arise from nuclear
states or from some other human source? The perspective of extinction could once again
be plausible. Needless to say, arguments against any use of nuclear weapons have lost none
of their relevance despite the collapse of the Soviet Union. The weapons abound and
spread. Their use, no matter how confined, would be a trauma of unconfinable effects.

AKH1294 ANY USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS RISKS EXTINCTION
George Kateb, political theorist, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 1992, p.111-2.
It is of no moral account that extinction may be only a slight possibility. No one can say
how great the possibility is, but no one has yet credibly denied that by some sequence or
other a particular use of nuclear weapons may lead to human and natural extinction. If it
is not impossible it must be treated as certain: the loss signified by extinction nullifies all
calculations of probability as it nullifies all calculations of costs and benefits. Abstractly
put, the connections between any use of nuclear weapons and human and natural extinction
are several. Most obviously, a sizable exchange of strategic nuclear weapons can, by a
chain of events in nature, lead to the earth's uninhabitability, to "nuclear winter," or to
Schell's "republic of insects and grass." But the consideration of extinction cannot rest with
the possibility of a sizable exchange of strategic weapons. It cannot rest with the
imperative that a sizable exchange must not take place. A so-called tactical or "theater"
use, or a so-called limited use, is also prohibited absolutely, because of the possibility of
immediate escalation into a sizable exchange or because, even if there were not an
immediate escalation, the possibility of extinction would reside in the precedent for future
use set by any use whatever in a world in which more than one power possesses nuclear
weapons. Add other consequences: the contagious effect on nonnuclear powers who may
feel compelled by a mixture of fear and vanity to try to acquire their own weapons, thus
increasing the possibility of use by increasing the number of nuclear powers; and the
unleashed emotions of indignation, retribution, and revenge which, if not acted on
immediately in the form of escalation, can be counted on to seek expression later. Other
than full strategic uses are not confined, no matter how small the explosive power: each
would be a cancerous transformation of the world. All nuclear roads lead to the possibility
of extinction.
AKH1295 OVERPOPULATION RISKS RECOURSE TO NUCLEAR WAR
George Kateb, political theorist, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 1992, p.126.
Yet, looked at globally, the problems of overpopulation, ecological damage, and poverty
seem so immense that, as I have admitted, state activism appears attractive. In fact, state
activism carried out by disciplinary dictatorships can appear doubly attractive, as it does
to even so magnanimous a soul as Hans Jonas in his important book The imperative of
Responsibility (1984). The further horror is that there might be fantasies in which the
gravest problem becomes the Swiftian solution to other grave problems, in which nuclear
war becomes the solution to many of the problems of overpopulation. Thus the possibility
of nuclear extinction would become most real when the urgencies of economic survival
had become most imperious, and the individual most pitilessly dwarfed.
AKH1296 NOT ACKNOWLEDGING THE NUCLEAR THREAT HEIGHTENS THE
RISK OF WAR
Jonathan Schell, journalist and peace activist, THE FATE OF THE EARTH, 1982, p.231.
Two paths lie before us. One leads to death, the other to life. If we choose the first path --
if we numbly refuse to acknowledge the nearness of extinction, all the while increasing our
preparations to bring it about -- then we in effect become the allies of death, and in
everything we do our attachment to life will weaken: our vision, blinded to the abyss that
has opened at our feet, will dim and grow confused; our will, discouraged by the thought
of trying to build on such a precarious foundation anything that is meant to last, will
slacken; and we will sink into stupefaction, as though we were gradually weaning
ourselves from life in preparation for the end.
AKH1297 THE GREATEST DANGER IS COMPLACENCY ABOUT THE NUCLEAR
THREAT
Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk, Professors of Psychology, Harvard, and International
Relations, Princeton, INDEFENSIBLE WEAPONS, 1982, p.x.
We feel deeply encouraged by the shifting context around nuclearism, the broad revulsion
toward nuclear weapons now visible in Europe, North America, and Japan. And we take
the 1982 Special Session of the United Nations on Disarmament -- and the massive nuclear
weapons protest that accompanied that session -- to be manifestations of this revulsion. We
are all too cognizant of the danger that this worldwide trend can lull us into false
reassurance. For the weapons remain, and indeed their numbers dangerously expand.
AKH1298 IT'S ESCAPISM NOT TO THINK ABOUT NUCLEAR WAR RISKS
Harvard Nuclear Study Group, LIVING WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS, 1983, p.254-5.
Therefore, citizens in free countries must insist that they and their political leaders honestly
face the dilemmas of the Nuclear Age. Any form of atomic escapism is a dead end. Living
with nuclear weapons is our only hope. It requires that we persevere in reducing the
likelihood of war even though we cannot remove the possibility altogether. This challenge
will be both demanding and unending, but we need not perish if practical steps continue
to be taken. Surely there is no greater test of the human spirit.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 111
AKH1299 AWARENESS OF THE DANGER OF NUCLEAR WAR IS ESSENTIAL
Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk, Professors of Psychology, Harvard, and International
Relations, Princeton, INDEFENSIBLE WEAPONS, 1982, p.143.
A direct awareness of the nuclear war danger is the indispensable first step In any process
of reducing or removing the danger. This awareness has to include some sense of anguish
about the current state of our security, an awareness unmitigated by bureaucratic
painkillers. One of the high costs of modern nationalism is a decline in the willingness,
perhaps the capacity, of leaders, especially of powerful countries, to speak the truth to their
citizens.
AKH1300 FACING THE REALITY OF NUCLEAR WAR IS KEY TO PREVENTING
IT
Harvard Nuclear Study Group, LIVING WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS, 1983, p.f13.
Both these forms of denial are human, but it is also human to search for a better
understanding of the vast problems nuclear weaponry creates. If we are to manage these
problems successfully, we have to treat the problems seriously and minimize our natural
tendency to deny the horrors. Facing the reality of nuclear war, however, does not mean
that coping with the problems is any less difficult. All the pictures of Hiroshima and the
visions of future disaster can tell one is what to avoid -- not how to avoid it. Still,
acknowledging the potential horrors of war in the nuclear age should serve as a constant
reminder of the necessity of keeping those horrors in the realm of "the potential." The goal
then is to be realistic without being fatalistic; to treat the dangers soberly without being
inhumane. This is a difficult challenge for every concerned individual. It is, nonetheless,
a prerequisite for progress.
AKH1301 ONLY BY CONTEMPLATING ITS IMPACT CAN NUCLEAR WAR BE
CHECKED
Helen Caldicott, doctor of medicine and peace activist, MISSILE ENVY, 1986, p.7.
The logical consequence of the preparation for nuclear war is nuclear war. The behavior
that perpetuates this race to oblivion can be changed only when people actually allow
themselves to contemplate the true medical and ecological implications of such an event.
Only then will they make a conscious decision to devote their lives, their fortunes, and
their sacred honor to save the creation.
AKH1302 UNDERSTANDING THE NUCLEAR THREAT IS THE MOST
IMPORTANT KNOWLEDGE POSSIBLE
Helen Caldicott, doctor of medicine and peace activist, MISSILE ENVY, 1986, p.299.
Thomas Jefferson said, "An informed democracy will behave in a responsible fashion." It
is the responsibility of every American to educate himself or herself about the vast
ramifications of the nuclear and conventional arms race, about the military-industrial
complex, about past American intervention in other countries, and about present U.S.
foreign policy. All this is vital because any superpower confrontation could end in nuclear
holocaust. Understanding this subject is more important than any other reading you have
to do. It should become the number one priority in your life. Such activity might preserve
the life of your family.
AKH1303 UNDERSTANDING THE RISKS OF NUCLEAR WAR IS ESSENTIAL FOR
REDUCING THEM
Herman Kahn, Director, Hudson Institute, THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE
IN THE 1980s, 1984, p.19.
Many of the concepts we deal with in this book are worth pursuing only because they are
very much on the minds of concerned citizens everywhere. Some of the ideas are not on
anyone's mind, but probably should be. All of them are presented in an effort to achieve
a balanced and reasonable perspective on the often misunderstood dangers of nuclear war.
To act responsibly we must learn as much as we can about the genuine risks involved in
order to make certain that we are better prepared to reduce them as much as possible. Or,
deal with them.
AKH1304 SEEING THE INSANITY OF NUCLEAR CONFRONTATION HELPS
OVERCOME NUCLEARISM
Karen Warren, Professor of Philosophy, Macalister, ECOLOGICAL FEMINISM, 1994,
p.193.
Suppose nuclearism is indeed an "addiction," as Lifton and Falk claim, or unhealthy
dissociation, as Smithka claims - partly psychological conditions. How does one recover
from it? Addictions and dissociation ultimately involve faulty beliefs which, for recovery
to occur, must be seen and rejected (Warren 1990). Nuclear awareness, then, involves
seeing the insanity of nuclear confrontation.
AKH1305 REFLECTION ON EXTINCTION MAKES US MOST LIKELY TO AVOID
IT
George Kateb, political theorist, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 1992, p.127.
I interpret a change of heart in the nuclear age as the cultivation of those thoughts and
feelings that would drive people to do all they could to avoid the possibility of extinction.
The dread of massive ruin can and does change hearts, of course. But it may be that the
greatest change can take place if the possibility of extinction dominates reflection.
AKH1306 THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR EXTINCTION REQUIRES DISCUSSION
George Kateb, political theorist, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 1992, p.128.
The nuclear situation thus forces us to talk earnestly about things we maybe would rather
keep silent about, and to talk about them in ways that seem all the more clumsy in contrast
with decorous silence. But if existence is at stake, how can we keep silent? How can we
keep silent about the ultimate reason for attention and resistance?

AKH1307 ADDRESSING NUCLEAR THREATS HELPS TO LOWER RISKS
Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk, Professors of Psychology, Harvard, and International
Relations, Princeton, INDEFENSIBLE WEAPONS, 1982, p.ix.
In the early 1980s something extremely important has happened to nuclear weapons. They
have begun to emerge from the shadows. While they have been among us since World War
II, it is only now that they have become psychologically and politically visible to the
common man and woman. They are no less dangerous to us; they are in fact more
dangerous than ever. But it is no longer possible, we believe, to reinstate the universal
numbing that has so long maintained such distance between them and us, and at so great
a cost. One result of this welcome exposure is that world leaders feel constrained to
address nuclear dangers and to present themselves as nuclear peacemakers. Surely that is
a desirable step, because it contains possibilities for treaties that restrict or reduce weapons
systems.
AKH1308 THE FEAR OF NUCLEAR DISASTER HAS BEEN POLITICALLY
BENEFICIAL
Herman Kahn, Director, Hudson Institute, THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE
IN THE 1980s, 1984, p.37.
The persistent fear of nuclear disaster, then, has brought about some positive
consequences: the potential for tremendous damage and suffering has provided national
leaders with almost overwhelming incentives to be careful in their conduct of international
politics. A relatively favorable climate for arms control has also been created -- for both
explicit and implicit agreements -- although the difficulties of achieving and maintaining
reliable and useful arms-control measures remain at all levels.
AKH1309 DISCOURSE ABOUT THE NUCLEAR THREAT IS NECESSARY
George Kateb, political theorist, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 1992, p.107-8.
It may be, however, that this very indirectness is a great poet's way of instructing us in the
foolhardiness of trying to say something about the subject of human extinction which does
not kill it by boredom. Still, such foolhardiness is needed. The subject that is not a subject
must be discussed; words about it must be produced. We must reject the advice of those
who in brief and undeniably interesting sentences advise us to keep quiet, so that we do
not reveal the nuclear situation's true absurdity and thus somehow make the worst more
likely to happen. Allow that most of the thousands of words one has read on the
encompassing theme of nuclear weapons, and the fewer words on the specific theme of
human extinction, fail. They tend to be boring, even when well written. One often notices,
as well, a recurrent unsteadiness in nuclear discourse: writers seem to regret what they said
earlier or to lose or bury their point, or change their minds without seeming to notice. Yet
we could not do without much of this writing. The deficiencies themselves teach lessons.
AKH1310 HUMAN EXTINCTION SHOULD BE AT THE CENTER OF NUCLEAR
DISCOURSE
George Kateb, political theorist, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 1992, p.109.
I would hazard the view, however, that anyone who thinks that moral philosophy has a
place in the discussion of the whole subject of nuclear weapons is very likely to find
Schell's book of tremendous value. Any moral philosophy is bound to place human
extinction at the center of nuclear discourse. In making human extinction the center, Schell
is trying to force us to abandon the usual way of considering the subject. He is persuaded,
even if he does not say it in so many words, that we cannot just inch up to the nuclear
situation, so to speak. Because this situation is radically discontinuous with all other past
and present dangers, those who think about it must create a break with any discourse that
tends to make the nuclear situation resemble, or resemble too closely, any other danger or
predicament.
AKH1311 THE FOCUS ON EXTINCTION CREATES A RUPTURE IN NUCLEAR
DISCOURSE
George Kateb, political theorist, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 1992, p.109.
So far are common sense and policy discourse from being adequate, they falsify the
subject. At whatever risks, writers must take the subject away -- at least for a while -- from
common sense and policy discourse and entrust it to philosophy, to the capacity of
philosophy to disclose the obvious, to reveal the obvious, which otherwise remains hidden
and obscure in the unreal familiarity inflicted on it by common sense and policy discourse.
Philosophy instigates a rupture and then tries to redefine the field. This is Schell's
endeavor. At the same time -- and I know it may sound frivolous to make this admission --
he helps to enlarge moral philosophy. He compels its attention to a subject that, long
before, professional philosophers should have addressed. Again, this success depends on
the theme of human extinction. By bringing the nuclear predicament into conjunction with
moral philosophy his words give a new urgency to both. Schell thus helps to open up the
subject for exploration.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 112
AKH1312 SCHELL'S NUCLEAR DISCOURSE IS UNIQUELY FERTILE
George Kateb, political theorist, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 1992, p.108.
Though a good number of writers help us understand the nuclear situation, only a few have
manifestly set out with the sense that unless they made special efforts their language would
fail them, fail their subject, fail us. I do not mean to read off an honor roll. But I must
single out, at the start, Jonathan Schell's book, The Fate of the Earth, published in 1982.
I would claim for this book the distinction of giving greater life to the subject of nuclear
weapons than any other. The key to Schell's success is that he makes human extinction the
center of the whole subject. He is not the first to do so. As far as I can tell, Gunther Anders,
the distinguished German philosopher, is the one who first insisted that adequacy to the
subject required dwelling on the possibility of human extinction. But it is Schell, writing
as a citizen of the first nuclear state, who has had the great effect on opinion.
AKH1313 SCHELL'S ANALYSIS HELPED COUNTER THE NUCLEAR THREAT
Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk, Professors of Psychology, Harvard, and International
Relations, Princeton, INDEFENSIBLE WEAPONS, 1982, p.x.
The recent book by Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth, was a landmark document in
its consolidation of knowledge about the nuclear threat. His book came at an opportune
time, entering into and significantly furthering the revulsion of which we speak.
AKH1314 SCHELL OVERCOMES THE LIMITS OF NUCLEAR DISCOURSE
George Kateb, political theorist, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 1992, p.111.
The doctrine of no-use is based on the possibility of extinction. Schell's perspective
transforms the subject. He takes us away from the arid stretches of strategy and asks us to
feel continuously, if we can, and feel keenly if only for an instant now and then, how
utterly distinct the nuclear world is. Nuclear discourse must vividly register that
distinctiveness.
AKH1315 THE SLIGHTEST RISK OF EXTINCTION MUST BE AVOIDED
George Kateb, political theorist, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 1992, p.111.
Schell's work attempts to force on us an acknowledgment that sounds far-fetched and even
ludicrous, an acknowledgment that the possibility of extinction is carried by any use of
nuclear weapons, no matter how limited or how seemingly rational or seemingly morally
justified. He himself acknowledges that there is a difference between possibility and
certainty. But in a matter that is more than a matter, more than one practical matter in a vast
series of practical matters, in the "matter" of extinction, we are obliged to treat a possibility
-- a genuine possibility -- as a certainty. Humanity is not to take any step that contains even
the slightest risk of extinction.
AKH1316 PREVENTING NUCLEAR WAR REQUIRES CONSIDERING SCENARIOS
FOR HOW IT MIGHT START
Harvard Nuclear Study Group, LIVING WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS, 1983, p.47.
The question is grisly, but nonetheless it must be asked. Nuclear war cannot be avoided
simply by refusing to think about it. Indeed the task of reducing the likelihood of nuclear
war should begin with an effort to understand how it might start. When strategists in
Washington or Moscow study the possible origins of nuclear war, they discuss "scenarios,"
imagined sequences of future events that could trigger the use of nuclear weaponry.
Scenarios are, of course, speculative exercises. They often leave out the political
developments that might lead to the use of force in order to focus on military dangers. That
nuclear war scenarios are even more speculative than most is something for which we can
be thankful, for it reflects humanity's fortunate lack of experience with atomic warfare
since 1945. But imaginary as they are, nuclear scenarios can help to identify problems not
understood or dangers not yet prevented because they have not been foreseen.
AKH1317 EVEN REMOTE NUCLEAR WAR SCENARIOS MUST BE TAKEN
SERIOUSLY
Herman Kahn, Director, Hudson Institute, THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE
IN THE 1980s, 1984, p.19.
The use of periphrases in strategic argument is central. We are dealing with remote (but
momentous) events that most people find difficult to comprehend. We try to make the
point that even though these possibilities are remote, they are not so remote, improbable,
or implausible that they should not be taken with deadly seriousness. Indeed, it would not
be the first time that history has turned out to be more imaginative and perverse than even
the most fertile minds would have thought possible. The detailed "outbreak scenario" of
World War I would probably have been rejected as the plot for a third-rate comedy of
errors as simply too outrageous. But the bizarre series of events did occur and brought with
it enormous suffering.

AKH1318 THINKING ABOUT NUCLEAR STRATEGY IS THE ONLY RESPONSIBLE
APPROACH
Herman Kahn, Director, Hudson Institute, THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE
IN THE 1980s, 1984, p.54-5.
"Now that we are agreed that nuclear weapons might be used," Herman would continue,
we have to think about how to use them: against what targets? Toward which objectives?
We have to think about how to use them to maximize the chances of survival and minimize
the damage (to civilians, military installations, industrial complexes, and so on). And we
have to think about how to use them to end the war as soon as possible. Herman would
stress the point that it's not immoral to think about these things; on the contrary -- planning
for nuclear contingencies in the event deterrence fails is the only responsible, prudent, and
moral course. The planners, Herman would say, don't plan war as a deliberate act; planning
is a prudential exercise, like taking out insurance against an accident. You hope you don't
need it, but you've taken reasonable precautions just in case. By the end of this dialogue,
thinking about the unthinkable had usually ceased to be an obscene act.
AKH1319 CONFRONTING NUCLEARISM REQUIRES EXAMINING
SYMPTOMS--NUCLEAR WEAPONS THEMSELVES
Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk, Professors of Psychology, Harvard, and International
Relations, Princeton, INDEFENSIBLE WEAPONS, 1982, p.ix-x.
But whatever the extent of that kind of reduction, the problem of what we call nuclearism
remains. By nuclearism we mean psychological, political, and military dependence on
nuclear weapons, the embrace of the weapons as a solution to a wide variety of human
dilemmas, most ironically that of "security." Our goal in this book is to explore this
fundamental deformation of attitude toward the weapons, as well as their immediate
dangers. We are equally concerned with pressing toward the kind of awareness that can
reverse, even cast off, this syndrome of nuclearism. Nuclearism, then, is the disease. Our
focus on the underlying disease process does not make us unmindful of the symptoms --
nuclear weapons stockpiles and policies. In this case symptoms can not only kill but kill
all. What is required is an examination of both symptoms and disease, a double awareness,
which could lead to steps in the direction of cure.
AKH1320 MILITARY DETERRENCE WORKS
Herman Kahn, Director, Hudson Institute, THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE
IN THE 1980s, 1984, p.37.
In The Absolute Weapon, the first great work on military strategy in the nuclear age,
Bernard Brodie wrote: "Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been
to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them." This observation is,
of course, exactly right. The notion of Armageddon has created a self-defeating prophecy:
the more frightened decision makers are, the more careful they become and the less likely
they are to initiate any action that might bring about the dreaded escalation to nuclear use.
Armageddon is averted to the degree it is feared. As a result, nuclear deterrence has not
only worked remarkably well in peacetime and served to limit the scope and intensity of
conventional warfare, but it is likely to work surprisingly well in a large U.S.-Soviet
conventional, and even a limited nuclear, war.
AKH1321 WEAKENING DETERRENCE INCREASES WAR RISKS
Herman Kahn, Director, Hudson Institute, THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE
IN THE 1980s, 1984, p.37.
One significant indication of the effectiveness of deterrence is that the Soviet Union and
the United States share the belief that a nuclear war would begin only out of desperation
or inadvertence. A weakening of deterrence could increase the possibility of a calculated
"voluntary" war or worse.
AKH1322 PAST PREDICTIONS CONCERNING THE THREAT OF NUCLEARISM
HAVE BEEN DISPROVEN
Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk, Professors of Psychology, Harvard, and International
Relations, Princeton, INDEFENSIBLE WEAPONS, 1982, p.128.
To write about nuclear weapons is inevitably to adopt a cause. It is partly a matter of
urgency. More than rhetoric is implied when we speak about a mounting condition of
emergency: either we lift the curse of nuclearism in the next decade or the human prospect
is likely to be decisively shattered.
AKH1323 THREAT ASSESSMENT IS UNAVOIDABLE
John Spanier, University of Florida, GAMES NATIONS PLAY, 1993, p.160.
The second point is that power is what people think it is. A distinction thus must be drawn
between subjective (perceived) power and objective (actual) power. If power is in the eyes
of the beholder, simple calculation of a nation's power is insufficient. If one country
believes it is strong enough to deter an enemy, but the latter perceives it otherwise, it may
still go to war. Thus, policy makers must concern themselves not only with what the actual
balance of power is, but also with how that balance is seen in other capitals. This is a
difficult task because access to another state's assessments is not usually available;
therefore the best that one can do is guess. Nevertheless, it is a task that must be done.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 113
AKH1324 PEACE REQUIRES ANALYZING THE POTENTIAL CAUSES OF WAR
Stephen Walt, University of Chicago, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY,
1991, p.229.
A recurring theme of this essay has been the twin dangers of separating the study of
security affairs from the academic world or of shifting the focus of academic scholarship
too far from real-world issues. The danger of war will be with us for some time to come,
and states will continue to acquire military forces for a variety of purposes. Unless one
believes that ignorance is preferable to expertise, the value of independent national security
scholars should be apparent. Indeed, history suggests that countries that suppress debate
on national security matters are more likely to blunder into disaster, because misguided
policies cannot be evaluated and stopped in time.
AKH1325 SUCCESSFUL FOREIGN POLICY REQUIRES CORRECTLY
EVALUATING SOURCES OF POWER
Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Thompson, Professors of Political Science, University of
Chicago and University of Virginia, POLITICS AMONG NATIONS, 1985, p.170.
It is the task of those responsible for the foreign policy of a nation and of those who mold
public opinion with regard to international affairs to evaluate correctly the bearing of these
factors upon the power of their own nation and of other nations as well, and this task must
be performed for both the present and the future. What is the influence of the unification
of the armed services upon the quality of the military establishment of the United States?
What effect will the use of nuclear energy have upon the industrial capacity of the United
States and of other nations? How will the industrial capacity, military strength, and
national morale of China develop after Deng's death? How has the hostility of China and
Pakistan influenced the national morale of India? What is the significance of the revival
of a German army for the national power of Germany? Has reeducation changed the
national character of Germany and Japan? How has the national character of the people of
Argentina reacted upon the political philosophies, methods, and objectives of successive
military and civilian regimes? In what ways does the advancement of the Russian sphere
of influence to the Elbe River affect the geographical position of the Soviet Union? Will
this or that reorganization or change in the personnel of the State Department strengthen
or weaken the quality of American diplomacy? These are some of the questions which
must be answered correctly if a nation's foreign policy is to be successful.
AKH1326 CORRECTLY INTERPRETING ACTUAL POLITICAL FORCES IS KEY TO
FOREIGN POLICY
Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Thompson, Professors of Political Science, University of
Chicago and University of Virginia, POLITICS AMONG NATIONS, 1985, p.113.
To see through these ideological disguises and grasp behind them the actual political forces
and phenomena is, then, one of the most important and most difficult tasks for the student
of international politics. This task is important because, unless it is done, it is impossible
to determine correctly the character of the foreign policy with which one happens to deal.
The recognition of imperialistic tendencies and of their particular character depends upon
a clear distinction between the ideological pretense that generally disavows imperialistic
aspirations altogether and the actual objectives of the policies pursued. To make this
distinction correctly is difficult because of the general difficulty of detecting the true
meaning of any human action apart from what the actor believes or feigns it to mean.
AKH1327 INTELLIGENT FOREIGN POLICY MUST AVOID BOTH UNDER- AND
OVER-ASSESSING THREATS
Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Thompson, Professors of Political Science, University of
Chicago and University of Virginia, POLITICS AMONG NATIONS, 1985, p.82.
Appeasement, which is the attempt to compromise with an imperialism not recognized as
such, and the fear that creates imperialism where there is none -- these are the two wrong
answers, the two fatal mistakes an intelligent foreign policy must try to avoid.
AKH1328 CORRECT INTERPRETATIONS OF FOREIGN INTENTIONS ARE KEY
TO PEACE
Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Thompson, Professors of Political Science, University of
Chicago and University of Virginia, POLITICS AMONG NATIONS, 1985, p.77.
The preceding considerations lead to the fundamental question that confronts the public
officials responsible for the conduct of foreign policy as well as citizens trying to form an
intelligent opinion on international issues. This question concerns the character of the
foreign policy pursued by another nation and, in consequence, the kind of foreign policy
that ought to be adopted with regard to it. Is the foreign policy of the other nation
imperialistic, or is it not? In other words, does it seek to overthrow the existing distribution
of power, or does it only contemplate adjustments within the general framework of the
existing status quo? The answer to that question has determined the fate of nations, and the
wrong answer has often meant deadly peril or actual destruction; for upon the correctness
of that answer depends the success of the foreign policy derived from it. While it would
be fatal to counter imperialistic designs with measures appropriate to a policy of the status
quo, it would be only a little less risky to deal with a policy seeking adjustments within the
status quo as though it were imperialistic. The classic example of the former error is the
appeasement of Germany in the late thirties. The other error had a decisive influence upon
the foreign policies of the great European powers in the decades before the outbreak of the
First World War.

AKH1329 FAILURE TO COUNTER REAL THREATS LEADS TO WAR
Harvard Nuclear Study Group, LIVING WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS, 1983, p.16-7.
When President John F. Kennedy was shown irrefutable evidence of the Soviet missile
emplacement -- U-2 photographs of the missile bases in Cuba -- he and his advisers
discussed the matter for six days before deciding on an American response to the
challenge. The decision, to place a naval blockade around the island, was not a risk-free
response. This, Kennedy honestly admitted to the nation on the night of October 22, 1962:
My fellow citizens, let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which
we have set out. No one can foresee precisely what course it will take.... But the greatest
danger of all would be to do nothing. Why did the president believe that "to do nothing"
about the missiles in Cuba would be an even greater danger than accepting the "difficult
and dangerous" course of the blockade? He accepted some risk of war in the short run,
because he believed his actions would reduce the risk of war in the long run, by
discouraging future Soviet aggressive behavior. Inaction might have led to an even more
dangerous future. This the president also explained that night in his address to the nation:
[This] sudden, clandestine decision to station weapons for the first time outside Soviet soil
-- is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be
accepted by this country if our courage and our commitments are ever to be trusted by
either friend or foe. The 1930's taught us a clear lesson: Aggressive conduct, if allowed to
grow unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war.
AKH1330 AN APPEASEMENT POLICY FAILS TO RECOGNIZE APPROPRIATE
THREATS
Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Thompson, Professors of Political Science, University of
Chicago and University of Virginia, POLITICS AMONG NATIONS, 1985, p.78.
Appeasement is a foreign policy that attempts to meet the threat of imperialism with
methods appropriate to a policy of the status quo. Appeasement tries to deal with
imperialism as though it were a policy of the status quo. It errs in transferring a policy of
compromise from a political environment favorable to the preservation of the status quo,
where it belongs, to an environment exposed to imperialistic attack, where it does not
belong. One might say that appeasement is a corrupted policy of compromise, made
erroneous by mistaking a policy of imperialism for a policy of the status quo.
AKH1331 STRENGTH IS NEEDED TO COUNTER IMPERIALISTIC POLICIES
Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Thompson, Professors of Political Science, University of
Chicago and University of Virginia, POLITICS AMONG NATIONS, 1985, p.77-8.
As the policies of imperialism and the status quo are fundamentally different in nature, so
must the policies designed to counter them be fundamentally different A policy adequate
to counter a policy of the status quo cannot be sufficient to meet a policy of imperialism.
A policy of the status quo which seeks adjustments within the existing over-all distribution
of power can be dealt with by a policy of give and take, of balance, of compromise: a
policy, in short, that makes use of the techniques of adjustment within a given overall
distribution of power in order to gain a maximum of advantage and to get by with a
minimum of loss. Imperialism, which seeks to overthrow the existing distribution of
power, must at the very least be countered by a policy of containment which, in defense
of the existing distribution of power, calls a halt to further aggression, expansion, or other
disturbances of the status quo on the part of the imperialistic nation. The policy of
containment erects a wall, either a real one, such as the Great Wall of China or the French
Maginot Line, or an imaginary one, such as the line of military demarcation drawn in 1945
between the Soviet orbit and the Western world. It says in effect to the imperialistic nation:
"Thus far and no farther," warning it that a step beyond the line entails the virtual certainty
of war.
AKH1332 UNDER-ASSESSING THREATS CAN LEAD TO WAR
Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Thompson, Professors of Political Science, University of
Chicago and University of Virginia, POLITICS AMONG NATIONS, 1985, p.6.
Neville Chamberlain's politics of appeasement were, as far as we can judge, inspired by
good motives; he was probably less motivated by considerations of personal power than
were many other British prime ministers, and he sought to preserve peace and to assure the
happiness of all concerned. Yet his policies helped to make the Second World War
inevitable, and to bring untold miseries to millions of people.
AKH1333 UNDERESTIMATING THREATS LEADS TO WAR
David Abshire, President, Center for Strategic and international Studies, PREVENTING
WORLD WAR III, 1988, p.xiii.
Historians and statesmen tend to argue that World War II was different. That, they say, was
a consequence of Hitler's calculation. I don't believe this. Hitler wanted conquest without
war if he could get it and was not preparing to fight a major world war. The Allies had
backed down over the 1936 remilitarization of the Rhineland and the violation of the treaty
provisions limiting the German army and navy. They had backed down over the Anschluss
in 1938 and the incorporation of Czech Sudentenland. After "peace with honor" at Munich,
Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia and was met only by harsh British and French
words. Why should Hitler have expected a different response to the division of Poland in
concert with Russia in September 1939? If Britain did fight, it could only be briefly, for
Poland was indefensible. Besides, Hitler knew his military capabilities would not reach
their peak until 1942. It was certainly not his intention to set off a general war when he was
not fully prepared.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 114
AKH1334 BOTH WORLD WARS BEGAN BECAUSE AGGRESSORS
UNDERESTIMATED OPPONENTS' STRENGTH
John Stoessinger, Professor of Political Science, City University of New York, WHY
NATIONS GO TO WAR, 1982, p.212.
Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914 had nothing but contempt for Russia's power. This
disrespect was to cost them dearly. Hitler repeated this mistake a generation later, and his
misperception led straight to his destruction.
AKH1335 LEADERS INITIATING WARS TEND TO UNDERESTIMATE THREATS
John Stoessinger, Professor of Political Science, City University of New York, WHY
NATIONS GO TO WAR, 1982, p.209.
There is a remarkable consistency in the self-images of most national leaders on the brink
of war. Each confidently expects victory after a brief and triumphant campaign. Doubt
about the outcome is the voice of the enemy and therefore inconceivable. This recurring
optimism is not to be dismissed lightly by the historian as an ironic example of human
folly. It assumes a powerful emotional momentum of its own and thus itself becomes one
of the causes of war. Anything that fuels such optimism about a quick and decisive victory
makes war more likely, and anything that dampens it becomes a cause of peace.
AKH1336 FAILURE TO RESPOND TO THE GERMAN THREAT LED TO WORLD
WAR II
Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Thompson, Professors of Political Science, University of
Chicago and University of Virginia, POLITICS AMONG NATIONS, 1985, p.79-80.
Later in 1938 Germany demanded the German parts of Czechoslovakia. The Munich
settlement granted the German demands. When Hitler, shortly before the settlement of
Munich, declared that the German parts of Czechoslovakia were the last territorial
demands Germany had to make in Europe, he was really saying that the annexation of
these territories was an end in itself, self-contained within its own rational limits. He
pretended that German policy operated within the general framework of the European
status quo and was not intent upon overthrowing it, and that the other European powers
ought to view German foreign policy in that light and deal with it correspondingly. It was
only by the end of March 1939, five months before the outbreak of the Second World War,
that the annexation of the whole of Czechoslovakia and the territorial demands on Poland
convinced the Western powers that what had appeared to be a policy of the status quo had
really been from the beginning a policy of imperialism, of continental, if not world,
dimensions. At that moment, the distribution of power in Europe was already changed in
favor of Germany. It was changed to such an extent that a further increase in German
power could not be prevented short of war. Germany had become strong enough to
challenge openly the status quo of Versailles, and the prestige -- that is, the reputation for
power -- of the nations identified with the order of Versailles had sunk so low that they
were unable to defend what was left of the status quo by mere diplomatic means. They
could either surrender or go to war. Thus the appeasers of 1938 became either the quislings
(if they deemed resistance to German imperialism hopeless) or the heroes of 1939-45 (if
they thought that resistance was morally required regardless of the outcome or that it had
even a chance to succeed). The final catastrophe, and the tragic choices with which the
catastrophe confronted the actors on the international scene, were predetermined by that
initial error which responded to a policy of imperialism as though it were a policy of the
status quo.
AKH1337 AGGRESSIVE LEADERS TEND TO BE OVERCONFIDENT OF THEIR
FORCES
John Stoessinger, Professor of Political Science, City University of New York, WHY
NATIONS GO TO WAR, 1982, p.209.
This common belief in a short, decisive war is usually the overflow from a reservoir of
self-delusions held by the leadership about both itself and the nation. The Kaiser's
appearance in shining armor in August 1914 and his promise to the German nation that its
sons would be back home "before the leaves had fallen from the trees" was matched by
similar expressions of overconfidence and military splendor in Austria, Russia, and the
other nations on the brink of war. Hitler's confidence in an early German victory in Russia
was so unshakable that no winter uniforms were issued to the soldiers and no preparations
whatsoever made for the onset of the Russian winter. In November 1941, when the mud
of autumn turned to ice and snow, the cold became the German soldier's bitterest enemy.

AKH1338 NUMEROUS WARS SHOW THE TENDENCY TO UNDERESTIMATE
OPPOSING FORCES
John Stoessinger, Professor of Political Science, City University of New York, WHY
NATIONS GO TO WAR, 1982, p.213.
Five successive presidents believed that Ho Chi Minh would collapse if only a little more
military pressure were brought to bear on him either from the air or on the ground. The
North Vietnamese leader proved them all mistaken, and only when America admitted that
North Vietnam could not be beaten did the war come to an end. In both Korea and Vietnam
the price of reality came high indeed. As these wars resolved less and less, they tended to
cost more and more in blood and treasure. The number of dead on all sides bore mute
testimony to the fact that America had to fight two of the most terrible and divisive wars
in her entire history before she gained respect for the realities of power on the other side.
In 1948 the Arabs believed that an invasion by five Arab armies would quickly put an end
to Israel. They were mistaken. But in 1973 Israel, encouraged to the point of hubris after
three successful wars, viewed Arab power only with contempt and its own as unassailable.
That, too, was wrong, as Israel had to learn in the bitter war of October 1973. In Pakistan
Yahya Khan had to find out to his detriment that a woman for whom he had nothing but
disdain was better schooled in the arts of war than he, did not permit her wishes to
dominate her thoughts, and, finally, managed to dismember Pakistan. And in the Persian
Gulf, the invading Iraqis were amazed at the "fanatical zeal" of the Iranians, whom they
had underestimated.
AKH1339 OVERCONFIDENCE LED TO MOST TWENTIETH CENTURY WARS
John Spanier, University of Florida, GAMES NATIONS PLAY, 1993, p.182-3.
One final point: in most of the wars started in this century, it is the side that initiated the
hostilities that lost the war. The Germans lost the two wars they began, as did their allies,
Italy and Japan, in the second one; the United States lost in Vietnam; the Soviets lost in
Afghanistan; the Arabs lost all the wars they precipitated against Israel; the Argentineans
lost against the British over the Falklands; and the Iraqis lost the war to the United
States-led coalition after an exhausting eight-year "victory" over Iran. One of the few
exceptions was North Vietnam. But after the unification of Vietnam and its invasion of
Cambodia, it was unable to suppress the resistance and, admitting failure, withdrew its
forces after several years. This is a terrible record and suggests that great caution should
be exercised by states, great and small alike, when making calculations and deciding
whether to go to war to achieve their objectives. Miscalculations are obviously all too easy
to make. Apparently, this is especially true when confidence in one's own strength and
expectations of a quick victory make it even easier to misjudge the opponent's strength and
resolve. Balance of power calculations, then, are not as simple as would be suggested by
the simple addition of the quantifiable factors. If they were, war would not be necessary,
for the contestants would know the outcome ahead of time.
AKH1340 IRAN-IRAQ AND THE GULF WAR RESULTED FROM THREAT
UNDERASSESSMENT
John Spanier, University of Florida, GAMES NATIONS PLAY, 1993, p.180.
But it is not just great powers that miscalculate. Iraq's Saddam Hussein did so when he
attacked Iran, a country with a much larger population. He expected a quick victory
because Iran was caught up in revolutionary turmoil after the overthrow of the shah, the
Islamic Revolution's purging of the military's officer corps, and its alienation of the United
States. When, despite some initial victories, Iraq failed to win, this war too became a war
of attrition in which the two sides sought to exhaust one another. Since Iran had the greater
resources, it would presumably win. Thus, Iraq resorted to the use of poison gas to prevent
an Iranian victory and demoralize Iranian troops. Ironically, Saddam Hussein repeated his
error when he invaded Kuwait. He expected the Arab world to be intimidated and submit;
he certainly did not expect the United States to intervene or many Arab countries to rally
behind Washington.
AKH1341 IMPRESSIONS OF WEAKNESS LEAD TO WAR
John Spanier, University of Florida, GAMES NATIONS PLAY, 1993, p.160.
The third point is that a reputation for power will confer power, whether others' estimates
of a nation's power are correct or not. If a nation has prestige, it is less likely to be
challenged; if its prestige is declining, challenges are likely, not only from powers of equal
strength but also from less powerful states. These challengers will think that they can defy
that nation's policies with impunity. After Britain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler at Munich
in 1938 over the issue of the Sudetenland, Benito Mussolini, Italy's dictator, said: "These
men [the British leaders] are not made of the same stuff as Francis Drake and the other
magnificent adventurers who created the Empire. They are after all the tired sons of a long
line of rich men." Shortly afterward, Hitler seized the rest of Czechoslovakia and began
to look hungrily at Poland.
AKH1342 DETERRENCE IS IMPORTANT WHATEVER OPPOSING INTENTIONS
ARE
Harvard Nuclear Study Group, LIVING WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS, 1983, p.37.
We can trust the Soviets in one sense. We can trust them to pursue their interests. The key
to our security is, therefore, to ensure that it is never in the Soviets' interests to attack the
United States or American allies. Even a "defensive power" can start a war if it
miscalculates, if easy opportunities are presented, or if it is backed into a corner where it
feels it has to fight. Even an "offensive power" can be deterred, if the opposite conditions
prevail.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 115
AKH1343 DETERRENCE IS BOTH SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE
Herman Kahn, Director, Hudson Institute, THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE
IN THE 1980s, 1984, p.37-8.
Deterrence is part objective and part subjective. The objective part is that adequate military
preparedness could be critical in some important circumstances. The subjective is, in part,
the perception by the potential enemy of the other side's power, determination, and
courage, as well as its estimate of the wartime effectiveness of the other side's relative
nuclear capability. If the aggressor believes that his opponent has the weapons and will to
use them, deterrence is likely to be effective. Therefore, a nation's defense lies, in part, in
the credibility, of its threat to use nuclear force as a last resort, which means that the need
remains for coherent and plausible policies for the use of nuclear weapons. Maintaining
this as an option has meant a major change in approaches to the problems of war.
AKH1344 MILITARY STRENGTH IS NEEDED FOR DETERRENCE
Herman Kahn, Director, Hudson Institute, THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE
IN THE 1980s, 1984, p.122.
In the early days of the nuclear era, many civilian strategists felt that the balance of terror
was so reliable that even an extremely hostile act would not provoke escalation to general
nuclear war. Today the (more accurate) assumption is that the nuclear nations probably are
reluctant to risk upsetting the status quo, and there is little that would make them do so. To
even remotely risk an Armageddon for immediate gains or potentially favorable
longer-term scenarios is almost unthinkable. As a result, deterrence works. But its
effectiveness depends heavily on the weakness of the desire to be aggressive, as well as
on the maintenance of competent military establishments.
AKH1345 POSTMODERN APPROACHES ARE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE IN THE
FIELD OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Stephen Walt, University of Chicago, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY,
1991, p.223.
In short, security studies must steer between the Scylla of political opportunism and the
Charybdis of academic irrelevance. What does this mean in practice? Among other things,
it means that security studies should remain wary of the counterproductive tangents that
have seduced other areas of international studies, most notably the "post-modern" approach
to international affairs (Ashley, 1984; Der Derian and Shapiro, 1989; Lapid, 1989).
Contrary to their proponents' claims, post-modern approaches have yet to demonstrate
much value for comprehending world politics; to date, these works are mostly criticism
and not much theory. As Robert Keohane has noted, until these writers "have delineated
. . . a research program and shown . . . that it can illuminate important issues in world
politics, they will remain on the margins of the field" (Keohane, 1988:392). In particular,
issues of war and peace are too important for the field to be diverted into a prolix and
self-indulgent discourse that is divorced from the real world.
AKH1346 THREATS AREN'T TOTALLY OBJECTIVE BUT THEY DO INVOLVE
REAL MATERIAL CONDITIONS RELEVANT TO POLICY
Ronnie Lipschutz, Professor of Politics, University of California-Santa Cruz, ON
SECURITY, 1995, p.10.
Security is, to put Waver's argument in other words, a socially constructed concept: It has
a specific meaning only within a specific social context. It emerges and changes as a result
of discourses and discursive actions intended to reproduce historical structures and
subjects within states and among them. To be sure, policymakers define security on the
basis of a set of assumptions regarding vital interests, plausible enemies, and possible
scenarios, all of which grow, to a not-insignificant extent, out of the specific historical and
social context of a particular country and some understanding of what is "out there." But,
while these interests, enemies, and scenarios have a material existence and, presumably,
a real import for state security, they cannot be regarded simply as having some sort of
"objective" reality independent of these constructions. That security is socially constructed
does not mean that there are not to be found real, material conditions that help to create
particular interpretations of threats, or that such conditions are irrelevant to either the
creation or undermining of the assumptions underlying security policy. Enemies, in part,
"create" each other, via the projections of their worst fears onto the other; in this respect,
their relationship is intersubjective. To the extent that they act on these projections, threats
to each other acquire a material character. In other words, nuclear-tipped ICBMs are not
mere figments of our imagination, but their targeting is a function of what we imagine the
possessors of other missiles might do to us with theirs.

AKH1347 EVEN IF THREATS ARE CONSTRUCTED, SOME ARE MORE
PLAUSIBLE THAN OTHERS
Ronnie Lipschutz, Professor of Politics, University of California-Santa Cruz, ON
SECURITY, 1995, p.14.
Groups based in U.S. civil society argued that South African apartheid was more likely to
result in embargoes of strategic materials than Soviet intervention or subversion, for two
reasons. First, the South African government was already in a strong position to control
the flow of minerals as a means of manipulating public policy the United States; and,
second, a favorable policy toward the South African government now (in the 1980s) could
result in hostile relations when, in the future, apartheid was replaced by majority rule. In
making such arguments, citizens groups constructed a counter-scenario that was, in the
final analysis, more convincing to the U.S. Congress and the public than the threat of "ore
wars." Ultimately, civil resistance was able to undermine the plausibility of the Reaganaut
security discourse for the region. Whose threats were "real?" Whose were not? Perhaps
both, perhaps, given the recent transfer of political power in South Africa, neither.
AKH1348 THREATS ARE INESCAPABLE, EVEN THOUGH THEY CAN BE
FRAMED IN DIFFERENT WAYS
Ronnie Lipschutz, Professor of Politics, University of California-Santa Cruz, ON
SECURITY, 1995, p.17-8.
In Buzan's view, the central question is whether the coalition will choose to isolate itself
from the periphery -- in essence, trying to secure itself from external chaos in a sort of
strategy of "self-containment" -- or to intervene there in an effort to enlarge the zone of
order -- but thereby to risk being pulled into that chaos, as well. The choice will depend
on how threats -- and the social constructions of security -- are framed. As is the case with
the U.S. intervention in Somalia and, more recently, in Haiti, chaos can be framed as a
threat to the core's moral legitimacy and supposed responsibilities to others. But chaos can
also be framed as a threat to the limited zones of peace in the core, which continue to resist
being pulled into the closer-to-home maelstrom of post-Yugoslavia and the Caucasian
Republics. Neither threat can be escaped, but framing them in terms of moral burdens may
ensure that the mentality of the laager -- a self-protecting but neoisolationist zone of
apparent peace amid chaos -- does not come to dominate security discourses and practices.
AKH1349 NEO-REALIST INTERPRETATIONS STILL HAVE SOME
EXPLANATORY FORCE
Ronnie Lipschutz, Professor of Politics, University of California-Santa Cruz, ON
SECURITY, 1995, p.18-9.
These two contrasting views, of separate and intermingled zones of order and chaos seem
to be diametrically opposed, but perhaps they are not. The world of states continues to
exist and operate along the logics of neorealism and interdependence. In that world, all
states are external to one other and view each other intersubjectively. Security is defined
in terms of one or more of these external actors penetrating the threatened state in some
material fashion. Missiles, pollutants, and immigrants all come from the "outside" and
menace the inside. The world of intermingled order and chaos, however, is already
"inside," snatching bodies, as it were. If the financial world poses a threat to the state, it
is because it is part and parcel of the body politic. Surviving the depredations of the robber
barons of Wall Street (and London, Tokyo, et al.) will be much like a serious heroin
addiction: take too little and you become ill; take too much and you die. The zone of
tolerability -- and security -- might, for better or worse, come to lie on the fine line, and our
ability to balance, between the two.
AKH1350 EVEN LIPSCHUTZ SEES CERTAIN THREATS AS REAL
Ronnie Lipschutz, Professor of Politics, University of California-Santa Cruz, ON
SECURITY, 1995, p.222.
Is the "immature anarchy" of ex-Somalia tolerable to the state-centric world system of the
industrial core? I would suggest that the apparent disorder of the African Horn, driven by
a different organizing logic than the international system, is too much for even the anarchic
state system to stomach, because it makes clear how weak are the boundaries between the
relatively ordered politics of international society and the Hobbesian state of nature. The
Somali world system, and the "world systems" of Bosnia, Georgia, and other zones of
chaos, are all threats to the international state system even as that system is a threat to these
micro-world-systems.
AKH1351 SOME ENEMIES ARE REAL
Alexander Wendt, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago, SOCIAL
THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, 1999, p.261-2.
It is important to emphasize that this concept implies nothing about whether enemy images
are justified. Some enemies are "real," in that the Other really does existentially threaten
the Self, as the Nazis did the Jews, and others are "chimeras," as the Jews were to the
Nazis. This difference may affect the dynamics of enmity and whether it can be overcome,
but it does not affect the reality of Hobbesian cultures. Real or imagined, if actors think
enemies are real then they are real in their consequences.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 116
AKH1352 NEGLECTING SECURITY CONCERNS IS A MAJOR CAUSE OF WAR
Charles Doran, Professor of International Relations, Johns Hopkins University,
SURVIVAL, Summer 1999, p.148-9.
And by neglecting the underlying problem of security, the probability of war perversely
increases: as governments fail to provide the kind of defence and security necessary to
maintain deterrence, one opens up the possibility of new challenges. In this regard it is
worth recalling one of Clauswitz's most important insights: A conqueror is always a lover
of peace. He would like to make his entry into our state unopposed. That is the underlying
dilemma when one argues that a major war is not likely to occur and, as a consequence,
one need not necessarily be so concerned about providing the defences that underlie
security itself. History shows that surprise threats emerge and rapid destabilising efforts
are made to try to provide that missing defence, and all of this contributes to the spiral of
uncertainty that leads in the end to war.
AKH1353 A WEALTH OF INFORMATION PERMITS INFORMED JUDGMENT
ABOUT OTHER COUNTRIES' INTENTIONS
Andrew Kydd, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Riverside,
SECURITY STUDIES, Autumn 1997, p.152-3.
This point of view completely ignores the possibility of revealing motivations offered by
transparent democratic policy processes, and deliberate signaling of intentions. It leads
scholars such as Mearsheimer to predict increased conflict between Britain, France, and
Germany when we see no evidence of such conflict. It ignores the wealth of information
available to states about the motivations of other states, and the fact that this information
often has a direct impact on foreign-policy making. Such theorizing tells us much about
the dynamics of a system in which all states are power maximizers, but it tells us less about
the real world in which few states fit that description.
AKH1354 TRULY AGGRESSIVE STATES ARE AT THE ROOT OF CONFLICT
Andrew Kydd, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Riverside,
SECURITY STUDIES, Autumn 1997, p.154.
In the case of the cold war, it is again difficult to escape the conclusion that the Soviet
Union was indeed expansionist before Gorbachev and not solely motivated by security
concerns. The increased emphasis within international relations scholarship on explaining
the nature and origins of aggressive expansionist states reflects a growing consensus that
aggressive states are at the root of conflict, not security concerns.
AKH1355 MOST WARS, INCLUDING WORLD WAR I, RESULT FROM ACTUAL
AGGRESSIVE INTENT
Andrew Kydd, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Riverside,
SECURITY STUDIES, Autumn 1997, p.154.
The alternative I propose, motivational realism, argues that arms races and wars typically
involve at least one genuinely greedy state, that is, states that often sacrifice their security
in bids for power. In the case of the First World War, the four continental powers all had
serious nonsecurity-related quarrels that played an indispensable role in producing the war.
France was eager to regain Alsace-Lorraine, Russia sought hegemony over fellow Slavs
in the Balkans when it could hardly integrate its own bloated empire, Germany dreamed
of Weltpolitik and empire in the Levant, while Austria-Hungary was focused on its own
imminent ethnic meltdown. All of these powers, had they sought just to be secure against
foreign threat, could easily have conveyed that to each other and refrained from arms
competition and war. Instead they engaged in competitions for power which eventually led
to war.
AKH1356 HITLER WAS GENUINELY AGGRESSIVE
Andrew Kydd, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Riverside,
SECURITY STUDIES, Autumn 1997, p.154.
As for the Second World War, few structural realists win make a sustained case that Hitler
was genuinely motivated by a rational pursuit of security for Germany and that other
German statesmen would have responded in the same way to Germany's international
situation. Even German generals opposed Hitler's military adventurism until 1939; it is
difficult to imagine a less forceful civilian leader overruling them and leading Germany
on the path of conquest.
AKH1357 NOT ALL THREATS ARE CONSTRUCTED; THERE ARE BONA FIDE
CASES OF AGGRESSION
Robert Jervis, Professor of International Politics, Columbia University,
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, Summer 1999, p.49.
In many cases, it is the interactive process among states that generates conflict rather than
merely reveals or enacts the preexisting differences in goals. Both sides would be satisfied
with mutual security; international politics represents tragedy rather than evil as the actions
of states make it even harder for them to be secure. This is not true in all cases, however.
Aggressor states are common; security and other interests often create differences that are
irreconcilable. In these and only these instances, defensive realists see conflict as
unavoidable.
AKH1358 THE MOTIVATIONS OF OTHER STATES AREN'T THAT HARD TO
APPRAISE
Andrew Kydd, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Riverside,
SECURITY STUDIES, Autumn 1997, p.128.
Does anarchy truly lead to tragic outcomes? I argue that structural realists strongly
overestimate the difficulty in assessing state motivations. Information on the motivations
of security-seeking states is so easy to come by that mistaken fears about motivations
cannot plausibly explain any significant war, arms race or crisis this century.

AKH1359 MANY AVENUES EXIST TO SIGNAL BENIGN INTERNATIONAL
MOTIVES
Andrew Kydd, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Riverside,
SECURITY STUDIES, Autumn 1997, p.153.
I argue that security-seeking states have many avenues to convey their benign motivations
and hence are able to avoid conflict and war with each other. The transparency of the
democratic policy process facilitates cooperation, provided that the populace and policy
makers are in fact security seekers. Also, the ability to send costly signals in both military
and non-military matters also makes cooperation between security seekers achievable.
Both offensive and defensive structural realists, therefore, exaggerate the negative
implications of the search for security. The search for security does not lead to conflict in
the absence of genuinely aggressive states.
AKH1360 GORBACHEV EFFECTIVELY SIGNALED THE SOVIET UNION'S
PEACEFUL INTENTIONS
Andrew Kydd, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Riverside,
SECURITY STUDIES, Autumn 1997, p.145.
Examples of costly signals in action can readily be found. One of the most important recent
examples of the use of costly signals is the U.S-.Soviet rapprochement of the late 1980s.
The Soviets employed all four types of costly signal identified above. In the
military/arms-control area, the INF treaty of 1987 mandated destruction of 1,846 missiles
for the Soviets, as opposed to 846 for the Western alliance. The troop reductions and
withdrawals announced by Gorbachev in December 1988 also substantially revised
American Policymakers' perceptions of the Soviet leadership's motivations. Gorbachev
was more moderate ideologically, as was discussed above, and he also improved treatment
of domestic minorities, leading ultimately to their secession from the Union. Treatment of
weak neighbors was also dramatically improved with the withdrawal from Afghanistan and
the establishment of the "Sinatra Doctrine" which allowed the Eastern European states to
do it their way. Indeed, no stronger signal could be sent than to let the Eastern European
states go their own way when for years the Soviet Union had imposed a rigid adherence
to the Warsaw Pact and socialist economic structures.
AKH1361 THE REAL RISK OF TERRORISM OUTWEIGHS THE RISK OF
TERRORIST THREAT CONSTRUCTION
Richard Falkenrath, Professor, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
SURVIVAL, Winter 1998-9, p.180.
There is, of course, a risk that unilaterally using force will create new terrorist threats, even
as old ones are stamped out. But more serious is the risk of creating an international
environment in which violent, motivated individuals might think it possible to take up
arms against the world's most powerful sovereign entities without putting themselves in
extreme personal jeopardy. An unambiguous, credible threat of forceful retaliation is the
essence of deterrence. A strategy to deter non-state aggression should include the ability
and the willingness to use military force unilaterally and decisively.
AKH1362 BIN LADEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT
Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, former members of U.S. National Security Council,
SURVIVAL, Summer 2000, p.171-2.
The key here is mass casualties. It is in this respect that Hoffman's criticism of the US
Government's focus on bin Laden seems perverse. Quite apart from the 'psychological'
game bin Laden is playing, he has bombed two American embassies, killed dozens of
people and wounded hundreds. He tried to blow up at least two other embassies. Is the US
supposed to shrug off these attacks in order to deny bin Laden the gratification of having
scored a psychological point? It is well and good to deplore the 'lionisation' of bin Laden,
but in an era of hundreds of cable channels, the 24-hour news cycle and a deluge of print
and electronic information, governments have few tools when it comes to creating a
balanced perspective in the public mind, much as they might try. And it is absurd to
insinuate that anyone in a position of responsibility ever suggested that bin Laden could
hope to vanquish the US military or overthrow the US government. It is worth noting, too,
that Hoffman slights the adverse effect on deterrence that would flow from the failure to
reply to terrorist attacks.
AKH1363 THE RESPONSE TO WMD TERRORISM ISN'T HYSTERICAL
Richard Falkenrath, Professor, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
SURVIVAL, Winter 1998-9, p.181.
While in my judgment Kamp underestimates the importance of these on-going
programmes in controlling the risk of nuclear terrorism and proliferation over the long
term, he implicitly endorses them. His disagreement with me does not therefore appear to
extend to my policy conclusions. I worry, however, that his contribution to the nuclear-
terrorism debate has had the unfortunate side-effect of succouring those in the West who
oppose nuclear-assistance efforts in the former Soviet Union. I would urge Kamp to spend
less time criticising a nonexistent hysteria about nuclear terrorism, and more time arguing
for more ambitious international efforts to improve the quality of fissile-material security
and accounting in the former Soviet Union. Germany's programmes in this area could
certainly be stronger.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 117
AKH1364 ANY THREAT OF NUCLEAR TERRORISM WARRANTS CONCERN
Richard Falkenrath, Professor, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
SURVIVAL, Winter 1998-9, p.180-1.
In any case, the reason to be concerned about nuclear terrorism starts -- but does not end
-- with the severity of its potential consequences. My contention is that the threat is likely
enough to cause serious concern, particularly since developments in the former Soviet
Union have contributed to making nuclear terrorism more likely. It is here that the
prescriptive implications of Kamp's difference with me are borne out. I argue that the risk
of nuclear terrorism is rising principally because the Soviet nuclear-custodial system is
degrading; Kamp argues that the Soviet Union's collapse 'only slightly increases the
likelihood of nuclear terrorism'. I believe that Kamp's 'only slightly' qualifier is incorrect,
but reasonable people can disagree on this point. However, I cannot understand Kamp's
nonchalance about any increase in the likelihood of nuclear terrorism. Given the severity
of the potential consequences of nuclear terrorism, even slight increases in its likelihood
should hold the attention of security analysts and officials.
AKH1365 STRICT DEFINITIONS OF TERRORISM AREN'T NEEDED FOR POLICY
PURPOSES
Jeffrey Simon, former RAND Corporation terrorism specialist, THE TERRORIST TRAP,
1994, p.385.
Definitional issues are important for academic treatments of terrorism, but are less relevant
for policymakers. That is why the international agreements that have been reached on
terrorism, including the Hague, Montreal, and New York/United Nations Conventions, all
deal with the tactics of terrorists -- hijackings, sabotage of aircraft, hostage taking -- rather
than the controversial issue of what exactly constitutes "terrorism."
AKH1366 FOCUS ON DEFINING TERRORISM ONLY BENEFITS THE TERRORISTS
Jeffrey Simon, former RAND Corporation terrorism specialist, THE TERRORIST TRAP,
1994, p.385.
The more disagreements there are on defining terrorism, the more terrorists can benefit by
the added confusion on the issue. Several decades of futile efforts to reach a consensus on
defining terrorism should be a clear enough signal to move on to other aspects of the
terrorist threat.
AKH1367 CONSENSUS EXISTS ON THE FUNCTIONAL DEFINITION OF
TERRORISM
Paul Wilkinson, Professor in International Relations, University of St Andrews,
TERRORISM, PROTEST AND POWER, Martin Warner and Roger Crisp eds., 1990,
p.445.
I readily admit that my own understanding of the meaning of terrorism is shaped by my
own preference for liberal democratic values and my experience of living and working in
a liberal democratic society. However, it is worth noting that there is now a widely shared
common understanding and usage of the concept of terrorism among scholars, lawyers,
governments and the educated public in the liberal democratic societies generally (see
Jenkins 1980: 3-10). Thus, when a French politician or jurist talks to an American
colleague about terrorist phenomena there is no fundamental conceptual barrier to effective
communication. (They may differ concerning the facts of an alleged terrorist incident, or
regarding the appropriate political or judicial measures that should be taken, but this is a
very different set of problems.) There is a very widely shared consensus among Western
'liberal' states that terrorism is not a synonym for violence in general; rather, it is a special
mode or method of violence which can be used either in isolation, or as part of a wider
repertoire of conflict, for example in conjunction with rural guerrilla warfare, economic
disruption, riots, and so on. It is clear that terrorism can be utilized both by subnational
actors and by states for an unlimited variety of ideological, political, religious and criminal
aims and purposes. Briefly defined, terrorism is the deliberate and systematic use of
coercive intimidation to create a climate of extreme fear among a wider target group than
the immediate victims of the violence.
AKH1368 TERRORISTS KILL LARGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE - IMPACTS AREN'T
JUST DISCURSIVE
Walter Laqueur, Professor of History, Georgetown, THE NEW TERRORISM, 1999, p.3.
Four hundred twelve men, women, and children were hacked to death by terrorists on the
night of December 29, 1997, in three isolated villages in Algeria's Elizane region. Four
hundred perished when a group of the Shah's opponents burned a cinema in Abadan during
the last phase of the monarchy in Iran. There were 328 victims when an Air India aircraft
was exploded by Sikh terrorists in 1985, and 278 were killed in the Lockerbie disaster in
Scotland in 1988 which was commissioned by Libya's Colonel Khadafi and carried out by
terrorists. Two hundred forty-one U.S. marines lost their lives when their barracks were
attacked by suicide bombers in Beirut in 1983, 171 were killed when Libyan emissaries
put a bomb on a French UTA plane in 1985. The largest toll in human life on American
soil was paid when 169 men, women, and children died in the bombing of the Alfred P.
Murrah building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

AKH1369 BIOLOGICAL TERRORISM WITH SMALLPOX COULD KILL TWO
BILLION PEOPLE
Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize-winning science and medical writer for Newsday, FOREIGN
AFFAIRS, January/February 2001, p.77.
Were a terrorist to disperse the smallpox virus, for example, populations that were once
universally vaccinated would now be horribly vulnerable. Today the U.S. government
stows only about 15.4 million doses of the smallpox vaccine -enough for less than seven
percent of the American population. The World Health Organization (WHO) keeps another
500,000 doses in the Netherlands, and other national stockpiles total about 60 million more
doses of varying quality and potency. If the smallpox virus were released today, the
majority of the world's population would be defenseless, and given the virus' 30 percent
kill rate, nearly two billion people could die.
AKH1370 TERRORISM RISKS ESCALATION TO WAR
Walter Laqueur, THE AGE OF TERRORISM, 1987, p.321.
The danger of international terrorism, in other words, is not in terrorist acts per se, but in
triggering off a wider and more dangerous armed conflict. For this reason, it is important
to prevent an escalation, to resist state-sponsored terrorism from the beginning, not to lead
its sponsors into temptation.
AKH1371 STATE VIOLENCE DOESN'T JUSTIFY TERRORISM AND THE IDEA OF
TERRORISM HELPS US REFLECT ON STATE VIOLENCE
Robert Phillips, Director of the Program for War and Ethics, University of Connecticut,
TERRORISM, PROTEST AND POWER, Martin Warner and Roger Crisp, eds., 1990,
p.73-4.
It is clear that terrorists the world over have simply appropriated concepts and episodes
(Hiroshima, Dresden) generated in the West. But it should be equally clear that this fact
should not in any way debilitate us in our fight against terrorism, a struggle which will be
long, sad and bloody. No government, no matter what its own past transgressions, can fail
to protect its own citizens. However, if anything positive can be said about this grim
situation, it is that as victims of terrorism we may be forced to rethink our own policies on
the use of force (including nuclear force) in order to bring them into line with our moral
denunciations of terror. If such re-evaluation does occur then perhaps some good will
emerge from this terrible evil.
AKH1372 TERRORISM REINFORCES THE POWER OF THE STATE
Robert Phillips, Director of the Program for War and Ethics, University of Connecticut,
TERRORISM, PROTEST AND POWER, Martin Warner and Roger Crisp, eds., 1990,
p.75-6.
The reasons for the failure of the short cut argument are not difficult to discern. Terrorism
certainly causes fear on the part of ordinary people, but fear of the terrorists themselves.
If anything, terrorism tends to drive people more firmly into the arms of their government.
The classic case of this is the terror bombing of Germany in the Second World War, whose
intention was to drive a wedge between Hitler and his people. However, the effect was just
the opposite. Hitler could plausibly say to his people that only monsters would rain down
fire upon innocent people and that he was their only refuge from barbarism. The same
analysis applies to modern terrorism. One has only to look at the areas of the world where
terror has held sway to see that typically terrorism prolongs conflict, sometimes seemingly
without end. Whether it be in Ireland or the Middle East, terrorism creates a climate of fear
such that no one feels safe unless the opponent is totally destroyed. In this sense, terrorism
declares 'total' war because no one is exempt from attack and no one is innocent. In such
an ethos, compromise and negotiation become impossible. Who can negotiate with
barbarians?
AKH1373 RESPONSES TO TERRORISM ARE NEEDED TO PRESERVE
CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT
Joseph Pilat, Research Associate, International Institute for Strategic Studies, SURVIVAL,
Summer 1999, p.167.
Responses to terrorism are intrinsically difficult in the US and other democracies, but they
must be undertaken if these states are to maintain constitutional government and the rule
of law. It is essential for public confidence and cooperation that governments be seen as
not acceding to terrorism, and to be taking the necessary measures to protect the lives and
property of their citizens from terrorist attacks.
AKH1374 THERE ARE MANY VIABLE DEFINITIONS OF TERRORISM
Jonathan White, Director of the School of Criminal Justice, Grand Valley State University,
TERRORISM: AN INTRODUCTION, 1991, p.7.
The problems associated with defining terrorism have not-been solved by these many
efforts: each definition has its weaknesses and limitations, but each is also perfectly
acceptable. Herman's view of state repression is just as valid as Jenkins's simplicity. The
academic rigor of Crenshaw does not detract from the pragmatism of Livingstone. All of
these definitions are viable.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 118
AKH1375 TERRORIST TACTICS CAN BE DEFINED EVEN IF WHO IS A
TERRORIST CAN'T BE
Jeffrey Simon, former RAND Corporation terrorism specialist, THE TERRORIST TRAP,
1994, p.384-5.
The difficulty in defining terrorism has given rise to the famous slogan, "one person's
terrorist is another person's freedom fighter." Communities that support various groups in
their violent acts do not necessarily see them as "terrorists." Since the essence of terrorism
is the effect that violent acts can have on various targets and audiences, it would make
more sense to talk about terrorist-type tactics -- which can be utilized by extremist groups,
guerrillas, criminals, or governments -- than to attempt to determine who exactly qualifies
as a "terrorist." The blowing up of planes, whether done by Canadian or American
criminals such as J. Albert Guay and John Gilbert Graham, or by Libyan agents and the
PFLP-GC, is terrorism. The same is true for hijackings, assassinations, bombings, product
contaminations, and other violent acts.
AKH1376 SEPARATION OF VICTIM AND TARGET IS THE HALLMARK OF
TERRORISM
Brian Michael Jenkins, terrorism expert, RAND Corporation, COUNTERING THE NEW
TERRORISM, 1999, p.v.
We recognized that terrorism contained a psychological component -- it was aimed at the
people watching. The identities of the actual targets or victims of the attack often were
secondary or irrelevant to the terrorists' objective of spreading fear and alarm or gaining
concessions. This separation between the actual victim of the violence and the target of the
intended psychological effect was the hallmark of terrorism. It was by no means a perfect
definition and it certainly did not end any debates, but it offered some useful distinctions
between terrorism and ordinary crime, other forms of armed conflict, or the acts of
psychotic individuals.
AKH1377 TERRORISM CAN BE MEANINGFULLY DEFINED AS VIOLENCE
SENDING A MESSAGE
Ken Robertson, AnalyticA Research Ltd., THE JOURNAL OF CONFLICT STUDIES,
Fall 1999, p.180-1.
However, my main debate with Guelke is his desire to give up on the idea that there is
something distinctive that we can call terrorism. It is true that it is often difficult to
distinguish ethnic conflict from guerrilla warfare or national liberation struggle from civil
war but I would argue that in all of these cases one can still identify something called
terrorism. He rightly rejects the argument that terrorism can be distinguished from other
forms of violence because civilians are targeted, although for the wrong reason. He argues
that attacks on civilians are a part of modern war and that therefore one would be obliged
to accept that many states are terrorists. If this was the argument then the dilemma of
choosing to describe Britain as a terrorist state, say between 1942 and 1945, or abandoning
the label may well lead one to choose the latter. But it is a false dilemma. An attack on a
soldier can be just as much an act of terrorism as planting a bomb in a shopping centre. The
issue does not rest on the nature of the target but on the objective of the violence. As
Tucker described earlier the key issue is whether the aim is to destroy a target because it
stands between you and your objective or whether one destroys it in order to send a
message. Terrorism is an act of communication that requires an audience who identify with
the victim and, at least in part, understand the message being sent. If the bombing of
German cities was about sending a message to the German people then it may indeed have
been terrorism but if the aim was to destroy people and property then it was not. It is not
always easy to determine the aim of violence but Guelke fails to see that this is the central
issue and not the red herring about the innocent or guilty. These concepts are subjective
and would leave the field ridden with confusion. Objectives may be unclear or confused
but there is at least the possibility of arriving at some form of scholarly judgement about
what they were. In conclusion, I find Tucker to be a very valuable addition to the literature
because, although he does complicate our lives, he sticks like a rock to the key idea:
terrorism is an act of violence in which the target is not the important objective, the aim
is the impact of the act on others.
AKH1378 SCHMID OFFERS A USEFUL AND COMPREHENSIVE DEFINITION OF
TERRORISM
Philip Heymann, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard,
TERRORISM AND AMERICA, 1998, p.4.
An extremely comprehensive review of possible definitions was conducted by Professor
Alex P. Schmid of Leiden University in the Netherlands. After consulting 50 scholars, he
came up with a definition far too lengthy to be useful but then found a far shorter
definition that was almost as accurate and more useful. Noting that there is a strong degree
of consensus about what actions count as war crimes -- including attacks on persons taking
no active part in hostilities and also hostage-taking -- and that just such attacks on the
undefended are "not an unsought side-effect but a deliberate strategy" of terrorists, Schmid
proposes defining acts of terrorism as "peacetime equivalents of war crimes:" acts that
would, if carried out by a government in war violate the Geneva Conventions."

AKH1379 THE CORE DEFINITION OF TERRORISM ENJOYS CONSENSUS
AGREEMENT
Philip Heymann, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard,
TERRORISM AND AMERICA, 1998, p.6.
The definitions of terrorism thus differ markedly in what they include. In this book, I focus
on the core of the problem by looking only at conduct that satisfies almost all the
definitions. The violence I discuss involves in most instances politically motivated activity
by groups, not individuals. It is more than a nonpolitical expression of rage, and it is meant
to work by raising concerns and fears, and not just by the isolated assassination of a
government leader such as Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin or U.S. President John F.
Kennedy. Borrowing from our State Department's definition, it is violence conducted as
part of a political strategy by a subnational group or secret agents of a foreign state
(although secret and violent repression of political opponents by an authoritarian
government is just as bad). The political violence I emphasize is plainly directed at
noncombatant targets; I set aside the hard question of where to place off-duty soldiers or
the industrial managers producing weapons of war. The violence is directed at people, not
just property, and carried out for a political purpose, although that purpose may only be
partially formed. Like the Committee of Interior Ministers of the European Union, I would
exclude situations of warfare. And, to preserve moral fervor, I limit "terrorism" to political
violence in or against true democracies. Every state would consider activities fitting this
core definition to be "terrorism." It overlaps very substantially with Alex Schmid's
definition of terrorism as behavior that would amount to war crimes if it occurred during
war. Like Netanyahu, I can think of very little excuse for an assault on civilians to advance
political purposes.
AKH1380 COMPLEX HISTORICAL PHENOMENA LIKE TERRORISM CAN NEVER
BE PERFECTLY DEFINED
Walter Laqueur, Professor of History, Georgetown, THE NEW TERRORISM, 1999, p.6.
Why is it so difficult to find a generally accepted definition? Nietzsche provided part of
the clue when he wrote that only things which have no history can be defined; terrorism,
needless to say, has had a very long history. Furthermore, there has not been a single form
of terrorism, but many, often with few traits in common. What was true of one variety was
not necessarily true of another. Today there are more varieties than existed thirty years ago,
and many are so different from those of the past and from each other that the term
terrorism no longer fits some of them. In the future, new terms will probably be found for
the new varieties of terrorism.
AKH1381 ITS VALUE-LOADED NATURE DOESN'T RENDER TERRORISM A
MEANINGLESS TERM
Paul Wilkinson, Professor in International Relations, University of St Andrews,
TERRORISM, PROTEST AND POWER, Martin Warner and Roger Crisp eds., 1990,
p.45-6.
It is frequently suggested that the usage of the concept of terrorism outlined above is so
contentious or 'value-loaded' that there is no adequate basis for meaningful scholarly
debate and collaborative research in the field. This is far from being the case. Since the mid
1970s there has been considerable development internationally in the academic social
scientific and historical literature on terrorism. As one would expect there is an enormous
variety of approaches, theories and methodologies within the field. An examination of the
scholarly literature on other aspects of conflict, such as revolution or limited war, would
find a similar diversity of methods and conclusions. It would be foolish to expect the
literature on terrorism to reflect total agreement on concepts, theories, data and literature.
It is noteworthy, however, that the most authoritative guide to the international literature
on terrorism (Schmid 1988) concludes that there is a consensus among over a hundred
leading scholars worldwide on what its editors call a 'minimal definition' of terrorism. This
consensus rests on five elements or characteristics which the overwhelming majority of
scholars in the field identify as the distinguishing characteristics or hallmarks of terroristic
violence. These five elements are:
1 . the intention to create extreme fear or terror;
2. the targeting of random and symbolic targets, including civilians and civilian property;
3. the attempt to influence a wider audience than the immediate victims of the violence;
4. the use of particularly brutal or extreme methods of violence, viewed as 'extranormal'
according to the norms of the community under attack;
5. the exploitation of terrorism for a variety of purposes, including influencing the mass
media, public opinion, sectors of the population and governments.
AKH1382 MORAL CONDEMNATION OF TERRORISM IS APPROPRIATE
Robert Phillips, Director of the Program for War and Ethics, University of Connecticut,
TERRORISM, PROTEST AND POWER, Martin Warner and Roger Crisp, eds., 1990,
p.68-9.
Moral denunciations of terrorism are appropriate and mandatory. Terrorist acts are
profoundly immoral and, in addition, tend not to be the short cut which their practitioners
advertise. One has only to look at the areas of the world where terror has held sway to see
that violence is typically prolonged, sometimes indefinitely. The reason for this is not
difficult to discern. Each side comes to perceive the other as 'criminal' and thus as beyond
the pale of civilized negotiation.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 119
AKH1383 MORAL DEFENSES OF TERRORISM ARE HYPOCRITICAL
Robert Phillips, Director of the Program for War and Ethics, University of Connecticut,
TERRORISM, PROTEST AND POWER, Martin Warner and Roger Crisp, eds., 1990,
p.76.
Finally, is the short cut argument ever advanced non-hypocritically? It is always difficult
to determine motives, but noting the historic failure of the argument, one suspects that
what matters to people about to embark upon a terrorist operation is not the moral calculus
involving the net beneficial consequences of terrorism, but rather a prior decision to wage
war the cheapest way possible. For terrorism, whether of the Second World War variety
or the most recent outbreaks of the IRA's war on the cheap. When that decision is made
the moral justification of more lives saved is got up as an afterthought.
AKH1384 INDISCRIMINATE TERRORISM CAN NEVER BE JUST
Walter Laqueur, Professor of History, Georgetown, THE NEW TERRORISM, 1999,
p.281.
There has never been a "just terrorism" doctrine analogous to the idea of a "just war," but
some of the terrorist campaigns of the past were fought for a just cause, with self-imposed
rules of engagement, against oppressors and tyrants. But this notion belongs to a period
in which terrorist acts were directed against individuals who were considered personally
guilty for one reason or another. Since then terrorism has proceeded from limited to total
and indiscriminate warfare, certainly as far as the targets are concerned, quite often the aim
is simply to kill or maim as many people as possible. For some terrorist groups, the
campaigns have become total with regard to not only the acts but also the objectives: the
Islamic radicals active in Algeria or Egypt or elsewhere in the Middle East want not reform
or a negotiated peace but the overthrow of the system, and those fighting against Israel
want its annihilation.
AKH1385 MASS TERRORISM CAN NEVER BE JUST
Walter Laqueur, Professor of History, Georgetown, THE NEW TERRORISM, 1999,
p.281.
Can there be a just terrorist campaign that is total in character and aims at the complete
destruction of the enemy? The answer of the protagonists of holy war will be affirmative,
but the philosophers of international law will hardly agree. Once the number of victims
produced by a war that is trying to right a wrong becomes incommensurate, the carnage
cannot be justified by any accepted moral standards. The terrorists, of course, do not accept
this but the escalation of terrorism in the future will not occur without a response from the
attacked. When terrorism becomes a real danger, those engaging in it will no longer be able
to run and hide, but will be treated by those attacked as they see fit, as a hostis, an enemy
of humankind, and thus outside the law. This will apply, a fortiori, if the weapons used are
nonconventional. Such an escalation is now gradually under way in the Middle East,
Africa, and Asia. Diderot once noted that the transition from fanaticism to barbarism is but
one step, and if present trends continue there is every reason for grim forebodings.
AKH1386 TERRORISM VIOLATES DEONTOLOGICAL ETHICS
Jessica Stern, research fellow, National Security Council, THE ULTIMATE
TERRORISTS, 1999, p.19.
But not all of the major moral traditions would proscribe terrorism, or the targeting of
noncombatants, in all circumstances. Deontological ethical systems, such as Kant's, would
do so, because they hold that the value of an act is intrinsic. The act is either good or evil
in and of itself. So killing the innocent is wrong, regardless of its ultimate consequences.
AKH1387 TERRORISM IMMORALLY USES OTHERS AS MEANS
Maurice Berger, cultural historian, VIOLENT PERSUASIONS, David Brown and Robert
Merrill, eds., 1993, p.18-20.
Ultimately, the most vexing issues surrounding the morality of terrorism center less on its
political goals (e.g., the emancipation of oppressed peoples, the end of colonial rule, the
collapse of an authoritarian regime, die survival of people marked for destruction) and
more on its means the strategies, conditions, and losses associated with violent political
behavior. Because almost all violent acts result in cruel and inhuman consequences, there
exists an overarching moral imperative that mitigates against physical terrorism as a form
of political speech. And in many instances of political violence, the immediate victims are
not directly responsible for the perceived injustices that are being avenged.
AKH1388 TERRORISM INHERENTLY VIOLATES JUST WAR PRINCIPLES
Jessica Stern, research fellow, National Security Council, THE ULTIMATE
TERRORISTS, 1999, p.18-19.
It is possible to be justified in initiating a war but to conduct it unjustly, and equally
possible to initiate an unjust war but still conform to the law of war. The just war tradition
requires that war meet both sets of criteria: both its ends (jus ad bellum) and its means (jus
in bello) must be just. Such wars are rare indeed. Modern terrorism, while it may
subjectively meet the first requirement, invariably fails the second, because terrorism
deliberately targets noncombatants.

AKH1389 WMD TERRORISM IS UNIQUELY IMMORAL
Jessica Stern, research fellow, National Security Council, THE ULTIMATE
TERRORISTS, 1999, p.30.
Under very narrow circumstances, some moral theories permit the deliberate killing of
innocents. But the same factors that make nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons
unusually dreadful also make them morally special. In most possible uses of such weapons,
terrorists would not know in advance how many victims would succumb. Nor would they
know the long-term residual effects on the health of survivors, or on the environment.
AKH1390 CURRENT TERRORISM ISN'T GROUNDED IN SOCIAL OR ECONOMIC
INJUSTICE
Walter Laqueur, Professor of History, Georgetown, THE NEW TERRORISM, 1999, p.9.
During the 1960s and 1970s, when most terrorism was vaguely left wing in inspiration,
arguments were made that terrorism was a response to injustice. Hence, if there were more
political, social, and economic justice, terrorism would more or less automatically vanish.
Seen in this light, terrorists were fanatical believers in justice driven to despair by
intolerable conditions. But in the 1980s and '90s, when most terrorism in Europe and
America came from the extreme right and the victims were foreigners, national minorities,
or arbitrarily chosen, those who had previously shown understanding or even approval of
terrorism no longer used these arguments. They could no longer possibly explain, let alone
justify, murder with reference to political, social, or economic injustice.
AKH1391 THE JUSTIFICATION OF TERRORISTS AS FREEDOM FIGHTERS IS NO
LONGER PLAUSIBLE
Walter Laqueur, Professor of History, Georgetown, THE NEW TERRORISM, 1999,
p.106-7.
These misjudgments sometimes had amusing and embarrassing results. Some on the left,
from Sartre to Fanon, from Marcuse to Chomsky, invoked a variety of arguments to
explain and, in some cases, to justify this kind of violence. They took the revolutionary
phraseology at face value and believed in the liberating and progressive mission of many,
if not all, terrorists. Some of them argued that the publicity given terrorism was nothing
but a smoke screen meant to divert attention from the true terrorism, that of the repressive
imperialist state. At the very least it was argued that one man's terrorist was another
person's freedom fighter, a dictum that was thought to be both witty and profound. This
kind of beatification continued as long as terrorism was predominantly left wing in
inspiration (or was thought to be so). Times changed, however, and during the 1980s,
left-wing terrorism petered out, a trend that coincided with the collapse of the Soviet bloc,
though it was not caused by the collapse. Instead, the terrorist initiative in Western
countries such as the United States, and also Germany and Turkey, moved to the extreme
right. Yesterday's theories about the progressive character of terrorism ceased to make
sense and became, in fact, embarrassing. The burning of a hostel housing foreign guest
workers in Germany could hardly be described any longer as a liberating act. Neither could
the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York or the bombing of a government
building in Oklahoma City be interpreted as a prologue to a revolution that would help the
masses. The old wisdom about one person's terrorist being another person's freedom
fighter was no longer heard.
AKH1392 ITS UNLIMITED CHARACTER MAKES TERRORISM THE ANTITHESIS
OF FREEDOM FIGHTING
David George, Lecturer in Politics, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, TERRORISM,
PROTEST AND POWER, Martin Warner and Roger Crisp, eds., 1990, p.65.
This is to make the further point that freedom fighting, as exemplified by the Resistance,
is a concrete activity, not an opposite abstraction to that of terrorism (as a 'means'). If it is
a misconception to think of terrorism as an all-purpose technique serving no end, or no
kind of end, in particular, and this was the burden of the argument earlier, it is no less
mistaken to take freedom fighting as the pursuit of freedom in any sense of the term and
in any way bar one, terror. In summary, its violent methods are rule-governed, discriminate
and, at least in some senses, proportionate to its end of eradicating the lawless,
liberty-denying, regime of tyranny and replacing it by the rule of law and a constitutional
government where civil liberty is enjoyed. Freedom fighting, in this sense, is a relatively
uncommon phenomenon; its range extends to rebellions such as the eighteenth century one
by the thirteen American colonies and to tyrannicides like the plot to assassinate Hitler in
July 1944, but no further. Terrorism, as a concrete activity or unity of means and ends, is
its antithesis, that is, it is a tyranny in the name of freedom.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 120
AKH1393 THE GOAL OF NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION DOESN'T JUSTIFY
TERRORISM
Paul Wilkinson, Professor in International Relations, University of St Andrews,
TERRORISM, PROTEST AND POWER, Martin Warner and Roger Crisp eds., 1990,
p.46-7.
But just suppose that redressing the denial of national self-determination is genuinely the
underlying motive of the movement utilizing terrorism. Does this legitimate the use of
terrorist means to that end? Surely not, because the waging of a just war of liberation
against an alien conqueror does not necessarily or inevitably involve a deliberate waging
of terror, a systematic policy of murder and massacre against the civilian population.
Indeed the use of such methods, whether on the part of insurgent movements or the armed
forces of states, is explicitly prohibited by the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) as
contained in the Geneva Conventions and the 1977 Protocols. And while it is certainly the
case that these rules of war have been violated on numerous occasions, this does not mean
that the IHL regime, so fragile but so necessary for some minimum protection of human
rights in times of war, can or should be cavalierly discarded.
AKH1394 TERRORISM IS VERY UNLIKELY TO PRODUCE MEANINGFUL
POLITICAL CHANGE
Philip Heymann, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard,
TERRORISM AND AMERICA, 1998, p.8-9.
Terrorism has traditionally used relatively unsophisticated weapons in a limited number
of ways to inflict relatively little damage. Within these constraints terrorism can only hope
to produce limited political results, since in almost every country the government controls
vastly superior military and civilian security forces. Even such limited actions may
occasionally force a change in particular occupants of office by carefully planned
assassinations like those of Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin. They may even bring about
a change in a particular policy by simply imposing sufficient costs upon a government that
the government will choose to abandon a weakly held policy, as when the United States
left Lebanon after the truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. But any
broader objectives, such as pulling out of places of considerable strategic or political
importance or abandoning important alliances or polices, are far more difficult and far less
likely. And changing the government itself would require the politically violent group
either to overpower the government's military force or to shift the loyalties of the
government security forces or the public at large sufficiently that they would broadly deny
their support to the state. Overthrow of a government may be the result of a civil war or
a coup d'etat, but it is a highly unlikely result of the relatively small-scale violence by those
outside of government that we associate with terrorism.
AKH1395 IT'S RIGHT TO CONDEMN TERRORISM BOTH BY GOVERNMENTS
AND NON-GOVERNMENT ACTORS
Robert Phillips, Director of the Program for War and Ethics, University of Connecticut,
TERRORISM, PROTEST AND POWER, Martin Warner and Roger Crisp, eds., 1990,
p.69.
While the Reagan administration was quite correct in its condemnation of terrorism as a
means of effecting political and social change, such denunciations only make sense against
a moral backdrop which (1) rigidly distinguishes between combatants and noncombatants
and (2) equally rigidly adheres to the principle that innocent people have an absolute right
not to be murdered for any reason whatever. Now it should be obvious that both of these
tenets have been steadily eroding since 1940, as much in the West as elsewhere. Despite
repeated commitments to a plethora of declarations of human rights, few, if any,
governments are terribly scrupulous in their military policies regarding such rights
AKH1396 TERRORISTS AREN'T EXCUSED BY THE FACT THAT STATES DO
MORE HARM
Walter Laqueur, Professor of History, Georgetown, THE NEW TERRORISM, 1999, p.9.
There are other misunderstandings concerning the motives and the character of terrorism.
For a long time there has been resistance in some circles to the use of the term to apply to
small groups of people who engage in futile violence against the political establishment
or certain sections of society. It was argued that the term should be reserved for states. It
is perfectly true that tyrannies have caused infinitely more harm in history than terrorists,
but it is hardly a relevant argument; with equal justice one could claim that it is not
worthwhile to look for a cure for AIDS because this disease kills fewer people than cancer
or heart disease, or that teaching French should be discontinued because there are twenty
times as many Chinese as French people in the world.

AKH1397 LEADING EXPERTS RECOGNIZE THAT STATES CAN COMMIT
TERRORISM
Jessica Stern, research fellow, National Security Council, THE ULTIMATE
TERRORISTS, 1999, p.14.
Another thorny issue is whether states themselves can be the perpetrators of terrorist acts.
The answer is yes. States and their leaders can and do unleash terrorist violence against
their own civilians, as Saddam Hussein did with chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds;
as Stalin did in acts of random violence against Soviet citizens; and as the Guatemalan
government did for nearly forty years against its own people. States have also used
terrorism as an instrument of war, by deliberately attacking civilians in the hope of
crushing enemy morale. In late 1940 the British Chiefs of Staff determined that Germany's
morale was more vulnerable than its industry, and decided to bomb the centers of key
German cities. Historians estimate that these attacks killed some 300,000 Germans, most
of them civilians, and seriously injured 780,000 more. In Dresden alone, in the spring of
1945, when the war was virtually won, the bombing killed nearly 100,000 people.
AKH1398 TERRORISM IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
Paul Wilkinson, Professor in International Relations, University of St Andrews,
TERRORISM, PROTEST AND POWER, Martin Warner and Roger Crisp eds., 1990,
p.51-2.
This brief paper has argued that terrorism is a deliberate policy for waging terror, usually
for political ends; it is the systematic and calculated use of terrorization and is explicitly
rationalized and justified by some philosophy, theory or ideology, however crude. Almost
invariably terrorists will claim that they use their violence only for the achievement of
freedom, Certainly the growth of democratic political freedoms provides the terrorist
movements with much greater opportunities to launch and conduct their campaigns of
violence. In ideological and political terms, however, terrorism is inherently incompatible
with the values and institutions of liberal democracy; indeed, it systematically seeks to
destroy them. In view of this fundamental philosophical contradiction there is a pressing
need to educate democratic societies, not only to assist them to uphold and strengthen the
institutions and values of freedom and the rule of law, but also to recognize that terrorism
is a totally illegitimate and morally unacceptable means of striving for a cause, especially
within a liberal democratic society.
AKH1399 TERRORISM KILLS SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS OF PEOPLE
Bruce Hoffman, terrorism expert, RAND Corporation, COUNTERING THE NEW
TERRORISM, 1999, p.17-19.
Indeed, some of the most significant terrorist acts of recent years have had some religious
element present. These include the 1993 bombing of New York City's World Trade Center
by Islamic radicals who deliberately attempted to topple one of the twin towers onto the
other;
the series of 13 near-simultaneous car and truck bombings that shook Bombay, India, in
February 1993, killing 400 persons and injuring more than 1000 others, in reprisal for the
destruction of an Islamic shrine in that country;
the December 1994 hijacking of an Air France passenger jet by Islamic terrorists belonging
to the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the attendant foiled plot to blow up
themselves, the aircraft, and the 283 passengers on board precisely when the plane was
over Paris, thus causing the flaming wreckage to plunge into the crowded city below;
the March 1995 sarin nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, perpetrated by an
apocalyptic Japanese religious cult (Aum Shinrikyo) that killed a dozen persons and
wounded 3796 others; reportedly the group also planned to carry out identical attacks in
the United States;
the bombing of an Oklahoma City federal office building in April 1995, where 168 persons
perished, by two Christian Patriots seeking to foment a nationwide race revolution;
the wave of bombings unleashed in France by the Algerian GIA between July and October
1995, of metro trains, outdoor markets, cafes, schools, and popular tourist spots, that killed
eight persons and wounded more than 180 others;
the assassination in November 1995 of Israeli Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin by a religious
Jewish extremist and its attendant significance as the purported first step in a campaign of
mass murder designed to disrupt the peace process;
the Hamas suicide bombers who turned the tide of Israel's national elections with a string
of bloody attacks that killed 60 persons between February and March 1996;
the Egyptian Islamic militants who carried out a brutal machinegun and hand-grenade
attack on a group of Western tourists outside their Cairo hotel in April 1996 that killed 18;
the June 1996 truck bombing of a U.S. Air Force barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia,
where 19 persons perished, by religious militants opposed to the reigning al-Saud regime;
the unrelenting bloodletting by Islamic extremists in Algeria itself that has claimed the
lives of more than an estimated 75,000 persons there since 1992;
the massacre in November 1997 of 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians by terrorists
belonging to the Gamat al-Islamiya (Islamic Group) at the Temple of Queen Hatsheput in
Luxor, Egypt; and
the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 that killed 257
and injured some 5000 others.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 121
AKH1400 HISTORY IS A POOR GUIDE TO THE GROWING TERRORIST THREAT
Richard Falkenrath, Professor, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
SURVIVAL, Autumn 1998, p.50.
If threat assessment were a simple extrapolation of past trends, analysts would probably
conclude that modern societies have little to fear from terrorist NBC aggression. But threat
assessment must also consider the changing capabilities, motives and strategic options of
potential adversaries, as well as the scope and character of their own vulnerabilities. The
capacity to conduct terrorist NBC attacks is growing among states and non-state actors
alike. It also appears that the motivation to conduct attacks of this kind is increasing.
AKH1401 A NEW, FAR DEADLIER, RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED TERRORISM
HAS EMERGED
William Finan, CURRENT HISTORY, April 2000, p.186.
The spector of a new terrorism is haunting America. Terrorism specialists argue that a
violence far deadlier than the political terrorism of the recent past -- the mass airliner
hijackings by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or the bombing of a hotel
filled with British cabinet ministers by the IRA -- has emerged. The attempt to collapse the
twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City in 1993, the release of nerve gas
into a crowded Tokyo subway in 1995, and the bombing of the United States embassies
in downtown Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998 are considered the defining acts of this
breed of terrorist, all of which appear motivated by religious rather than political goals.
And although the religious beliefs have varied in each instance, the tactics appeared to
have the same aim: to kill as many people as possible.
AKH1402 NEW TERRORISTS WANT THE ADDED HORROR OF WMD
Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, former members of U.S. National Security Council,
SURVIVAL, Spring 2000, p.71.
Nonetheless, recent events indicate that extremist religious groups have sought WMD and,
US officials believe, will continue to do so. Indeed, those who argue on grounds of
efficacy that terrorists will not devote the resources and energies necessary for WMD
procurement may be missing the point. These terrorists seek to maximise the number of
casualties, but the additional horror that attaches to WMD use would provide a premium
on their investment. Thus, after multiple failures in its effort to use biological weapons,
Aum Shinrikyo still refused to use conventional weapons, switching instead to chemical
weapons for its attack in the Tokyo subway. After a multi-million dollar production effort,
supervised by a Ph.D. chemist, the attack claimed 12 lives, undoubtedly far fewer than the
cult was seeking. But for Aum's apocalyptic aims, more reliable, conventional weapons
would not have been fitting.
AKH1403 CONSENSUS AGREES TERRORIST USE OF WMD IS ONLY A MATTER
OF TIME
John Nagl, Professor of International Relations, U.S. Military Academy, WORLD
AFFAIRS, Spring 2000, p.165-6.
Most experts agree that it is only a matter of time until terrorists use weapons of mass
destruction. The World Trade Center bombing of 1995, in which terrorists used a fertilizer
and diesel fuel truck bomb in an attempt to kill 60,000 people, indicates that that threshold
has already been crossed.
AKH1404 ANTHROPOCENTRISM IS LEGITIMATE - HUMANS ARE UNIQUE
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.103.
Deep ecology's contradictory presuppositions, intuitions, anthropomorphisms, and naive
assertions leave us spinning like tops. We are enjoined to engage in 'deep questioning' in
order to decide on intuitive grounds that we are intrinsically no different in 'worth' or
'value' from any 'entity' in the 'ecosphere'. Yet the deep questioning so prized by Devall,
Sessions, Naess, et al., is something that no other life-form can do -- besides us. In the
vastness of the ecosphere, nothing apart from human beings is capable of even voicing the
notion of 'biocentric egalitarianism', much less understanding any notion of 'rights',
'intrinsic worth', or 'superiority' and 'inferiority'. It is the ultimate in anthropomorphism to
impute a moral sense to animals that lack the conceptual material of abstract thought
provided by language and the rich generalizations we form in our minds from our vast
repertoire of words.
AKH1405 DEEP ECOLOGY IS INTELLECTUALLY BANKRUPT
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.90.
Why did such a patently simplistic and singularly unoriginal body of views as deep
ecology take root in the first place - initially in the United States and later in Europe? To
a great extent, it was the very simplicity - indeed, the simpleminded message - of Naess's
ecological philosophy that made it attractive. Deep ecology makes no great intellectual
demands upon its followers. Its intuitions and a priori concepts, usually presented as
simple homilies and metaphors, make it accessible to anyone who vaguely 'loves nature'.
More a mood than a body of ideas, deep ecology derives its message from the same
intuitive materials that have long been exploited by assorted gurus, shamans, priests,
fakirs, and dubious psychotherapists. Deep ecology, in effect, makes its appeal to the heart
rather than to the head, and little intellectual effort is required to absorb its maudlin
message of how to live the 'simple life' and behave 'ecologically'.

AKH1406 ANTHROPOCENTRISM DOESN'T LEAD TO ECO-CRISIS
R.M. Hare, University of Florida Philosophy Professor, APPLIED PHILOSOPHY:
MORALS AND METAPHYSICS IN CONTEMPORARY DEBATE, 1991, p.14.
From the premise that we have no duties to trees or lakes or the biosphere, it does not
follow that we have no duties with regard to these things. Harm to them may harm sentient
beings including people, to whom we have duties. It is up the conservationists, and not so
difficult as some people think, to show that these inanimate things, though they themselves
have no morally relevant interests, ought to be conserved in the interests of beings that do
have such interests. Wise conservationists try to show this, instead of taking the short cut
of assuming illegitimately that all kinds of things have morally relevant interests, and thus
rights, which could not have them.
AKH1407 DEEP ECOLOGY HAS A SIMPLISTIC EXPLANATION OF
ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
Bron Taylor, Professor of Religion and Social Ethics, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh,
BENEATH THE SURFACE, Eric Katz, et al., eds., 2000, p.275.
Bioregional deep ecology generally asserts the binary associations found in table 14.1. My
central argument is that such, ideology would be more competing if its advocates would
eschew simplistic binary oppositions and monocausal explanations in their efforts to
explain the causes of and solutions to environmental degradation. Sometimes, of course,
such dichotomies insightfully illuminate how certain social variables, cultural differences,
and historical developments shape human lifeways and impact nature. A problem arises,
however, when such dichotomies are viewed, as they often are, as distinct and rigid
oppositions, of as variables whose influence runs in a single direction. When examined in
historical and cross-cultural perspective, it becomes clear that such oversimplifications are
grounded in a misleading failure to appreciate the diversity and complexity of human
cultures and political economies. The failure of many deep ecology advocates to appreciate
such complexity signals either social-scientific naivete or interpretive hubris.
AKH1408 SELF-INTEREST, NOT DEEP ECOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS, IS
BEHIND MOST SUCCESSFUL ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM
Bron Taylor, Professor of Religion and Social Ethics, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh,
BENEATH THE SURFACE, Eric Katz, et al., eds., 2000, p.277-8.
This was an important finding of my on-the-ground research that explored diverse and
widely dispersed examples of movements promoting environmental protection which have
been variously been characterized as "militant" or "radical." This cross-cultural research
challenged the prevalent deep ecological conviction that consciousness change toward an
ecocentric, deep ecological spirituality is a precondition of "radical" environmental action.
Although we found examples where deep ecology-like values and spiritualities animated
environmental actors and groups, we also found many cases where such motivations were
missing or not widely shared. Indeed, contrary to deep ecological expectations, in the
global context the most prevalent factor precipitating and justifying aggressive
environmental resistance appears to be a recognition that intensifying environmental
degradation directly threatens traditional livelihoods, human health, and the life prospects
of children.
AKH1409 APPLYING DEEP ECOLOGY WOULD BE DEVASTATING TOWARDS
THE POOR
Joseph Des Jardins, Professor of Philosophy, College of Saint Benedict,
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL
PHILOSOPHY, 2001, p.228.
One version of this critique is raised by the Indian ecologist Ramachandra Guha. Guha
argues that despite its claims to universality, Deep Ecology is uniquely an American
ideology, essentially a radical branch of the wilderness preservation movement. In Guha's
view, if put into practice, Deep Ecology would have disastrous consequences, especially
for the poor and agrarian populations in underdeveloped countries. Describing India as a
"long settled and densely populated country in which agrarian populations have a finely
balanced relationship with nature," Guha reasons that a policy of biocentric equality and
wilderness preservation would effectively result in a direct transfer of wealth from poor
to rich and a major displacement of poor people.
AKH1410 DEEP ECOLOGY IS GENOCIDAL
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.106-7.
Finally, deep ecology is heir to the lingering legacy of Malthus, whose warning about
population growth outstripping food production 'was ignored by the rising tide of
industrial/technological optimism', according to Devall and Sessions. Whereupon they
extol William Catton, Jr, author of Overshoot, for applying 'the ecological concept of
carrying capacity' and remind us that William Vogt, who 'articulated' the environmental
crisis, 'anticipat[ed] the work of radical ecologist Paul Ehrlich in the 1960s'. Vogt's recipes
for diminishing population by withholding antibiotics from Third World countries go
unmentioned.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 122
AKH1411 DEEP ECOLOGY IS RACIST AND MISANTHROPIC
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.106.
Lest we suspect that Devall is merely fatuous, arrant misanthropy emerges in the closing
pages of his book: '[w]e lack compassion and seem [!] misanthropic if we turn our backs
on hundreds of millions of humans who reside in megalopolises. However, when a choice
must be made, it seems consistent with deep ecology principles to fight on the side of
endangered species and animals' -- and presumably ignore the plight of congested urban
dwellers, which is a concern of 'misplaced humanists'. What concerns Devall about cities
is not only the absence of 'wild animals' [!] there but the extent to which 'urban elites'
exercise power with their 'materialist ideology and nihilism'. This trend, too, is a concern
only of 'misplaced humanists', who also would wrongheadedly -- in Devall's view -- justify
'large-scale immigration to Western Europe and North America from Latin America and
Africa'. Such views are redolent of the reactionary ideology currently abounding in the
First World against people of color from the Third World.
AKH1412 DEEP ECOLOGY THREATENS CIVILIZATION
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.105.
While deep ecology trivializes the human spirit, it depends immensely on humanistic
appeals to support its most basic tenets. Moreover, its absorption of human individuality
into a mystical self-in-Self of cosmic proportions advances a reactionary message. In a
mass society, where selfhood is atrophying under the assault of social forces and
institutions over which the individual has virtually no control; when disempowerment has
become an epochal social pathology; when women, people of color, the poor, and the
underprivileged are asked to surrender what fragments of autonomy and freedom they still
possess to the power of multinational corporations, impersonal bureaucracies, and the state
- the 'decentering of humankind' opens the way for a cultural and social barbarism of
frightening proportions.
AKH1413 DEEP ECOLOGY IS TOTALITARIAN
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.109.
Deep ecology and much of its literature is unnervingly redolent of the reactionary views
chronicled by Fritz Stern and George Mosse in Germany prior to the rise of National
Socialism. Cries like 'Back to the Pleistocene!' during Earth First!'s militant days
contribute to a mentality that denies human uniqueness even as it appeals to human beings
to carry out an ethics that no animal can possibly have. At the same time, deep ecology
views humanity rather cheaply. Its literature abounds with denunciations of humanity as
a 'cancer' on the planet and human intervention into the natural world as demonic.
AKH1414 DEEP ECOLOGY SUPPORTS AUTHORITARIAN STATE CONTROLS
Murray Bookchin, Social Critic, THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL ECOLOGY, 1990,
P.196-7.
I have personally encountered a misanthropy, indeed an inhumanity, masked as
"biocentrism," "deep ecology," and population control, that provides a brutal mandate for
human suffering and authoritarian State controls. We must face the fact that ecology, on
these terms, threatens to become an ideology that can only be designated as cruel, not as
caring nor cooperative.
AKH1415 DEEP ECOLOGY IS POLITICALLY IMPOTENT
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.88.
Finally, it is worth adding that apart from his general references to decentralization,
diversity, and symbiosis, little in Naess's remedies for the environmental crisis
distinguished his ideas from the reformist activities of shallow ecologists. Indeed, deep
ecology was quite tame in its vision of a new social dispensation. But Naess and his
acolytes during the 1970s, confined to their fastnesses in the academy, were basically
isolated from the new ecological trends - technological, communitarian, and political - that
were emerging in the United States. Their writings reveal little lived contact with the
international environmental movement that was unfolding. If deep ecology was a
movement, it was overwhelmingly a cerebral one that had little interaction with groups
actively trying to expand public consciousness of environmental hazards and indeed of the
need to change society's way of interacting with the natural world.
AKH1416 DEEP ECOLOGY IS POLITICALLY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.98.
A multitude of intuitions and irrational belief systems are returning to the foreground in
the closing years of this century. From mystical divinations to ethnic hatreds, these belief
systems have grave implications for the future of modern society and the way people view
reality. That deep ecology has contributed to this regressive trend with hortatory claims
that are strictly subjective, even personalistic, and often reactionary cannot be ignored -
and must be seriously probed.

AKH1417 RELYING ON CRISIS-INDUCED CHANGE IS SUICIDAL
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.7.
More frightening, and more immediate, is the specter of a few radicals actually opposing
necessary environmental reforms. Such individuals conclude that "reform
environmentalism" is "worse than useless because by correcting short-term symptoms it
postpone[s] the necessary reconstruction of the entire human relationship with the natural
world" (Nash 1989:150). From here it is a short step to argue that reform would only
forestall an ecological apocalypse -- which some evidently believe is a necessary
precondition for the construction of an environmentally benign social order. The insanity
of pushing the planet even closer to destruction in order to save it in the future should be
readily apparent.
AKH1418 SIMPLE QUESTIONING DOESN'T PRODUCE MEANINGFUL INSIGHT
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.98.
Thus, for Devall and Sessions to claim that their intuited norms are 'arrived at by the deep
questioning process and reveal the importance of moving to the philosophical and religious
level of wisdom' is rhetorical. No 'deep questioning process' can rest exclusively on
intuition, least of all that of Arne Naess, to which they are referring here. If Devall's and
Sessions' 'deep questioning' cannot be supported by experiential reality, other than what
they regard as valid experience, it simply cannot be challenged. One cannot attain a
'philosophical and religious wisdom' without acknowledging the premises of objective
knowledge (which include science) and the need for logical consistency, both of which
stand at odds with the privileged claims of intuition. A questioning process that is insulated
from rationality and experience can hardly be said to involve very much questioning at all.
Nor is one intuition true and its contrary false if both rest merely on a personal belief.
AKH1419 DEEP ECOLOGY IS PRONE TO CONSERVATIVE, CAPITALIST
COOPTION
Val Plumwood, Australian Research Council Fellow, University of Sidney, BENEATH
THE SURFACE, Eric Katz, et al., eds., 2000, p.71.
In the earlier sections we noted how the theoretical possibilities associated with unity and
individual consciousness change have assumed a privileged role over the solidarity and
structural analysis allied with feminist-postcolonial theory and other politically radical
movements. just as deep ecology failed to provide alternatives to an ethical theory based
on unity, so it has failed to provide political alternatives to political theory based on unity.
This pattern in the political area provides the basis for the seduction of deep ecological
political theory by a conservative paradigm endorsing capitalism, private property, and
small government, and by a notably shallow and elite-accommodating "deep pocket"
strategy that seeks the ecological enlightenment of the Man of Property as its main
objective. The unity interpretation, which has the potential to provide support for both
totalitarian and capitalist positions, once again provides the means by which this
hegemonic accommodation is constructed.
AKH1420 SYNTHESIS OF ANTHROPOCENTRIC AND NONANTHROPOCENTRIC
ARGUMENTS PRODUCES THE BEST POLICY
Peter Wenz, Professor of Philosophy, University of Illinois, Springfield,
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Winter 2002, p.389.
Some anthropocentrists, such as Bryan Norton, claim that intergenerational
anthropocentrism provides the best rationale for protecting biodiversity. Some
nonanthropocentrists, such as J. Baird Callicott and Eric Katz, disagree. In the present
paper, I analyze different varieties of anthropocentrism, argue for adopting what is here
called multicultural anthropocentrism, and then advance the following thesis of
environmental synergism: combining multicultural anthropocentrism with
nonanthropocentrism enables synergists to argue more cogently and effectively than either
anthropocentrists or previous nonanthropocentrists for policies that both protect
biodiversity and maximize long-term welfare for human beings as a group.
AKH1421 WELL-INFORMED ANTHROPOCENTRISTS WILL ALSO PROTECT THE
ENVIRONMENT
Bron Taylor, Professor of Religion and Social Ethics, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh,
BENEATH THE SURFACE, Eric Katz, et al., eds., 2000, p.279.
When informed by an ecological understanding of resource-based limits and widespread
environmental damage resulting from industrial growth, even those with anthropocentric
value systems will realize that such growth cannot benefit most people. participants in
popular movements, consequently, decreasingly view industrial growth as the
"development" goal or the means to "social justice." Arriving at such ecology-informed
conclusions certainly involves a transformation of consciousness, particularly when we
consider the success capitalist societies have had in making economic growth the axial
social organizing principle of most countries on the planet. But such consciousness change
can occur without a concomitant shift toward a deep ecological, or even an ecocentric,
perspective.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 123
AKH1422 AN ETHICAL ANTHROPOCENTRISM CAN PROTECT THE
ENVIRONMENT
Melissa Clarke, Professor of Philosophy, Texas A & M University, ENVIRONMENTAL
ETHICS, Spring 2003, p.112.
The ultimate conclusion of the book plainly advocates nonanthropocentrism in discussing
the concept of "synergism," which weaves throughout the entire last half of the work.
Synergism is the idea that as we value and work to improve nature and the environment,
we will also benefit ourselves. Wenz's introduction and treatment of synergism is
wonderfully integrative and lends a spirit of hope to the discussion of our environmental
problems. Yet, it is not clear why Wenz is determined to juxtapose anthropocentrism with
synergism. It is consistent with synergism that if we value and work to improve humanity
in a deep ethical sense nature will also benefit, since if what benefits nature benefits
humans, the converse holds as well. Oddly, in all of the final five chapters (including the
last four paragraphs of the book), Wenz comes close to recognizing that synergism need
not necessarily originate in nonanthropocentrism and yet he never quite makes the
connection. He persists in claiming outright that environmental change will occur only
through the starting point of people's learning to value the more-than-human. This view,
however, can be challenged by considering that change might occur if we truly begin to
think ethically at all; that is, that we might begin by considering the value of other humans
in lieu of our short-term economically motivated, unethical nonenvironmental
"anthropocentrism." I daresay that consistent ethical thinking would produce similar
synergistic consequences, making environmental anthropocentrism a candidate for
membership in a morally pluralistic approach to a synergistic view.
AKH1423 ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSE WON'T CHANGE SOCIETY
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.11.
Many eco-radicals hope that a massive ideological campaign can transform popular
perceptions, leading both to a fundamental change in lifestyles and to large-scale social
reconstruction. Such a view is highly credulous. The notion that continued intellectual
hectoring will eventually result in a mass conversion to environmental monasticism
(Roszak 1979: 289) -- marked by vows of poverty and nonprocreation -- is difficult to
accept. While radical views have come to dominate many environmental circles, their
effect on the populace at large has been minimal. Despite the greening of European politics
that recently gave stalwarts considerable hope, the more recent green plunge suggests that
even the European electorate lacks commitment to environmental radicalism. In the United
States several decades of preaching the same ecoradical gospel have had little appreciable
effect; the public remains, as before, wedded to consumer culture and creature comforts.
AKH1424 ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSE FEEDS CONSERVATISM
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.39.
One reason conservative ideas so readily latch onto the environmental discourse lies in the
widespread denial of any essential distinction between human beings and nature's other
creatures. If people are fundamentally similar to all other animals, it is only logical that our
basic nature should derive from instinct and other biological imperatives -- a staple of
conservative thought for centuries. In contrast to this organicist view is not only the notion
that human nature is at least substantially a cultural construct, a central tenet of
contemporary social theory, but also ideas of individual autonomy and free will -- the core
of most classical justifications for civil liberty. Both derive from a distinctly different
humanistic tradition. Civil rights are much more difficult to defend in a discourse that
purports to explain human nature in biological terms.
AKH1425 DEEP ECOLOGY ISN'T A MEANINGFUL MOVEMENT
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.96.
To the extent that deep ecology has since become an 'established' ecophilosophy, it was
primarily among some two hundred or so professors and/or their students whom Sessions
and Devall could reach with their newsletter and conference papers. Despite growing
support today, many academic environmentalists viewed deep ecology with considerable
skepticism or rejected it outright. For the rest of the Mystical Zone, deep ecology was more
of a rumor that denoted deep thinking than a movement or coherent outlook.
AKH1426 DEEP ECOLOGY IS PRONE TO COOPTION BY THE POLITICAL RIGHT
Val Plumwood, Australian Research Council Fellow, University of Sidney, BENEATH
THE SURFACE, Eric Katz, et al., eds., 2000, p.60.
While the word "tolerance" is apt to generate lots of warm, fuzzy feelings, an abstract
embrace of tolerance principles is no substitute for the development of real theoretical and
stand-point diversity, and here deep ecology is deeply lacking. The effect of the original
underdevelopment of political thinking in the platform, plus the recent appearance of a
conservative brand of deep political theory, plus the Naess-Carnap abstract tolerance for
diversity beyond the agreement on the politically underdeveloped "platform," is to make
deep ecology today potentially subject to capture by the right. The choice principles of the
real world differ significantly, however, from the ideal world of Ecosophy T. Choices
between left and right political developments of the Ecosophy T position and platform
cannot be avoided indefinitely by appeals to abstract tolerance, since, as I argue in this
essay, some of the political alliances and directions deep ecology can take up are strongly
incompatible with others.

AKH1427 DEEP ECOLOGY'S UNITY OF INTEREST ASSUMPTION MAKES IT
LIABLE TO COOPTION
Val Plumwood, Australian Research Council Fellow, University of Sidney, BENEATH
THE SURFACE, Eric Katz, et al., eds., 2000, p.67-8.
Now I am not saying here, as some supporters of deep ecology seem to think, that all deep
ecologists or others who have theorized the basis of solidarity in terms of unity are selfish
male chauvinist pigs, that they all wish to incorporate nature into the self, or are all
megalomaniacs aiming at control who take their own interests to be those of nature or the
universe at large" (although in fact there are some who hold doctrines of unity who do --
one could argue that Walt Whitman in his later stages was a good example, and there may
be others attracted to this kind of theorization). Nor am I insisting that we must treat deep
ecology according to its worst possible interpretation, as the incorporative self. What I am
saying is that assumptions of unity of interest are especially liable to hegemonic
interpretations, and that in the absence of a critical analysis of power, they are open to
co-optition by existing dominance orders and by the dominant Lockean account and
incorporative self upon which capitalism is based.
AKH1428 DEEP ECOLOGY FUELS STATISM
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.110.
In the light of Naess's commitment to a strong state, what happens to free choice,
idiosyncratic behavior, personal talents, and individuality? Or, for that matter, to his
'nonviolent anarchism'? And, if the Cosmic 'Self' into which the 'self' should dissolve is a
suprahuman organism, a 'whole' - a 'totality'? - that blots out personal identity in traditional
families and communities structured around castes, deep ecology can easily become an
ideology for a strong centralized state in the name of perpetuating the 'rights of Nature'.
AKH1429 THE SELF-EFFACEMENT OF DEEP ECOLOGY LEADS TO TYRANNY
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.99.
By 'self-realization', Devall and Sessions leave little doubt that they mean a certain type
of religious notion of the self that can more properly be called self-effacement. We have
to shed, as they put it, the 'modern Western self' and return to the traditional Asian notion
of the individual, who disappears in a "'self-in-Self" where "Self" stands for organic
wholeness'. More precisely, we have to return to a self for whom 'the phrase [sic!] "one"
includes not only me, an individual human,' Devall and Sessions emphasize, 'but all
humans, whales, grizzly bears, whole rain forest ecosystems, mountains and rivers, the
tiniest microbes in the soil, and so on.' Subsumed in the unending natural cycles of
ahistorical cosmologies, this self (or more precisely, the lack thereof) is divested of control
over its destiny. Historically, such a self was long subjugated to despotic monarchs and
lords - all of whom have spoken in the name of a 'natural order', 'natural forces', and a
divine or 'cosmic' power, ideologies that drained peasants, craftspeople, and slaves of the
will to transform their destinies, not to speak of the spirit of revolt.
AKH1430 DEEP ECOLOGY JUSTIFIES MASSIVE HUMAN DIEBACKS
Joseph Des Jardins, Professor of Philosophy, College of Saint Benedict,
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL
PHILOSOPHY, 2001, p.248.
Bookchin's critique of Deep Ecology can be generalized to apply to any biocentric or
ecocentric ethics that attributes "equal moral worth" to human and nonhuman life-forms.
During these debates, Bookchin highlighted the extreme views of members of Earth First!
and several Deep Ecologists. These views suggested that famine and AIDS, for example,
were "nature's revenge" for overpopulation and ecological destruction. The implication
was that starving children in places like Ethiopia and Somalia should be allowed to die in
the name of some natural ecological law concerning carrrying capacity and population
dynamics. Bookchin forcefully rejected these views as unjust, claiming that they followed
straightforwardly from the philosophy of biocentrism.n If the Deep Ecology principle of
"biocentrism" teaches that human beings are no different from lemmings in terms of their
"intrinsic worth" and the moral consideration we owe them, and if human beings are
viewed as being subject to "natural laws" in just the same way as any other species, then
these "extreme" statements are really the logical conclusion of Deep Ecology philosophy.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 124
AKH1431 DEEP ECOLOGY SUPPORTS REDUCING HUMAN NUMBERS TO 100
MILLION
Mikael Stenmark, Department of Theology, Uppsala University, ENVIRONMENTAL
ETHICS, Summer 2002, p.142-3.
What about the nonanthropocentrists? Can we find any hints about what population
policies they advocate? Yes, I believe we can. I also think that there are good reasons to
believe that they typically differ from the intergenerational anthropocentric ones. Rolston
maintains, for instance, that "conserving the Earth is more important than having more
people." It is even "more important than the needs, or even the welfare, of existing people."
Arne Naess tells us that one of the key principles of deep ecology is that "The flourishing
of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human
population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease." Furthermore,
Naess writes as a response to an answer given by a United Nations study (to the question
"Given the present world-wide industrial and agricultural capacity, technological
development, and resource exploitation, how many people could be supported on Earth
today with the standard of living of the average American?") that The authors think that
500 million would not result in a uniform, stagnant world and refer to the seventeenth
century. Agreed, but the question raised refers only to humans. How about other living
beings? If their life quality is not to be lowered through human dominance, for instance
agriculture, are not 500 million too many? Or: are cultural diversity, development of the
sciences and arts, and of course basic needs of humans not served by, let us say, 100
million? Likewise, Callicott suggests that as "omnivores, the population of human beings
should, perhaps, be roughly twice that of bears, allowing for differences of size. A global
population of more than four billion persons and showing no signs of an orderly decline
... is at present a global disaster ... for the biotic community."
AKH1432 DEEP ECOLOGY HARMS PEOPLE LIVING IN THE UNDERDEVELOPED
WORLD
Joseph Des Jardins, Professor of Philosophy, College of Saint Benedict,
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL
PHILOSOPHY, 2001, p.228-9.
Guha also faults Deep Ecology for its appropriation of Eastern philosophies and traditions.
Citing Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism as if they are a single consistent Eastern
worldview and one that is more in tune with environmentalism "does considerable violence
to the historical record." Eastern cultures, as well as Western cultures, have manipulated
nature and caused significant ecological destruction. Accordingly, Deep Ecology is not
very helpful to the environmental concerns of peoples of underdeveloped countries. At
best, it is irrelevant. At worst, it can be harmful to the very people who already are
victimized by social and political dominance.
AKH1433 DEEP ECOLOGY IS A LUXURY THAT MOST OF THE WORLD CAN'T
AFFORD
John Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University, New Orleans, BENEATH THE
SURFACE, Eric Katz, et al., eds., 2000, p.6.
The platform quite correctly suggests that we forsake the meretricious attractions of a
"higher standard of living" in favor of the deeper satisfactions of "situations of inherent
value." Yet this concept is much more applicable for the more affluent minority in our
world than for the disinherited majority. There are certainly innumerable cases in which
a person in a poor country chooses an ecologically unsound option -- for example, using
an inconvenient and highly polluting form of transportation to get to a stressful, laborious,
and low-paying job -- not because he or she thinks that it promises a "higher standard of
living" than the more traditional way of life that has often been cruelly destroyed. Rather,
it is because he or she has no effective choice in the matter. There are thus billions of
people who are de facto reducing ecological richness and diversity in order to "satisfy"
what are, without question, "vital needs."
AKH1434 HIERARCHY IS ESSENTIAL AND INEVITABLE
Joel Kovel, Professor of Social Studies, Bard College, SOCIAL ECOLOGY AFTER
BOOKCHIN, Andrew Light, ed., 1998, p.44.
In sum, we have to recognize that certain hierarchies can be both ubiquitous and at least
potentially good. These would include the parent-child relation, but also that of
teacher-student, or indeed any place in the cultural system where, some people have
something useful to impart to others and claim an, authority to do so. Can we imagine a
surgical operating room without hierarchy? An oceangoing ship? In other words, hierarchy
is as inherent in the human situation as is childhood, culture, and the division of labor.
Indeed, hierarchy is a concrete manifestation of human being. It is embedded in the very
essentials of our species life, in the facts that we are born helpless and live through the
creation and social transmission of a created world. In other words, if you want to
eliminate hierarchies, you have to eliminate what is specifically human.
AKH1435 CAPITALISM DOES NOT CAUSE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.163-4.
Radical greens admit that environmental conditions in Eastern Europe are as bad as those
found in the West. But such admissions are far from adequate; by almost every measure,
the communist environment is more severely degraded than the capitalist environment.
Only with the recent downfall of marxian regimes has the ecological debacle of the East
come to light. As our knowledge increases, the environmental conditions of Eastern
Europe are revealed as ever more horrific. And when one considers the poor performances
of the economies that have wreaked such destruction, the comparison between capitalism
and communism becomes one-sided indeed.

AKH1436 REJECTION OF THE STATE ISN'T NECESSARY TO ACHIEVE GREEN
VALUES
John Barry, Lecturer, Department of Politics, Keele University, RETHINKING GREEN
POLITICS, 1999, p.97.
What this chapter has argued is that eco-anarchism is not an essential component of green
politics, in that the values greens espouse may be institutionalized in non-anarchistic ways.
For example, the eco-anarchist concern with autonomy and self-determination is something
which as a green value can be realized in non-anarchist ways. Autonomy is discussed in
Chapter 6 where an ecological virtue perspective on human flourishing is argued to hinge
on the relationship between human autonomy and welfare. Nor is it desirable that, as it
stands, the ecoanarchist utopia acts as a fetter on the future development of green theory,
unnecessarily precluding its positive engagement with the state.
AKH1437 REFORMISM IS NECESSARY FOR POLITICAL MOBILIZATION
John Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University, New Orleans, SOCIAL
ECOLOGY AFTER BOOKCHIN, Andrew Light, ed., 1998, p.162.
To reject all reform proposals at the level of the nation-state a priori reflects a lack of
sensitivity to the issues that are meaningful to people now. Bookchin correctly cautions us
against succumbing to a mere "politics of the possible." However, a political purism that
dogmatically rejects reforms that promise a meaningful improvement in the conditions of
life for many people chooses to stand above the actual people in the name of "the People"
(who despite their capitalization remain merely theoretical).
AKH1438 BOOKCHIN DOESN'T OFFER A VIABLE WAY TO TRANSCEND
CAPITALISM AND THE STATE
Andrew Light, Professor of Philosophy, State University of New York, Binghamton,
SOCIAL ECOLOGY AFTER BOOKCHIN, 1998, p.16.
Also, Clark points out that Bookchin's utopian municipalism lacks a sense of historical and
cultural context. Bookchin criticizes any type of reform that proposes less than the
complete abolition of capitalism and the nation-state, but he does not provide a strategy
for getting from the present, which is decidedly immersed in both, to his utopian vision of
the future. According to Clark his is a form of "abstract idealism, and tends to divert the
energies of its adherents into an ideological sectarianism and away from an active and
intelligent engagement with the complex, irreducible dimensions of history, culture and
psyche." Thus, for Clark, Bookchin fails to provide a reliable pathway from here to there,
from today's statist capitalism to his utopian libertarian municipalism.
AKH1439 SOCIAL ECOLOGY UNDERMINES ENVIRONMENTAL COALITION
BUILDING
Andrew Light, Professor of Philosophy, University of Alberta, ENVIRONMENTAL
PRAGMATISM, 1996, p.167.
While particular charges like this one can serve as the foundation for an interesting
dialogue on important social and political concerns, Bookchin's overall attitude towards
deep ecology, characterized by his lumping and splitting of the opposition in the "cowboy"
quote, is exemplary of the anti-compatibilism that makes environmental political theory
difficult to translate into practice. This is particularly problematic when practice may
require large-scale coalitions across a broad array of philosophical commitments. But the
blame cannot be laid at one doorstep: Bookchin and Naess are both guilty of a kind of
essentializing of the theoretical ground of their positions (the former in Kropotkinian
evolutionary theory and the latter in religious ecospiritualism) which would make any kind
of communication between the two difficult. But it is not only at the theoretical level that
divisions are drawn. It is clear that Bookchin really does see the struggle in practice of
ecoanarchists to be directed as much against deep ecologists as it is against liberal
environmentalists and growth-oriented polluters of the earth.
AKH1440 BOOKCHIN'S SOCIAL ECOLOGY APPEALS ONLY TO A SMALL
NUMBER OF INTELLECTUALS
John Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University, New Orleans, SOCIAL
ECOLOGY AFTER BOOKCHIN, Andrew Light, ed., 1998, p.151.
Particularly as Bookchin has become increasingly suspicious of the imagination, the
psychological dimension, and any form of "spirituality," and as he has narrowed his
conception of reason, he has created a version of social ecology that is likely to appeal to
only a small number of highly politicized intellectuals. Despite the commitment of social
ecology to unity-in-diversity, his approach to social change increasingly emphasizes
ideological unity over diversity of forms of expression. If the "radical intelligentsia" within
the movement for radical democracy is to include a significant number of poets and
creative writers, artists, musicians, and thoughtful people working in various professional
and technical fields, a more expansive vision of the socially transformative practice is
necessary.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 125
AKH1441 BOOKCHIN HAS NO VIABLE PLAN FOR GETTING FROM EXISTING
SOCIETY TO HIS UTOPIA
John Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University, New Orleans, SOCIAL
ECOLOGY AFTER BOOKCHIN, Andrew Light, ed., 1998, p.175.
But even if this particular form of mysticism were the correct standpoint toward some
ultimately utopian society, it would not give us much direction concerning how to get
there. Can anyone really take seriously a "libertarian municipalism" that proposes a
municipalization of all enterprises, after which conditions of work and distribution of
products would be determined (or perhaps we should say "nondetermined") by "basic
decency and humaneness"? Once again, the problem of Bookchin's lack of mediations
between an idealized goal and actually existing society becomes apparent. And this is not
to say that his utopian goal is itself coherent. For despite his self-proclaimed role as the
defender of "Reason," he scrupulously avoids consideration of the role of rationality in
utopian distribution, in this case failing back instead on mere feeling, dualistically divorced
from rationality according to the demands of ideological consistency. This is, of course,
his only option short of a fundamental rethinking of his position. For reason, unfortunately
for Bookchin, expresses itself in determinations, as tentative and self-transforming as these
determinations may be.
AKH1442 TURN - ATTACKING CAPITALISM IS ECOLOGICALLY
COUNTERPRODUCTIVE
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.13.
At the same time, the pernicious fear of compromise seriously diminishes the possibility
of creating a broader coalition for environmental action. Barry Commoner, for example,
warns environmentalists that if they compromise with corporations they may become
"hostages" and eventually even assume "the ideology of [their] captors" (1990:177). The
end result of this kind of thinking -- to which we are painfully close in the United States
-- is an ideological stalemate in which opposed camps are increasingly unable even to
communicate. In such a political environment, the creation of an ecologically sustainable
society becomes little more than an impossible dream.
AKH1443 TURN - DECENTRALIZATION IS DISASTROUS
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.116.
The bioregional future imagined by eco-radicals would never provide them with the utopia
they crave, even if it could be constructed exactly as envisaged. But that is the least of their
problems. More pressing is the question of how we could begin to make the
transformations necessary for the creation of the desired small-scale social world. As I
have attempted to show, virtually any step taken in that direction would lead only to
increased environmental degradation. It is one thing to dream of a pastoral America
without cities, but quite another to imagine the process of deurbanizing the United States.
Almost everywhere one looks, the eco-radical prescriptions are in the end just as harmful
as the disease originally diagnosed.
AKH1444 RECENT IMPROVEMENTS SHOW THE VALUE OF GOVERNMENT FOR
THE ENVIRONMENT
Gregg Easterbrook, environmental journalist, A MOMENT ON THE EARTH, 1995,
p.xviii.
To the ecorealist, fashionable pessimism about the environment could not be more wrong,
if only because it denies the good done already. In some vexing policy areas such as crime
or public education it is difficult to imagine where solutions reside. On environmental
affairs I can promise you -- and will show you -- that public investments yield significant
benefits within the lifetimes of the people who make the investment. The first round of
environmental investments did not fail; they worked, which is a great reason to have more.
I consider this glorious if only because as a political liberal I long for examples of
government action that serves the common good. The extraordinary success of modern
environmental protection is such an example: perhaps the best instance of government-led
social progress in our age.
AKH1445 BIOREGIONALISM WOULD UNDERCUT SOLUTIONS TO GLOBAL
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
John Barry, Lecturer, Department of Politics, Keele University, RETHINKING GREEN
POLITICS, 1999, p.89-90.
It is perhaps at the external level that the shortcomings of bioregionalism are most
apparent. Given the ongoing impact of globalization on human societies, drawing them
into an increasingly complex web of interrelations, the' complete realization of the
bioregional vision, complete bioregional autarky, is impossible. Which is not to say
'deglobalization' may not be necessary or desirable from a green political point of view.
When we look at the global nature of ecological problems such as ozone depletion and
global warming, there is a need for more not less co-operation and interaction between
societies. From a global ecological point of view, the fragmentation of the world as
propounded by bioregionalism may exacerbate ecosystemic problems. The strategy of
saving the whole by saving the parts only works if there is some degree of trans-communal
co-operation and co-ordination. This is because when it comes to ecosystems, Commoner's
first law of ecology holds: 'everything is connected to everything else' (1971: 29), so
saving the part involves knowing what is happening to other parts and to the whole.
Co-operation may be possible in a world of bioregions, but reaching agreement may be
more difficult under stateless conditions because of the increase in the number of parties
to the agreement (Goodin, 1992).

AKH1446 HIERARCHY IS INESCAPABLE AND NOT NECESSARILY BAD
Joel Kovel, Professor of Social Studies, Bard College, SOCIAL ECOLOGY AFTER
BOOKCHIN, Andrew Light, ed., 1998, p.43-4.
There is a muddle here that is both. revealing and puzzling. Logically, if the ecological
society Is to be without hierarchies, then it will have to dispense with the parent-child
relationship, since this is a hierarchy according to Bookchin. Perhaps the little ones can be
put in an autonomously run nursery, where they may learn the joys of freedom, preparing
their own food and putting themselves to bed at night without anybody telling them what
to do. If this is not to his taste and he would prefer, like other people, that small children
be protected and cared for, then Bookchin must be willing to live with hierarchy, which
is to say in his terms, domination. Where, then, is the theory of social ecology? Ah, but he
says that the parent-child relationship is, or at least can be, a good hierarchy -- a perfectly
sensible idea that requires us, however, to detach hierarchy from domination. More
specifically, we need then to concretely specify hierarchies to discern those that are
harmful for humans and nature. And it also follows that there can be no necessary
correlation between the domination of humans and that of nature, since such a correlation
is grounded, according to Bookchin, in the generalization "hierarchy = domination."
AKH1447 THERE'S NO NECESSARY LINK BETWEEN SOCIAL HIERARCHY AND
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Warwick Fox, National Research Fellow, Center for Environmental Studies, University
of Tasmania, DEEP ECOLOGY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, George
Sessions, ed., 1995, p.276.
An interesting example of the failure to recognize this point is provided by Murray
Bookchin's anarcho-socialist inspired "social ecology" (I describe this approach as
"anarcho-socialist" in inspiration because it advocates decentralism and cooperativeness
and stands opposed to all forms of hierarchy). Bookchin is interesting in this context
because, on the one hand, he correctly observes in the course of a highly polemical attack
upon deep ecology that it is possible for a relatively ecologically benign human society
also to be extremely oppressive internally (he offers the example of ancient Egyptian
society), and yet, on the other hand, he fails to see that the reverse can also apply -- that is,
that it is possible for a relatively egalitarian human society to be extremely exploitative
ecologically." For Bookchin, to accept this latter point would e to argue against the basis
of his own social ecology, since in his view a nonhierarchical, decentralist, and cooperative
society is "a society that will live in harmony with nature because its members live in
harmony with each other."
AKH1448 INDUSTRIALISM, NOT CAPITALISM, IS THE ROOT OF
ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
Andrew McLaughlin, Professor of Philosophy, City University of New York, DEEP
ECOLOGY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, George Sessions, ed., 1995, p.85.
In the last few hundred years, industrial society has encircled the earth and, in requiring
massive disruptions of ecological processes for its ordinary functioning, threatens all forms
of life on this planet. Both capitalist and socialist variants of expansionary industrialism
routinely require the destruction of species and ecosystems. Industrialism now threatens
to disrupt atmospheric conditions fundamental to the whole biosphere. If ecological
problems have roots in industrialism, then a perspective which takes industrialism itself
as part of the problem is needed.
AKH1449 SOCIALISM HAS BEEN ECOLOGICALLY DISASTROUS
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.163.
The easiest defense of capitalism is simply to contrast it with existing and recently existing
examples of marxian socialism. As is now abundantly clear, marxism's record is dismal on
almost every score, be it economic, social, or environmental. These failures cannot be
dismissed as errant quirks; marxian regimes have come to power in numerous countries,
and everywhere the results have been disheartening. From impoverished African states like
Mozambique, Ethiopia, Guinea, Madagascar, and the Congo to highly industrialized,
once-prosperous European countries like the former East Germany and Czechoslovakia,
all marxist experiments have ended in disaster.
AKH1450 ATTACKS ON THE STATE ARE NOT HELPFUL FOR GREEN POLITICS
John Barry, Lecturer, Department of Politics, Keele University, RETHINKING GREEN
POLITICS, 1999, p.81.
The strong version of anarchism is problematic, particularly as regards the lack of
empirical evidence to support its claims, while theoretically it can be criticized as
dependent upon an ahistorical explanatory schema which confuses the concept of the state
with particular conceptions. The pure anarchist position in which the state is an
intrinsically exploitative institution is, I suggest, both unnecessary and unhelpful to green
politics. At the same time the traditional anarchist demand that social relations be
transparent is neither a necessary nor a desirable political aim of green politics, which is
not to say that all anarchist principles or values are to be rejected. Indeed, as argued below,
a close analysis of the social ecology position is compatible with the democratization and
decentralization rather than the abolition of the state.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 126
AKH1451 BOOKCHIN FAILS TO EXPLAIN WHY REFORMISM HAS TO FAIL
John Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University, New Orleans, SOCIAL
ECOLOGY AFTER BOOKCHIN, Andrew Light, ed., 1998, p.142-3.
While Bookchin is certainly right in saying that we are at a crucial turning point in human
and earth history, he has never presented a careful analysis of why some types of
reformism (or any alternatives to his own politics) cannot possibly avoid ending in either
fascism or global ecological catastrophe. His claims are reminiscent of those of Bakunin,
who spent much of his career writing a long work whose major, yet quite unsubstantiated,
thesis was that Europe's only options were military dictatorship or anarchist social
revolution.
AKH1452 MANY REFORMIST MOVEMENTS HAVEN'T BEEN COOPTED
John Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University, New Orleans, SOCIAL
ECOLOGY AFTER BOOKCHIN, Andrew Light, ed., 1998, p.161-2.
There is, in fact, an inspiring history of struggles for limited goals that did not betray the
more far-reaching visions, and indeed revolutionary impulses, of the participants. To take
an example that should be meaningful to Bookchin, the anarchists who fought for the
eight-hour work day did not give up their goal of the abolition of capitalism. There is no
reason why left greens today cannot fight for a thirty-hour work week without giving up
their vision of economic democracy. Indeed, it seems important that those who have
utopian visions should also stand with ordinary people in their fights for justice and
democracy -- even when many of these people have not yet developed such visions, and
have not yet learned how to articulate their hopes in theoretical terms. Unless this occurs,
the prevailing dualistic split between reflection and action will continue to be reproduced
in movements for social transformation, and the kind of "People" that libertarian
municipalism presupposes will never become a reality.
AKH1453 THE POWER-HUNGRY WILL ULTIMATELY UNDERMINE ANARCHISM
Bron Taylor, Professor of Religion and Social Ethics, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh,
BENEATH THE SURFACE, Eric Katz, et al., eds., 2000, p.282-3.
Andrew Bard Schmookler, in his critique of utopian anarchism, has raised a kindred
concern. In The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution, he
criticized anarchists (and their relatively moderate bioregional progeny) for ignoring a
specific problem of power. He asked: How can good people prevent being dominated by
a ruthless few, and what will prevent hierarchies from emerging if decentralized political
self-rule is ever achieved? One does not have to believe all people are bad to recognize that
not all people will be good, he argued; and unless bad people all become good, there is no
solution to violence other than some kind of government to restrain the evil few.
Schmookler elsewhere noted that those who exploit nature gather more power to
themselves. How, then, can we restrain such power? There must be a government able to
control the free exercise of power, Schmookler concluded.
AKH1454 ANARCHISTIC BIOREGIONALISM CAN'T SUFFICIENTLY CONSTRAIN
ELITES
Bron Taylor, Professor of Religion and Social Ethics, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh,
BENEATH THE SURFACE, Eric Katz, et al., eds., 2000, p.282.
A more trenchant problem is how bioregionalists (and the anarchists who influenced their
most influential theorists) often assume that people are naturally predisposed (unless
corrupted by life in unnatural, hierarchical, centralized, industrial societies) to cooperative
behavior. This debatable assumption appears to depend more on radical environmental
faith, a kind of Paul Shepard-style mythologizing, than on ecology or anthropology.
Unfortunately for bioregional theory, evolutionary biology shows that not only cooperation
promotes species survival; so also, at times, does aggressive competitiveness. Based on its
unduly rosy view of the potential for human altruism, it is doubtful that bioregionalism can
offer sufficient structural constraints on the exercise of power by selfish and
well-entrenched elites.
AKH1455 BOOKCHIN DOESN'T OFFER A VIABLE GROUND FOR OPPOSITIONAL
POLITICS
Alan Rudy and Andrew Light, Ph.D. in sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz,
and Professor of Philosophy, University of Alberta, MINDING NATURE: THE
PHILOSOPHERS OF ECOLOGY, David Macauley, ed., 1996, p.335.
Finding both the nation-state and the international division of labor to be the products of
hierarchy and domination, Bookchin sees increasingly little worth saving or working to
transform in either form of social organization. For him, neither is spontaneous or part of
the "ever-striving developing. . . substance whose most dynamic and creative attribute is
its ceaseless capacity for self-organization into increasingly complex forms." While his
position is far preferable to uncritical acceptance of capitalist social relations, it is
nonetheless too rigid to ground an oppositional politics.

AKH1456 BOOKCHIN'S POLITICS TENDS TOWARDS SECTARIAN IN-FIGHTING
John Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University, New Orleans, SOCIAL
ECOLOGY AFTER BOOKCHIN, Andrew Light, ed., 1998, p.137-8.
One of my main contentions in this critique is that because of its ideological and dogmatic
aspects, Bookchin's politics remains, to use Hegelian terms, in the sphere of morality rather
than reaching the level of the ethical. That its moralism can be compelling I would be the
last to deny, since I was strongly influenced by it for a number of years. Nevertheless, it
is a form of abstract idealism, and tends to divert the energies of its adherents into an
ideological sectarianism, and away from an active and intelligent engagement with the
complex, irreducible dimensions of history, culture, and psyche. The strongly voluntarist
dimension of Bookchin's political thought should not be surprising. When a politics lacks
historical and cultural grounding, and the real stubbornly resists the demands of
ideological dogma, the will becomes the final resort. In this respect, Bookchin's politics
is firmly in the tradition of Bakuninist anarchism.
AKH1457 BOOKCHIN'S CONFRONTATIONAL RHETORIC HAS UNDERMINED
HIS POLITICAL INFLUENCE
Michael Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy, Tulane University, CONTESTING
EARTH'S FUTURE, 1994, p.167.
Bookchin's confrontational style stems in part from his Marxist origins, which led him to
view the political world as composed of opposing factions that meet in frontal conflict: this
is the political concretization of the dialectic. One critic charges that Bookchin's attempt
to force complex situations into "the conceptual boxes of two clashing opposites"
reinforces dualistic thinking and encourages violent acts of "negating the thesis." In the
name of "progressive development," left-wing politicians often "focus on creating and
inflating conflict, searching for contradictions in positions espoused by peers, and verbally
attacking other people with great intensity." Bookchin's pugnacious and at times abusive
rhetoric has undermined his standing among radical ecologists.
AKH1458 THE SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION BOOKCHIN VIEWS AS NECESSARY
IS IMPOSSIBLE
Adolf Gundersen, Professor of Political Science, Texas A & M, SOCIAL ECOLOGY
AFTER BOOKCHIN, Andrew Light, ed., 1998, p.204.
Bookchin's utopianism is certainly attractive, even inspiring. Unfortunately, upon closer
inspection, the very purity that lends it its initial allure begins to look more formal than
theoretical. I do not mean to challenge Bookchin's claim that radical change represents the
only answer to the ecological crisis of our time, though that claim can certainly be
challenged. (just what, after all, constitutes a "crisis"?) What I do find implausible, even
preposterous, is Bookchin's definition of "radical change." As we have already seen, on
Bookchin's view only utopian ecocommunities will do -- a world of ecocommunities
coordinated by confederal bodies. Nor is that all. Bookchin admits and even insists that
this can only happen through the spontaneous and simultaneous action of communities
everywhere: "We cannot hope to realize this vision in only one neighborhood, town, or
city. Ours needs to be a confederal society based on the coordination of all municipalities"
(DE, p. 84). Bookchin has even gone so far as to suggest that "after the revolution the
planet would be dealt with as a whole" (PSA, p. 261; see also RS, p. 184; TES, p. 256).
That such a widespread revolution, with all the profound changes it would entail, is a faint
hope hardly seems worth emphasizing, especially given the tremendous number and
complexity of the new intercommunal relationships that it presupposes. Small wonder,
then, that despite Bookchin's efforts to plumb history for evidence of communal uprisings,
he can find no parallel for such a society-wide popular uprising.
AKH1459 CAPITALISM IS KEY TO ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.20.
Yet we can devise ways to begin to even out social discrepancies and restore ecological
health without sacrificing economic growth. I am convinced that such goals may be
realized through "guided capitalism" -- a corporate and market system in which the state
mandates public goods, in which taxes are set both to level social disparities and to
penalize environmental damage, and in which fiscal policies are manipulated to encourage
long-term investments in both human and industrial capital (see Rosecrance 1990). But
these social and environmental goals will, in the end, be attainable only if we nurture and
guide rather than strangle the rather truculent capitalist goose that lays the golden eggs.
AKH1460 URBANIZATION PROTECTS THE ENVIRONMENT BY LIMITING LAND
USE
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.94.
Equally revealing is a comparison of actual land use in the two environments. Urban
dwellers typically require a small fraction of the space required by country people. This
is readily apparent both in housing [multistory apartments versus detached, single-family
dwellings] and in infrastructure (the more scattered the population, the greater the expanse
of roadway). If America's present urban population were to be dispersed over the
countryside, vast tracts of land would have to be converted to housing and transporting
them, tremendously reducing wildlife habitat.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 127
AKH1461 BOOKCHIN'S ECOCOMMUNITIES WOULD STILL BE PRONE TO
FASCISM AND WAR
Michael Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy, Tulane University, CONTESTING
EARTH'S FUTURE, 1994, p.181.
Recognizing the use to which Nazis put the idea of organic "rootedness"' in the soil,
Bookchin emphasizes that his anarchistic municipalities should be based on elective social
ties, not on blood kinship. But one can readily imagine how bioregions could become
jingoistic and expansionistic rather than tolerant communities open to the challenges posed
by the "differences" of their neighbors. Bookchin insists that because people in
ecomunicipalities would no longer be greedy, "one liberated community will not try to
dominate another because it has a potential monopoly of copper." But Bookchin provides
little convincing evidence that greed and competition will vanish in ecocommunities.
Hence, there is good reason to believe that such communities would probably have the
same chance of leading to wars and ecofascism as deep ecological communities.
AKH1462 BOOKCHIN DEVALUES JUSTICE AND THE NEEDS OF THE
DESTITUTE
Joel Kovel, Professor of Social Studies, Bard College, SOCIAL ECOLOGY AFTER
BOOKCHIN, Andrew Light, ed., 1998, p.47.
To Bookchin, justice is the mere rearrangement of inequities, while freedom is the positive
good of overcoming hierarchy. Freedom is "not only the equality of unequals, but also the
enlargement of our concepts of subjectivity, technics, science and ethics." Justice, stained
with the retrograde Marxian emphasis on economics, has actually become a bad thing:
What is so stunning to the careful observer is that if justice never came to compensate but
merely to reward, its spirit has finally become mean and its coinage small. Like every
limited ideal, its history has always been greater than its present. But the future of justice
threatens to betray even its claims to have upheld the "rights" of the individual and
humanity. For as human inequality increases in fact, if not in theory, its ideology of
equivalence assails the ideal of freedom with its cynical opportunism and a sleazy
meliorism. Even after we clear away the rhetoric -- " stunning," "betray," "assails,"
"cynical," "sleazy," and so on -- there remains something insufferable about this way of
thinking, which reduces the struggle against suffering and exploitation to an empty gesture,
while the real work of overcoming "hierarchy" takes place so that the liberated social
ecologist can frolic in the polls of the postscarcity utopia. The connoisseur of mental
projections in Bookchin's work here finds one more specimen for his or her scrapbook,
since meanness of spirit and smallness of coinage certainly apply to this callous passage.
Callous and irrelevant too, for the notion of a postscarcity conjuncture that opens the way
for "freedom" was based on a shallow reading of capitalism. The utopian hopes of the late
1960s now seem a hoax in a world where 850 million people are out of work and mass
starvation looms. The postscarcity project is now on the scrap heap of history, not because
the means for overcoming scarcity are not at hand, but because it is more obvious than ever
that capitalism is not about to let them be realized.
AKH1463 BOOKCHIN'S APPROACH WOULD LEAD TO ECONOMIC FAILURE
John Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University, New Orleans, SOCIAL
ECOLOGY AFTER BOOKCHIN, Andrew Light, ed., 1998, p.171.
However, we always begin with a historically determined self-hood in a historically
determined cultural context. It is quite likely that communities (and self-managed
enterprises) might find that in the task of creating liberatory institutions within the
constraints of real history and culture, the common good is attained best by preserving
some form of "accounting" of contributions from citizens and distribution of goods. To
whatever degree Bookchin's anarcho-communist system of distribution is desirable as a
long-term goal, the attempt to put it into practice in the short run, without developing its
psychological and institutional preconditions, would be a certain recipe for disillusionment
and economic failure.
AKH1464 THERE'S NO ROOT CAUSE TO ALL FORMS OF OPPRESSION
Deborah Slicer, Professor of Philosophy, University of Montana, ECOLOGICAL
FEMINISM, Karen Warren, ed., 1994, p.29.
With that in mind, I want to pause over three conceptual muddles that recur in both the
popular and the philosophical ecofeminist literature of the last two decades. I consider
these muddles significant, although not insurmountable, challenges to mature - coherent
as well as politically affective - theory. The first is the claim that there is some "root" cause
of our multiple social oppressions, including naturism. While this particular claim does not
appear in all ecofeminist literature, some version of a quest for historical or conceptual first
causes appears often enough and very often either androcentrism or anthropocentrism are
identified as the culprits. I try to clarify what various writers seem to mean when they
make this claim, and I argue that our multiple oppressions are too inextricably linked to
identify a root cause and that little of practical or conceptual importance actually hangs on
doing so.

AKH1465 IDENTIFYING WOMEN WITH NATURE PERPETUATES THEIR
PSYCHOSOCIAL SUBORDINATION
Karen Green, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS,
Summer 1994, p.129.
The glorification of woman's spiritual connectedness with the earth, characteristic of much
ecofeminist writing, is, therefore, deeply problematical. If Chodorow is right, the tendency
to see oneself as connected with, and submerged within, a powerful world mother is an
aspect of the psychology of women that has been associated both with woman's caring role
and her sense of her own helplessness. On this view, feminism should lead us to want to
destroy the psychosexual underpinnings of woman's connectedness with nature, and a
desire to promote in women a psychology of connectedness should undermine any
tendency to want to free women from their exclusive mothering role.
AKH1466 EMBRACING FEMALE ROLES MAY PERPETUATE ENVIRONMENTAL
DESTRUCTION
Victoria Davion, Professor of Philosophy, University of Georgia, ECOLOGICAL
FEMINISM, Karen Warren, ed., 1994, p.19.
Women may demonstrate the quest for social validation differently both from men and
from each other, but such a quest is certainly an assigned, socialized part of many feminine
("female") roles. And, the industries supported by women playing out feminine roles are
often responsible for gross environmental damage, e.g. the damage to the ozone layer by
the use of aerosol hairspray cans, the cruel testing of cosmetics on animals. Finally, many
women have sought validation by dominating other women and men through, for example,
assertion of social status and use of power and privilege conferred by such factors as race
and class. Thus, in seeking validation through playing out traditional feminine roles,
women may be more concerned about the health of the environment than men, but that is
neither a biological nor a social given; they also may perpetuate its destruction.
AKH1467 ECOFEMINISM UNDERCUTS THE FEMINIST AGENDA GLOBALLY
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.36.
In its effort to avoid the appearance of cultural imperialism, radical eco-feminism also flirts
with an ethical relativism that could conceivably undermine the feminist agenda at the
global scale. To posit that '[w]hat counts as sexism, racism, or classism may vary
cross-culturally [K. Warren 1990:139] is to ignore a huge array of deeply sexist practices
existing in numerous non-Western cultures.
AKH1468 ECOFEMINISM ULTIMATELY SUPPORTS THE STATUS QUO
Janet Biehl, social ecologist, RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS, 1991, p.157.
In the ecology movement, thinking women must, if only to realize their own human
potentialities, either join with thinking men in developing a new politics, rationality, and
science - not to speak of those qualities that make us humane as well as human - or they
are likely to follow the ecofeminist path toward a narrow parochialism, primitivism, and
irrationalism that will ultimately mystify and support the status quo rather than transcend
it by achieving a free ecological society.
AKH1469 ECOFEMINISM IS INCOHERENTLY ECLECTIC
Janet Biehl, social ecologist, RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS, 1991, p.3.
Ecofeminism, far from being healthily diverse, is so blatantly self-contradictory as to be
incoherent. As one might expect, at least one ecofeminist even rejects the very notion of
coherence itself, arguing that coherence is "totalizing" and by inference oppressive.
Moreover, because ecofeminists rarely debate each other, it is nearly impossible to glean
from their writings the extent to which they agree or disagree with each other. The reader
of this book should be wary of attributing the views of any one ecofeminist, as they are
presented here, to all other ecofeminists. But ecofeminists' apparent aversion to sorting out
the differences among themselves leaves the critical observer no choice but to generalize.
AKH1470 ECOFEMINISM IS IRRATIONALIST
Janet Biehl, social ecologist, RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS, 1991, p.2.
Ecofeminism has also become a force for irrationalism, most obviously in its embrace of
goddess worship, its glorification of the early Neolithic, and its emphasis on metaphors and
myths. It has also become irrational in another sense: that is, by virtue of its own
incoherence.
AKH1471 ECOFEMINISM NEGLECTS WOMEN'S ROLE IN ENVIRONMENTAL
DESTRUCTION
Warwick Fox, National Research Fellow, Center for Environmental Studies, University
of Tasmania, DEEP ECOLOGY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, George
Sessions, ed., 1995, p.277.
Inauthenticity, on the other hand, can be thought of in terms of under-inclusiveness.
Simplistic analyses are inauthentic in that they lead to a complete denial of responsibility
when at least partial responsibility for ecological destruction should be accepted. Such
theorizing conveniently disguises the extent to which (at least a subset of) the
simplistically identified oppressed group (e.g., women or the working class) also benefits
from, and colludes with, those most responsible for ecological destruction (e.g., consider
the case of animal destruction for furs and cosmetics consumed by Western and
Westernized women, or the case of capitalists and unionists united in opposition to the
antidevelopment stance of "greenies").
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 128
AKH1472 ECOFEMINISM IGNORES THE INHERENT HUMAN NEED TO EXPLOIT
NATURE
Margarita Garcia Levin and Michael Levin, Professors of Philosophy, Yeshiva University
and City College of New York, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Louis Pojman, ed., 2001,
p.200.
Proposition 2 of Warren's argument, like proposition 1, also corresponds to an idea that has
had some currency, but, like proposition 1, it also does very much less than justice to the
way people actually think ("at least in Western society," as Prof. Warren might add). Few
people would claim an individual or collective right to "dominate" nature. They would
claim a right to use nature in the interest of their survival and prosperity. And they would
not base this prerogative on man's superiority, but on what Francis Bacon called "the right
of necessity." We cannot live without eating animals, harvesting crops and removing
minerals from the Earth. We do what we must. Furthermore, like innate sex differences,
our impulse to exploit nature cannot reasonably be criticized because it is beyond our
control: every human being -- every living thing -- has a powerful innate drive to preserve
his own existence, and, in the more recently evolved animals, a perhaps even more
powerful drive to preserve the existence of his offspring. This willingness to see the rest
of the world as a means for preserving one's self and one's children is inevitable in any
life-form that transmits its traits to its offspring. For imagine a gene that did not code for
this drive. It would obviously be at a disadvantage when competing for resources with
genes that did code for self- and offspring-preservation at all costs. It would reproduce less
readily and quickly disappear. In Heaven the lion and the lamb can lie down together
because the lion need not take in energy from the environment, but the human sense of
what man is entitled to do was shaped by conditions on Earth, where the needs of different
creatures do not necessarily harmonize.
AKH1473 THE ECOFEMINIST NOTION OF "OPPRESSION" IS TOO VAGUE TO BE
USEFUL
Margarita Garcia Levin and Michael Levin, Professors of Philosophy, Yeshiva University
and City College of New York, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Louis Pojman, ed., 2001,
p.199.
Warren's formulation of this argument, and indeed her entire discussion is extremely vague
and loose. At no point does she define "oppression." Furthermore, her definition of
"feminist issue" as anything "that contributes in some way to understanding the oppression
of women" is so wide-open that, under it, the demolition of NOW [National Organization
of Women] headquarters by an errant meteorite would raise "feminist issues," since it
would presumably have the effect of reducing the capacity of women to fight their
oppression. If this construal of Warren's words seems uncharitable, consider her own
example, the introduction of Eucalyptus trees, as a monoculture species tree, in rural India,
said to be a feminist issue because it reduces the ability of Indian women to find food, fuel
and medicine. Has Warren forgotten that Indian men have an equal need for food, fuel and
medicine? But the main point is that the purpose of introducing the monoculture species
tree was commerce, not making the lives of women more difficult, although this may have
been a side-effect. A definition of oppression that ignores intent sweeps in almost anything
that affects women. Speaking more broadly, the lack of concrete examples that would give
us an idea of what Prof. Warren considers to be oppression -- is it inability to vote,
inability to divorce an unwanted spouse, less pay for more work, social expectations that
women will marry and rear children? -- illustrates how feminists make no concessions to
the possibility that their basic assumptions may be mistaken. It is simply taken as
self-evident, without argument, that women are oppressed and that this oppression must
be ended.

AKH1474 OPPOSITION TO ONE FORM OF DOMINATION DOESN'T IMPLY
OPPOSITION TO ALL OTHERS
Margarita Garcia Levin and Michael Levin, Professors of Philosophy, Yeshiva University
and City College of New York, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Louis Pojman, ed., 2001,
p.201.
But let us suppose both of Prof. Warren's premises are true. Let us agree that there is a
single pattern of thought used to justify the domination of women and the domination of
nature. Prof. Warren takes it to follow immediately that anyone who opposes one of these
forms of domination must oppose the other -- that the cause of women against their
oppressors is also the cause of nature, or in the words of a slogan of the 1960s, "Same
struggle, same fight." But natural as this inference may appear, it is quite wrong. Consider
first the relation of men to their weapons and their vehicles. This relationship is in fact one
of domination; men do what they want to with these things, using them as tools, taking
them for joyrides, and the like. In certain respects men treat their vehicles and weapons as
if they were women: they refer to ships as "she," and give their guns female names ("Big
Bertha"). Does it follow that women should see themselves as in some way similar to
weapons, or think that their liberation is tied to the liberation of weapons, just because (as
we have agreed) men dominate their women and their weapons? We take this as a reductio
ad absurdum, but Warren might not: she might well maintain that there is a valid point
here, namely that the struggle to liberate women is linked to the struggle to cease using
weapons as weapons -- that is, feminism and pacificism are as naturally allied as feminism
and anti-naturism. Very well, then, consider the attitude of the Nazis to the Jews. The
Nazis spoke of Jews as vermin and a disease infecting Germany. In other words, the Nazis
created a conceptual link between anti-Semitism and the germ theory of disease. It hardly
follows that anyone who opposed Nazism had to oppose the germ theory of disease.
Another counter-example: during the era of slavery, slaves were treated like animals, and
legally classified with animals and furniture as chattel property. Within broad limits, the
owner of a slave and a horse could do whatever he wanted with either. Surely this does not
mean that there is a "conceptual link" between human slaves and animals, and that
abolishing property rights is necessary for the overthrow of slavery.
AKH1475 ENDING THE OPPRESSION OF SLAVES DIDN'T REQUIRE ENDING THE
OPPRESSION OF ANIMALS
Margarita Garcia Levin and Michael Levin, Professors of Philosophy, Yeshiva University
and City College of New York, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Louis Pojman, ed., 2001,
p.201.
In effect, Prof. Warren is assuming that 'if a person or group of people A thinks B is
similar to C, and for this reason treats B and C similarly, opposition to A's treatment of B
requires opposition to A's treatment of C. Quite to the contrary, just because A thinks B
resembles C, and links B and C in his own mind, that doesn't mean that there really is a
connection between them. Just because slave-holders thought that slaves, animals and
furniture could all be treated as property doesn't mean that slaves are property, or that
slaves are property if and only if furniture is. In historical fact, the enslavement of human
beings was abolished not by ending the ownership of both people and animals, but by
legally severing the link between them. The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves
in the American South and left furniture still owned. Perhaps, again speaking generally,
A is half-right about B and C; his treatment of B is proper but his treatment of C is not.
AKH1476 THE "OPPRESSION" OF WOMEN AND NATURE HAS LITTLE IF
ANYTHING IN COMMON
Margarita Garcia Levin and Michael Levin, Professors of Philosophy, Yeshiva University
and City College of New York, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Louis Pojman, ed., 2001,
p.200-1.
In short, it is only by speaking in her vague and jargon-ridden way that Prof. Warren can
even make it appear that "Sexism is conceptually linked with naturism through an
oppressive conceptual framework characterized by a logic of domination." If women and
nature are "oppressed" at all, they are so in very different ways and for entirely different
reasons. It is quite true that women are sometimes said to be more "natural" than men,
where this means that they are more emotional and spontaneous, and less concerned with
analyzing and following rules. Prof. Warren would seem to endorse this saying, although
it is usually cited as a paradigm of the sort of stereotyping she also deplores. However,
women being more "natural" in this sense hardly suggests that there is some "oppressive
conceptual framework" subsuming the treatment of both.
AKH1477 ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS PREDATE PATRIARCHY
Lisa Benton and John Rennie Short, Professors of Geography at Colgate and Syracuse
Universities, ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE, 1999, p.144.
We believe that feminist arguments relying on a single agency (patriarchy) as the lynchpin
in the whole system of environmental degradation are problematic. We would counter that
human attempts to control nature can be traced back to such technological inventions as
fire, the wheel, tools -- all of which predate patriarchal societies. Patriarchy is not the
original explanation of environmental change and degradation; rather we would agree with
the deep ecologists that the anthropocentric view rests at the heart of environmental
exploitation.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 129
AKH1478 WOMEN ALSO EMBRACE CONSUMERISM AND THREATEN THE
ENVIRONMENT
Michael Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy, Tulane University, CONTESTING
EARTH'S FUTURE, 1994, p.252-3.
Assuming that the behavior of many males in patriarchal society is largely shaped by death
denial, I often wonder whether women in patriarchy confront their mortality any More
successfully and with fewer damaging ecological consequences. The obsession that many
American women exhibit regarding the condition of their bodies, specifically with regard
to their weight and appearance, suggests that such women have their own fears and
resentments about age and death. The Western world's extraordinary "consumerist"
mentality is supported in part by women who are fixated not only on improving their
wardrobes and cosmetics, but also on somehow filling up the internal "void" experienced
by so many people in materialistic societies. To be sure, female preoccupation with
physical appearance is greatly influenced by the male gaze, but the situation is probably
more complex than this. Men are themselves influenced by and seek the approval of the
female gaze, particularly of those females whom men consider attractive. Arguably, so
many modern Western men have been obsessed with acquiring wealth and power because
these often prove effective in gaining the interest of women whom those men consider
desirable. Perhaps by attempting, with markedly little success, to fulfill sexual-romantic
fantasies, men and women alike are concealing more disturbing issues about personal
identity, life purpose, and mortality.
AKH1479 ECOFEMINISM IGNORES THE ROLE WOMEN PLAY IN
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION
Lisa Benton and John Rennie Short, Professors of Geography at Colgate and Syracuse
Universities, ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE, 1999, p.144-5.
In relying on "gender" as the primary factor, ecofeminists actually construct a new
metanarrative in the same tradition as modernists or Marxists. For example, is highly
probable that a rich/white/female/elite member, driving a convertible sports car does not
have the same concern for or affinity to nature as a poor/ Latina/female/single mother who
labors in the strawberry fields in the Central Valley of California. Feminists who see
patriarchy as the structure responsible for creating environmental degradation dangerously
assume that the domination of women and nature is a cross-cultural phenomenon.
Woman-as-victim becomes the dominant concept, overlooking the fact that women have
collaborated in their own subordination and in tile oppression of other women. We must
assign women some culpability: after all some women continue to purchase toxic
household cleaners, they adorn themselves in fur, they choose to drive gas-guzzling cars
(such as sports utility vehicles) and enjoy jet-setting across the globe, thus contributing to
the release of tons of carbon dioxide.
AKH1480 SCAPEGOATING ALL MEN FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS IS
INACCURATE AND MORALLY OBJECTIONABLE
Warwick Fox, National Research Fellow, Center for Environmental Studies, University
of Tasmania, DEEP ECOLOGY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, George
Sessions, ed., 1995, p.276-7.
In doing violence to the complexities of social interaction, simplistic social and political
analyses of ecological destruction are not merely descriptively poor and logically facile,
they are also morally objectionable on two grounds, scapegoating and inauthenticity.
Scapegoating can be thought of in terms of over-inclusiveness. Simplistic analyses target
all men, all capitalists, all whites, and all Westerners, for example, to an equal degree when
in fact certain sub-classes of these identified classes are far more responsible for ecological
destruction than others. Not only that but significant minorities of these classes can be
actively engaged in opposing the interests of both the dominant culture of their class and
those members of their class most responsible for ecological destruction.
AKH1481 ECOFEMINISM ISN'T A COHERENT OR CONSISTENT THEORY
Lisa Benton and John Rennie Short, Professors of Geography at Colgate and Syracuse
Universities, ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE, 1999, p.145.
One critic, Janet Biehl, is concerned about the "disquieting tendency" of ecofeminism. She
argues that ecofeminism has become so blatantly self-contradictory and problematic that
it is incoherent. And because theory should enlighten rather than confuse, the legitimacy
of ecofeminists' claim to an alternate "theory" is challenged. Biehl claims that ecofeminism
often ignores or rejects important intellectual legacies, such as social theory or the best of
western culture and democracy, and instead reinforces irrationalism (through its embrace
of goddess worship and prehistoric rituals). Some ecofeminists trace the subjugation of
women and the domination of nature to the Scientific Revolution; others connect it to the
Judeo-Christian tradition; still others associate it with the Indo-European invasions of
nomadic tribes in Eurasia in 4500 BC. These variations are significant and have yet to be
resolved. Biehl has criticized ecofeminism for being primarily defined by a plethora of
short, often self-contradictory essays on the subject (indeed, much of the ecofeminist
literature is found in anthologies and edited collections that neither attempt to resolve the
inherent contradictions or engage in debate).

AKH1482 THERE'S NO COHERENT BODY OF ECOFEMINIST THOUGHT
Janet Biehl, social ecologist, RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS, 1991, p.2-3.
But apart from these basic themes, the short essays anthologized in these books often
blatantly contradict each other. Some of the recent essays argue, for example, that there is
an innate, even biological "connection" between women and nature, while others avow that
this "connection" is really a socially constructed product. Some advocate a belief in a
goddess, while others are adamantly secular. Some locate the roots of the ecological crisis
in the late Neolithic in Europe, while others locate those roots in Christianity, and still
others in the Scientific Revolution. Some assert that "All is One," while others argue for
particularism and multiplicity. Some are influenced by social ecology, while others have
ties with deep ecology. Some regard ecofeminism as a liberatory concept of nearly
unprecedented proportions, while others - even in articles in these anthologies themselves -
reject the name "ecofeminism" altogether as insulting to feminist activists. Although most
political movements might feel the need to sort out these differences and their theorists
might argue for and against them, producing a healthy debate, ecofeminists rarely confront
each other on the differences in these writings.
AKH1483 ECOFEMINISM PROVIDES NO MEANINGFUL GUIDE TO ACTION
Margarita Garcia Levin and Michael Levin, Professors of Philosophy, Yeshiva University
and City College of New York, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Louis Pojman, ed., 2001,
p.202.
We have all learned from Popper and the empiricists to distrust claims which rule nothing
out; claims which are true no matter what may sound meaningful, but they aren't. The same
caution should be exercised toward ethical theories. However high-sounding its language,
the measure of an ethical theory is its do's and don't's. We need to know what it commands
and what it forbids, the difference (if any) between following and violating it. We have
already remarked on the extreme vagueness of "oppression" and its cognates as used by
Warren and other feminists, so particular attention must be paid to what an ecofeminist
would do that a sexist or naturist ethic would not. "Ecofeminists fight sexism and the
oppression of nature" is the promissory note; now we want its cash value. Would an
ecofeminist cull deer herds? Would she let forest fires burn themselves out? How would
she weigh the aesthetic value of a vista against the economic value of development? Would
it be all right to burn some rain forest if so doing was necessary to save a herd of
elephants? Should Eskimos with no other resources be permitted to hunt whales, or should
they be publicly supported on a reservation (where they will drink themselves to oblivion)?
Demanding a list of specifics may appear inappropriate, even rude, but grandiose promises
about "the dismantling of patriarchal conceptual frameworks" invites it. In fact, Warren's
essay supplies few indications of how ecofeminism would work.
AKH1484 FEMINISM'S PREOCCUPATION WITH GENDER LEADS IT TO
NEGLECT THE NATURAL WORLD
Warwick Fox, National Research Fellow, Center for Environmental Studies, University
of Tasmania, DEEP ECOLOGY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, George
Sessions, ed., 1995, p.278.
All I am drawing attention to here is the fact that this kind of "radical" approach simply
serves to legitimize and, hence, to perpetuate our entirely traditional preoccupation with
interhuman affairs. In accordance with the approach adopted by essentialist feminists, there
is no need to give any serious consideration whatsoever to the possibility that women
might, for example, discriminate against men, accumulate rather than distribute private
wealth, be racist, support imperialism, or be ecologically destructive if the conditions of
their historical subjugation were undone and the possibility of exercising genuine social
and political power were available to them. The upshot is that there is no need to worry
about any form of human domination other than that of androcentrism. For deep ecologists,
it's just another variation on the same old song -- the song that reassures us that all will
become ecologically well with the world if we just put this or that interhuman concern
first.
AKH1485 APPEALS TO NATURE HAVE BEEN USED TO SUPPRESS WOMEN
Karen Green, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS,
Summer 1994, p.127.
It was at least partly in direct response to this reasoning that Wollstonecraft asserted that
it is the faculty of reason which distinguishes human beings from the brutes and that the
perfection of both men and women consists in the triumph of reason and virtue. Viewed
in this way, the second historical argument rests on a one-sided characterization of the
Christian tradition and masks the fact that, historically, feminists have had good reason to
be suspicious of the valorization of nature, since it is so closely associated with the
valorization of women's natural role and with a justification of their exclusion from the
rights of self-determination.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 130
AKH1486 APPEALS TO NATURE HAVE BEEN USED TO JUSTIFY
SUBORDINATION OF WOMEN
Karen Green, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS,
Summer 1994, p.126-7.
The problem of the education of the virtuous citizen, therefore, becomes the problem of
discovering a method of allowing the true God-given nature of man to unfold. This is a
method that has to be discovered by reason, but it is a reason subordinated to the dictates
of nature, which, Rousseau believes, can be discerned in bare outline beneath the actual
character of people who have suffered from centuries of cultural corruption. When applied
to women, this reasoning transforms itself into a classic justification for their subordination
to their husbands within the private sphere of the household. Since it is in women's nature
to bear children, and since, in bearing children, a woman is at a disadvantage and requires
support, nature and reason dictate that her character and education should mould her to
fulfill the role of loving mother and devoted wife. Thus, in this strand of Western
philosophical thought, far from there being a connection between the subordination of
nature and the subordination of women, it is the valorization of nature. which extends to
the valorization of natural women, that is used to justify the subordination of women to
their husbands and to decry the corrupting influence of those disordered women who
neglect their natural maternal duties in favor of participation in the world of politics and
the arts.
AKH1487 OVERGENDERIZATION PRODUCES WOMEN'S OPPRESSION
Huey-li Li, University of Illinois, ECOFEMINISM, Greta Gaard, ed., 1993, p.288.
The splitting of humanity into femininity and masculinity deprives human beings of
personality traits, behavioral patterns, and value systems that could be common to both
men and women. The polarization of maleness and femaleness is in line with the
establishment of the male-dominated and female-subordinated sexual hierarchy. Male
aggression is justified by the ideology of the dominant class, males. Overgenderization in
human culture not only produces women's oppression but also constructs an
aggression-oriented society. While genetic factors may contribute to male aggressiveness,
other factors are also important. In accordance with the primary ecological principle that
everything is interconnected with everything else, an inquiry into the impact of
genderization must also include a consideration of interrelated sociohistorical conditions,
events, and processes.
AKH1488 ECOFEMINISM RETAINS PATRIARCHAL STEREOTYPES
Janet Biehl, social ecologist, RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS, 1991, p.15-6.
Despite ecofeminism's allegedly "revolutionary" potential, some feminists (who are not
ecofeminists) have criticized ecofeminism and its closely associated cultural feminism for
their reactionary implications. Ecofeminist images of women, these critics correctly warn,
retain the patriarchal stereotypes of what men expect women to be. These stereotypes
freeze women as merely caring and nurturing beings, instead of expanding the full range
of women's human potentialities and abilities. To focus overwhelmingly on women's
"caring nature" as the source of ecologically necessary "values" easily leads to the notion
that women are to remain intuitive and discourages them from expanding their human
horizons and capacities.
AKH1489 ITS TOTAL REJECTION OF WESTERN CULTURE MAKES
ECOFEMINISM POLITICALLY REGRESSIVE
Janet Biehl, social ecologist, RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS, 1991, p.1-2.
But recent ecofeminist literature does not fulfill this promise at all. It has not drawn on the
best of previous social theory, but instead works in a realm outside it, even rejecting it as
"male" or "masculine." It has not drawn on the best legacies of Western culture - and
despite its many abuses, Western culture does have emancipatory legacies - but instead
situates women outside Western culture altogether, associated with a mystified notion of
"nature." It largely ignores or rejects legacies of democracy, of reason, and of the project
of scientifically understanding much of the natural world as part of a radical liberatory
movement. For if women and nature are radically counterposed to Western culture, as
many ecofeminists claim, this lodges women basically outside the best of that cultural
legacy. It has thus become an ideology that, far from being liberatory, is regressive for
most thinking women.
AKH1490 ECOFEMINISM IS CONTRIBUTING TO AN INTELLECTUAL REIGN OF
TERROR
Luc Ferry, Professor of Philosophy, the Sorbonne, THE NEW ECOLOGICAL ORDER,
1995, p.118.
Salleh's thesis, which is representative of that of the entire movement, is that the hatred of
women, which ipso facto brings about that of nature, is one of the principal mechanisms
governing the actions of men (of "males") and, thus, the whole of Western/patriarchal
culture. It would be wrong, seen from Europe, to think that this is simply a fantasy, one of
those hyperboles characteristic of fringe groups, which we ourselves had abundant
experience with in the 1960s. For ecofeminism is beginning to occupy a less than
negligible place in the heart of American feminism and beyond: it is omnipresent in
universities, where it strongly contributes to the reign of intellectual terror exercised in the
name of political correctness and the right to be different - the demand for which evolves
easily into a demand for a difference in rights.

AKH1491 ECOFEMINISM SCORNS DEMOCRACY
Janet Biehl, social ecologist, RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS, 1991, p.135-6.
Some ecofeminists who refer to the ideas of democratic politics actually do so in a
pejorative way. Ynestra King sees the democratic political tradition as historically contrary
to organic community. "The Western male bourgeois...extracts himself from the realm of
the organic to become a public citizen, as if born from the head of Zeus" - as if the words
"public citizen" denote nothing but the grasping "male bourgeois" ego concerned only with
self-interest! For King, to draw on "the Western democratic tradition" is to "work. ..with
a political legacy that is founded on the repudiation of the organic, the female, the tribal,
and particular ties between people...I am mindful that the original citizen in that tradition
is male, propertied, and xenophobic." This is convoluted thinking and atavism with a
vengeance, especially if one considers that the Western democratic tradition produced a
consciousness of universal freedom that ultimately opened the public sphere to women and
advanced beyond the parochialism of "tribal" life with its focus on the blood tie.
AKH1492 BY ESSENTIALIZING WOMEN, RADICAL ECOFEMINISM RISKS
PERPETUATING HIERARCHY
Carolyn Merchant, Department of Conservation and Resources Studies, University of
California, Berkeley, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Michael Boylan, ed., 2001, p.79.
Yet in emphasizing the female, body, and nature components of the dualities male/female,
mind/body, and culture/nature, radical ecofeminism runs the risk of perpetuating the very
hierarchies it seeks to overthrow. Critics point to the problem of women's own
reinforcement of their identification with a nature that Western culture degrades. If "female
is to male as nature is to culture," as anthropologist Sherry Ortner argues, then women's
hopes for liberation are set back by association with nature. Any analysis that makes
women's essence and qualities special ties them to a biological destiny that thwarts the
possibility of liberation. A politics grounded in women's culture, experience, and values
can be seen as reactionary.
AKH1493 ECOFEMINISM ESSENTIALIZES GENDER
Lisa Benton and John Rennie Short, Professors of Geography at Colgate and Syracuse
Universities, ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE, 1999, p.146.
Thus one problem in attempting to come to feminist terms with the environment is,
ironically, that it can often be ecologically unsound. Ecological principles rely on the
construction of the interdependence of many complex systems. There is no one single
strand that can be removed from the web. Ecofeminists can fall prey to the temptation to
simplify explanations down to the polarization of sex/gender difference, a temptation,
however, that continues the reductionist imperative of the modernistic, mechanistic
paradigm to which many feminists and ecofeminists are in opposition. The writings of
many feminists and ecofeminists do not reflect a perception of the whole (environmental
destruction as the result of a complex political, economic, social, and even religious
construct) for the sum of the parts (the parts in this case being patriarchal military,
government, eco-establishment). The complexity of human experience and interaction and
the links between various structures is thus reduced to a single dimension: gender
domination. Such a view is based on a linear, cause-and-effect paradigm that cannot
elucidate the complexity of the worldwide environmental problem. When every analysis
leads to gender and patriarchy as the casual agent, it is essentialist. Gender makes a
difference but perhaps not the difference.
AKH1494 HEIDEGGER'S MEDITATIVE THINKING LEADS TO INDIFFERENCE TO
SUFFERING
Michael Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy, Tulane University, CONTESTING
EARTH'S FUTURE, 1994, p.134.
Others assert that the "not-thinking" involved in Zen's nondualism can all too easily
involve a simpleminded refusal to think, which can encourage passivity in the face of
redressable injustice and misery. This passivity may be a major problem for Heidegger's
"thinking," which can be read as an ontological aestheticism with little concern about
concrete suffering.
AKH1495 HEIDEGGER'S POSITION UNDERMINES ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM
Richard Watson, Professor of Philosophy, Washington University, ENVIRONMENTAL
ETHICS, Louis Pojman, ed., 2001, p.163-4.
A difficult question that arises for advocates of this position is whether or not humans can
be activists. For example, near-total passivism seems to be suggested by Michael
Zimmerman in his approving summation of what he takes to be Heidegger's admonition
to the Western World: Only Western man's thinking has ended up by viewing the world
as a storehouse of raw material for the enhancement of man's Power.... [A] new kind of
t h i n k i n g mu s t ... p a s s b e yond the subjectivistic thinking o f
philosophy-science-technology.... Heidegger indicates that the new way must "let beings
be," i.e., it must let them manifest themselves in their own presence and worth, and not
merely as objects for the all-powerful Subject.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 131
AKH1496 PERMUTATION - YOU CAN ACCEPT THE KRITIK AND STILL ACT
Hanspeter Padrutt, psychiatrist, Daseinanalytisches Institut, Zurich, HEIDEGGER AND
THE EARTH, Ladelle McWhorter, ed., 1992, p.31.
Once in a while the conceptual interplay of theory and praxis is put against this attempt.
From the philosophical point of view the so-called practical or political dimension of the
attempt is rejected, whereas from the ecological point of view the so-called theoretical,
philosophical dimension is rejected. But deeper reflection and decisive action do not need
to contradict each other. Those who shield themselves from the political consequences
might one day be confronted with the fact that no decision is still a decision that can have
consequences. And those who believe that they need not bother about thinking fail to
recognize that no philosophy is also a philosophy e.g., a cybernetic worldview -- that also
has consequences.
AKH1497 HEIDEGGERIAN CRITICISM CAN'T SOLVE THE PROBLEMS OF THE
NUCLEAR AGE
J. Fisher Solomon, UCLA, DISCOURSE AND REFERENCE IN THE NUCLEAR AGE,
1988, p.241.
Time and again Heidegger condemns as ignoble any contemplation of the kind of concrete
political dilemmas that require negotiation and compromise. This is the way of weakness,
of the social horde, of a puling desire for security. The Heideggerian hero, who looks more
and more like Nietzsche's superman, rejects all security to open himself to Being, to shatter
himself upon the unknown. But we have already done that by opening up the unfamiliar
world of the atom. It is now time for the unheroic activity of coping with our own
discoveries. To put this another way, the Heideggerian critique cannot lead us to a realistic
political criticism. Poetry is not going to solve the concrete problems of the nuclear age.
AKH1498 HEIDEGGER REMAINED ANTHROPOCENTRIC
Michael Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy, Tulane, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS,
Fall 1993, p.213.
One important difference between the two is that while deep ecologists maintain that
humanity is a part of life on Earth, Heidegger, like many other anti-Darwinian
conservatives, held that humans are not animals. In fact, he argued that the modernity's
"naturalistic humanism" was the final, nihilistic stage of Aristotle's definition of humans
as rational animals. Because of this attitude, his former student, Karl Lowith, accused him
of perpetuating the anthropocentricism and dualism so characteristic of the metaphysical
and theological traditions which he purported to overcome.
AKH1499 HEIDEGGER MAINTAINS A JUSTIFICATION FOR HUMAN
DOMINATION OF NATURE
Michael Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy, Tulane, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS,
Fall 1993, p.201.
Deep ecologists are sometimes suspicious of Heidegger's claims about the uniqueness of
humanity's capacity for understanding being, for Western society has always justified its
domination of nature by portraying it as inferior to what is "uniquely" human: soul,
rationality, spirit, language. Such suspicions are fueled by Heidegger's claim that there is
something worse than the destruction of all life on Earth by nuclear war.
AKH1500 HEIDEGGER MAINTAINS HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISM
Leslie Paul Thiele, Professor of Political Science, University of Florida, TIMELY
MEDITATIONS, 1995, p.185.
Heidegger, as Zimmerman notes, also supports a nonanthropocentric approach to the earth
and the world. This is absolutely true, and has obvious ecological merit. But Heidegger
does not suggest that we replace anthropocentrism with biocentrism. Biocentrism, intrinsic
to most deep-ecological perspectives, relegates the human species to the same status as all
other organisms." Despite his fervent attack on subjectivism and humanism, Heidegger
firmly maintains human exceptionalism. He maintains this exceptionalism because of
human being's unique disclosive capacities; "it is man, open toward Being, who alone lets
Being arrive as presence" (ID 31 - 32; see also BT 28, 35). Animals, Heidegger writes,
cannot engage in the "work" - philosophical, artistic, or political - in which the disclosure
of Being in thought, word, or deed occurs. And this incapacity of beasts arises for one
simple reason: "they lack freedom" (PT 109). Our capacity for disclosive freedom makes
our sojourn here on earth exceptional, however brief this sojourn is in cosmic or
evolutionary terms.
AKH1501 HEIDEGGER'S PRIORITY OF ONTOLOGICAL OVER ETHICAL IS
LINKED TO HIS NAZISM
Michael Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy, Tulane University, CONTESTING
EARTH'S FUTURE, 1994, p.109-10.
This idea has been criticized by Emmanuel Levinas, who says that ontology forces the
Other to conform to the identity posited by the subject, whereas ethics demands that I
conform or accede to the ethical demands of the Other. For Heidegger, ontology meant the
study of humanity's openness for the self-manifesting of things, but at times Levinas seems
to define ontology in a way that corresponds to what Heidegger meant by metaphysics --
an anthropocentric, subjectivistic ways of understanding things. Yet Levinas's concern
with ethics and his mistrust for Heidegger's ontology is important when we recall the grim
political consequences of Heidegger's belief that National Socialism was "a complete
transformation of our German Dasein," a revolutionary ontological shift, which
-renouncing the ethical limits of democratic modernity, Judaism, and Christianity -- would
establish a new ethos to save Germany from modernity.

AKH1502 HEIDEGGER'S ONTOLOGICAL EMPHASIS LED HIM TO NEGLECT THE
ETHICAL
Michael Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy, Tulane University, MINDING NATURE:
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ECOLOGY, David Macauley, ed., 1996, p.73-4.
Regrettably, as John D. Caputo has observed, Heidegger neglected to take seriously
enough the Jewish and Christian claim that human existence, by dint of its association with
and dependence on the transcendent, also must take upon itself the enormous moral
responsibility of living according to a law that runs counter to natural human inclinations.
Enthralled by the Greek fascination with the aesthetic, that is, with encouraging and
encountering the manifestness of things, Heidegger neglected the Jewish and Christian
preoccupation with the moral, that is, with being responsible for the ontical well-being of
the Other. Resolving to do the "hard" and "dangerous" things needed to let being reveal
itself anew, the Nazi Heidegger turned a blind eye to the suffering of those who were
crushed in this brutal process.
AKH1503 HEIDEGGER'S ANTIMODERNISM MADE HIM ANTIDEMOCRATIC
Michael Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy, Tulane University, BENEATH THE
SURFACE, Eric Katz, et al., eds., 2000, p.182.
Some proponents of Earth-based religiosity, like many other people faced with the trials
and tribulations of modern life, yearn for a simplified tribal life in closer proximity to the
land. Wilber, however, cautions against giving in to such yearnings, since doing so would
encourage the regression to prepersonal modes of awareness and the rise of corresponding
authoritarian social structures that would undermine the positive achievements of
modernity, including individuated personhood and constitutional democracy. Heidegger
was antimodern in being antidemocratic and in denying a developmental view of history;
moreover, he was neopagan in rejecting the biblical tradition and in calling for the arrival
of new gods to generate a new world to replace the nonworld of technological modernity.
Nevertheless, in calling for the Germans to repeat ancient Greece's generation of a world,
he was asking them to prepare for a new encounter with the transcendent, that is, with the
being of entities that transcends even the gods.
AKH1504 HEIDEGGER WAS A REACTIONARY ELITIST
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.189.
In such passages Heidegger is already, as early as in Being and Time, insinuating a
'leadership principle' into his 'ontology'. What is unambiguous is that he is a reactionary
elitist, for whom the 'They' - bluntly, the Nietzschean 'herd' - is the inauthentic raw material
of the authentic few, most notably the German reactionary mandarins who are guided by
conscience, guilt, care, and a heroic stance toward the certainty of death.
AKH1505 HEIDEGGER REJECTED INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS
Michael Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy, Tulane, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS,
Fall 1993, p.209-10.
Heidegger also favored abandoning individual rights. Speaking in favor of the Nazi
"revolution" that would save Western civilization from extinction, he proclaimed that "The
individual by himself counts for nothing." Hence, he was silent while thousands of German
socialists, communists, liberals, and other "un-German" types were rounded up into
concentration camps near Freiburg. After the war, moreover, he refused to comment on the
Nazi's murder of millions of Jews and other "vermin." During difficult times, he apparently
concluded, difficult things have to be done. If Manes' radical views prevail during a time
of "ecological scarcity," what would happen to selfish, ecologically unenlightened people
who refused to "abandon" their inalienable rights? Would they be rounded up and possibly
eliminated so that the Earth could recover from the effects of the "human cancer" now
afflicting it?
AKH1506 HEIDEGGER REJECTS LIBERTY, EQUALITY, AND DEMOCRACY
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.168.
'Authenticity', it can be said without any philosophical frills, lay in the pristine Teutonic
world of the tribal Germans who retained their ties with 'the Gods', and with later peoples
who still tried to nourish their past amidst the blighted traits of the modern world. Since
some authors try to muddy Heidegger's prelapsarian message by focusing on his assumed
belief in individual freedom and ignoring his hatred of the French Revolution and its
egalitarian, 'herd'-like democracy of the 'They', it is worth emphasizing that such a view
withers in the light of his denial of individuality. 'The individual by himself counts for
nothing', he declared after becoming a member of the National Socialist party in 1933. 'The
fate of our Volk in its state counts for everything.'
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 132
AKH1507 WE NEED TO ENGAGE IN BOTH CALCULATIVE AND MEDITATIVE
THINKING
Joseph Kockelmans, Penn State philosopher, HEIDEGGER AND SCIENCE, 1985, p.254.
This ambivalent attitude In regard to modern science and technology, which says at the
same time yes and no, corresponds to the two modes of thinking we have referred to
earlier. Calculative thinking will help us to use our resources effectively; meditative
thinking will help us in making certain that technicity will not overpower us. Meditative
thinking will thus make it possible for us to come to a freedom in regard to things that lets
beings be ( Gelassenheit), by maintaining an openness to the mystery that is hidden in
modern technicity.
AKH1508 HUMANS SHOULD NEITHER TOTALLY IDENTIFY WITH NOR
TOTALLY REPUDIATE TECHNOLOGY
William Lovitt, Professor of German, Cal State-Sacramento, introduction to Martin
Heidegger's THE QUESTION CONCERNING TECHNOLOGY AND OTHER ESSAYS,
1977, p.xxxiii.
Man needs above all in our age to know himself as the one who is so claimed. The
challenging summons of Enframing "sends into a way of revealing" (QT 24). So long as
man does not know this, he cannot know himself; nor can he know himself in relation to
his world. As a consequence he becomes trapped in one of two attitudes, both equally vain:
either he fancies that he can in fact master technology and can by technological means -
by analyzing and calculating and ordering - control all aspects of his life; or he recoils at
the inexorable and dehumanizing control that technology is gaining over him, rejects it as
the work of the devil, and strives to discover for himself some other way of life apart from
it. What man truly needs is to know the destining to which he belongs and to know it as
a destining, as the disposing power that governs all phenomena in this technological age.
AKH1509 CURRENT EVENTS CONFIRM REALISM
Barry Buzan, Professor of International Relations, University of Westminster,
INTERNATIONAL THEORY: POSITIVISM AND BEYOND, Steve Smith, et al., eds.,
1996, p.61.
Realism also finds seemingly endless affirmation in current events. One of its attractions,
for some, is that it gives an odds on advantage to those who make gloomy predictions (i.e.
more power politics, more conflict) about the future. Much of realism can be read as a
sophisticated form of fatalism, and as Fukuyama (1992, p. 70) notes: 'a naive optimist
whose expectations are belied appears foolish, while a pessimist proven wrong maintains
an aura of profundity and seriousness'. The dialectics of order and conflict in the three
world wars (two hot, one cold) of the twentieth century provide a good illustration of how
current events reinforce realist pessimism. The wars themselves of course supported the
realist view, as did their outcomes.
AKH1510 REALISM IS ANTI-MILITARISTIC
Kenneth Waltz, former Professor of International Relations, University of California,
Berkeley, REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, 1998, p.373.
There are really two reasons why people think that I am a hardline conservative. The first
is that they think realists are. And that is so ingrained that when Morgenthau very actively
opposed the war in Vietnam. there were a lot of people who were saying, 'Oh, he's tired of
being unpopular. He wants to be popular, especially among the youth. So he's renounced
all his beliefs, and now he's opposing the war in Vietnam.' That was absolutely false. He
was opposing the war in Vietnam because he was a realist. The other reason that I think
that people think of me as a hardline conservative is that the people who read the theory
tend not to read what I write that isn't theory. I've written quite a bit of stuff on the
military. And I've been a fierce critic of American military policy and spending and
strategy, at least since the 1970s. The fact is that there is no way to read directly from a
theory to policy conclusions. People who say realists are hardline conservatives are doing
that. They're saying, 'That's his theoretical stance; therefore that must be his policy
preference.
AKH1511 THE SECURITY DILEMMA CAN'T BE ELIMINATED THROUGH
BETTER DISCURSIVE PRACTICES
Dale Copeland, Professor, Department of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of
Virginia, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, Fall 2000, p.212.
Yet by bracketing off domestic processes, Wendt has overlooked the irony of
constructivism: that the mutability of human ideational structures at the domestic level
reinforces leaders' great uncertainty about future intentions at the interstate level. The
security dilemma, with all its implications, is real and pervasive. It cannot be talked away
through better discursive practices. It must be faced.
AKH1512 THE CENTRAL REALIST INSIGHTS REMAIN TRUE
Robert Myers, President, Carnegie Commission on Ethics and International Affairs,
ETHICS AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Volume 11, 1997, p.258.
Another contemporary observation on the strength of the realist tradition is from Robert
Kagan, in an otherwise critical article: The realists' central insights into the competitive and
conflictual nature of mankind remain true; nor should we forget the truism that all great
powers must some day fall. Indeed, the task of realism should be to warn us that the
present happy state of affairs is extremely fragile: we live in an interwar period. But how
long that period will last, and what quality of international life can be achieved in the
interim, are matters which Americans hold it in their power to influence.

AKH1513 EMPIRICAL RESEARCH SUPPORTS REALISM
John Mearshimer, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago,
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, Summer 1995, p.87.
Liberal institutionalism has been at the center of international relations debates for well
over a decade, a lengthy period by academic standards. If there were strong empirical
support for liberal institutionalism, some of it should have surfaced by now, In fact,
considerable empirical research has been done on the theory. However, most of it
undermines liberal institutionalism and supports realism. Thus, it is not surprising that the
liberal institutionalists are now converting to realism, but it would clarify matters if they
would admit it.
AKH1514 THERE IS NO SINGLE THEORY OF REALISM
Randall Schweller, Professor of Political Science, Ohio State, AMERICAN POLITICAL
SCIENCE REVIEW, December 1997, p.927.
There is no definitive or "single" theory of political realism; there are, instead, many realist
theories derived from the same first principles and, basic set of assumptions.
AKH1515 NO THEORY IS PERFECT, BUT REALISM IS THE BEST AVAILABLE
Robert Myers, President, Carnegie Commission on Ethics and International Affairs,
ETHICS AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Volume 11, 1997, p.260.
Ideally, says Thompson, "the organized body of facts and knowledge upon which the
theorist must depend spans the limits of human knowledge." Since no single individual is
likely to accomplish that in a single lifetime, one looks to history (and psychology) for
examples of success in interstate relations, both ancient and contemporary, and does the
best that one can to "theorize" about international relations. This can only provide one
answer -- not the whole answer -- but it is my contention that realism presents the best
explanation for international relations available.
AKH1516 REALISM SURVIVES BECAUSE OF THE LACK OF AN ALTERNATIVE
Ethan Kapstein, Council of Foreign Relations, INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION,
Autumn 1995, p.751.
I argue in this essay that structural realism, qua theory, must be viewed as deeply and
perhaps fatally flawed. Yet at the same time, qua paradigm or worldview, it continues to
inform the community of international relations scholars. The reason for this apparent
paradox is no less sociological than epistemological. Borrowing from Thomas Kuhn, I
argue that structural realism will not die as the cornerstone of international relations theory
until an alternative is developed that takes its place. In the absence of that alternative,
students of world politics will continue to use it as their cornerstone; in an important sense,
structural realism continues to define the discipline.
AKH1517 CRITICAL THEORY ISN'T AN ALTERNATIVE TO REALISM
John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago,
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, Winter 1994/95, p.46-7.
Critical theorists have ambitious aims. However, critical theory also has important flaws,
and therefore it will likely remain in realism's shadow. Specifically, critical theory is
concerned with affecting fundamental change in state behavior, but it says little about how
it comes about. Critical theorists do occasionally point to particular causes of change, but
when they do, they make arguments that are inconsistent with the theory itself. Finally,
there is little empirical evidence to support the claims of critical theorists, and much to
contradict them.
AKH1518 REALISM IS KEY TO HUMAN SURVIVAL
Kenneth Thompson, Professor of Political Science, University of Virginia, MORALISM
AND MORALITY IN POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY, 1985, p.106.
If Morgenthau was right in his analysis of nuclear war, his legacy of living with all the
contradictions and ambiguities of the Cold War may be more enduring than any of us at
first supposed. For his political realism, linking power conflicts with diplomatic
accommodation, may not only be the best of possible alternative approaches to the Cold
War. It may be the only viable and workable approach if mankind is to survive.
AKH1519 REALISM, NOT MORALITY, BEST ASSURES PEACE
Francis Gavin, Postdoctoral Fellow in International Security, Harvard, ORBIS, Fall 1997,
p.641.
Peace and stability are more likely when considerations of power are taken into account
in policy making. When ideology or morality drove American foreign policy during the
twentieth century, the result was often failure.
AKH1520 REALISM WOULD REDUCE MILITARY INTERVENTION
Jack Donnelly, Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina,
TRADITIONS OF INTERNATIONAL ETHICS, Terry Nardin and David Mapel, eds.,
1992, p.102.
In fact, in the United States, where moral and ideological concerns have often served to
justify intervention, a consistent application of realist principles would almost certainly
lead to far less intervention.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 133
AKH1521 REALISM BEST DEALS WITH LARGE IMPACT SCENARIOS
Francis Gavin, Postdoctoral Fellow in International Security, Harvard, ORBIS, Fall 1997,
p.641.
Realism is the most prudent policy for the modern world because on the big issues, as
Ninkovich quotes Dean Acheson saying, "we can be wrong only once." As for Wilson
himself, perhaps his best epitaph flowed from the pen of the first modern realist,
Machiavelli: "Men always commit the error of not knowing where to limit their hopes, and
by trusting to these rather than to a just measure of their resources, they are generally
ruined." This hard-learned lesson may have been Wilson's most lasting legacy.
AKH1522 THE CLASSICAL AMERICAN STATESMEN DISPLAYED A PRUDENT
REALISM
Kenneth Thompson, Professor of Political Science, University of Virginia, MORALISM
AND MORALITY IN POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY, 1985, p.28.
Alexander Hamilton warned in his "Pacificus" and "Americanus" letters that the only sure
guide was the national interest. George Washington resisted the popular mass movement
lead by Citizen Genet for intervention on the side of the French Revolution on grounds that
"no nation is to be trusted further than it is bound by its interest; and no prudent statesman
or politician will venture to depart from it." Even American idealists such as Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison, Henry Clay, and Abraham Lincoln, especially when they were
responsible for decision-making, were less concerned with American involvement in
revolutions abroad than in building a good society and preserving national security.
AKH1523 AMERICAN POLICY TOWARD GERMANY SHOWS THE SUCCESSES
OF REALISM
Francis Gavin, Postdoctoral Fellow in International Security, Harvard, ORBIS, Fall 1997,
p.637-8.
In fact, despite the claims of Hampton, Smith, and even Ninkovich, it could be argued that
American policy towards Germany during the postwar period is one of realism's greatest
success stories. After the Second World War, the United States faced enormous political,
economic, and military difficulties in Europe: a powerful Soviet Union seemingly
determined to dominate the whole continent, a divided and resentful Germany that was
sure to be a source of danger in years to come, a weakened Western Europe, lacking the
confidence and strength necessary to stabilize Europe, and an American populace
unwilling to make a large military commitment in Europe. But in the two decades
following the war, the United States struggled to come to terms with the seemingly
insoluble problem of rebuilding and defending Western Europe while keeping Germany
in line and not provoking the Soviets. This involved confronting the seemingly intractable
dilemma of marshaling German power for the Western alliance without allowing such
power to be used independently. This problem was made all the more difficult by the
fundamental changes to the international system produced by the nuclear revolution. This
struggle had little to do with Wilsonian concerns about world opinion or democratization
or even the spread of American values. it had to do rather with the distribution of military
power in Central Europe.
AKH1524 PACIFIST NEGLECT OF THE SECURITY DILEMMA LEADS
ULTIMATELY TO WAR
Michael Doyle, Professor, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, WAYS
OF WAR AND PEACE, 1997, p.27.
Herz focused on three forms of utopian internationalism: Mazzinian nationalism, Marxist
Socialist 'internationalism, and Cobdenite commercial pacifism. For each, whether a world
of free nations, liberated working classes, or competitive capitalism, fulfillment meant
peace. But each neglected, Herz charged, the "security dilemma," which consists of the
dilemma all states face. Realists warn us that without a world government, no state will be
able to trust other states because It cannot be assured of their peaceful intentions. Whether
those intentions appear to be satisfied nationalism, Socialist internationalism, or
commercial pacifism, each state's defenses appear to be potential offensive preparations
to other states. The result: "A vicious circle will arise -- of suspicion and countersuspicion,
competition for power, armament races, ultimately war."
AKH1525 ORTHODOX INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SCHOLARSHIP SEEKS
PEACE, NOT CONTROL
D.S.L. Jarvis, University of British Columbia, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND
THE CHALLENGE OF POSTMODERNISM, 2000, p.202.
Certainly orthodox practitioners too have been far from successful in explaining and
understanding international relations, in achieving peace, and avoiding war. Yet at least
among those who disavow deconstructionism and postmodernist subversion, there is a
desire for theory, a wish to better understand and explain international phenomena and,
within this ambit, to manipulate and control certain aspects of international relations and
thereby improve them. This is not control for its own sake, as post-modernists falsely
accuse with Orwellian insinuations, but control and manipulation in order to improve,
enhance, and better international relations such that world politics is not an anarchical
realm populated by war-prone states. Our professional preoccupations were founded on
such laudable objectives. More is the pity that these have now been turned against us as
subversive postmodernists paint a grim and unfounded picture of modernist obsession with
the technical manipulation of history for the sake of control.

AKH1526 CRITICAL THEORY CAN'T GUARANTEE THAT A MORE VIOLENT
DISCOURSE WON'T REPLACE REALISM
John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago,
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, Winter 1994/95, p.44.
Thus, in a sense, the communitarian discourse championed by critical theorists is wishful
thinking, not an outcome linked to the theory itself Indeed, critical theory cannot guarantee
that the new discourse will not be more malignant than the discourse it replaces. Nothing
in the theory guarantees, for example, that a fascist discourse far more violent than realism
will not emerge as the new hegemonic discourse.
AKH1527 CRITICAL THEORY CAN'T EXPLAIN WHY REALISM PERSISTED SO
LONG
John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago,
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, Winter 1994/95, p.44-5.
Three points are in order regarding the critical theorists' interpretation of history. First, one
cannot help but be struck by the sheer continuity of realist behavior in the critical theorists'
own account of the past. Seven centuries of security competition and war represents an
impressive span of time, especially when you consider the tremendous political and
economic changes that have taken place across the world during that lengthy period.
Realism is obviously a human software package with deep-seated appeal, although critical
theorists do not explain its attraction.
AKH1528 REALISM EXPLAINS STATE BEHAVIOR UNDER UNCERTAINTY
BETTER THAN CONSTRUCTIVISM
Dale Copeland, Professor, Department of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of
Virginia, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, Fall 2000, p.201-2.
Wendt accepts that the problem facing rational states "is making sure that they perceive
other actors, and other actors' perception of them, correctly" (p. 334, emphasis in original).
Yet the book provides no mechanism through which Ego and Alter can increase their
confidence in the correctness of their estimates of the other's type. Simply describing how
Ego and Alter shape each other's sense of self and other is not enough. Rational choice
models, using assumptions consistent with structural realism, do much better here. In
games of incomplete information, where states are unsure about the other's type, actions
by security-seeking actors that would be too costly for greedy actors to adopt can help
states reduce their uncertainty about present intentions, thus moderating the security
dilemma. Wendt cannot simply argue that over time states can learn a great deal about
other states. It is what is not "shared," at least in the area of intentions, that remains the
core stumbling block to cooperation.
AKH1529 THE CONSTRUCTIVIST INSIGHT INTO DOMESTIC MUTABILITY
JUSTIFIES REALIST FOREIGN POLICY
Dale Copeland, Professor, Department of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of
Virginia, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, Fall 2000, p.204.
This discussion reveals a deep irony in the constructivist take on international relations.
It is constructivism's very emphasis on the mutability of interests and identities, when
taken down to the domestic level, that reinforces why anarchy forces states to be on guard.
States know that diplomacy alone will rarely be enough to ensure the long-term peaceful
nature of the other (consider the difficulties that Washington faces today in stabilizing
Russia's democratic institutions). This problem is heightened by a fact of which Wendt is
aware: that domestic processes are typically far more "dense" than international ones (pp.
2,13,21, 27-28,107-108). Wendt believes that this fact makes his argument for a systemic
constructivism a "hard case." But he overlooks the more profound point: that the
independence of domestic processes undermines his effort to show that material structures
do not constrain and shape state behavior except by way of ideas rising through
international interaction. If states know that the nature of the other is mostly a function of
its own domestic processes, then they must pay great attention to their present and future
material capability, in order to guard against a situation in which the other becomes
aggressive later on. Thus domestic-level constructivism reinforces the value of a systemic
realist view of world politics, at least as a baseline starting point for theory building.
AKH1530 LIBERALISM OFFERS THE POSSIBILITY OF IDEOLOGICAL
CONSENSUS AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE
James Kurth, Professor of Political Science, Swarthmore, CURRENT HISTORY, January
1999, p.7.
After its victories over fascism and national socialism in World War II, and its victories
over Marxism and communism in the cold war, liberalism now stands alone, triumphant.
Over the past half-century, it has succeeded in undermining both the social bases and the
problem-solving appeals of all its ideological adversaries. Advanced by the United States,
the sole superpower and the leader of the global economy, liberalism promises to make the
new century one of ideological consensus -- indeed, the end of ideology -- and of
international peace.
AKH1531 POST-WAR GERMANY AND JAPAN DEMONSTRATE THE SUCCESSES
OF LIBERALISM
Michael Doyle, Professor, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, WAYS
OF WAR AND PEACE, 1997, p.273.
Similarly, the twentieth-century expansion of Liberalism into less powerful nonLiberal
areas has also had some striking successes. The forcible liberalization of Germany and
Japan following World War II and the long covert financing of Liberal parties in Italy are
the more significant instances of successful transplant.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 134
AKH1532 LIBERALISM HAS MORE EMPIRICAL SUPPORT THAN REALISM OR
CONSTRUCTIVISM
Andrew Moravesik, Professor of Government, Harvard University, INTERNATIONAL
ORGANIZATION, Autumn 1997, p.516.
Third, a theoretical restatement should demonstrate empirical accuracy vis-a-vis other
theories: it should expose anomalies in existing work, forcing reconsideration of empirical
findings and theoretical positions. This restatement of liberal theory meets this criterion
by revealing significant methodological biases in empirical evaluations of realist theories
of "relative gains-seeking" and constructivist analyses of ideas and IR due to the omission
of liberal alternatives. If these biases were corrected, liberal accounts might well supplant
many widely accepted realist and institutionalist, as well as constructivist, explanations of
particular phenomena in world politics.
AKH1533 THE FAILURE OF LIBERALISM WOULD MEAN ANOTHER CENTURY
OF TOTAL WAR
James Kurth, Professor of Political Science, Swarthmore, CURRENT HISTORY, January
1999, p.8.
Does liberalism have a fatal flaw, as did national socialism and communism? It is certainly
difficult to discern one at this time. Liberalism was the product of the international peace
and economic growth of what many historians call the long nineteenth century, the era
between 1789 and 1914 that saw the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and their
lengthy aftermath. It then, astonishingly, turned out to be the ultimate victor in the world
wars -- two hot and one cold -- and economic depression of what the historian Eric
Hobsbawm has called the short twentieth century from 1914 to 1989. But wars and
depression produced formidable enemies of liberalism, which could only be vanquished
at the cost of millions of lives and trillions of dollars. As long as liberalism can deliver on
its promise to make the twenty-first century one of peace and prosperity, it will maintain
its ideological hegemony. But if that project should fail, the twenty-first century is, likely
to be another century of total war and ideological conflict.
AKH1534 LIBERALISM IS WILLING TO INTERVENE TO PREVENT GENOCIDE
Joshua Muravchik, resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute, THE IMPERATIVE
OF AMERICAN LEADERSHIP, 1996, p.22-3.
Will Wilsonians, however, more often hazard military action where no U.S. interests are
at stake? Sometimes yes. They will be more open than Washingtonians to humanitarian
interventions, but the occasions for such are rare and extreme. Indeed, the cases most often
discussed as ripe for humanitarian intervention are hypothetical -- against Pol Pot's mass
slaughter or Hitler's genocide. One contemporary tragedy where a strong case could have
been made for humanitarian intervention was Rwanda, but oddly no one made the case
since America had only recently been burned in Somalia, where a low-risk humanitarian
mission, launched by a very non-Wilsonian president, had been spoiled by "mission
creep."
AKH1535 LIBERALISM ENHANCES RATIONAL POLICY-MAKING
John Hall and T.V. Paul, Professors of Sociology and Political Science, McGill University,
INTERNATIONAL ORDER AND THE FUTURE OF WORLD POLITICS, 1999, p.74.
Nonetheless, the advantages of liberal democracy are much greater than the problems that
it causes. First, liberalism can help rational calculation on the part of states, as we can see
immediately when we review the historical episodes that we have had in mind. Wilhelmine
Germany lacked this ability to assign priorities, thereby so offending its neighbors that it
created the encirclement from which it then tried to escape. In contrast, the cabinet
structure of the British state allowed for more rational policy-making.
AKH1536 LIBERAL VALUES REQUIRE A REJECTION OF CRUSADING
Michael Doyle, Princeton University, INTERNATIONAL ORDER AND THE FUTURE
OF WORLD POLITICS, T. V., Paul and John Hall, eds., 1999, p.42.
A second reason why we should let our enemies identify themselves is that liberal values
require that we should reject an indiscriminate "crusade for democracy." If we seek to
promote democracy because it reflects the rights of all to be treated with equal respect -
irrespective of race, religion, class, or nationality - then equal respect must guide both our
aims and our means. A strategy of geopolitical superiority and liberal imperialism, for
example, would both require increased arms expenditures and international subversion and
have little (or more likely a retrogressive) effect on human rights in the countries that are
our targets.

AKH1537 LIBERALISM IS A LEGITIMATE ELEMENT IN A REVITALIZED SOCIAL
DISCOURSE
Jean Bethke Elshtain, Professor of Ethics, University of Chicago, WOMEN AND WAR,
1987, p.249.
No country can shed its historically determined skin. By this I mean that the strong pacifist
appeal of a Gandhi would fall on uncomprehending ears should it be presented to an
aggressively defined warrior band. There must be within a nation or a people a capacity,
however unformed, that an appeal can forge into something palpable as an identity or
discernible as an idea. Of American social identity it can be said that it is not only
profoundly individual, it is also intensely linked to the belief that being an American
means, or ought to mean, something. It means one has claims against any society that
refuses to treat one with respect. It means America has stood historically for certain worthy
ideals. A revitalized civic discourse must be neither abstract nor ahistorical but concrete
and available to social participants. To break the war/peace nexus, such discourse must
also incorporate potentially transformative features. Liberal and republican elements
commingle in this American civic stew, absorbing moments from Adam Smith's discussion
of commercial society and the tempering of war in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes
of the Wealth of Nations (1776)," and imbibing some of Adam Ferguson's republican
ferocity from An Essay on the History of Civil Society.
AKH1538 AMERICAN LIBERAL HEGEMONY HAS BROUGHT PEACE AMONG
GREAT POWERS
G. John Ikenberry, professor of political science, University of Pennsylvania, CURRENT
HISTORY, January 1999, p.23.
Today we still live in the order created in the 1940s. It is an order largely created by and
centered on the United States. It is an order that constituted a sharp break with previous
patterns of international relations. It is an order built on modern industrial society,
democracy, international capitalism, multilateral institutions, and what might be called
American "liberal hegemony". It is an order that has succeeded in reintegrating Germany
and Japan into a community of industrial democracies -- and that has made war among the
traditional great powers unthinkable. It is an order that has no name or fixed geographical
boundaries. For better or for worse, this American-centered order, crystallized between
1944 and 1951, remains the dominant structure in world politics today.
AKH1539 ITS LIBERAL CHARACTER MAKES AMERICAN HEGEMONY
NON-THREATENING
G. John Ikenberry, professor of political science, University of Pennsylvania, CURRENT
HISTORY, January 1949, p.26.
The deep stability of the postwar order is tied to the liberal character of American
hegemony and the array of international institutions that work together to reduce the
implications of power asymmetries. This complex of democratic states, all connected to
the large and decentralized American democracy, has worked to mute the implications of
power within the postwar political order. Institutions and democracy make the United
States less threatening to other countries, and this makes the postwar order more acceptable
to them. The stakes in world politics -- that is, the implications of winning and losing --
are reduced, thus systematically minimizing the incentives for challenging or overturning
the order. It has been the ability of the United States to exercise "strategic restraint" -- to
reduce the political implications of hegemony -- that has made political order so stable
despite unprecedented power differentials.
AKH1540 INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS REDUCE WAR
Bruce Russett, Professor of International Politics, Yale, BOSTON REVIEW, October
1997, p.14.
One additional influence is worth noting. International organizations reduce conflict in
many ways. A few of them can actually coerce law-breakers; all can mediate conflicts of
interest, convey information and assist problem-solving, and socialize governments and
peoples to common norms and mutual identities. Countries that shared membership in
many international organizations (a few of them universal organizations, most of them
regional organizations for trade, security, development, or environmental protection) were
also less likely to fight each other or threaten to do so.
AKH1541 LIBERALISM IS INCREASINGLY DISPOSED AGAINST INTERVENTION
Stanley Hoffman, Chairman of the Center for European Studies, Harvard University,
FOREIGN POLICY, Spring 1995, p.169.
On both issues the old split about whether or not to intervene is as deep as ever. On
balance, however, the noninterventionist impulse is strengthened by the disappearance of
the Soviet threat and rationalized with the argument that the propagation of political
liberalism will ultimately result from the spread of global economic liberalism. Thus,
paradoxically, the principle of state sovereignty (which is not particularly liberal, since
many states are not based on consent) is often given precedence over the liberal norms of
self-government and of national self-determination. The old argument for nonintervention
was that intervention even for liberal causes would multiply violent conflicts, whereas
liberalism's aim was to dampen them. A new argument is that in a world where chaos is
now a major peril, intervention even for good liberal causes may only create more chaos.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 135
AKH1542 LIBERALISM ISN'T PRONE TO WARS OF CONVERSION
Michael Mandelbaum, Professor of American Foreign Policy, Johns Hopkins University,
SURVIVAL, Winter 1998-9, p.23.
This is not to say that ideology is dead. To the contrary, the ideology that competed with
and vanquished Marxism-Leninism is alive, triumphant and on the march. But that
ideology, liberalism, and the form of government that embodies it, democracy, do not lend
themselves to wars of conversion. Their spread, in fact, contributes to the process of
debellicisation.
AKH1543 LEADING LIBERALS NOW RECOGNIZE THE NEED TO AVOID
CRUSADES
Michael Doyle, Princeton University, INTERNATIONAL ORDER AND THE FUTURE
OF WORLD POLITICS, T. V., Paul and John Hall, eds., 1999, p.41-2.
In order, however., to avoid the extremist possibilities of its abstract universalism, liberal
policy should be constrained by a geopolitical budget. Strategy involves matching what
we are prepared to spend to what we want to achieve. It identifies aims, resources, threats,
and allies. While liberal democracy therefore can identify our natural allies abroad, we
must let our actual enemies identify themselves. One reason for this is that we cannot
embark upon the "crusades" for democracy that have been so frequent within the liberal
tradition. In a world armed with nuclear weapons crusading is suicidal. And in a world
where changes in regional balances of power could, be extremely destabilizing for
ourselves and our allies, indiscriminate provocations of hostility (such as against the
People's Republic of China) could create increased insecurity (for Japan and ourselves).
We simply do not have the excess strength that would free us from a need to economize
on dangers.
AKH1544 LIBERALISM BEST ANALYZES INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL
ISSUES
Stephen Krasner, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University, INTERNATIONAL
THEORY: POSITIVISM AND BEYOND, Steve Smith, et al., eds., 1996, p.123-4.
Issues related to the international environment, for instance, seem to cry out for liberal
analysis since it appears that everyone can be made better off if institutions can be
developed to deal with externalities including mechanisms for side payments. For example
agreements banning the production of CFCs were reached quite quickly in the later 1980s
when the scientific evidence for ozone depletion became unassailable and when, one must
add, the major chemical companies, especially Dupont, were able to produce substitutes.
Distributional conflicts were resolved by providing technical and material aid to tropical
Third World states which stood to lose the most from the ban.
AKH1545 LIBERALISM HAS LED TO A PACIFIC UNION OF SOCIETIES
Michael Doyle, Professor, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, WAYS
OF WAR AND PEACE, 1997, p.260.
Beginning in the eighteenth century and slowly growing since then, a zone of peace, which
Kant called the pacific federation or pacific union, began to be established among Liberal
societies. (More than sixty Liberal states currently make up the union. Most are in Europe
and North America, but they can be found on every continent.)
AKH1546 LIBERALISM STRENGTHENS THE PROSPECTS FOR WORLD PEACE
Michael Doyle, Professor, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, WAYS
OF WAR AND PEACE, 1997, p.252.
Yet the peaceful intent and restraint that Liberalism does manifest in limited aspects of its
foreign affairs announce the possibility of a world peace this side of the grave or of world
conquest. Liberals, contrary to the Institutionalists, have created something considerably
more stable than a troubled peace constantly threatening an outbreak of war. They have
strengthened the prospects for a world peace established by the steady expansion of a
separate peace among Liberal societies.
AKH1547 LIBERALISM NEEDS TO BE EVALUATED IN COMPARISON TO ITS
ALTERNATIVES
Michael Doyle, Professor, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, WAYS
OF WAR AND PEACE, 1997, p.299.
In the end, as with most theoretical disputes, the debate will turn on the alternatives.
Liberal theory should not be compared with the statistical residual a richly described case
study, or "History" but with the comparative validity of other theories of similar scope. To
do this, we need disconfirmable versions of the two other leading modern candidates,
Realism and Marxism, which is in part the aim of this book.
AKH1548 LIBERALISM UNDERSTANDS SECURITY PROBLEMS BETTER THAN
REALISM
Daniel Deudney, Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania,
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, Spring 1995, p.225.
In its republican forms, liberalism claims an understanding of the security problem that is
superior to realism's because it is more complete: it addresses the full insecurity quadrangle
of revolution, tyranny, war, and empire, and it understands that the statist solution is itself
a potential threat. Given this, structural republicanism is security liberalism and should be
added to Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye's four types of liberalism (the commercial,
democratic, regulatory, and sociological, varieties).

AKH1549 RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM IS ANTI-CAPITALIST.
Andrew Murphy, Valparaiso University, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Spring 2003,
p.85-6.
From its earliest days, critics note, modern science has walked hand in hand with nascent
capitalism, commercial values, consumerism, industrialism, and the destruction of nature.
In Merchant's words, "The organic framework, in which the Mother Earth image was a
moral restraint against mining, was literally undermined by the new commercial activity."
Thus, the exploitation of nature was part of a larger capitalist project involving the
exploitation of humans; much of the contemporary environmental literature recommends,
indeed presumes, an anticapitalist stance. With capitalism comes the relentless push of
industrialism and technology, and the antimodern narrative of environmental decline views
these various phenomena as jointly responsible for the modern predicament.
AKH1550 CAPITALISM IS KEY TO PROSPERITY AND DEMOCRACY.
Francis Fukuyama, Senior Social Scientist, Rand Corporation, TRUST, 1995, p.4.
The enormous prosperity created by technology-driven capitalism, in turn, serves as an
incubator for a liberal regime of universal and equal rights, in which the struggle for
recognition of human dignity culminates. While many countries have had trouble creating
the institutions of democracy and free markets, and others, especially in parts of the former
communist world, have slid backward into fascism or anarchy, the world's advanced
countries have no alternative model of political and economic organization other than
democratic capitalism to which they can aspire.
AKH1551 PROSPERITY IS KEY TO PEACE.
Walter Mead, World Policy Institute, NEW PERSPECTIVE QUARTERLY, Summer,
1992, p.30.
What if the global economy stagnates -- or even shrinks? In that case, we will face a new
period of international conflict. South against North, rich against poor. Russia, China,
India -- these countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose
a much greater danger to world order than Germany and Japan did in the '30s.
AKH1552 PROSPERITY PROTECTS THE ENVIRONMENT.
Martin Lewis, Pf. Geography, Duke U., Green Delusions, 1992, p.10-1.
Only a strongly expanding economic base can generate the capital necessary to retool our
economy into one that does not consume the earth in feeding itself. Ecological sanity will
be expensive, and if we cannot pay the price we may well perish. This proposition is even
more vital in regard to the Third World; only steady economic expansion can break the
linkages so often found in poor nations between rural desperation and land degradation.
Genuine development, in turn, requires both certain forms of industrialization as well as
participation in the global economy.
AKH1553 DEMOCRACY IS KEY TO PEACE.
Zeev Maoz, Professor of Political Science, Tel Aviv University, INTERNATIONAL
SECURITY, Summer 1997, p.181.
If democracy has this kind of dampening effect on dispute propensity in cases of highly
dispute-prone dyads, it should -- and does -- have an even stronger effect on other
politically relevant dyads. 'Me evidence is highly robust. No matter how we look at it,
democracy, rather than any other ad hoc explanation, accounts for the drastic reduction in
levels of international conflict and brings the probability of war to near zero.
AKH1554 DEMOCRACY PROTECTS THE ENVIRONMENT.
Francis Fukuyama, Senior Social Scientist, Rand Corporation, THE END OF HISTORY
AND THE LAST MAN, 1992, p.114-15.
And in this respect, the communist world's truly abysmal environmental record suggests
that what is most effective in protecting the environment is neither capitalism nor
socialism, but democracy. As a whole, democratic political systems reacted much more
quickly to the growth of ecological consciousness in the 1960s and 70s than did the world's
dictatorships. For without a political system that permits local communities to protest the
siting of a highly toxic chemical plant in the middle of their communities, without freedom
for watchdog organizations to monitor the behavior of companies and enterprises, without
a national political leadership sufficiently sensitized that it is willing to devote substantial
resources to protect the environment, a nation ends up with disasters like Chernobyl, or the
desiccation of the Aral Sea, or an infant mortality rate in Krakow that is four times the
already high Polish national average, or a 70 percent rate of miscarriages in Western
Bohemia.
AKH1555 ALL VARIETIES OF ENVIRONMENTAL RADICALISM ASSUME
CAPITALISM IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE CRISIS
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.150.
The belief that capitalism is a root cause of our environmental crisis is common to all
varieties of radical environmentalism. Among ecomarxists capitalism is, of course, singled
out as the overwhelming source of all ills, social and environmental. But even nonmarxist
greens like Herman Daly insist that an ecologically sustainable, fully capitalist economy
could not exist and that an alternative economic system must therefore be devised (Daly
and Cobb 1989:2).
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 136
AKH1556 DEEP ECOLOGY THREATENS PROGRESS
Dwight Lee, University of Georgia Ramsey professor of economics, SOCIETY,
March/April 1992, p.54.
For many, serving the environment requires the destruction of the capitalistic system,
which is correctly seen as the engine of economic growth. In a publication of Ecotage, an
offshoot of Earth First, we read: "We must first make this an insecure and uninhabitable
place for capitalists and their projects. This is the best contribution we can make towards
protecting the earth and struggling for a liberating society." Barry Commoner testified
before the Senate in 1969 that "nothing less than a change in the political and social
system, including revision of the Constitution, is necessary to save the country from
destroying its natural environment."
AKH1557 ECOFEMINISM REJECTS CAPITALISM
Mary Mellor, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic,
FEMINISM AND ECOLOGY, 1997, p.162.
Ecofeminists incorporate an implicit or explicit rejection of capitalism in their critique of
western society, although very few adopt a socialist analysis in the Marxian sense. Carolyn
Merchant has argued the case for a socialist analysis of the ecological crisis couched in
terms of socialist feminism: 'Socialist feminism views change as dynamic, interactive and
dialectical, rather than as mechanistic, linear and incremental ... A socialist feminist
environmental ethic involves developing sustainable, non-dominating relations with nature
and supplying all peoples with a high quality of life'(1990:105). Merchant points out that
'socialist feminist environmental theory gives both reproduction and production central
places', thus denying the centrality of the Marxian analysis of production. In a later book
Merchant advocates a 'radical ecology' as the basis of a socialist position in which social
movements such as bioregional movements, grassroots struggle and mainstream
environmental campaigning have largely replaced social class as political agents (1992).
AKH1558 FOR BOOKCHIN, THE CAPITALIST STATE DESTROYS BOTH SOCIETY
AND ENVIRONMENT
Alan Rudy and Andrew Light, Ph.D. in sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz,
and Professor of Philosophy, University of Alberta, MINDING NATURE: THE
PHILOSOPHERS OF ECOLOGY, David Macauley, ed., 1996, p.323.
For Bookchin, the capitalist conversion of human beings and nature into commodities is
destroying society. Society is experiencing the "social dialectic and the contradictions of
capitalism" as they expand from economic to hierarchical realms of society. These
expanding forms of domination shape social life so that the "suffocating impersonality"
of modern market-oriented life produces nothing that can serve as a normative guide for
social interaction. The combination of the domination of the nation-state -- which "makes
us less than human ... towers over us, cajoles us, disempowers us, bilks us of our
substance, humiliates us -- and often kills us in its imperial adventures" -- and capitalism
-- which "is unique in contrast with other societies in that it places no limits on growth and
egotism" -- has destroyed all but the very last vestiges of "organic" society. For Bookchin,
the nation-state and capitalism are simplifying both human social life and the natural world
to the detriment of both. This simplification of society and ecology is inseparable from
capitalist technologies and "resources of abundance" which "reinforce the monopolistic,
centralistic and bureaucratic tendencies in the political apparatus. In short, they furnish the
state with historically unprecedented means for manipulating and mobilizing the entire
environment of life -- and for perpetuating hierarchy, exploitation and unfreedom."
AKH1559 GREEN EXTREMISM IS FUNDAMENTALLY ANTI-GROWTH
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.9-10.
But a critique of these notions, however sound, misses the fundamental point. Ultimately,
green extremism is rooted in a single, powerful conviction: that continued economic
growth is absolutely impossible, given the limits of a finite planet. Only if this notion is
discredited can the edifice of eco-radical philosophy be shaken.
AKH1560 DEEP ECOLOGY THREATENS PROGRESS
Dwight Lee, university of Georgia Ramsey professor of economics, SOCIETY,
March/April 1992, p.54.
Many of those who are working to create the impression of a looming natural-resource and
environmental crisis are enamored with the notion of reversing economic progress and
going aback to what they see as a simpler, more virtuous, and supportable way of life. Paul
Ehrlich, the Stanford University biologist and prophet of impending disaster, states:
"We've already had too much economic growth in the United States, Economic growth in
rich countries likes ours is the disease, not the cure." The founder of Earth First, David
Foreman, argues: "We must ... reclaim the roads and the plowed land, halt dam
construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers, and return to wilderness
millions and tens of millions of (acres of) presently settled land."

AKH1561 CAPITALISM OFFERS THE ONLY EFFECTIVE ROUTE TO PROSPERITY
Fareed Zakaria, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK
REVIEW, April 25, 1999, p.18.
The real fantasy in this book is of those wonderful traditional societies that flourished
before modernity and the free market wrecked them. The reality in those communities for
most people was -- and is -- medieval levels of poverty, disease and starvation. That is why
in every third world country peasants flee their settled patterns of life by the busloads,
hoping to find jobs in factory towns and cities. Capitalism has provided the only durable
path out of misery for ordinary people, first in the West and now around the globe. Of
course the movement out of centuries-old poverty is highly dislocating, but the response
can hardly be therefore to stop it.
AKH1562 CAPITALISM IS THE ONLY VIABLE ECONOMIC SYSTEM
Francis Fukuyama, Senior Social Scientist, Rand Corporation, THE END OF HISTORY
AND THE LAST MAN, 1992, p.90-1.
Despite the bad moral odor that capitalism has had for both the traditionalist-religious
Right and the socialist-Marxist Left, its ultimate victory as the world's only viable
economic system is easier to explain in terms of the Mechanism than is the victory of
liberal democracy in the political sphere. For capitalism has proven far more efficient than
centrally planned economic systems in developing and utilizing technology, and in
adapting to the rapidly changing conditions of a global division of labor, under the
conditions of a mature industrial economy.
AKH1563 DEMOCRACY IS LINKED TO CAPITALISM
Michael Novak, fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRATIC
CAPITALISM, 1982, p.15.
While bastard forms of capitalism do seem able for a time to endure without democracy,
the natural logic of capitalism leads to democracy. For economic liberties without political
liberties are inherently unstable. Citizens economically free soon demand political
freedoms. Thus dictatorships or monarchies which permit some freedoms to the market
have a tendency to evolve into political democracies, as has happened in recent years in
Greece, Portugal, Spain, and other nations. On the other side, the state which does not
recognize limits to its power in the economic sphere inevitably destroys liberties in the
political sphere.
AKH1564 HISTORY PROVES THE LINK BETWEEN ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL
FREEDOM
Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winning economist, CAPITALISM AND FREEDOM, 1962,
p.9.
Viewed as a means to the end of political freedom, economic arrangements are important
because of their effect on the concentration or dispersion of power. The kind of economic
organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also
promotes political freedom. because it separates economic power from political power and
in this way enables the one to offset the other. Historical evidence speaks with a single
voice on the relation between political freedom and a free market. I know of no example
in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom,
and that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of
economic activity.
AKH1565 CAPITALISM PROMOTES PEACEFUL ACTIVITIES OVER CONFLICT
Francis Fukuyama, Senior Social Scientist, Rand Corporation, TRUST, 1995, p.360-1.
The role that a capitalist economy plays in channeling recognition struggles in a peaceful
direction, and its consequent importance to democratic stability is evident in
postcommunist Eastern Europe. The totalitarian project envisioned the destruction of an
independent civil society and the creation of a new socialist community centered
exclusively around the state. When the latter, highly artificial community collapsed, there
were virtually no alternative forms of community beyond those of family and ethnic group,
or else in the delinquent communities constituted by criminal gangs. In the absence of a
layer of voluntary associations, individuals clung to their ascriptive identities all the more
fiercely. Ethnicity provided an easy form of community by which they could avoid feeling
atomized, weak, and victimized by the larger historical forces swirling around them. In
developed capitalist societies with strong civil societies, by contrast, the economy itself is
the locus of a substantial part of social life. When one works for Motorola, Siemens,
Toyota, or even a small family dry-cleaning business, one is part of a moral network that
absorbs a large part of one's energies and ambitions. The Eastern European countries that
appear to have the greatest chances for success as democracies are Hungary, Poland, and
the Czech Republic, which retained nascent civil societies throughout the communist
period and were able to generate capitalist private sectors in relatively short order. There
is no lack of divisive ethnic conflicts in these places, whether over competing Polish and
Lithuanian claims to Vilnius or Hungarian irredenta vis-a-vis neighbors. But they have not
flared up into violent conflicts yet because the economy has been sufficiently vigorous to
provide an alternative source of social identity and belonging.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 137
AKH1566 SOCIALISM DOESN'T PRODUCE PEACE
Michael Novak, fellow, American Enterprise Institute, THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRATIC
CAPITALISM, 1982, p.190.
Second, national and ethnic loyalties have proved to be stronger than class loyalties. Thus
as early as World War I, workers, even socialist workers, manufactured the munitions used
by soldiers, even socialist soldiers, in each of the national armies. Since that time, socialist
nations have declared war on one another, invaded one another, and publicly and
emotionally denounced and threatened one another.
AKH1567 SLOW GROWTH RISKS NAZISM AND WAR
Leonard Silk, Ralph Bunche Institute on the United Nations Senior Research Fellow,
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Winter 1992/93, p.173.
I shall always remember the phrase of my old boss, Elliott V. Bell: "Out of the wreckage
of depression slithered the serpents of Nazism and war." Nowadays, reversing the
celebrated maxim of George Santayana, we believe or hope that those who remember the
past are not condemned to repeat it. Yet it is already evident that the long period of slow
growth, which some have called a "controlled depression," has produced revolutionary
consequences of its own. It helped to shatter the Soviet empire. As the British editor
William Rees-Mogg has written: "A world economic crisis is a type of world revolution.
It destroys old structures, economic and political. The Soviet Union, with it's rigid inability
to adapt, was the first to fall before the full force of the storm. Such a crisis destroys
well-meaning politicians and promotes men of power.... It destroys respect for government,
as people discover that their leaders cannot control events."
AKH1568 DEPRESSIONS LED TO BOTH WORLD WARS
Steven Weber, Professor of Political Science, University of California-Berkeley,
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July/August 1997, p.66.
The depression at the end of the nineteenth century closed a historic era of advancing free
trade and saw Germany and America move decisively toward protection. A shift in world
economic power laid the groundwork for conflicts that would culminate in world war. The
Great Depression of the 1930s brought international protectionism and the near collapse
of trade. The gold standard disintegrated after competitive devaluations, and competing
monetary blocs developed. The depression tore apart international cooperation, preparing
the way for the rise of illiberal nationalist ideologies -- most prominently Nazism -- that
contributed, in turn, to another world war.
AKH1569 DATA FROM 117 NATIONS SHOW THAT HIGHER INCOME PRODUCES
A BETTER ENVIRONMENT
Bjorn Lomborg, Professor of Statistics, Department of Political Science, University of
Aarhus, THE SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST, 2001, p.32-3.
In general we need to confront our myth of the economy undercutting the environrnent.
We have grown to believe that we are faced with an inescapable choice between higher
economic welfare and a greener environment. But surprisingly and as will be documented
throughout this book, environmental development often stems from economic development
-- only when we get sufficiently rich can we afford the relative luxury of caring about the
environment. On its most general level, this conclusion is evident in Figure 9, where higher
income in general is correlated with higher environmental sustainability.
AKH1570 EFFICIENCY GAINS MAKE GROWTH COMPATIBLE WITH
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
David Schmidtz and Matt Zwolinski, Professors of Philosophy, University of Arizona,
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Spring 2003, p.103.
Like Gruen, Mark Sagoff in his essay on "Consumption" argues that technological
progress often lets us do more with less. Sagoff thus rejects the wholesale technological
pessimism of people like Paul Ehrlich (pp. 480-82). It was no fluke that Ehrlich lost his
infamous bet against Julian Simon. (Simon invited Ehrlich to select any raw material he
wanted, and any date in the future more than a year away, offering to bet that the
inflation-adjusted price of whatever Ehrlich selected would be lower by the target date,
indicating decreasing rather than increasing scarcity. In 1980, Ehrlich selected five
minerals -- chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten -- and a target date in 1990. Ehrlich
lost on all five counts., Simon renewed the invitation: any raw material, any future date.
This time, Ehrlich declined.) Increasing consumption in the sense of higher living
standards does not imply increasing consumption in terms of natural resource input. Sagoff
argues that we can enjoy higher standards of living even while reducing our ecological
footprint. In part, this is due to our ability to discover ways to reduce our need for
relatively scarce inputs, as when petroleum was developed as a substitute for whale oil,
thereby increasing out quality of life and saving whales in the process. Of course, that
petroleum can replace whale oil is not a natural fact but an artifact of technological
process. In a well-functioning economy, consumption that transforms resources into waste
(p. 473) occurs in tandem with production that transforms waste into resources (e.g.,
technology that recycles copper or replaces it with fiber optic cable made out of sand). This
was what Simon understood and Ehrlich did not.

AKH1571 ECONOMIC STAGNATION WOULD PRODUCE ENVIRONMENTAL
DEVASTATION
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.9.
If, on the other hand, eco-extremists were to succeed only in paralyzing the economy's
capacity for further research, development, and expansion, our future could turn out to be
reminiscent of the environmental nightmare of Poland in the 1980S, with a stagnant
economy continuing to rely on outmoded, pollution-belching industries. A throttled
steady-state economy would simply lack the resources necessary to create an
environmentally benign technological base for a populace that shows every sign of
continuing to demand electricity, hot water, and other conveniences. Eastern Europe shows
well the environmental devastation that occurs when
economic growth stalls out in an already industrialized society.
AKH1572 LIMITS ON GROWTH IMPERIL ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS
Indur Goklany, Manager of Science and Engineering, Department of the Interior, THE
TRUE STATE OF THE PLANET, Ronald Bailey, ed., 1995, p.370.
From a global perspective, the environmental priorities for improving air quality, all
focused on the developing world, should be, first, reducing indoor air pollutants in homes
using biofuels and coal for cooking and heating, and, second, reducing urban outdoor
particulates and SO2. Finally, anything that unduly retards economic growth in developing
countries - including inefficient policies, no matter how well intentioned - will ultimately
retard net environmental progress and imperil human lives.
AKH1573 THE DEMOCRATIC PEACE IS INDISPUTABLE
Bruce Russett, Yale University Political Science Professor, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN,
November 1993, p.120.
This research of social scientists points to an irrefutable and tantalizing observation: stable
democracies are unlikely to engage in military disputes with one another or to let any such
conflicts escalate into war. In fact, they rarely even skirmish,
AKH1574 DEMOCRATIC PEACE CORRELATIONS ARE STATISTICALLY
SIGNIFICANT
Bruce Russett, et al, Yale University, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, SPRING 1995,
P.170.
An obvious question to ask is: what is the probability, assuming independence over many
trials, of consistently finding zero (or 4 or 5 in the Finland years) democracies at war,
Instead of taking each individual-year "test" in isolation, what is the probability of
producing this finding year after year? The answer requires multiplying the probabilities
in each year; for example, the probability of finding no liberal dyads at war in 1980 is,
from Spiro's table, .829; in 1979.704, etc., so the calculation is .8289 times .704, etc. The
joint probability over 165 years is .000000000000000000002, which would appear to be
impressive evidence for democratic peace.
AKH1575 GLOBAL CAPITALISM EXTENDS LIFE AND RAISES LIVING
STANDARDS WORLDWIDE
Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign affairs columnist, New York Times,
THE LEXUS AND THE OLIVE TREE, 2000, p.350
Indeed, for all the churning that global capitalism brings to a society, the spread of
capitalism has raised living standards higher, faster and for more people than at any time
in history. It has also brought more poor people into the middle classes more quickly than
at any time in human history. So while the gap between rich and poor is getting wider-as
the winners in today's globalization system really take off and separate themselves from
everyone else-the floor under the poor has been rising steadily in many pans of the world.
In other words, while relative poverty may be growing in many countries, absolute poverty
is actually failing in many countries. According to the 1997 United Nations Human
Development report, poverty has fallen more in the past fifty years than in the previous
five hundred. Developing countries have progressed as fast in the past thirty years as the
industrialized world did in the previous century. Since 1960, infant mortality rates,
malnutrition and illiteracy are all significantly down, while access to safe water is way up.
In relatively short periods of time, countries that have been the most open to globalization,
like Taiwan, Singapore, Israel, Chile and Sweden, have achieved standards of living
comparable to those in America and Japan, while the ranks of the middle class in countries
like Thailand, Brazil, India and Korea have swelled, due partly to globalization.
AKH1576 DEMOCRATIC CAPITALISM SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASES
LONGEVITY
Arthur Herman, Professor of History, George Mason, THE IDEA OF DECLINE IN
WESTERN HISTORY, 1997, p.441.
In his book The Good Society and Its Discontents, Robert Samuelson points out that
modern Americans live a strange paradox. On the one hand, their material life has
improved dramatically in the four decades since the end of World War 11. Average life
expectancy in 1930 was 58 years for men, 61 years for women. In 1990 it was 71 years for
men, 79 years for women. Median family income in 1940 was $18,000 measured in 1993
dollars; in 1990 it was more than $39,000. Today the United States and other industrial
economies grow on average at twice or three times the rate that they did in the nineteenth
century. Taken in conjunction with its twin victories over fascism in World War II and
communism in the Cold War, democratic capitalism represents an extraordinarily
successful chapter in the history of human civilization.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 138
AKH1577 THE RADICAL GREEN AGENDA WOULD DESTROY NATURE
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.9.
If the most extreme version of the radical green agenda were to be fully enacted without
a truly massive human die-off first, forests would be stripped clean of wood and all large
animals would be hunted to extinction by hordes of neo-primitives desperate for food and
warmth.
AKH1578 RETURN TO NATURE WOULD BE AN ENVIRONMENTAL
CATASTROPHE
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.8.
Yet unless our numbers court be reduced to a small fraction of present levels, any return
to nature would be an environmental catastrophe. The more the human presence is placed
directly on the land and the more immediately it is provisioned from nature, the fewer
resources will be available for nonhuman species. If all Americans were to flee from
metropolitan areas, rural populations would soar and wildlife habitat would necessarily
diminish.
AKH1579 RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM'S ANTI-MODERNISM CAN LEAD TO
ECOFASCISM
Michael Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy, Tulane University, MINDING NATURE:
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ECOLOGY, David Macauley, ed., 1996, p.63.
Radical environmentalists are ill-informed if they believe that Marxists and liberal theorists
ciriticize radical environmentalism solely because it threatens their growth-oriented
economies. Instead, such criticism is also advanced because progressive thinkers (here I
mean the best socialist and liberal theorists) recall National Socialism's celebration of the
link between a healthy race and an unpolluted landscape. In view of that link, socialist and
liberal theorists are understandably suspicious of radical environmentalists who either
condemn modernity in toto, or who claim that they are neither left nor right, but "out in
front." If environmentalists are correct in saying that modernity gives rise to totalizing
systems with ecologically destructive tendencies, supporters of modernity are also right
in replying that radical ecology may inadvertently help to generate ecofascism by
promoting an anti-universalistic antihumanism that undermines modernity's emancipatory
aims.
AKH1580 DEEP ECOLOGY JUSTIFIES TYRANNY
Lincoln Allison, Sir Robert Meuzies Centre for Australian Studies visiting fellow,
ECOLOGY AND UTILITY, 1991, p.41-42.
Then Porrit affirms, `the belief that everyone should be empowered to determine the course
of his or her own life within the constraints of a finite planet. To which the world-weary
political theorist is bound by professional duty to point out that whoever gets the job of
defining `the constraints of a finite planet' will have enormous and unprecedented power,
greater, even, than that of his predecessors who allowed people freedom within God's laws
or within the historical needs of the state. Ecology cannot be improved without stopping
a lot of people from doing things they would otherwise choose to do; the Porritt formula
is either a recipe for ineffectiveness or a license for authoritarianism. It may, indeed, be
both: the `worst case scenario' is massive authority based on a badly-constructed theory
of `the needs of a finite planet.'
AKH1581 BY DEPICTING HUMANS AS A CANCER, RADICAL ECOLOGY OFFERS
A RATIONALE FOR MASS KILLING
Michael Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy, Tulane University, CONTESTING
EARTH'S FUTURE, 1994, p.117.
Elsewhere, however, Levi-Strauss contends that modern societies are to primitive societies
as viruses are to higher animals. Western scientific method is like a virus that invades other
cultures and forces them to reproduce Western ways. Left unchecked, viruses destroy their
hosts: "And we may well ask ourselves what will happen when our civilization has injected
its formula into all other living civilizations and transformed them into its own image and,
consequently, will no longer possess this mode of perpetuating itself." The parallels
between this view of Western civilization and the Nazi view of Jews and other "vermin"
are disturbing, for the same reasons that the comparisons made by certain Earth Firsters
between humanity (especially Western humanity) and a cancer on the planet are disturbing.
By depicting humans as pests worthy of extermination, one may end up embracing the
same crude metaphors (and unwittingly inviting similar practices) used by the Nazis. Given
the complexity of the relation between human and nonhuman life, it seems just as
inadequate to say that we are "simply animals" as it is to say that we are "radically other
than animals."
AKH1582 ECO-RADICALS REPUDIATE DEMOCRACY
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.40.
All forms of political extremism, be they identified as right or left, unite in their disdain
for democracy as we know it. While many lavish praise on a hypothetical form of direct
or participatory democracy (for example, Tokar 1987), all implicitly disparage
representative democracy as a sham, a circus staged by big-money interests. (Some would
go so far as to suggest that "representation" is fraudulent as long as animals and plants
have no parliamentary voice [see Nash 1989:130].) Given the fact that the electorate almost
always rejects their call, this attitude is hardly surprising. In return, the more extreme
eco-radicals regard the majority of voters with barely concealed contempt, viewing them
as blind stooges easily deceived by the blandishments of a corporate-owned mass media.

AKH1583 ECO-RADICALS JOIN THE FAR RIGHT IN OPPOSITION TO
DEMOCRACY
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.40.
If green extremism rejects representative democracy in theory, its response to existing
American governmental institutions is one of extraordinary contempt. Most eco-radicals
would like to demolish our entire political foundation, and many argue that all
national-level structures are inherently destructive of the environment. Here they can find
much agreement on the far right. Indeed, a newly touted extreme rightwing version of
environmental philosophy, the so-called "free-market environmentalism" of Anderson and
Leal (1991), is as hostile to the American government as is the environmentalism of the
far left. The only difference is that rightist radicals would like to see power devolve onto
wealthy individuals and corporations rather than the properly constituted communities or
politically acceptable social classes favored by the far left.
AKH1584 ECO-RADICALS THREATEN CIVILIZATION
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.42.
These eclectic voices, however, are beginning to be drowned out by those of the true
extremists, writers who, like Christopher Manes (1990),call for nothing less than the total
demolition of civilization. Those who are convinced that humanity is destroying nature
generally advocate taking the strongest medicine conceivable. Unfortunately, they are
proposing a lethal overdose.
AKH1585 ECO-RADICALS REJECT MODERN TECHNOLOGY
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.117.
Most green radicals define technologies as appropriate if they are small of scale, lend
themselves to decentralization, emit little pollution, and do not require extensive
consumption of natural resources. While the more sophisticated thinkers (for example,
Porritt 1985) argue that some forms of high technology may be allowable, the larger
eco-radical agenda makes it clear that appropriate technology must exclude virtually every
innovation made over the past century - if not the past five millennia.
AKH1586 TECHNOLOGY IS KEY TO ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
David Schmidtz and Matt Zwolinski, Professors of Philosophy, University of Arizona,
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Spring 2003, p.103.
Lori Gruen's essay on "Technology" exhibits a similarly nice balance. She concludes,
"Technology is surely implicated in much environmental damage, . . . [I]t is tempting to
think that technology, in itself, is objectionable. Such an argument, however, is hard to
sustain. If nature is valuable, as many have argued, then technology can be used to inform,
educate, and assist in promoting its value" (p. 447). As Kristen Shrader-Frechette once said
in conversation, technology is part of the problem, but it has to be part of the solution, too.
Gruen focuses on education, but obvious promise for environmental progress also lies in
areas of solar power technology and birth control technology. A complementary point,
mentioned in Ian Simmons's essay on "History," is that low income or low access to
technology does not necessarily mean low environmental impact (p.293).
AKH1587 RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM EMBRACES ANARCHISM
John Barry, Lecturer, Department of Politics, Keele University, RETHINKING GREEN
POLITICS, 1999, p.96.
It is from this dualistic methodology, coupled with the utopiancritical demands of the early
green movement, that eco-anarchism became the dominant political theory of greens. Three
steps can be identified in this process:
1. the concern with what a 'sustainable society' would look like, to highlight the
unsustainable nature of existing society; which led to
2. a focus on mapping 'the sustainable society', that is describing, often in great detail, a
generally agreed picture/blueprint of that society;
3. the assumption of the sustainable society as 'anarchistic', to rule out eco-authoritarian
dystopias, and to act as the benchmark against which 'greenness' could be judged.
It is the particular historical development of green theory (both internal debates, and
between it and other theories such as socialism and liberalism), and green political practice
(fundis/realos), that largely account for the prevalence of the eco-anarchist solution.
AKH1588 ANARCHY FAILS TO PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT
Gerald Gaus and John Chapman, Professors of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh,
ANARCHISM, J. Rowland Pennock and John Chapman, eds., 1978, p.xxii.
In reflecting on Rothbard's plan, Christopher D. Stone finds a number of difficulties likely
to arise in anarcho-capitalism. Of these perhaps the most critical have to do with activities
injurious to the general community rather than to specified individuals; for example,
environmental pollution. His argument at this point coincides with that of Alan
Wertheimer. Rothbard's adversary-arbitration model seems ill-designed to cope with such
collective depredations.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 139
AKH1589 UTOPIANISM APPROACHES PROBLEMS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF
ULTIMATE ENDS
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.157-8.
The Utopian approach may be described as follows. Any rational action must have a
certain aim. It is rational in the same degree as it pursues its aim consciously and
consistently, and as it determines its means according to this end. To choose the end is
therefore the first thing we have to do if we wish to act rationally; and we must be careful
to determine our real or ultimate ends, from which we must distinguish clearly those
intermediate or partial ends which actually are only means, or steps on the way, to the
ultimate end. If we neglect this distinction, then we must also neglect to ask whether these
partial ends are likely to promote the ultimate end, and accordingly, we must fail to act
rationally. These principles, if applied to the realm of political activity, demand that we
must determine our ultimate political aim, or the Ideal State, before taking any practical
action. Only when this ultimate aim is determined, in rough outline at least, only when we
are in possession of something like a blueprint of the society at which we aim, only then
can we begin to consider the best ways and means for its realization, and to draw up a plan
for practical action. These are the necessary preliminaries of any practical political move
that can be called rational, and especially of social engineering.
AKH1590 IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO TOTALLY REINVENT POLITICS
Harvard Nuclear Study Group, LIVING WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS, 1983, p.19.
lt would be a tragedy if opportunities for practical progress toward nuclear peace were
missed because our goals were set too high, beyond the reach of what is possible. In his
book The Fate of the Earth, Jonathan Schell has reminded people of the dangers of nuclear
war but his "solution" is precisely such an impossible goal. "The task," he wrote, "is
nothing less than to reinvent politics: to reinvent the world." In reality, however, neither
politics nor the world were invented by men, nor can either politics or the world be
reinvented. Rather, these arrangements evolved through trial and error, through sacrifice
and occasional gifted leadership, to an organization of life on earth that has reached
unprecedented attainments. The nature of humanity, the complex mosaic of civilizations,
the web of relations that unite so many nations cannot be taken apart and reinvented in the
future. They can, we hope, continue to evolve.
AKH1591 UTOPIANISM CAN'T ADAPT TO CHANGING CONDITIONS
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.160.
A generalization of this argument leads to a further criticism of the Utopian approach. This
approach, it is clear, can be of practical value only if we assume that the original blueprint,
perhaps with certain adjustments, remains the basis of the work until it is completed. But
that will take some time. It will be a time of revolutions, both political and spiritual, and
of new experiments and experience in the political field. It is therefore to be expected that
ideas and ideals will change. What had appeared the ideal state to the people who made the
original blueprint, may not appear so to their successors. If that is granted, then the whole
approach breaks down. The method of first establishing an ultimate political aim and then
beginning to move towards it is futile if we admit that the aim may be considerably
changed during the process of its realization. It may at any moment turn out that the steps
so far taken actually lead away from the realization of the new aim. And if we change our
direction according to the new aim, then we expose ourselves to the same risk again. In
spite of all the sacrifices made, we may never get-anywhere at all.
AKH1592 EVEN BENEVOLENT UTOPIAN ASPIRATIONS FAIL
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.159-60.
Some points not touched upon in that chapter furnish us with even more direct arguments
against the Utopian approach. One of the difficulties faced by a benevolent dictator is to
find whether the effects of his measures agree with his good intentions (as de Tocqueville
saw clearly more than a hundred years ago). The difficulty arises out of the fact that
authoritarianism must discourage criticism; accordingly, the benevolent dictator will not
easily hear of complaints concerning the measures he has taken. But without some such
check, he can hardly find out whether his measures achieve the desired benevolent aim.
AKH1593 UTOPIANISM LEADS TO THE SUPPRESSION OF REASONABLE
CRITICISM
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.160.
The situation must become even worse for the Utopian engineer. The reconstruction of
society is a big undertaking which must cause considerable inconvenience to many, and
for a considerable span of time. Accordingly, the Utopian engineer will have to be deaf to
many complaints; in fact, it will be part of his business to suppress unreasonable
objections. (He will say, like Lenin, 'You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.')
But with it, he must invariably suppress reasonable criticism also.

AKH1594 KNOWLEDGE IS INADEQUATE TO PERMIT UTOPIAN PLANNING
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.161-2.
What I criticize under the name Utopian engineering recommends the reconstruction of
society as a whole, i.e. very sweeping changes whose practical consequences are hard to
calculate, owing to our limited experiences. It claims to plan rationally for the whole of
society, although we do not possess anything like the factual knowledge which would be
necessary to make good such an ambitious claim. We cannot possess such knowledge since
we have insufficient practical experience in this kind of planning, and knowledge of facts
must be based upon experience. At present, the sociological knowledge necessary for
large-scale engineering is simply non-existent.
AKH1595 RADICAL UTOPIANISM IS ULTIMATELY IRRATIONALIST
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.167-8.
This leads us to the more important second point, to the irrationalism which is inherent in
radicalism. In all matters, we can only learn by trial and error, by making mistakes and
improvements; we can never rely on inspiration, although inspirations may be most
valuable as long as they can be checked by experience. Accordingly, it is not reasonable
to assume that a complete reconstruction of our social world would lead at once to a
workable system. Rather we should expect that, owing to lack of experience, many
mistakes would be made which could be eliminated only by a long and laborious process
of small adjustments; in other words, by that rational method of piecemeal engineering
whose application we advocate. But those who dislike this method as insufficiently radical
would have again to wipe out their freshly constructed society, in order to start anew with
a clean canvas; and since the new start, for the same reasons, would not lead to perfection
either, they would have to repeat this process without ever getting anywhere. Those who
admit this and are prepared to adopt our more modest method of piecemeal improvements,
but only after the first radical canvas-cleaning, can hardly escape the criticism that their
first sweeping and violent measures were quite unnecessary.
AKH1596 PROBLEMS OF SUCCESSION UNDERMINE UTOPIANISM
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.160.
Another difficulty of Utopian engineering is related to the problem of the dictator's
successor. In chapter 7 I have mentioned certain aspects of this problem. Utopian
engineering raises a difficulty analogous to but even more serious than the one which faces
the benevolent tyrant who tries to find an equally benevolent successor (see note 25 to
chapter 7). The very sweep of such a Utopian undertaking makes it improbable that it will
realize its ends during the lifetime of one social engineer, or group of engineers. And if the
successors do not pursue the same ideal, then all the sufferings of the people for the sake
of the ideal may have been in vain.
AKH1597 THERE'S NO RATIONAL BASIS FOR DETERMINING ULTIMATE AIMS
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.161.
We see now that the Utopian approach can be saved only by the Platonic belief in one
absolute and unchanging ideal, together with two further assumptions, namely (a) that
there are rational methods to determine once and for all what this ideal is, and (b) what the
best means of its realization are. Only such far-reaching assumptions could prevent us from
declaring the Utopian methodology to be utterly futile. But even Plato himself and the
most ardent Platonists would admit that (a) is certainly not true; that there is no rational
method for determining the ultimate aim, but, if anything, only some kind of intuition. Any
difference of opinion between Utopian engineers must therefore lead, in the absence of
rational methods, to the use of power instead of reason, i.e. to violence.
AKH1598 UTOPIANISM UNDERMINES PRACTICAL PROBLEM SOLVING
Harvard Nuclear Study Group, LIVING WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS, 1983, p.18-9.
When facing enormous problems, there is a special attraction to the assumption that only
radical answers can suffice. Hence, the strong pull of utopian visions of both the extreme
left and the extreme right: the ideas that only a world government can solve all our
problems or that sheer military muscle is all that America needs. Both prescribe
all-purpose solutions, but each ignores the real world. In the real world, packed with huge
nuclear arsenals, mere military muscle, unless built and exercised with restraint and skill,
will not ensure American security. In the real world of sovereign states, a world
government is a dream for the distant future, not a practical goal for current policymakers.
The danger of focusing on utopian objectives is that they can take attention away from
practical and positive steps that can be taken now. Such actions may only produce
incremental progress toward the goal of national security. But incremental steps matter.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 140
AKH1599 UTOPIANISM UNDERMINES PRACTICAL PROBLEM SOLVING
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.4.
The prophets who prophesy the coming of a millennium may give expression to a
deep-seated feeling of dissatisfaction; and their dreams may indeed give hope and
encouragement to some who can hardly do without them. But we must also realize that
their influence is liable to prevent us from facing the daily tasks of social life. And those
minor prophets who announce that certain events, such as a lapse into totalitarianism (or
perhaps into 'managerialism'), are bound to happen may, whether they like it or not, be
instrumental in bringing these events about.
AKH1600 UTOPIANISM LEADS TO DICTATORSHIP
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.159.
As opposed to that, the Utopian attempt to realize an ideal state, using a blueprint of
society as a whole, is one which demands a strong centralized rule of a few, and which
therefore is to lead to a dictatorship. This I consider a criticism of the Utopian approach;
for I have tried to show, in the chapter on the Principle of Leadership, that an authoritarian
rule is a most objectionable form of government.
AKH1601 UTOPIANISM DESTROYS THE FABRIC OF SOCIAL LIFE
Chris Matthew Sciabarra, New York University Politics Department, AYN RAND: THE
RUSSIAN RADICAL, 1995, p.148.
In Hayek's view, cultural traditions are largely the result of inarticulate social practices.
Hayek argued that spontaneously emergent social institutions are the historical product of
human interaction but not of deliberate design. The attempt to alter these evolved
institutions by will is one of the hallmarks of utopianism. Those who seek to control the
delicate fabric of social life ultimately destroy the very forces that generate order. Hayek
condemned these utopians as "constructivist rationalists." His critique of utopianism was
simultaneously a powerful indictment of the efficacy and propriety of state planning.
AKH1602 UTOPIANISM PRODUCES A HELL ON EARTH
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.168.
Aestheticism and radicalism must lead us to jettison reason, and to replace it by a desperate
hope for political miracles. This irrational attitude which springs from an intoxication with
dreams of a beautiful world is what I call Romanticism. It may seek its heavenly city in the
past or in the future; it may preach 'back to nature' or 'forward to a world of love and
beauty'; but its appeal is always to our emotions rather than to reason. Even with the best
intentions of making heaven on earth it only succeeds in making it a hell -- that hell which
man alone prepares for his fellow-men.
AKH1603 OPPOSED TO INCREMENTAL DECISIONMAKING, UTOPIANISM
LEADS TO AN INTOLERABLE INCREASE IN SUFFERING
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.158.
Before proceeding to criticize Utopian engineering in detail, I wish to outline another
approach to social engineering, namely, that of piecemeal engineering. It is an approach
which I think to be methodologically sound. The politician who adopts this method may
or may not have a blueprint of society before his mind, he may or may not hope that
mankind will one day realize an ideal state, and achieve happiness and perfection on earth.
But he will be aware that perfection, if at all attainable, is far distant, and that every
generation of men, and therefore also the living. have a claim; perhaps not so much a claim
to be made happy, for there are no institutional means of making a man happy, but a claim
not to be made unhappy, where it can be avoided. They have a claim to be given all
possible help, if they suffer. The piecemeal engineer will, accordingly, adopt the method
of searching for, and fighting against, the greatest and most urgent evils of society, rather
than searching for' and fighting for, its greatest ultimate good. This difference is far from
being merely verbal. In fact, it is most important. It is the difference between a reasonable
method of improving the lot of man, and a method which, if really tried, may easily lead
to an intolerable increase in human suffering.
AKH1604 PIECEMEAL REFORM IS FAR EASIER TO ACCOMPLISH
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.158-9.
In favour of his method, the piecemeal engineer can claim that a systematic fight against
suffering and injustice and war is more likely to be supported by the approval and
agreement of a great number of people than the fight for the establishment of some ideal.
The existence of social evils, that is to say, of social conditions under which many men are
suffering, can be comparatively well established. Those who suffer can judge for
themselves, and the others can hardly deny that they would not like to change places. It is
infinitely more difficult to reason about an ideal society. Social life is so complicated that
few men, or none at all, could judge a blueprint for social engineering on the grand scale;
whether it be practicable; whether it would result in a real improvement; what kind of
suffering it may involve; and what may be the means for its realization. As opposed to this,
blueprints for piecemeal engineering are comparatively simple. They are blueprints for
single institutions, for health and unemployed insurance, for instance, or arbitration courts,
or anti-depression budgeting, or educational reform. If they go wrong, the damage is not
very great, and a re-adjustment not very difficult. They are less risky, and for this very
reason less controversial.

AKH1605 PIECEMEAL REFORM ALLOWS DEMOCRATIC COMPROMISE
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.159.
But if it is easier to reach a reasonable agreement about existing evils and the means of
combating them than it is about an ideal good and the means of its realization, then there
is also more hope that by using the piecemeal method we may get over the very greatest
practical difficulty of all reasonable political reform, namely, the use of reason, instead of
passion and violence, in executing the programme. There will be a possibility of reaching
a reasonable compromise and therefore of achieving the improvement by democratic
methods.
AKH1606 IT'S BEST TO PROCEED BY CHANGING ONE INSTITUTION AT A TIME
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.163.
But the kind of experiment from which we can learn most is the alteration of one social
institution at a time. For only in this way can we learn how to fit institutions into the
framework of other institutions, and how to adjust them so that they work according to our
intentions. And only in this way can we make mistakes, and learn from our mistakes,
without risking repercussions of a gravity that must endanger the will to future reforms.
AKH1607 PIECEMEAL REFORM PROVIDES A SUPERIOR DATA BASE
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.162.
Such arguments in favour of Utopian engineering exhibit a prejudice which is as widely
held as it is untenable, namely, the prejudice that social experiments must be on a 'large
scale', that they must involve the whole of society if they are to be carried out under
realistic conditions. But piecemeal social experiments can be carried out under realistic
conditions, in the midst of society, in spite of being on a ' small scale ', that is to say,
without revolutionizing the whole of society. In fact, we are making such experiments all
the time. The introduction of a new kind of life-insurance, of a new kind of taxation, of a
new penal reform, are all social experiments which have their repercussions through the
whole of society without remodelling society as a whole. Even a man who opens a new
shop, or who reserves a ticket for the theatre, is carrying out a kind of social experiment
on a small scale; and all our knowledge of social conditions is based on experience gained
by making experiments of this kind.
AKH1608 PIECEMEAL APPROACHES ALLOW SCIENTIFIC READJUSTMENTS
Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND
ITS ENEMIES, VOLUME ONE: THE SPELL OF PLATO, 1966, p.163.
Furthermore, the Utopian method must lead to a dangerous dogmatic attachment to a
blueprint for which countless sacrifices have been made. Powerful interests must become
linked up with the success of the experiment. All this does not contribute to the rationality,
or to the scientific value, of the experiment. But the piecemeal method permits repeated
experiments and continuous readjustments. In fact, it might lead to the happy situation
where politicians begin to look out for their own mistakes instead of trying to explain them
away and to prove that they have always been right. This -- and not Utopian planning or
historical prophecy -- would mean the introduction of scientific method into politics, since
the whole secret of scientific method is a readiness to learn from mistakes.
AKH1609 THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT IS UTOPIAN
Ben Bolch and Harold Lyons, Professors of Economics and Chemistry, Rhodes College,
APOCALYPSE NOT, 1993, p.5.
Sincere scholars who seek to understand the motives of the environmental movement
disagree over whether it is at root a political-economic struggle for power or a
manifestation of a new kind of religion: political scientist Aaron Wildavsky is a good
exponent of the power theory while economist Robert Nelson is a leading advocate of the
religion theory. We believe there are both elements in the environmental movement. Just
as a kind of religion is mixed with the need for power in utopian systems such as Marxism,
so religion and power are intertwined in the environmental move meet. Indeed, by looking
at the environmental movement as a form of utopianism, one has the best chance of
understanding its complex, sometimes irrational, and often contradictory viewpoints.
AKH1610 ENVIRONMENTALISM DISPLAYS THE TYPICAL TRAITS OF
UTOPIANISM
Ben Bolch and Harold Lyons, Professors of Economics and Chemistry, Rhodes College,
APOCALYPSE NOT, 1993, p.6.
The environmental movement's similarities to utopian crusades are fairly simple to detail
by reference to Thomas Molnar's taxonomy of utopianism. With reference to religion, there
is often a rejection of much of the Judeo-Christian heritage in both modern socialist
utopian moments and in extreme environmentalism. Environmentalism displays a special
objection to the biblical injunction for mankind to be fruitful and multiply and to hold
dominion over other creatures and Earth. Along those same lines, environmentalism has
more than a streak of pantheism (in the sense of the worship of multiple manifestations of
nature) and much of the notion of deus absconditus, or the transcendent god knowable only
to the elect.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 141
AKH1611 ENVIRONMENTALIST UTOPIANISM THREATENS CIVILIZATION
Ben Bolch and Harold Lyons, Professors of Economics and Chemistry, Rhodes College,
APOCALYPSE NOT, 1993, p.130.
This attempt to convince by fear and intimidation is one of the surest of all tip-offs that the
issue being discussed is not the environment but rather some hidden agenda: a new utopia.
Why else must the burden of proof fall on those who would preserve freedom rather than
on those who would take it away? How else could the gift of democratic capitalism, which
has given us nothing less than the revolutionary enhancement of human life and the
elimination of starvation and abject poverty, be damned by those purveyors of
melancholy? Like other collectivist utopians before them, environmentalists feel the need,
in Karl Popper's words, to clean the canvas before they paint the beautiful picture of their
new order. But unlike their predecessors, the utopians wish to erase more than institutions
and ideas; they wish to erase people as well. What they fail to realize is that in the process
of canvas cleaning, they will also erase themselves.
AKH1612 UTOPIAN ENVIRONMENTALISM LEADS TO STATISM
Ben Bolch and Harold Lyons, Professors of Economics and Chemistry, Rhodes College,
APOCALYPSE NOT, 1993, p.7.
Modern socialist utopian movements, like much of the environmental movement, stress
the need to look far into the future (as in the thousand-year Reich) and to impose great
present sacrifices to ensure the goodness of the outcome of that distant future. This
forward-looking stance of the environmental movement often leads to specious forecasts,
such as those associated with global warming, where experts have the temerity to discuss
the weather 50 years in the future when present-day weather forecasters have difficulty
forecasting 50 days (much less 50 months) into the future. Nevertheless, those movements
are willing, by virtue of their fantastic pretensions of knowledge, to grant colossal powers
to the state. Such powers allow the control and manipulation of every detail of political,
economic, and intellectual life for the sake of an improved future. An absurdly long time
horizon, coupled with absolute state control, is supposed to ensure for both socialist
utopians and environmentalists that the base selfishness in mankind will be replaced by a
collective consciousness that is ever more favorable to the movement's goals.
AKH1613 SUCCESSFUL ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM HAS BEEN UTILITARIAN
Ben Bolch and Harold Lyons, Professors of Economics and Chemistry, Rhodes College,
APOCALYPSE NOT, 1993, p.9.
The beauty of the pluralistic society that most Americans once cherished is that people
who place great value on environmental amenities, and can afford them, are quite free to
spend their own income to obtain them. The idea that a wealthy person could repair to
some natural retreat at periodic intervals is an old one in our culture. In fact, Americans
value the benefits of natural settings so greatly that the nation has extended the ability to
return to those settings to the poor by providing public parks, seashores, and the like. Thus,
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the federal government spent a minuscule
portion of national income by present standards, the Preservation movement was able to
mobilize public opinion in favor of a system of national parks. But preservationists like
John Muir were interested in the rewards to humanity of preserving the beauty of nature
and in the intangible benefits (such as greater love of country) that natural preserves might
bring in their train. Another great American movement, the Conservationists, was even
more utilitarian, stressing such things as water projects and sustained agricultural yields.
According to the great champion of that movement, Gifford Pinchot, "Conservation means
the greatest good for the greatest number [of people] for the longest time."
AKH1614 NIHILISM NEGATES ALL VALUES
Stanley Rosen, Professor of Philosophy, Penn State, NIHILISM, 1969, p.xiii.
Nietzsche defines nihilism as the situation which obtains when "everything is permitted."
If everything is permitted, then it makes no difference what we do, and so nothing is worth
anything. We can, of course, attribute value by an act of arbitrary resolution, but such an
act proceeds ex nihilo or defines its significance by a spontaneous assertion which can be
negated with equal justification. More specifically, there is in such a case no justification
for choosing either the value originally posited or its negation, and the speech of
"justification" is indistinguishable from silence.
AKH1615 NIHILISM SEEKS THE DESTRUCTION OF ALL VALUES
Leonard Peikoff, Professor of Philosophy, New York University, THE OMINOUS
PARALLELS, 1982, p.207.
The term that captures twentieth-century culture; the term that include all of these and
every similar, value-annulling doctrine and attitude; the term that names the modern soul
is: nihilism. "Nihilism" in this context means hatred, the hatred of values and of their root,
reason. Hatred is not the same as disapproval, contempt, or anger. Hatred is loathing
combined with fear, and with the desire to lash out at the hated object, to wound, to
disfigure, to destroy it. The essence and impelling premise of the nihilist-modern is the
quest for destruction, the destruction of all values, of values as such, and of the mind. It
is a destruction he seeks for the sake of destruction, not as a means, but as an end.

AKH1616 NIHILISM DESTROYS BOTH PAST AND PRESENT
Stanley Rosen, Professor of Philosophy, Penn State, NIHILISM, 1969, p.193-4.
Nihilism as a political or cultural phenomenon is a consequence of philosophy in two
senses. First, it is a consequence of the transformation of nature and eternity into history
and temporality fundamentally to advance human mastery, freedom, autonomy, or
creativity, to mention the most important terms that have been employed in this
connection. But second, it is a consequence of the at least partial failure of this
revolutionary transformation. The destruction or exclusion of nature and eternity, intended
to regain for human appropriation the value implicit in this world and mistakenly alienated
or projected into another, supersensible, trans-historical world, has instead resulted in the
dissolution of value in the world of concrete history. The destruction of the past, very far
from freeing our creative will for a new stage of positive human or superhuman existence,
seems rather to entail the destruction of the present as well.
AKH1617 NIHILISM LEADS TO MASS DEATH
Albert Camus, French philosopher, THE REBEL, 1951, p.6-7.
Equally, absolute nihilism, which accepts suicide as legitimate, leads, even more easily,
to logical murder. If our age admits, with equanimity, that murder has its justifications, it
is because of this indifference to life which is the mark of nihilism. Of course there have
been periods of history in which the passion for life was so strong that it burst forth in
criminal excesses. But these excesses were like the searing flame of a terrible delight. They
were not this monotonous order of things established by an impoverished logic in whose
eyes everything is equal. This logic has carried the values of suicide, on which our age has
been nurtured, to their extreme logical consequence, which is legalized murder. It
culminates, at the same time, in mass suicide. The most striking demonstration of this was
provided by the Hitlerian apocalypse of 1945.
AKH1618 NIHILISM LEADS TO TOTAL DESTRUCTION
Albert Camus, French philosopher, THE REBEL, 1951, p.294.
The errors of contemporary revolution are first of all explained by the ignorance or
systematic misconception of that limit which seems inseparable from human nature and
which rebellion reveals. Nihilist thought, because it neglects this frontier, ends by
precipitating itself into a uniformly accelerated movement. Nothing any longer checks it
in its course and it reaches the point of justifying total-destruction or unlimited conquest.
We now know, at the end of this long inquiry into rebellion and nihilism, that rebellion
with no other limits but historical expediency signifies unlimited slavery.
AKH1619 NIHILISM LEGITIMATES MURDER
Albert Camus, French philosopher, THE REBEL, 1951, p.282-3.
Irrational crime and rational crime, in fact, both equally betray the value brought to light
by the movement of rebellion. Let us first consider the former. He who denies everything
and assumes the authority to kill -- Sade, the homicidal dandy, the pitiless Unique,
Karamazov, the zealous supporters of the unleashed bandit -- lay claim to nothing short
of total freedom and the unlimited display of human pride. Nihilism confounds creator and
created in the same blind fury. Suppressing every principle of hope, it rejects the idea of
any limit, and in blind indignation, which no longer is even aware of its reasons, ends with
the conclusion that it is a matter of indifference to kill when the victim is already
condemned to death.
AKH1620 NIHILISM LEADS TO WARS OF TOTAL DESTRUCTION
Stanley Rosen, Professor of Philosophy, Penn State, NIHILISM, 1969, p.142-3.
Again, the nihilist despairs because he is fully enlightened (the ultimate consequence of
the Enlightenment) or free from all illusions. His despair is the sign of his enlightenment
or freedom, the seal of his integrity. One is tempted to say that the nihilist hopes for
despair in order to be free for the possibility of hope. Value and significance, if they are
the ground of facticity, restrict man's freedom by the chains of objectivity. The nihilist
dissolves these chains by the acid of despair and re-solves himself in the hope of
hopelessness. This is the existential manifestation of his essential incoherence. In terms of
an older vocabulary, nihilism is doomed to shipwreck because it sunders courage from
wisdom, justice, and moderation. As we have seen, a reliance upon courage led Nietzsche
to invoke the unleashing of the blonde beasts and wars of universal destruction as the
negative prelude to the advent of positive nihilism.
AKH1621 NIHILISM OFFERS DESTRUCTION WITHOUT ALTERNATIVE
Stanley Rosen, Professor of Philosophy, Penn State, NIHILISM, 1969, p.140.
Nihilism is fundamentally an attempt to overcome or to repudiate the past on behalf of an
unknown and unknowable yet hoped-for future. The danger implicit in this attempt is that
it seems necessarily to entail a negation of the present, or to remove the ground upon
which man must stand in order to carryout or even merely to witness the process of
historical transformation. The mood of boredom or hopelessness that is the most visible
negative manifestation of nihilism testifies to the incoherence of the hidden essence of
nihilism. The attempt to overcome the past is necessarily rooted in a judgment upon the
past; the nihilist inevitably and rather inconsistently asserts that, at the present moment,
the past is worth less than the future. Because of the complex character of the instructions
for overcoming the past, whether by political revolution, creative will, or ontological
Gelassenheit, we often fail to recognize the undefined character of the hoped-for future.
The nihilist invokes us to destroy the past on behalf of a wish which he cannot articulate,
let alone guarantee fulfillment. The classless society, the superman, the next epoch of
Seinsgeschichte, so far as we in the present are concerned, are extreme revisions of the
kind of wish described by Socrates in the Republic.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 142
AKH1622 NIHILISM IS A POTENTIALLY FATAL DISEASE
Karen Carr, Professor of Religious Studies, Lawrence University, THE BANALIZATION
OF NIHILISM, 1992, p.124.
But it is at best imprecise, at worst inaccurate to see Nietzsche as an unambiguous
champion of nihilism in any of its forms, for two reasons. First, he regarded nihilism as a
destructive disease. To be sure, we can "return from such sickness...new born," but we can
also perish. Nietzsche's goal was, finally, to overcome the decadence that was beginning
to paralyze European culture (a decadence of which nihilism was the most obvious
symptom.) Second, and perhaps more important, sustained nihilism would signal the
demise of the necessarily interpretive character of human life.
AKH1623 PERSISTENT NIHILISM LEADS TO ULTIMATE DESTRUCTION
Karen Carr, Professor of Religious Studies, Lawrence University, THE BANALIZATION
OF NIHILISM, 1992, p.137.
One of the lessons we learn from Rorty is that resistance to nihilism shows our
commitment to standards that nihilism itself undermines, a lesson we also learned with
Nietzsche. The very intellectual tradition we have revered leads to its own destruction; as
Rorty has said, our concern about its destruction shows our continuing commitment to
intellectual intuitions that are outmoded and passe. It is because of our expectations of
truth that we feel the absence of truth as a problem. Rorty's solution to this problem is to
jettison the notion of truth. But Nietzsche's version of this same lesson had a second part
to it: that nihilism, while inevitable, and necessary, and itself a state of tension, must be
temporary -- either we give birth to new ways of valuing, new forms of believing, or we
perish. The will to interpret, to impose our truths on our surroundings, is simply too strong.
AKH1624 ANTI-FOUNDATIONALIST NIHILISM IS POLITICALLY REACTIONARY
Karen Carr, Professor of Religious Studies, Lawrence University, THE BANALIZATION
OF NIHILISM, 1992, p.134.
The result of Rorty's aversion to theory, in other words, seems to lead to the perpetuation
of the present structures of society. Both Bernstein and McCarthy argue that Rorty's
anti-foundationalism not only serves to reinforce the dominant social beliefs and practices
of our culture, but also undercuts any possible social criticism. All we need, Rorty says,
are the beliefs and practices of our community; since they are all we have, there is, it would
seem, no basis on which to assess them. Any attempt to do so is dismissed as the bad-faith
effort to adopt a God's-eye view.
AKH1625 NIHILISM RESULTS IN THE ABSOLUTIZATION OF DOMINANT
POWER STRUCTURES
Karen Carr, Professor of Religious Studies, Lawrence University, THE BANALIZATION
OF NIHILISM, 1992, p.134.
What this suggests is that the banalization of nihilism ultimately culminates in nihilism's
opposite: dogmatism -- the unrelenting insistence upon one's own position, one's own point
of view, immune to any sort of criticism or rational scrutiny. When we fully and happily
dispatch with truth, what we gain is not pluralism, not toleration, but rather the
absolutization of the dominant power structures of the culture to which we belong.
Nihilism, once complete, leaves us with nothing but the set of currently existing social
practices and beliefs; in the absence of anything else, these practices and beliefs become,
for all intents and purpose, absolute.
AKH1626 NIHILISM UNDERMINES INTELLECTUAL AND POLITICAL PROGRESS
Karen Carr, Professor of Religious Studies, Lawrence University, THE BANALIZATION
OF NIHILISM, 1992, p.140.
When one accepts nihilism as "just the way things are," it ceases to be a potential weapon
against corrupt and decaying modes of thought, as both Nietzsche and Barth employed it,
and as Rorty says he too is employing it. The possibility of any kind of ethical, religious,
or political transformation is defacto ruled out and the perpetuation of the status quo is
covertly promoted. Any disagreements that do exist deteriorate, ultimately, into contests
of power. The ultimate implications, in other words, of banalizing nihilism are anything
but banal.
AKH1627 NIHILISM PRODUCES POLITICAL QUIESCENCE
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.175-6.
The more one feels disempowered about the human condition and bereft of social
commitment, the more one becomes cynical and thereby captive to the prevailing social
order. To the extent that hope and belief in progress are lost, a disarming relativism,
ahistoricism, and ultimately nihilism replace any belief in the objectivity of truth, the
reality of history, and the power of reason to change the world. Beliefs that foster social
quietism and a withdrawal into personal life, in turn, tend to neutralize an activist and
interventionist mentality oriented toward the public sphere.

AKH1628 NIHILISM CAN LEAD TO COMMITMENTS TO INTOLERABLE
COMMUNITIES
Karen Carr, Professor of Religious Studies, Lawrence University, THE BANALIZATION
OF NIHILISM, 1992, p.139-40.
An "excessive commitment to a particular community," however, is no small thing. History
bears sufficient examples, some in quite recent memory, where such commitment has had
horrendous consequence; it is not something about which we can afford to be sanguine.
But it appears to be an inevitable consequence of the full-fledged adoption of alethiological
nihilism for, unlike his existentialist predecessors, Rorty has lost the critical edge afforded
by the refusal to view nihilism as the final word. The ultimate result of this is making the
trivial absolute, for there is nothing to prevent identifying our particular truths and values
with "the Truth." In the absence of some kind of commitment to something greater than
the community, however nebulous and illformed the object of this commitment be, the
community itself becomes absolute. At its least offensive, this fosters a kind of smugness
commented on even by one of Rorty's more adamant supporters. At its worst, it fosters a
blind dogmatism that neither knows nor can know any limit.
AKH1629 GERMAN NIHILISM LED TO HITLER
Leonard Peikoff, Professor of Philosophy, New York University, THE OMINOUS
PARALLELS, 1982, p.211-2.
Nihilism in Germany worked to exacerbate economic and political resentments by
undermining the only weapon that could have dealt with them. The intellectuals wanted
to destroy values; the public shaped by this trend ended up wanting to destroy men. The
social corollary of "Weimar culture" was a country animated, and torn apart, by hatred,
seething in groups trained to be impervious to reason. The political corollary was the same
country put back together by Hitler.
AKH1630 NAZISM WAS THE EMBODIMENT OF NIHILISM
Donald Crosby, Professor of Philosophy, Colorado State, THE SPECTER OF THE
ABSURD, 1988, p.404.
In another place, Rauschning notes that everything National Socialism does "is done in the
spirit of revolutionary destruction," and that it is "destroying the elements of every spiritual
order, and preventing the creation of any new one" (274-275). He argues for the fatal
instability of estate that deliberately repudiates any "ethical basis" and aims solely at the
perpetuation of the power and position of its ruling elite. "A totalitarian dictatorship of
pure violence is possible on a basis of nihilism, but it destroys its own foundation in
proportion as its principles become general among the masses." "What has now to be
overcome," he continues, "is the dictatorship of violence, which draws its destructive
energies from the directionless revolution, a revolution merely for revolution's sake."
AKH1631 NAZISM REPRESENTS THE EXTREME OF NIHILISM
Leonard Peikoff, Professor of Philosophy, New York University, THE OMINOUS
PARALLELS, 1982, p.213.
The left-moderns miscalculated; if nihilism was the standard, as they made it, then Nazism
was unbeatable, because Nazism is the final extreme of nihilism, in a form that was
tailored to attract all the major groups in Germany. Hitler denounced some avant-garde
details, he raved against "cultural Bolshevism," but -- as he did with Marxism -- he
unfailingly preached its essence. He differed from the intellectuals only in one (tactical)
respect. He stripped the modernist ideas of their world-weary pessimism and made nihilism
the basis of a fantasy projection, promising a new order in which men would rise to
unprecedented heights, by means of illogic, self-immolation, worldwide destruction, and
strict obedience to the Fuhrer. The intellectuals were spreading the doctrines which,
directly or indirectly, produced helplessness, demoralization, despair on a mass scale. Once
it was done, it was easy for the right kind of killer to kick the spreaders aside. He had only
to announce that he was not helpless and would tell men what to do.
AKH1632 NIHILISM THREATENS BLACK AMERICA
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, RACE MATTERS, 1993, p.19-20.
The liberal/conservative discussion conceals the most basic issue now facing black
America: the nihilistic threat to its very existence. This threat is not simply a matter of
relative economic deprivation and political powerlessness -- though economic well-being
and political clout are requisites for meaningful black progress. It is primarily a question
of speaking to the profound sense of psychological depression, personal worthlessness, and
social despair so widespread in black America.
AKH1633 NIHILISM IS AN ONGOING THREAT TO BLACK AMERICA
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, RACE MATTERS, 1993, p.23.
Nihilism is not new in black America. The first African encounter with the New World
was an encounter with a distinctive form of the Absurd. The initial black struggle against
degradation and devaluation in the enslaved circumstances of the New World was, in part,
a struggle against nihilism. In fact, the major enemy of black survival in America has been
and is neither oppression nor exploitation but rather the nihilistic threat -- that is, loss of
hope and absence of meaning. For as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the
possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive. The self-fulfilling prophecy of the
nihilistic threat is that without hope there can be no future, that without meaning there can
be no struggle.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 143
AKH1634 NIHILISM LEADS TO MEANINGLESS AND HOPELESSNESS
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, RACE MATTERS, 1993, p.22-3.
The proper starting point for the crucial debate about the prospects for black America is
an examination of the nihilism that increasingly pervades black communities. Nihilism is
to be understood here not as a philosophic doctrine that there are no rational grounds for
legitimate standards or authority; it is, far more, the lived experience of coping with a life
of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and (most important) lovelessness. The
frightening result is a numbing detachment from others and a self-destructive disposition
toward the world. Life without meaning, hope, and love breeds a coldhearted,
mean-spirited outlook that destroys both the individual and others.
AKH1635 NIHILISM IS A DISEASE OF THE SOUL
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Harvard, RACE MATTERS, 1993, p.28-9.
What is to be done about this nihilistic threat? Is there really any hope, given our shattered
civil society, market-driven corporate enterprises, and white supremacism? If one begins
with the threat of concrete nihilism, then one must talk about some kind of politics of
conversion. New models of collective black leadership must promote a version of this
politics. Like alcoholism and drug addiction, nihilism is a disease of the soul. It can never
be completely cured, and there is always the possibility of relapse.
AKH1636 NIHILISM REPRESENTS A DEHUMANIZING UTOPIANISM
Donald Crosby, Professor of Philosophy, Colorado State, THE SPECTER OF THE
ABSURD, 1988, p.377.
The third reason for rejecting nihilism is stated in this chapter's epigraph, taken from
Rosen's book on nihilism. This philosophy is surprisingly and ironically akin to utopianism
in its anguished yearning for a perfection that, if realized, would deprive us of our
humanity. To resolve all of the problems about which nihilists endlessly complain --
fallible knowledge, susceptibility to pain, situatedness in time, etc. -- would require the
complete annulment of the conditions of our life in the world. This is not only an
unreasonable demand, it also overlooks the fact that such a phantom state of "perfection"
would hardly be ideal.
AKH1637 NIHILISM IS A ONE-SIDED PICTURE OF HUMAN LIFE
Donald Crosby, Professor of Philosophy, Colorado State, THE SPECTER OF THE
ABSURD, 1988, p.377.
A second reason for rejecting nihilism is that it presents a one-sided picture of human life,
lavishing attention on its negative aspects but failing to take fairly into account its
counterbalancing positive traits and possibilities. The nihilistic philosophy is a sustained
exercise in special pleading for what turns out to be a distorted, fragmentary view of
existence.
AKH1638 NIHILISM EXPRESSES INTELLECTUAL LAZINESS
Donald Crosby, Professor of Philosophy, Colorado State, THE SPECTER OF THE
ABSURD, 1988, p.376.
The first reason for rejecting the nihilistic outlook is that it is grounded on certain basic
assumptions that we have shown to be indefensible or at least highly questionable. When
these assumptions are brought into the light of day and examined critically, the philosophy
of nihilism loses most of its power to persuade. Nihilistic thinkers can therefore be faulted
for not probing deeply enough and even for being guilty of a kind of intellectual laziness.
Cochran's indictment of ancient skepticism holds for nihilism as well; it tends to be "an
anaesthetic for those . . . wearied of thought" (1944:167).
AKH1639 POSTMODERNISM IS NIHILISTIC
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.174.
But the failure of the uprising, together with the decline of the New Left generally in
Europe and America, opened the way to a nihilistic reaction whose effects are still being
felt to this very day. Postmodernism is not only a nihilistic reaction to the failures imputed
to Enlightenment ideals of reason, science, and progress but more proximately a cultural
reaction to the failures of various socialisms to achieve a rational society in France and
elsewhere in our century.
AKH1640 POSTMODERNISM EMBRACES NIHILISM
Karen Carr, Professor of Religious Studies, Lawrence University, THE BANALIZATION
OF NIHILISM, 1992, p.140.
Nihilism, the bane of the nineteenth century, is fast becoming the banality of the late
twentieth century. The loss of truth prophesied by Nietzsche has become reality in
postmodern circles, yet without the attendant loss of meaning he also predicted. In the
postmodern world, we can have meaning without truth because we can have knowledge
without truth. The nineteenth-century belief that if truth disappeared, so too must
knowledge and meaning, has been supplanted; in a world without truth (it is held) both
knowledge and meaning still abound.

AKH1641 WE ENGAGE IN MULTIPLE LANGUAGE GAMES
A.C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy, Oxford, WITTGENSTEIN, 1988, p.71-2.
What 'lies open to view', Wittgenstein says, is the fact that language is not one uniform
thing but a host of different activities. We use language to describe, report, inform, affirm,
deny, speculate, give orders, ask questions, tell stories, playact, sing, guess riddles, make
jokes, solve problems, translate, request, thank, greet, curse, pray, warn, reminisce, express
emotions, and much else besides (compare especially P 23 and, for example, P 27, 180,
288, 654). All these different activities Wittgenstein calls 'language-games'. Earlier, in The
Brown Book, he had used this notion to mean a simplified fragment of language,
inspection of which tells us something about the nature of language proper. In the
Investigations the label takes on a more general signification; it means any of the many and
various language-using activities we engage in: 'the term "language-game" is meant to
bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a
form of life' (P 23). Wittgenstein talks of the 'multiplicity of language-games', and in P 23,
directly after giving a list of language-games (much as set out above), says: 'It is
interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools in language and of the ways they are
used, the multiplicity of kinds of words and sentences, with what logicians have said about
the structure of language. (Including the author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.)'
The comparison is one to be drawn between the great diversity of language-games and the
false view of the 'logicians' and the Tractatus's author that language has a single underlying
logical structure.
AKH1642 THE CONCEPT OF LANGUAGE GAMES APPLIES TO THE TOTAL
RANGE OF LINGUISTIC ACTIVITIES
A.C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy, Oxford, WITTGENSTEIN, 1988, p.72.
Wittgenstein's use of the term 'game' is not intended to suggest that the different linguistic
activities of reporting, describing, asking, and the rest are in some way frivolous or
unimportant. They are, of course, earnest. His reason for employing the notion is given in
this passage: Consider . . . the proceedings we call 'games'. I mean board-games,
cardgames, ball games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? -- Don't
say: 'There must be something common or they would not all be called "games",' but look
and see whether there is something common to all, -- for if you look at them you will not
see something that is in common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series
of them at that . . . And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of
similarities overlapping and cries-crossing . . . I can think of no better expression to
characterize these similarities than 'family resemblances'; for the various resemblances
between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc., etc.,
overlap and criss-cross in the same way. -- And I shall say: 'games' form a family. (P 66-7)
AKH1643 THE MULTIPLICITY OF LANGUAGE GAMES SHOULD BE RESPECTED
Richard Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History, Rice, THE TERMS
OF CULTURAL CRITICISM, 1992, p.15-6.
Lyotard has attempted to address the dilemma of poststructuralism and ethics in theory of
"language games," which is in part taken over from the work of the later Wittgenstein. The
logic of the "differend" suggests that the differences among language games are so extreme
that, in the last analysis, their various claims to "right" are incommensurable, undecidable.
For Lyotard, justice is attained by allowing the multiplicity of language games to subsist
in their various states of difference, that is, by our refusal to totalize them according to a
repressive logic of consensus. In this way, argues Lyotard, the values of pluralism are best
served.
AKH1644 MASTERY OF LANGUAGE REQUIRES BEING ABLE TO PLAY
MULTIPLE DIFFERENT LANGUAGE GAMES
A.C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy, Oxford, WITTGENSTEIN, 1988, p.74.
Mastery of a language consists in being able to employ its expressions in the many
different language-games to which they belong. In view of the multiplicity of language
games it is inevitable that the concept of use should in this way be a broad one and that
therefore no single formula can be found to encapsulate it.
AKH1645 MASTERY OF LANGUAGE INVOLVES FOLLOWING THE RULES OF
DIFFERENT LANGUAGE GAMES
A.C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy, Oxford, WITTGENSTEIN, 1988, p.77.
Wittgenstein's account of language-understanding, where 'understanding' is mastery of a
technique or practice in the way just explained, turns on the notion of following a rule, the
idea being that the practice in which understanding the meaning of expressions consists
is that of observing the rules for their use in the different language-games they belong to
(note that talk of 'rules' is naturally and intentionally allied to that of 'games').
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 144
AKH1646 LANGUAGE GAMES CAN'T BE MEANINGFULLY CHALLENGED FROM
THE OUTSIDE
A.C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy, Oxford, WITTGENSTEIN, 1988, p.95.
Doubt, Wittgenstein says, is itself possible only in the context of a language-game. If doubt
concerning whether I have hands is to be intelligible, then I must understand what is meant
by talk of 'hands' and of my 'having' them. But then this understanding, since it is based
upon the language-game which makes it possible, itself rules out the meaningfulness of
having such doubts; for to have them is to threaten the very conditions for the
meaningfulness of the words being used: 'The fact that I use the word "hand" and all the
other words in my sentence without a second thought, indeed that I should stand before the
abyss if I wanted so much as to try to doubt their meanings -- shows that absence of doubt
belongs to the essence of the language-game' (C 370). A language-game, it is to be
remembered, is a form of life; it is a practice or a set of practices involving agreement
about the rules for the use of words.
AKH1647 LANGUAGE GAMES CAN'T BE QUESTIONED AS A WHOLE FROM
WITHOUT
A.C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy, Oxford, WITTGENSTEIN, 1988, p.103-4.
Most Wittgensteinians deny that the later philosophy constitutes a form of 'anti-realism',
but at the same time it appears that Wittgenstein himself thinks that the most one can say
on the question of an independently existing reality is that our language-games -- more
generally, our practices -- in which we deal with things like, say, chairs, tables, and the
rest, presuppose a commitment on our part to there being such a reality. This comes out in
the view, expressed in On Certainty, that the validity of many beliefs consists in the role
they play in language; the very sense of our talk about an external world, in which there
are hands or in which physical things have existed for a long time, turns on our
unquestioning acceptance of such beliefs themselves as (here we have more metaphors)
the 'bed and banks' or 'scaffolding' of that language-game itself. Wittgenstein puts this
point by saying that propositions like 'physical objects exist' are 'grammatical' -- that is,
logical -- propositions, having a special role in our discourse as forming part of its very
conditions of meaningfulness. Likewise, religious discourse is a language game in which
talk of God similarly plays a fundamental role, and consequently the validity of religious
discourse is something internal to itself (a point some theologians have gratefully accepted
from Wittgenstein because it helps them defend against the criticism that no independent
means exist for substantiating religious claims). There is no question of asking, still less
answering, questions about the validity of these language-games as a whole, or from
without; they rest upon 'the form of life' -- the shared experience, the agreement, the
customs, the rules -- which underlie them and give them their content. Accordingly it
appears that, in Wittgenstein's view, language and thought are in some sense internally
self-determining and self-constituting, and that therefore reality is not, as he had thought
of it in the Tractatus, independent of language and thought.
AKH1648 DOUBTS WHICH UNDERMINE THE WHOLE LANGUAGE GAME ARE
HOLLOW
A.C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy, Oxford, WITTGENSTEIN, 1988, p.95.
The language-game itself cannot be called into question as a whole or from 'outside': the
language-game, as a form of life, is 'the given'. Wittgenstein points out that a child who is
learning, say, history has to accept the language game before he can question whether
something is true or whether something exists (C 310-15); 'Doubt', he says, 'comes after
belief' (C160). If the pupil continually doubted whether the world had existed for longer
than a few hours or years, the business of learning history would be impossible.
Wittgenstein says that such doubts are 'hollow' (C 312), for in effect they try to make the
entire language-game itself impossible. But if the language-game were impossible then the
doubt itself would fail to make sense: 'A doubt that doubted everything would not be a
doubt' (C 450).
AKH1649 POSTMODERN CRITIQUE CAN'T BE EFFECTIVELY APPLIED TO A
DIFFERENT LANGUAGE GAME
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.12.
This may seem an odd charge to bring in view of Lyotard's pluralist rhetoric, his stress on
the open multiplicity of language games, each disposing of its own immanent criteria and
none having the right to adjudicate over any other. But the effect of this
incommensurability-thesis -derived from a mixture of poststructuralist, Wittgensteinian
and liberal-communitarian ideas - is to render criticism pretty much otiose in the face of
practices or beliefs (no matter how obnoxious) which subscribe to some different
language-game or set of cultural norms.

AKH1650 THE BASIC FRAMEWORK OF THE LANGUAGE GAME CONFERS
INTELLIGIBILITY THUS, IT CAN'T BE QUESTIONED
A.C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy, Oxford, WITTGENSTEIN, 1988, p.96-7.
The idea of 'testing' and of the 'peculiar logical role' of certain propositions echoes what
Wittgenstein elsewhere says in the later writings about the connected facts that having
reasons, and giving justifications, has to end somewhere. Where they end is the form of
life constituting the language-game; this is the framework which confers intelligibility on
what we do. Testing our beliefs can only be carried out against a background of beliefs
which are not open to test: 'the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact
that some of our propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which
those turn' (C 341). The exempt propositions are the 'grammatical' propositions, that is, the
propositions constituting the framework of our language and practices, and they form the
system within which all testing takes place (C 83, 90-2, 105). The beliefs expressed by
these propositions are variously described by Wittgenstein to illustrate the fundamental
role they play; he says that our commitment to them is part of our nature (C 359), that their
'special role in our frame of reference' (C 83), consists in their being the 'substratum' (C
162) or 'scaffolding' (C 211) of our ordinary testable beliefs.
AKH1651 WE CAN'T LEGITIMATELY DOUBT THE FRAME OF REFERENCE FOR
OUR LIFE
A.C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy, Oxford, WITTGENSTEIN, 1988, p.95-6.
What is being ruled out by these considerations is doubt concerning matters which are
fundamental to our linguistic and other practices. Wittgenstein is not saying that there
cannot be any doubt about anything, for of course there can be. But legitimate doubt can
only make sense in the context of a framework which is itself not a subject for doubt: 'The
game of doubting itself presupposes certainty' (C 115). Moore's claim about his hands --
and by extension any claim about basic matters of fact concerning the existence of material
things, the continuous history of the world, and so on -- are therefore not legitimate
subjects for doubt because they constitute the frame of reference for all our practices.
Wittgenstein says 'My life consists in my being content to accept many things' (C 344);
'My life shews that I know or am certain that there is a chair over there, or a door, and so
on'.
AKH1652 ASSUMPTIONS AND PRACTICES ARE GROUNDED IN FORMS OF LIFE
WHICH CAN'T BE RATIONALLY JUSTIFIED
A.C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy, Oxford, WITTGENSTEIN, 1988, p.84-5.
What Wittgenstein means by a 'form of life' is this: it is the underlying consensus of
linguistic and nonlinguistic behaviour, assumptions, practices, traditions, and natural
propensities which humans, as social beings, share with one another, and which is
therefore presupposed in the language they use; language is woven into that pattern of
human activity and character, and meaning is conferred on its expressions by the shared
outlook and nature of its users (cf. P 19, 23, 241, P II, pp.174, 226). Thus a form of life
consists in the community's concordance of natural and linguistic responses, which issue
in agreement in definitions and judgements and therefore behaviour. Because the
'foundation', so to speak, of the practices which language-use consists in is the form of life
into which that language is woven, it follows for Wittgenstein that questions about the
ultimate explanation or justification of the concepts embodied in our thought and talk very
soon come to an end -- what justifies our usages is the shared form of life underlying them,
and that is that: no more either need be or indeed can be said. The form of life is the frame
of reference we learn to work within when trained in the language of our community;
learning that language is thus learning the outlook, assumptions, and practices with which
that language is inseparably bound and from which its expressions get their meaning. And
this is why explanation and justification neither need to nor can go beyond a gesture
towards the form of life: 'If I have exhausted the justification I have reached bedrock, and
my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do" '(P 217); 'What
has to be accepted, the given is -- so one could say -- forms of life' (P II, p.226).
AKH1653 FUNDAMENTAL BELIEFS ARE INDOUBTABLE IN PRACTICE
A.C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy, Oxford, WITTGENSTEIN, 1988, p.97.
Although Wittgenstein talks of these beliefs as constituting the 'foundation' (C 401, 411,
415) of our language-games he does not mean by this expression what philosophers
normally mean by it. Typically the conception of 'foundational beliefs' is taken to mean
beliefs which are fixed and permanent; thus some philosophers claim that there are beliefs
which are logically necessary conditions for anything that can count as thought or
experience, such that even Martians or a divinity would have to have them if they were to
enjoy anything recognizable as experience. Wittgenstein, rather, has it that the foundational
beliefs are only relatively foundational -- they are like the bed and banks of a river which
determine the course along which the waters flow (C 96-9); the bed and banks are in
course of time eroded and therefore shift, but this is a long process and from the viewpoint
of our ordinary talk and practice the foundational beliefs serve as what is 'fast' and 'solid'
(C 151). But the important point is that the foundational role of the 'grammatical'
propositions consists in their indubitability in practice, in action: 'it belongs to the logic of
our scientific investigations that certain things are indeed not doubted' (C 342).
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 145
AKH1654 POSTMODERN THOUGHT BELIEVES LOCAL KNOWLEDGE WITHIN
AN INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITY IS ALL THAT'S POSSIBLE
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.5.
Not that I would wish to be taken as endorsing any version of the crassly reductive view
advanced by some sociologists of knowledge or sceptical debunkers in the
postmodern-pragmatist vein. On this account 'local knowledge' is the most that we can ever
hope for, since theoretical truth-claims amount to nothing more than the expression of
in-place consensus beliefs on the part of some existing cultural enterprise, professional
interest-group, 'interpretive community', or whatever. Such ideas have gained ground
across a range of disciplines, influenced on the one hand by ethnographers and social
anthropologists like Clifford Geertz, and on the other by various prevalent forms of
deep-laid ontological and epistemological scepticism.
AKH1655 POSTMODERN SKEPTICISM EMPOWERS DOGMATIC OPPONENTS OF
REFORM
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.25-6.
But it is equally the case - as with postmodernists like Rorty and Lyotard--that the
wholesale revolt against Enlightenment thinking gives rise to a form of discursive
'anarchy', a species of cognitive and ethico-political relativism pushed to the point where
criticism is powerless against those same (nowadays, resurgent) dogmatic truth-claims.
Such, after all, is the lesson often derived from Wittgenstein, Lyotard, and other
proponents of the view that every language-game (or discourse) disposes of its own sui
generis criteria, so that the best we can do - in the interests of justice is acknowledge this
open multiplicity of life-forms and give up the attempt to criticize 'truths' or values
different from our own. And this (be it noted) at a time when fundamentalist creeds of
various description - Christian, Islamic, nationalist, free-market capitalist, and so forth- are
vigorously asserting their claim to supersede not only the secular discourse of
Enlightenment but also its associated values of participant democracy, liberty of
conscience, social welfare, and egalitarian reform.
AKH1656 POSTMODERN CRITICAL APPROACHES SIMPLY REFLECT THE
POLITICAL IMPOTENCE OF INTELLECTUALS
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.1.
A sociologist of culture could probably come up with some interesting facts - even
statistics - about the spread of 'postmodernist' thinking in relation to localized differences
of history, class-politics, economic development and so forth. This project might discover
quite a range of home-truths with regard to the vagaries of intellectual fashion (especially
in university departments of literature) and their wider cultural or socio-political context.
Most revealing would be the inverse relation that arguably exists between the scope for
off-campus political involvement - for various forms of 'grassroots' activist concern - and
the extent to which academics have embraced the current postmodernist turn.' For it is
tempting to speculate that few would adopt this outlook of disabused fin-de-siecle wisdom
were it not for their willing or enforced isolation in enclaves utterly remote from any
contact with realities outside the seminar-room. Small wonder that it has produced such
at. array of exotic, hypercultivated hot-house blooms as a result of these adverse external
conditions.
AKH1657 POST-STRUCTURALIST THOUGHT IS POLITICALLY POWERLESS
Robert Hughes, critic and historian, CULTURE OF COMPLAINT, 1993, p.76.
The intellectual who imagines he or she can challenge the status quo by arguing the
uselessness of language starts with not one, but three strikes against him, and this is why
poststructuralism, though it has filled the seminar rooms for the last decade and given us
a mound of largely unreadable cultural criticism along with some preachy neo-conceptual
art, has had so little lasting effect on the way people in general write, think, or act. It is
mostly an enclave of abstract complaint.
AKH1658 DECONSTRUCTION TURNS THE UNIVERSITY INTO A POLITICAL
BATTLEFIELD
Amy Gutmann, Professor of Politics, Princeton, MULTICULTURALISM, 1994, p.20.
Taken seriously, on its own terms, the deconstructionist defense of a more multicultural
curriculum itself appears as an assertion of political power in the name of the exploited and
oppressed, rather than as an intellectually defensible reform. And deconstructionism
represents critics and criticisms of multiculturalism, however reasonable, as politically
retrograde and unworthy of intellectual respect. Whereas essentialists react to reasonable
uncertainty and disagreement by invoking rather than defending timeless truths,
deconstructionists react by explaining away our different viewpoints, presuming they are
equally indefensible on intellectual grounds. Intellectual life is deconstructed into a
political battlefield of class, gender, and racial interests, an analogy that does not do justice
to democratic politics at its best, which is not merely a contest of competing interest
groups. But the image conveyed of academic life, the real arena of deconstructionist
activity, is more dangerous still because it can create its own reality, converting
universities into political battlefields rather than mutually respectful communities of
substantial, sometimes even fundamental, intellectual disagreement.

AKH1659 DECONSTRUCTION CAN'T OPPOSE RADICAL EVIL SUCH AS NAZISM
Dinesh D'Souza, American enterprise institute, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, March 1991,
p.78.
In a recent debate on deconstructionism in The New York Review of Books, Charles L.
Griswold, Jr., of Howard University, alleged, and his opponent Denis Donoghue, of New
York University, admitted, that "nothing in deconstruction provides an ethical criticism of
Nazism." One might add that nothing in deconstructionism even permits such a criticism.
Griswold maintained that "deconstruction dissolves notions of personal accountability and
responsibility"; indeed, it "renders theoretically unintelligible basic moral terms such as
good and evil."
AKH1660 POSTMODERNISM IS UNWILLING TO DEFEND THE HISTORICAL
VALIDITY
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.115.
Such is the conclusion drawn by Lyotard when he discusses Robert Faurisson's outrageous
thesis that for all we can know the gas-ovens at Auschwitz were never used for the mass
extermination of Jewish and other victims since none of those victims has survived to
verify the claim. To which, one might think, there is a simple (but by no means
simple-minded) line of response - that this is just a piece of sophistical chicanery, and that
there exist many kinds of evidence besides that of first-hand documentary or ocular
witness. But Lyotard replies - true to postmodernist form - by invoking his notion of the
'differend' as that which enjoins us to respect the heterogeneity of language-games, each
disposing of its own sui generis criteria. In which case we have no right to criticize
Faurisson on terms laid down by traditional modes of scholarly enquiry or goodfaith
historical research. For it is evident enough - on Lyotard's submission - that Faurisson
simply doesn't accept those standards, and therefore that we do him a signal injustice by
applying them to his statements about the Holocaust. More than that: we fall straight into
Faurisson's trap by adopting a 'totalitarian' approach that takes for granted its own
privileged status with regard to issues of truth, justice, and ethical accountability. For he
can then justifiably retort that his opponents have made him the victim of a discourse that
suppresses the narrative or speech-act differend, and which thus peremptorily denies his
right to a free and fair hearing.
AKH1661 POSTMODERN RELATIVISM IGNORES BLATANT INJUSTICE
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.26.
Thus it is all very well for 'advanced' Western theorists to allow themselves this luxury of
(in Lyotard's oxymoronic phrase) 'judging without criteria', or treating every case - every
language-game or form of life - as equally requiring the principled suspension of our own
judgmental norms. But it is a message unlikely to carry much weight with the victims of
'ethnic cleansing' in erstwhile Yugoslavia, with women in the Islamic countries who stand
to lose all their hard-won gains if the 'radical' clergy and the hard-line ideologues win out,
or with those in the Western 'liberal democracies' who are witnessing the large-scale
rollback of rights (often re-named 'benefits') which formed, until recently, the common
ground of a broad-based political consensus. At any rate they cannot derive much comfort
from an outlook - whatever its impeccably pluralist credentials - that refuses to judge in
such matters, treating them rather as so many instances of the narrative-pragmatic
'differend' that always opens up between rival (heterogeneous) ideas of truth and justice.
AKH1662 REJECTION OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT LEADS TO NATIONALISM
AND FUNDAMENTALISM
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.111.
For it is among the more striking ironies of our 'postmodern' age that the widespread
rejection of Enlightenment values like truth, reason, and critique has gone along with - and
arguably contributed to - the resurgence of nationalist and religious fundamentalist creeds.
AKH1663 POST-STRUCTURALISM CAN'T EFFECTIVELY RESPOND TO
FUNDAMENTALISM
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.101-2.
For post-structuralism and its offshoots had nothing to say--or nothing of ethical substance
that could offer some means of reflecting critically on the current resurgence of nationalist
myths and regressive fundamentalist. creeds. On the one hand it lacked any notion of the
subject capable of bearing such a role. On the other it raised the rhetoric of 'difference' into
a slogan whose political implications were at best obscure, and at worst a grim prognostic
of recent events in ex-Yugoslavia and elsewhere.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 146
AKH1664 POSTMODERN REJECTION OF REASON INVITES A RETURN TO
REPRESSIVE FAITH
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.11-2.
But postmodernists typically confuse the issue by ignoring the difference - the crucial
difference between 'truth' as a matter of privileged access, vouchsafed to some religious
or secular elite already (so to speak) 'in the know', and truth as arrived at through reasoned
enquiry in the public sphere of open participant debate. In so doing - as Habermas justly
remarks - they revert to a pre-enlightenment ethos when faith (not reason) was the arbiter
of right thinking, and when the 'hermeneutic circle' (so beloved of present-day theorists)
indeed marked the horizon of permissible belief.
AKH1665 POSTMODERN SKEPTICISM WOULD SUPPORT THE INQUISITION
OVER GALILEO
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.9.
The strong whiff of mystery-mongering here is reinforced by the parallel with
contemporary theologians who take comfort from any hint that science has to acknowledge
limits to its present powers of explanatory grasp. In fact the honourable term 'sceptic' is
wholly misapplied to a thinker such as Feyerabend who would champion Cardinal
Bellarmine and the Church authorities against the upstart heretic Galileo, or to those who
- following Rorty - regard the issue between them as merely a matter of alternative
metaphors, one of which (the heliocentric model) just happens to have won out and thus
set the agenda for subsequent 'scientific' thought. That these ideas enjoy widespread
popularity among cultural theorists is more a symptom of their scientific ignorance - or of
the current state of play in inter-departmental politics - than a sign that we have now
matured, as Rorty would have it, into an attitude of healthy scepticism vis-a-vis the
grandiose delusions of an earlier time.
AKH1666 RELATIVISM DESTROYS THE POSSIBILITY OF SELF-CRITICISM
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.23.
Whence the conclusion (6) that ontological relativism of this sort is strictly incoherent,
along with any doctrine (including that of the 'hermeneutic circle') which relativizes truth
to some particular language-game, discourse, or local interpretive horizon. For on this
account it is not just our kind of 'truth' that drops out - as the relativists would cheerfully
maintain - but also any prospect of revising or rejecting our own pre-existent beliefs in
light of alternative truth-claims.
AKH1667 POSTSTRUCTURALIST JARGON UNDERMINES REFORM
Robert Hughes, critic and historian, CULTURE OF COMPLAINT, 1993, p.83.
If the American left is to revitalize itself, it will have to relearn plain English, return to the
actual and resistant world, reclaim not only the Enlightenment principles but the language
of Tom Paine and Orwell for itself--and it will never do that with its present encumbrance
of theory. All that preserves the illusion of radicalness in academic poststructuralism and
neo-Marxism is the conservative opposition.
AKH1668 QUESTIONING ALL ASSUMPTIONS IS PATHOLOGICAL
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.83.
One can also accept a more strictly existential interpretation of Nietzsche's point, for it is
equally clear that if the individual had to think out from its beginnings every act that he
wished to perform, his life would become impossible. An ability to take things on faith--to
act with out continually trying to make explicit the grounds and assumptions of one's
actions--is an absolute necessity in both social and individual life. In the absence of this
ability, we enter the realm of pathology.
AKH1669 POSTMODERNIST REJECTION OF UNIVERSALS JUSTIFIES TORTURE
Wayne Booth, Professor of English, University of Chicago, FREEDOM AND
INTERPRETATION, Barbara Johnson, ed., 1993, p.77.
Thus we work here on that shaky ground where we can know in advance that any universal
moral principle uncovered by philosophy,literary criticism, or rhetorical theory, will clash
directly with all or most empirical data. Perhaps it is for this very reason that recent
theoretical questionings of the substantive nature of of the individual self h ave produced
those rumors: torture is itself so widespread, and is deemed so necessary when calculating
ends and means in extreme situations, that those of us who object must always feel that we
are about to lose the battle. Can we not expect that the worlds ubiquitous torturers will
welcome the rumor that advanced thinkers in the most advanced nations find no solid
reality in that victim who cringes and weeps before their dry eyes? That precise fear was
recently expressed to me by a young Chinese woman who had fled China after Tiananmen
Square and then found, she said, that postmodernist Western thought seemed to deny her
very existence as an individual protester.

AKH1670 POSTMODERN OPPOSITION TO UNIVERALISM IS OVERLY
RELATIVISTIC
Terry Eagleton, Professor of English Literature, Oxford, FREEDOM AND
INTERPRETATION, Barbara Johnson, ed., 1993, p.139.
But this very historicist strength is also the source of MacIntyre's theoretical weakness. For
what he offers in oppostion to Enlightenment universalism is the claim of one's particular
historical tradition; and it is hard to see how this can avoid relativism. "What the good life
is for a fifth-century Athenian general will not be the same as what it was for a medieval
nun or a seventeenth-century farmer." Are all these forms of life, then, to be indifferently
endorsed? MacIntyre would seem to assume, rather like Matthew Arnold, that belonging
to a tradition is a good in itself; in Wittgensteinian or postmodernist fashion, there is
apparently no possibility of subjecting a whole form of life to moral scrutiny. "I am a
citizen of this clan, this tribe, this nation. Hence what is good for me has to be the good for
one who inhabits these roles." (I belong to the clan known as the the SS, the nation known
as Nazi Germany, the profession of pornographer...)
AKH1671 POSTMODERN RELATIVISM UNDERMINES SOCIAL CRITICISM
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.176-7.
Within this delimited scope, postmodernism can clearly be seen as a fragmenting and
relativizing ideology par excellence that reflects the anomie and despair so widespread in
the closing years of the century. In this respect postmodernism, precisely because it is a
'weary' and nihilistic body of ideas, may very well serve to validate the present society or
even render it possible for its acolytes to 'dwell' rather innocuously within the existing set
of social conditions, however much they regard themselves as social rebels, especially
concerning issues that do not challenge the structure of the present society. Its denigration
of reason, coherence, and historicism, can hardly provide a sense of direction for popular
restiveness or the intellectual means for contesting the anti-ecological and multinational
capitalism of our time, still less provide the bases for a serious project for social change.
Rather, it more often leads to a pervasive relativism and to a dismembering of the
'universalist' projects initiated by Enlightenment thinkers and their more radical
descendants), so as to produce a form of social myopia. Put bluntly: it disarms all serious
oppositional tendencies toward the prevailing society, apart from the narcissistic
adventures of mere personal rebellion in dealing with the frustrations the society arouses
in oppressed but marginal cultural groups.
AKH1672 POSTMODERNISM COULD LEAD TO RIGHT-WING
TOTALITARIANISM
Martin Lewis, Professor, Duke University School of the Environment, GREEN
DELUSIONS, 1992, p.247-8.
While their professors may find the extreme relativism of subversive postmodernism
bracingly liberating, many of today's students may embrace only the new creed's rejection
of the past. Stripped of leftist social concerns, radical postmodemism's contempt for
established social and political philosophy -- indeed, its contempt for liberalism -- may
well lead to right-wing totalitarianism. When cynical, right-leaning students are taught that
democracy is a sham and that all meaning derives from power, they are being schooled in
fascism, regardless of their instructors' intentions.
AKH1673 POSTMODERNISM IS FRIVOLOUS IN LIGHT OF THE ECOLOGICAL
CRISIS
Joel Kovel, Professor of Social Studies, Bard College, SCIENCE WARS, Andrew Ross,
ed., 1996, p.199.
Similarly, what might be oxymoronically called classical postmodernism is now as
obsolete as the high modernism it punctured. Given the gathering threat, the postmodern
critique of foundationalism clearly has to be rethought. What rang true when framed
against the dominative tendencies of modern science's totalizing claims -- including those
of Marxism -- is now glaringly inadequate when the danger to an actual foundation
increases before our eyes. For the ecological crisis is no text, though misshapen and false
texts play a major role in its working out. It is, rather, a threat to the life that produces
texts.
AKH1674 POSTMODERN THOUGHT ENTRENCHES THE STATUS QUO
Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology co-founder, RE-ENCHANTING
HUMANITY, 1995, p.176.
By contending that reason is questionable as a path to ascertaining truth, indeed that it is
simply a social artifact and that truth is merely a social artifice, postmodernism advances
this process, as does its denial that an objective history exists - a denial that divests the
present of any ethical moorings and social meaning. Civilization ceases to be regarded as
a realm of rational attainments; indeed the very idea of progress as a basis for hope and
social foresight begins to fade, if not disappear completely. Moreover, such sweeping
claims tend to obscure the social factors that have created the 'postmodern condition' (to
use Jean-Francois Lyotard's phrase); in fact, by rendering social analysis anemic, even
bloodless, postmodernism tends to underpin the status quo precisely by challenging its
effects rather than its underlying workings.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 147
AKH1675 KRITIK IS GROUNDED IN ENLIGHTENMENT PERSPECTIVES
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.83.
Still we should be wrong to conclude from all this that enlightenment critique henceforth
stands revealed as a delusive or bad-faith enterprise, one whose professions of
emancipatory intent are everywhere bound up with a domineering drive to subjugate
cultural difference and otherness. For in the end, as de Man well knows, we have no choice
but to keep faith with Husserl's conception of philosophy as 'a process by means of which
naive assumptions are made accessible to consciousness by an act of critical
self-understanding', or again as 'a persistently reflective attitude that can take philosophy
itself for its theme'.
AKH1676 POSTMODERN CRITIQUE MAKES NO SENSE WITHOUT AN
ENLIGHTENMENT FRAMEWORK
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.33.
That is to say, these thinkers take for granted a whole range of crucial distinctions - as
between truth and falsehood, reason and rhetoric, real human interests and their distorted
(ideological) representation - which no amount of de rigueur postmodern scepticism can
entirely conceal from view. Such projects would lack any meaning or purpose (would
indeed be quite unintelligible) were it not for their tacitly acknowledged commitment to
those same principles and values. Historically they stand in a line of descent from the
critique of revelation- of truth-claims vested in a single self-authorizing discourse - which
ousted theology from its sovereign role as arbiter in issues of intellectual conscience, and
which thus secured an expanding sphere of freedom in the natural and human sciences.
Moreover, it is this history of hard-won progress in the right to think and criticize that
postmodernists would blithely revoke when they denounce 'enlightenment' as a thing of
the past, an authoritarian discourse aimed towards suppressing all signs of cultural
difference or alterity. For the very terms in which their arguments are couched historical,
sociological, ethico-political - are terms that quite literally make no sense if removed from
the validating context of enlightened thought.
AKH1677 POSTMODERN CRITIQUE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT ATTACKS A
STEREOTYPE
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.31.
Hence the massively distorted image of 'Enlightenment' reason put around by
postmodernists,neo-pragmatists, and others, often (one suspects) on the basis of a slender
acquaintance with the rely event texts and contexts. Nor does it require any great
investment of scholarly labour to perceive how utterly wide of the mark is this bugbear
characterization. One only need compare (say) Lyotard's prejudicial talk of enlightened
'meta-narratives', 'master-discourses', monopolistic capitalized Truth, and so forth with the
account offered by a well-informed intellectual historian like Peter Gay. What then
becomes clear - no doubt to the surprise of readers bred up on the doxastic postmodern
view - is the sheer absurdity of equating 'Enlightenment' either with one historically
delimited period of recent European thought or with a fixed set of doctrines laying claim
to some ultimate (quasi-theological) truth; Even the most cursory reading of Gay's two
volumes is sufficient to dispel the latter misconception. Never has there been a more
fissile, internally fractured, and disputatious movement of thought than the enterprise
launched by the French philosopher and raised to a higher point of critical reflection by
Kant and subsequent thinkers. In fact this was not just a period trait but a defining
characteristic of the Enlightenment project, committed as it was - and as Kant most
explicitly proclaimed - to a principle of freedom in the questioning of received ideas and
values.
AKH1678 THE FOCUS ON DISCOURSE IGNORES THE REALITY OF TRAGEDY
Allan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.345.
Foucault's insights most decidedly ought to be put to use, but only with great
circumspection. For if one adopts, in a cavalier and single-minded fashion, the view that
everything is discourse or text or fiction, the realia are trivialized. Real people who really
died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz or Treblinka become so much discourse. Again, I
do not accuse Foucault himself of forgetting that discourse and world are finally different.
I am merely pointing out how easy, and how dangerous, this kind of misreading is.

AKH1679 FOCUS ON LANGUAGE LEADS TO NEGLECT OF SUBSTANTIVE
MORAL QUESTIONS
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.102.
This was Aristotle's point when he argued that certain kinds of practical syllogism could
issue not only in a further proposition but also in some appropriate action or mode of
conduct equally consistent with the given premises. Other philosophers - Stuart Hampshire
among them - have likewise insisted on the close relation between ethical theory and
practice, and on the fallacy involved in any thinking (like Hume's) that treats them as
separate realms. For such thinking itself has consequences, albeit of a negative and
disabling kind. On the one hand it can lead to the notion of ethics as a higher-order
(meta-linguistic) discipline whose business is to clarify the status or 'logical grammar' of
our various moral conceptions, but not to address more substantive issues of justice,
freedom, or rights. On the other- as in Hume and some latterday varieties of emotivist
doctrine - it produces a generalized scepticism with regard to theory in whatever form, so
that reason is regarded as a 'slave of the passions', and ethics reduces to a matter of moral
sentiment without need for any further (reasoned or principled) justification.
AKH1680 LANGUAGE REFERS TO REALITY--IT DOESN'T CREATE IT
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.102.
That is to say, there is no reason - aside from the 'linguistic turn' and its resultant forms of
modish epistemological scepticism - to reject the much-derided commonsense view that
language does very often refer to real-world states of affairs, and furthermore that
truth-claims (including theoretical truth-claims) may indeed have real and decisive
consequences for our conduct as reflective moral agents.
AKH1681 REALITY ISN'T JUST LINGUISTICALLY CONSTRUCTED
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.7.
It is one thing to hold that the findings of recent research into microphysics or
aerodynamics wouldn't make any sense in a culture that had no use for computers, radar
technology, brain-scan instruments, rapid air transport, and other such perquisites of the
late twentieth-century Western lifeworld. But it is quite a different thing to maintain - with
thinkers like Rorty and Paul Feyerabend -that these are just so many spin-off products of
an optional language-game that figures the world according to its own temporarily
favoured models or metaphors. One is tempted to suggest that such an argument could
seem persuasive only to those who write it out on their laptop machines at thirty thousand
feet while remaining largely ignorant of whatever it is that prevents both technologies from
crashing.
AKH1682 REALITY ISN'T JUST A PRODUCT OF DISCOURSE
Christopher Norris, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Wales, TRUTH AND
THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM, 1994, p.6.
I count myself fortunate in having been a student at University College, London at the time
of Frank Kermode's graduate seminars when the new French thinking Lacan, Althusser,
Derrida, Barthes - had not yet hardened into an ironcast orthodoxy with punitive sanctions
attached. And life in Cardiff (where I have taught for the past fifteen years) has the signal
advantage that the real world still exists within hailing distance for those not altogether
sold on talk of reality, as a textual construct or of subject-positions as constituted always
in and through 'discourse'. To put it bluntly: there is less excuse for being a postmodernist
in Cardiff than in other places where the new solipsism exerts an understandable (though
none the less regressive and politically enervating) appeal.
AKH1683 THE CONCEPT OF CRISIS UNDERLIES POSTMODERN THOUGHT
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.112.
The belief that all continuity had been lost and that in consequence new and unexpected
possibilities had, for good or ill, been opened up was shared by many in the prewar period.
But it would be a mistake to regard this feeling of crisis or discontinuity as merely a
"period" concept. On the contrary, it underlies the whole of modernist and postmodernist
art and literature--as Alan Wilde's illuminating study, Horizons of Assent, helps us to see.
Moreover, going beyond art and literature, the interpretive categories of modernism and
postmodernism are applicable to the realm of thought as well. Modernist and
postmodernist notions of crisis and of how to respond to crisis turn out to be central to
such intellectual trends or movements as psychoanalysis, existentialism, structuralism, and
post structuralism.
AKH1684 FOUCAULT ACCEPTS THE IDEA OF CULTURAL CRISIS
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.183.
The perspective that Nietzsche suggests and that the later Heidegger then unequivocally
adopts finds further expression in the brilliant, speculative, and in some ways deeply
disturbing writings of Michel Foucault (b. 1926). Foucault stands as an heir to the diverse
thoughts of his two great predecessors. However much he may differ from them in detail,
he accepts their fundamental assumption of cultural crisis, of a derelict present, of a
nothing out of which everything must be created. The presuppositions of his
historiography lie in crisis thought (in the present essay, I am much more concerned with
these presuppositions than I am with the historiography itself.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 148
AKH1685 HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY RESTS ON HIS VIEW OF CULTURAL
CRISIS
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.112-3.
To deal in any detail with the manifestations of the crisis notion from the 1890s to the
1920s would take me away from my main task here, which is to come to an understanding
of Heidegger in particular and of aestheticism in general. This task must take precedence
over any attempt at the detailed reconstruction of historical contexts, however interesting
those contexts may be. Nonetheless, as a background to Heidegger's own crisis
preoccupation and as an indication that the notion of cultural crisis did not come from the
empyrean heights but had, on the contrary, a definite historical matrix, the main loci of the
crisis idea can be quickly indicated.
AKH1686 THE IDEA OF CULTURAL CRISIS IS AN UNJUSTIFIED DOGMA
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.111
In one or another of its versions, crisis is the most widely held assumption of
twentieth-century thought. Its very pervasiveness leads to its mindless repetition. More
often than not, it is evoked rather than explained and defended. Unchallenged, it is
exempted from any sort of critical examination.
AKH1687 CRISIS PERSPECTIVE OBSCURES CONCRETE CASES
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.347.
What are we supposed to do about the death of God, the crisis of values, the eclipse of
authority? And how exactly would any action that we might take on these fronts have an
effect on the practical difficulties of our political and social life? The problem with the
crisis notion, from a pragmatic point of view, is that whether or not these difficulties are
related to the crisis, they have causes of a more immediate sort that are in all likelihood far
more amenable to improvement than is the supposed crisis of values or belief. The problem
with the crisis notion is that it can only speak in vague generalities. It does not properly
address concrete cases. In fact, it tends to obscure concrete cases--in the same way that
Heidegger allowed his vision of the "National Socialist Movement" to be obscured in
1933.
AKH1688 CRISIS EMPHASIS TENDS TO BECOME SELF-FULFILLING
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.347.
Concerning crisis, one further point needs to be made. I have attacked the crisis notion in
this study. Yet, I am well aware that there is one sense in which crisis is more disturbingly
real at this time than at any time in the past. For it is clear that human history could indeed
come to an end. It could do so with frightening speed and viciousness. The "end of history"
is a practical possibility: the technology that would bring about such an end is already in
place. Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault are all believers in the apocalypse. At any rate,
they project a reasonable facsimile of such a belief. Unfortunately, such prophecies have
a tendency toward self-fulfillment. Heidegger's conviction that only a god can save us is
hardly calculated to help us evade the crisis of which he speaks; Foucault's belief in
unending protest--his hostility to every order--may only move us closer to disaster.
AKH1689 CRISIS EMPHASIS LEADS TO APOCALYPSE MONGERING
Alan Megill, University of Iowa, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY, 1985, p.347-8.
In short, I see the crisis notion itself as a danger. I have already noted that Nietzsche and
Heidegger are better seen as post-Christian than as anti-Christian thinkers, a point that I
made in connection with their commitment to the creativity of art. But if the notion of
radical creativity is a Christian notion, so also is that of crisis and apocalypse. The crisis
of the City of Man--its destruction, making way for the City of God--is an important part
of the Christian myth. At some times it has been more emphasized than at others. It has
received much emphasis recently among American religious fundamentalists. Some of
these fundamentalists give a quite precise political interpretation to the apocalypse that
they envisage. The apocalypse means an all-out war between the forces of Good and the
forces of Evil. The war is imminent. What's more, it is to be welcomed: for it heralds the
Coming. The possibility of nuclear destruction is thus transformed into a herald of
salvation. I am not holding Nietzsche or Heidegger or Foucault responsible for the
presence of such views. I am merely pointing out that these thinkers are fascinated by
crisis. They are fascinated by crisis because they see therein the possibility, or at least the
vision, of something better than the degraded present. But for those who do not believe that
the present is so utterly degraded, or who lack a faith in the cleansing power of crisis, there
ought to be a compulsion to actively oppose the crisis notion.

AKH1690 PRAGMATISM REJECTS INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATIONS
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.18-19.
One can only have such a hope if one thinks that, despite the fears of Husserl, Julien
Benda, and contemporary communitarian critics of political liberalism, a democratic
society can get along without the sort of reassurance provided by the thought that it has
'adequate philosophical foundations' or that it is 'grounded' in 'human reason'. On this
view, the most appropriate foundation for a liberal democracy is a conviction by its
citizens that things will go better for everybody if every new metaphor is given a hearing,
if no belief or desire is held so sacred that a metaphor which endangers it is automatically
rejected. Such a conviction amounts to the rejection of the claim that we, the democratic
societies of the West, know what we want in advance -- that we have more than a tentative
and revisable Grundriss for our social projects. One task of the intellectuals in these
societies will be to help their fellow citizens live with the thought that we do not yet have
an adequate language, and to wean them from the idea that there is something out there to
be 'adequate' to. This amounts to suggesting that we try to eschew scientistic
pronunciamentos which take for granted that we now have a secure grasp on the nature of
society, or of the good. It means admitting that the terms in which we state our communal
convictions and hopes are doomed to obsolescence, that we shall always need new
metaphors, new logical spaces, new jargons, that there will never be a final resting-place
for thought, nor a social philosophy which is a strenge Wissenchaft.
AKH1691 PRAGMATISM SEEKS HUMAN WELFARE, NOT ULTIMATE TRUTH
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.27.
A suitable interpretation of Heidegger's claim requires defining Platonism is the claim that
the point of inquiry is to get in touch with something like Being, or the Good, or Truth, or
Reality -- something large and powerful which we have a duty to apprehend correctly. By
contrast, pragmatism must be defined as the claim that the function of inquiry is, in
Bacon's words, to "relieve and benefit the condition of man" -- to make us happier by
enabling 'is to cope more successfully with the physical environment and with each other.
AKH1692 PRAGMATISM EMBRACES SOCIAL AND DISCURSIVE
CONSTRUCTION BUT STILL JUSTIFIES POLITICS
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.31.
I do not think that subsequent American leftists have made any advance on Dewey's
understanding of the relation between the individual and society. Dewey was as convinced
as Foucault that the subject is a social construction, that discursive practices go all the way
down to the bottom of our minds and hearts. But he insisted that the only point of society
is to construct subjects capable of ever more novel, ever richer, forms of human happiness.
The vocabulary in which Dewey suggested we discuss our social problems and our
political initiatives was part of his attempt to develop a discursive practice suitable for that
project of social construction.
AKH1693 PRAGMATISM AVOIDS SPECTATORIAL POLITICS
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.35-6.
I said earlier that we now have, among many American students and teachers, a
spectatorial, disgusted, mocking Left rather than a Left which dream of achieving our
country. This is not the only Left we have, but it is the most prominent and vocal one.
Members of this Left find America unforgivable, as Baldwin did, and also unachievable,
as he did not. This leads them to step back from their country and, as they say, "theorize"
it. It leads them to do what Henry Adams did: to give cultural politics preference over real
politics, and to mock the very idea that democratic institutions might once again be made
to serve social justice. it leads them to prefer knowledge to hope. I see this preference. as
a turn away from secularism and pragmatism-as an attempt to do precisely what Dewey
and Whitman thought should not be done: namely, to see the American adventure within
a fixed frame of reference, a frame supplied by theory. Paradoxically, the leftists who are
most concerned not to "totalize," and who insist that everything be seen as the play of
discursive differences rather than in the old metaphysics-of-presence way, are also the
most eager to theorize, to become spectators rather than agents. But that is helping yourself
with one hand to what you push away with the other. The further you get from Greek
metaphysics, Dewey urged, the less anxious you should be to find a frame within which
to fit an ongoing historical process.
AKH1694 PRAGMATISM SEEKS THE FULFILLMENT OF HUMAN POTENTIALITY
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.18.
So the crucial difference between the Heideggerian and the pragmatist attitude towards the
philosophical tradition stems from a difference in attitude towards recent political history.
The basic motive of pragmatism, like that of Hegelianism, was, I have argued elsewhere,
a continuation of the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment's sanctification of natural
science. Once scientistic rhetoric (which persists in both Hegel and Dewey, and obscures
their more basic Romanticism) is cleared away, both Hegelianism and pragmatism can be
seen as attempts to clear the ground for the kind of society which the French Revolution
hoped to build: one in which every human potentiality is given a fair chance.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 149
AKH1695 PRAGMATISM, UNLIKE HEIDEGGER, SEEKS TO MAXIMIZE HUMAN
HAPPINESS
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.21.
In what precedes I have sketched what I take to be the central metaphilosophical
disagreements of recent times. On my account, there are two basic lines of division: one
between the scientism common to Husserl and positivism, and the other between two
reactions to this scientism. The first reaction -- Heidegger's is dictated by a tacit and
unarguable rejection of the project of the French Revolution, and of the idea that
everything, including philosophy, is an instrument for the achievement of the greatest
happiness of the greatest number. The second -- Dewey's -- is dictated by an equally tacit
and unarguable acceptance of that project and that idea.
AKH1696 PRAGMATISM SEES SOCIAL FREEDOM AS THE FUNCTION OF
PHILOSOPHY
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.18.
The pragmatist and Heidegger can agree that the poet and the thinker (in Heidegger's
special 'elitist' senses of these terms) are the unacknowledged legislators of the social
world. But whereas Heidegger thinks of the social world as existing for the sake of the poet
and the thinker, the pragmatist thinks of it the other way round. For Dewey as for Hegel,
the point of individual human greatness is its contribution to social freedom, where this is
conceived of in the terms we inherit from the French Revolution.
AKH1697 PRAGMATISM SUPPORTS CULTURAL PLURALISM
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.132-3.
One reason we pragmatists have this preference is that we see the sort of cultural pluralism
which rejects metaphors of centrality and depth as chiming with democratic politics -- with
the spirit of tolerance which has made constitutional democracies possible. We see this
tolerance as saying that public policy and public institutions must be neutral on questions
of what is central to human life, questions about the goal or point of human existence.
Contemporary democratic societies are built around the assumption that we have to
develop institutions which are suitable for people who have wildly different ideas on such
topics -- for example, worshipers of God, of science, of literature, and of nothing in
particular.
AKH1698 PRAGMATIC HUMANISM ISN'T A FORM OF POWER MANIA
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.48.
That combination was just what Dewey wanted to achieve. He wanted to combine the
vision of a social democratic utopia with the knowledge that only a lot of hard work and
blind luck, unaided by any large nonhuman power called Reason or History, could bring
that utopia into existence. He combines reminders that only attention to the daily detail,
to the obstinacy of particular circumstance, can create a utopia with reminders that all
things are possible, that there are no a priori or destined limits to our imagination or our
achievement. His "humanism" was not the power mania which Heidegger thought to be
the only remaining possibility open to the West. On the contrary, it put power in the
service of love -- technocratic manipulation in the service of a Whitmanesque sense that
our democratic community is held together by nothing less fragile than social hope.
AKH1699 REJECTING HUMANISM IS A FAILURE OF NERVE
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.37-8.
This distrust of humanism, with its retreat from practice to theory, is the sort of failure of
nerve which leads people to abandon secularism for a belief in sin, and in Delbanco's
"fixed standard by which deviance from the truth can be measured and denounced." It
leads them to look for a frame of reference outside the process of experimentation and
decision that is an individual or a national life. Grand theories -- eschatologies like Hegel's
or Marx's, inverted eschatologies like Heidegger's, and rationalizations of hopelessness like
Foucault's and Lacan's -- satisfy the urges that theology used to satisfy. These are urges
which Dewey hoped Americans might cease to feel. Dewey wanted Americans to share a
civic religion that substituted utopian striving for claims to theological knowledge.
AKH1700 ONLY PIECEMEAL REFORM CAN WORK
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.109.
The cultural Left has a vision of an America in which the white patriarchs have stopped
voting and have left all the voting to be done by members of previously victimized groups,
people who have somehow come into possession of more foresight and imagination than
the selfish suburbanites. These formerly oppressed and newly powerful people are
expected to be as angelic as the straight white males were diabolical. if I shared this
expectation, I too would want to live under this new dispensation. Since I see no reason
to share it, I think that the Left should get back into the business of piecemeal reform
within the framework of a market economy. This was the business the American Left was
in during the first two-thirds of the century. Someday, perhaps, cumulative piecemeal
reforms will be found to have brought about revolutionary change.

AKH1701 REFORMISM IS THE BEST HOPE FOR THE AMERICAN LEFT
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.55-6.
Those who admire the revolutionary turn which the New Left took in the late Sixties have
offered us their own accounts of the history of the American Left. Much of the tone and
emphasis of these accounts comes from the writings of C. Wright Mills and Christopher
Lasch. I think the description of mid century America which these two men helped put in
circulation needs to be replaced. It should be replaced with a story which gives the
reformers their due, and thereby leaves more room for national pride and national hope.
Emphasizing the continuity between Herbert Croly and Lyndon Johnson, between John
Dewey and Martin Luther King, between Eugene Debs and Walter Reuther, would help
us to recall a reformist Left which deserves not only respect but imitation-the best model
available for the American Left in the coming century. If the intellectuals and the unions
could ever get back together again, and could reconstitute the kind of Left which existed
in the Forties and Fifties, the first decade of the twenty-first century might conceivably be
a Second Progressive Era.
AKH1702 TOP DOWN REFORM IS POSSIBLE
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.52-3.
Those dispossessed farmers were often racist, nativist, and sadistic. The millionaire
socialists, ruthless robber barons though they were, nevertheless set up the foundations
which sponsored the research which helped get leftist legislation passed. We need to get
rid of the Marxist idea that only bottom-up initiatives, conducted by workers and peasants
who have somehow been so freed from resentment as to show no trace of prejudice, can
achieve our country. The history of leftist politics in America is a story of how top-down
initiatives and bottom-up initiatives have interlocked. Top-down leftist initiatives come
from people who have enough security, money, and power themselves, but nevertheless
worry about the fate of people who have less. Examples of such initiatives are muckraking
exposes by journalists, novelists, and scholars -- for example, Ida Tarbell on Standard Oil,
Upton Sinclair on immigrant workers in the Chicago slaughterhouses, Noam Chomsky on
the State Department's lies and the New York Times's omissions. Other examples are the
Wagner and Norris-Laguardia Acts, novels of social protest like People of the Abyss and
Studs Lonigan, the closing of university campuses after the American invasion of
Cambodia, and the Supreme Court's decisions in Brown v. Board of Education and Romer
v. Evans.
AKH1703 PRAGMATISM JUSTIFIES PROBLEM SOLVING AS ESSENTIAL TO
PROGRESS
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.28.
The culminating achievement of Dewey's philosophy was to treat evaluative terms such
as "true" and "right" not as signifying a relation to some antecedently existing thing -- such
as God's Will, or Moral Law, or the Intrinsic Nature of Objective Reality -- but as
expressions of satisfaction at having found a solution to a problem: a problem which may
someday seem obsolete, and a satisfaction which may someday seem misplaced. The effect
of this treatment is to change our account of progress. Instead of seeing progress as a
matter of getting closer to something specifiable in advance, we see it as a matter of
solving more problems. Progress is, as Thomas Kuhn suggested, measured by the extent
to which we have made ourselves better than we were in the past rather than by our
increased proximity to a goal.
AKH1704 PRAGMATISM ASSUMES THE VALUE OF DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITY
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.20.
But for Dewey, "progress, the happiness of the greatest number, culture, civilization" do
not belong on the same list as "the suprasensory world, the Ideas, God, the moral law, the
authority of reason." The latter are dead metaphors which pragmatists can no longer find
uses for. The former still have a point. The pragmatist does not claim to have an argument
against the latter items and for the former items. He is not scientistic enough to think that
there is some neutral philosophical standpoint which would supply premises for such an
argument. He simply takes his stand within the democratic community and asks what an
understanding of the thinkers of the past and of the present can do for such a community.
AKH1705 TECHNOLOGICAL RATIONALITY CAN BE SUBORDINATED TO
DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITY
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.20.
Heidegger thinks that a non-reductive, non-anachronistic hearing of the word of these
thinkers might put us in a position to appreciate where we now are (where, as Heidegger
would say, Being now is). The pragmatist agrees, but hears them differently. He hears them
as the young Hegel did -- as urging us in the direction of greater human freedom, rather
than in the direction of technological frenzy, of an age in which "human creativity finally
passes over into business enterprise." He agrees with both Husserl and Heidegger (and
with Horkheimer and Adorno) that the age of scientific technology may turn out to be the
age in which openness and freedom are rationalized out of existence. But his reply is that
it might turn out to be the age in which the democratic community becomes the mistress,
rather than the servant, of technical rationality.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 150
AKH1706 THE TECHNOLOGICAL WORLD IS CAPABLE OF IMPROVEMENT
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.24.
Habermas is (despite what are, to my mind, unfortunate residues of scientism in his
thought) the contemporary philosopher who most resembles Dewey -- not only in doctrine
but in his attitude toward his society, and in the role which he has played in the day-to-day,
nitty-gritty political debates of his time. Like Dewey, Habermas's thought is dominated by
the question "What sort of philosophical vocabulary and approach would serve human
freedom best?" and by the conviction that the modern industrialized technological world
is not hopeless, but, on the contrary, capable of continual self-improvement.
AKH1707 RADICAL CRITIQUE IS UNNEEDED -- WE NEED TO DEAL
PRAGMATICALLY WITH SUFFERING
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.25.
The Deweyan is ruefully willing to admit that there are always going to be more varieties
of suffering and oppression to be exposed (e.g., those endured by women as a class). He
sees philosophy's role in exposing them as continuous with that of literature and of the
social sciences. But he thinks contemporary democratic societies are already organized
around the need for continual exposure of suffering and injustice, and that no 'radical
critique' is required, but just attention to detail. So he thinks of the philosopher not as
exposing the false or corrupt foundations of this society but as playing off the good and
the bad features of this society against each other.
AKH1708 THE IDEA OF RADICAL CRITIQUE IS AHISTORICAL AND
SCIENTISTIC
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.25.
To my mind, the persistence on the left of this notion of 'radical critique' is an unfortunate
residue of the scientistic conception of philosophy. Neither the idea of penetrating to a
reality behind the appearances, nor that of theoretical foundations for politics, coheres with
the conception of language and inquiry which, I have been arguing, is common to
Heidegger and to Dewey. For both ideas presuppose that someday we shall penetrate to the
true, natural, ahistorical matrix of all possible language and knowledge. Marx, for all his
insistence on the priority of praxis, clung to both ideas, and they became dominant within
Marxism after Lenin and Stalin turned Marxism into a state religion. But there is no reason
why either should be adopted by those who are not obliged to practice this religion.
AKH1709 RADICAL PHILOSOPHY DOESN'T ILLUMINATE OUR POLITICAL
PROBLEMS
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.26.
The vocabulary of social democratic politics -- the vocabulary which Dewey and Weber
helped cobble together --probably does not require further sophistication by philosophers
(though economists and sociologists and historians have done some useful updating).
There are no facts about economic oppression or class struggle, or modern technology,
which that vocabulary cannot describe and a more 'radical' metaphoric can. The horrors
peculiar to the end of our century -- imminent nuclear holocaust, the permanent
drug-riddled black underclass in the U.S., the impossibility of feeding countries like Haiti
and Chad except by massive charity which the rich nations are too selfish to provide, the
unbreakable grip of the rich or the military on the governments of most of the Third World,
the unbreakable grip of the KGB on the Russian people and of the Soviet army on a third
of Europe -- are no better describable with the help of more recent philosophical
vocabulary than with the vocabulary used by our grandfathers. Nobody has come up with
any proposal for ending any of these horrors which draws on new conceptual resources.
Our political imagination has not been enlarged by the philosophy of our century. This is
not because of the irrelevance or cowardice or irresponsibility of philosophy professors,
but because of the sheer recalcitrance of the situation into which the human race has
stumbled.
AKH1710 IDEOLOGICAL CRITIQUE ISN'T CENTRAL TO REFORM
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.135.
We pragmatists view the "critique of ideology" as an occasionally useful tactical weapon
in social struggles, but as one among many others. We see no evidence to confirm de
Man's claim that those familiar with "the linguistics of literariness" are likely to be more
useful than, say, statisticians or muckraking journalists. Suggesting that this sort of
linguistics is somehow central or essential to political thought seems to us like suggesting
that, say, antisubmarine mines are central or essential to modern warfare.

AKH1711 RADICAL CRITIQUE NEED NOT UNDERMINE LIBERALISM
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.96.
I have argued in various books that the philosophers most often cited by cultural leftists
-- Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida -- are largely right in their criticisms of
Enlightenment rationalism. I have argued further that traditional liberalism and traditional
humanism are entirely compatible with such criticisms. We can still be oldfashioned
reformist liberals even if, like Dewey, we give up the correspondence theory of truth and
start treating moral and scientific beliefs as tools for achieving greater human happiness,
rather than as representations of the intrinsic nature of reality. We can be this kind of
liberal even after we turn our backs on Descartes, linguistify subjectivity, and see
everything around us and within us as one more replaceable social construction.
AKH1712 "DISRUPTIVE" THEORIZING IS POLITICALLY IMPOTENT
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.93.
When one of today's academic leftists says that some topic has been "inadequately
theorized," you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of
language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of economic
determinism. Theorists of the Left think that dissolving political agents into plays of
differential subjectivity, or political initiatives into pursuits of Lacan's impossible object
of desire, helps to subvert the established order. Such subversion, they say, is
accomplished by "problematizing familiar concepts." Recent attempts to subvert social
institutions by problematizing concepts have produced a few very good books. They have
also produced many thousands of books which represent scholastic philosophizing at its
worst. The authors of these purportedly "subversive" books honestly believe that they are
serving human liberty. But it is almost impossible to clamber back down from their books
to a level of abstraction on which one might discuss the merits of a law, a treaty, a
candidate, or a political strategy. Even though what these authors "theorize" is often
something very concrete and near at hand -- a current TV show, a media celebrity, a recent
scandal -- they offer the most abstract and barren explanations imaginable.
AKH1713 METAPHYSICAL IDEAS DON'T REALLY MATTER
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.146.
Nonintellectuals' conviction that what the intellectuals talk about does not really matter
was greatly strengthened when the new Enlightenment intellectuals informed them that the
previous batch of intellectuals -- the priests -- had been completely wrong. One
consequence of the mechanization of nature, and of the resulting popularity of a pragmatic,
Baconian attitude toward knowledge-claims, was a heightened cynicism and indifference
about the questions that intellectuals discuss. This is why metaphysical issues about "the
nature of reality" and "the true self" have less resonance and popular appeal than religious
heresies once did, and why philosophical questions raised within Comte's "positive,"
postmetaphysical perspective have even less. People always thought the priests a bit funny,
but also a bit awe-inspiring. They thought German idealists, and Anglo-Saxon positivists,
merely funny.
AKH1714 WE SHOULD DEBATE POLITICS, NOT ABSTRACT PHILOSOPHY
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.25-6.
The moral I wish to draw from the story I have been telling is that we should carry through
on the rejection of metaphilosophical scientism. That is, we should let the debate between
those who see contemporary democratic societies as hopeless, and those who see them as
our only hope, be conducted in terms of the actual problems now being faced by those
societies. If I am right in thinking that the difference between Heidegger's and Dewey's
ways of rejecting scientism is political rather than methodological or metaphysical, then
it would be well for us to debate political topics explicitly, rather than using Aesopian
philosophical language. If we did, then I think that we would realize how little theoretical
reflection is likely to help us with our current problems. For once we have criticized all the
self-deceptive sophistry, and exposed all the 'false consciousness', the result of our efforts
is to find ourselves just where our grandfathers suspected we were: in the midst of a
struggle for power between those who currently possess it (in our day: the oilmen of Texas
or Qatar or Mexico, the nomenklatura of Moscow or Bucharest, the generals of Indonesia
or Chile) and those who are starving or terrorized because they lack it. Neither
twentieth-century Marxism, nor analytical philosophy, nor post-Nietzschean 'continental'
philosophy has done anything to clarify this struggle. We have not developed any
conceptual instruments with which to operate politically that are superior to those available
at the turn of the century to Dewey or Weber.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 151
AKH1715 PHILOSOPHY ISN'T KEY TO POLITICS
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.135.
Having granted all these points, however, we pragmatists still want to insist that what de
Man says in the passages I have cited is absurd. It is just not the case that one has to have
a Saussurian-Wittgensteinian-Derridean understanding of the nature of language in order
to think clearly and usefully about politics. One does not have to be an anti-essentialist in
philosophy in order to be politically imaginative or politically useful. Philosophy is not
that important for politics, nor is literature. Lots of people who accept theocentric or
Kantian logocentric accounts of moral obligation unconsciously and uncritically -- starting
with Kant himself -- have done very well at political thinking. They have been invaluable
to social reform and progress. The same can be said of lots of essentialists -- for example,
all those people who still think that either natural or social science can change our
self-image for the better by telling us what we really, essentially, intrinsically, are.
AKH1716 PHILOSOPHY ISN'T KEY TO POLITICS
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.97.
Whitman and Dewey, I have argued, gave us all the romance, and all the spiritual uplift,
we Americans need to go about our public business. As Edmundson remarks, we should
not allow Emerson, who was a precursor of both Whitman and Dewey, to be displaced by
Poe, who was a precursor of Lacan. For purposes of thinking about how to achieve our
country, we do not need to worry about the correspondence theory of truth, the grounds
of normativity, the impossibility of justice, or the infinite distance which separates us from
the other. For those purposes, we can give both religion and philosophy a pass. We can just
get on with trying to solve what Dewey called "the problems of men."
AKH1717 HIGH LEVEL ABSTRACTION DISTORTS ANALYSIS
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.92-3.
In support of my first suggestion, let me cite a passage from Dewey's Reconstruction in
Philosophy in which he expresses his exasperation with the sort of sterile debate now
going on under the rubric of "individualism versus communitarianism." Dewey thought
that all discussions which took this dichotomy seriously suffer from a common defect.
They are all committed to the logic of general notions under which specific situations are
to be brought. What we want is light upon this or that group of individuals, this or that
concrete human being, this or that special institution or social arrangement. For such a
logic of inquiry, the traditionally accepted logic substitutes discussion of the meaning of
concepts and their dialectical relationships with one another. Dewey was right to be
exasperated by sociopolitical theory conducted at this level of abstraction. He was wrong
when he went on to say that ascending to this level is typically a rightist maneuver, one
which supplies "the apparatus for intellectual justifications of the established order." For
such ascents are now more common on the Left than on the Right. The contemporary
academic Left seems to think that the higher your level of abstraction, the more subversive
of the established order you can be. The more sweeping and novel your conceptual
apparatus, the more radical your critique.
AKH1718 DISCURSIVE ANALYSIS ISN'T KEY TO SOCIAL WELFARE
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.135.
Even though we pragmatists commend our anti-essentialism and anti-logocentrism on the
ground of its harmony with the practices and aims of a democratic society, we do not want
to claim that accepting and applying such doctrines is necessary for overcoming social and
economic repression. After all, a lot of such repression is so blatant and obvious that it
does not take any great analytic skills or any great philosophical self-consciousness to see
what is going on. It does not, for example, take any "critical-linguistic analysis" to notice
that millions of children in American ghettos grew up without hope while the U.S.
government was preoccupied with making the rich richer --with assuring a greedy and
selfish middle class that it was the salt of the earth.
AKH1719 POSTMODERNISM ISN'T A USEFUL CONCEPT
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.1.
Heidegger and Derrida are often referred to as "postmodern" philosophers, I have
sometimes used "postmodern" myself, in the rather narrow sense defined by Lyotard as
"distrust of metanarratives." But I now wish that I had not. The term has been so over-used
that it is causing more trouble than it is worth. I have given up on the attempt to find
something common to Michael Graves's buildings, Pynchon's and Rushdie's novels,
Ashberry's poems, various sorts of popular music, and the writings of Heidegger and
Derrida. I have become more hesitant about attempts to periodize culture -- to describe
every part of a culture as suddenly swerving off in the same new direction at approximately
the same time. Dramatic narratives may well be, as MacIntyre has suggested, essential to
the writing of intellectual history. But it seems safer and more useful to periodize and
dramatize each discipline or genre separately, rather than trying to think of them all as
swept up together in massive sea changes.

AKH1720 LYOTARD DEVALUES CONSENSUS AND COMMUNICATION
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.175.
Lyotard unfortunately retains one of the Left's silliest ideas -- that escaping from such
institutions is automatically a good thing, because it insures that one will not be "used" by
the evil forces which have "co-opted" these institutions. Leftism of this sort necessarily
devalues consensus and communication, for insofar as the intellectual remains able to talk
to people outside the avant-garde she "compromises" herself.
AKH1721 HEIDEGGER IGNORED THE VITAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
DEMOCRACY AND TOTALITARIANISM
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.19.
It will be apparent that, in formulating the pragmatist view in this way, I am trying to turn
such Heideggerian notions as 'clearing', 'opening', 'authenticity' and 'historical being-there'
to un-Heideggerian purposes. I want to yoke them to political movements which Heidegger
himself distrusted. For him, the political life of both the liberal democracies and the
totalitarian states was a piece with that 'technological frenzy' which seemed to him the
essence of the modern age. The difference between the two did not really matter. By
contrast, I want to suggest that we see the democracy-versus-totalitarianism issue as as
basic as an intellectual issue can get.
AKH1722 HEIDEGGER'S PERSPECTIVE IS POLITICALLY STERILE
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.24.
When it comes to attempts to make non-analytic philosophy continuous with politics,
however, things become more complex and problematic. For nonanalytic philosophy is,
with some exceptions, dominated by a Heideggerian vision of the modern world rather
than a Deweyan one, and by despair over the condition of the world rather than by social
hope. Because the typical member of this tradition is obsessed with the idea of 'radical
criticism', when he or she turns to politics it is rarely in a reformist, pragmatic spirit, but
rather in a mood either of deep pessimism or of revolutionary fury. Except for a few
writers such as Habermas, 'continental' philosophers see no relation between social
democratic politics and philosophizing."' So the only sort of politics with which this
tradition is continuous is not the actual political discourse of the surviving democratic
nations, but a kind of pseudo-politics reminiscent of Marxist study-groups of the thirties
-- a sort of continual self-correction of theory, with no conceivable relation to practice.
AKH1723 HEIDEGGER IGNORED CONCRETE SOCIAL PROBLEMS
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.19.
Although Heidegger's philosophy seems to me not to have specifically totalitarian
implications, it does take for granted that attempts to feed the hungry, shorten the working
day, etc., just do not have much to do with philosophy. For Heidegger, Christianity is
merely a certain decadent form of Platonic metaphysics; the change from pagan to
Christian moral consciousness goes unnoticed. The 'social gospel' side of Christianity
which meant most to Tillich (a social democratic thinker who was nevertheless able to
appropriate a lot of Heideggerian ideas and jargon) meant nothing to Heidegger.
AKH1724 HEIDEGGER NEGLECTS PRACTICAL HUMAN PROBLEMS
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.40-1.
One should be clear that for Heidegger things like the danger of a nuclear holocaust, mass
starvation because of overpopulation, and the like, are not indications that the time is
particularly dark and dangerous. These merely ontic matters are not the sort of thing
Heidegger has in mind when he says that "the wasteland spreads."
AKH1725 HEIDEGGER WAS INDIFFERENT TO HUMAN SUFFERING
Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, ESSAYS ON
HEIDEGGER AND OTHERS, 1991, p.72.
Only he can see the point of Heidegger's disdainful remark that the greatest disaster -- the
spread of the wasteland, understood as the forgetfulness of Being -- may "easily go hand
in hand with a guaranteed living standard for all men, and with a uniform state of
happiness for all men." Ascetic priests have no patience with people who think that mere
happiness or mere decrease of suffering might compensate for Seinsvergetsenheit,
forgetfulness of Being.
AKH1726 FOUCAULT'S POLITICS REINFORCE THE STATUS QUO
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.139.
This conviction seems to me entirely mistaken. I take Foucault's refusal to indulge in
utopian thinking not as sagacity but as a result of his unfortunate inability to believe in the
possibility of human happiness, and his consequent inability to think of beauty as the
promise of happiness. Attempts to imitate Foucault make it hard for his followers to take
poets like Blake or Whitman seriously. So it is hard for these followers to take seriously
people inspired by such poets -- people like jean Jaures, Eugene Debs, Vaclav Havel, and
Bill Bradley. The Foucauldian academic Left in contemporary America is exactly the sort
of Left that the oligarchy dreams of: a Left whose members are so busy unmasking the
present that they have no time to discuss what laws need to be passed in order to create a
better future.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 152
AKH1727 FOUCAULT'S THEORY OF POWER IS A COUNTERPRODUCTIVE
THEOLOGY
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.95.
The ubiquity of Foucauldian power is reminiscent of the ubiquity of Satan, and thus of the
ubiquity of original sin -- that diabolical stain on every human soul. I argued in my first
lecture that the repudiation of the concept of sin was at the heart of Dewey and Whitman's
civic religion. I also claimed that the American Left, in its horror at the Vietnam War,
reinvented sin. It reinvented the old religious idea that some stains are ineradicable. I now
wish to say that, in committing itself to what it calls "theory," this Left has gotten
something which is entirely too much like religion. For the cultural Left has come to
believe that we must place our country within a theoretical frame of reference, situate it
within a vast quasicosmological perspective.
AKH1728 FOUCAULDIAN REJECTION OF HUMANISM IS POLITICALLY
DISABLING
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.37.
The Foucauldian Left represents an unfortunate regression to the Marxist obsession with
scientific rigor. This Left still wants to put historical events in a theoretical context. it
exaggerates the importance of philosophy for politics, and wastes its energy on
sophisticated theoretical analyses of the significance of current events. But Foucauldian
theoretical sophistication is even more useless to leftist politics than was Engels' dialectical
materialism. Engels at least had an eschatology. Foucauldians do not even have that.
Because they regard liberal reformist initiatives as symptoms of a discredited liberal
"humanism," they have little interest in designing new social experiments.
AKH1728 DERRIDA'S THOUGHT IS POLITICALLY DISABLING
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.96-7.
But I have also urged that insofar as these antimetaphysical, anti-Cartesian philosophers
offer a quasi-religious form of spiritual pathos, they should be relegated to private life and
not taken as guides to political deliberation. The notion of "infinite responsibility,"
formulated by Emmanuel Levinas and sometimes deployed by Derrida -- as well as
Derrida's own frequent discoveries of impossibility, unreachability, and unrepresentability
-- may be useful to some of us in our individual quests for private perfection. When we
take up our public responsibilities, however, the infinite and the unrepresentable are merely
nuisances. Thinking of our responsibilities in these terms is as much of a stumbling-block
to effective political organization as is the sense of sin. Emphasizing the impossibility of
meaning, or of justice, as Derrida sometimes does, is a temptation to Gothicize -- to view
democratic politics as ineffectual, because unable to cope with preternatural forces.
AKH1729 PREOCCUPATION WITH VIETNAM DISABLES THE LEFT
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.38.
In the remaining lectures I shall be contrasting the Deweyan, pragmatic, participatory Left
as it existed prior to the Vietnam War and the spectatorial Left which has taken its place.
One consequence of that disastrous war was a generation of Americans who suspected that
our country was unachievable that that war not only could never be forgiven, but had
shown us to be a nation conceived in sin, and irredeemable. This suspicion lingers. As long
as it does, and as long as the American Left remains incapable of national pride, our
country will have only a cultural Left, not a political one.
AKH1731 ALTERNATIVES ARE NECESSARY FOR EFFECTIVE POLITICS
Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Virginia, ACHIEVING OUR
COUNTRY, 1998, p.104.
The voting public, the public which must be won over if the Left is to emerge from the
academy into the public square, sensibly wants to be told the details. It wants to know how
things are going to work after markets are put behind us. It wants to know how
participatory democracy is supposed to function. The cultural Left offers no answers to
such demands for further information, but until it confronts them it will not be able to be
a political Left. The public, sensibly, has no interest in getting rid of capitalism until it is
offered details about the alternatives. Nor should it be interested in participatory
democracy -- the liberation of the people from the power of the technocrats -- until it is
told how deliberative assemblies will acquire the same know-how which only the
technocrats presently possess. Even someone like myself, whose admiration for John
Dewey is almost unlimited, cannot take seriously his defense of participatory democracy
against Walter Lippmann's insistence on the need for expertise.

AKH1732 ENVIRONMENTAL PRAGMATISM SEEKS PHILOSOPHICAL ANSWERS
IN PRIVATE WHILE SEEKING REFORM IN PUBLIC
Andrew Light, University of Alberta Philosophy Professor, ENVIRONMENTAL
PRAGMATISM, 1996, p.174.
In all these cases the environmental pragmatist searches for answers to these questions in
private while publicly pursuing the best possible solutions to practical environmental
questions. The pragmatist also recognizes that the current state of the world, either
economically, politically, or ontologically, is the result of a contingent history; existing
individual or social relationships with the non-human natural world are not manned to be
the only ones that must be worked within in looking for solutions to environmental
problem. Them are no universal statements on the state of nature available for the
environmental pragmatist (or rather, the pragmatist does not permit such statements in
public) -- descriptions of the relationship between humans and nature are descriptions of
states of affairs that could have been otherwise. And because they could have been
otherwise pragmatists do not essentialize their conceptions of the identity of nature or our
duty to it which would limit their ability to reconceptualize nature in such a way that it can
be most expeditiously protected.
AKH1733 PRAGMATIC SOLUTIONS ARE STEPS TOWARD MORE COMPLETE
SOLUTIONS
Andrew Light, University of Alberta Philosophy Professor, ENVIRONMENTAL
PRAGMATISM, 1996, p.178.
When we feel the urgency to act, in order to provide aid to nature, we will find temporary
stopping places in our ongoing conversations on how best to act for nature and how best
to interpret the needs of nature. For pragmatists as I conceive them there may be no other
public solutions to some problems other than "pragmatic" ones as we have given up on the
idea of a totalizing discourse for now about conceptions of nature. But pragmatic solutions
are not something we settle on, they are things we strive for while privately pursuing if we
choose, our individual redescriptions of nature in positive, totalizing or hegemonic terms.
AKH1734 PHILOSOPHICAL ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS SHOULD ARISE OUT OF
PRACTICE
Gary Varner, Texas A&M Philosophy Professor, ENVIRONMENTAL PRAGMATISM,
Light, ed., 1996, p.267.
Bryan Norton, for instance, urges us to let theory arise out of rather than precede and then
be applied to, real world controversies. He calls this "practical philosophy" to distinguish
it from business-as-usual "applied philosophy." And Paul Thompson sees a role for theory
in the "diagnosis" of environmental disputes like water rights controversies. What such
pragmatically oriented philosophers are impatient with is the obsession, typical of
philosophical environmental ethics, with very abstract controversies over anthropocentrism
vs. holism, intrinsic value vs. instrumental value, and so on.
AKH1735 PRAGMATIC PHILOSOPHY IS PROBLEM ORIENTED
Bryan Norton, Georgia Tech Philosophy Professor, ENVIRONMENTAL PRAGMATISM.
Light, ed, 1996, p.108.
Practical philosophy, as I am defining it here in contrast to applied philosophy, is more
problem-oriented; its chief characteristic is an emphasis on theories as tools of the
understanding, tools that are developed to resolve specific policy controversies. It shares
with applied philosophy the goal of contributing to problem solution; but practical
philosophy does not assume that useful theoretical principles will be developed and
established independent of the policy process and then applied within that process. It
works towards theoretical principles by struggling with real cases, appealing to less
sweeping rules of thumb that can be argued to be appropriate in a particular context, rather
than establishing a universal theory and "applying" it to real cases. Practice is prior to
theory in the sense that principles are ultimately generated from practice, not vice versa.
AKH1736 OPENENDED INQUIRY IS NEEDED WITH REGARD TO THE
ENVIRONMENT
Andrew Light, University of Alberta Philosophy Professor, ENVIRONMENTAL
PRAGMATISM, 1996, p.10.
In this stage of flux and uncertainty, when the goal of the new evolution of value is
undetermined, it would be a serious mistake to attempt to force a theoretical consistency
in environmental philosophy -- to require, as Callicott does, one basic formulation of
environmental ethics. Weston, suggests that this is rather a time for open ended inquiry and
a kind of Deweyan social reconstruction. a time for experimentation in the expression and
language of environmental thought. This practical project Weston calls "enabling
environmental practice" -- for it will enable the creation and evolution of new
environmental values and a new relationship with the natural world.
The Anti-Kritik Handbook 153
AKH1737 ONTOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS SHOULD DEFER TO SPECIFIC
SITUATIONS
Andrew Light, University of Alberta Philosophy Professor, ENVIRONMENTAL
PRAGMATISM, 1996, p.177.
Importantly, the environmental pragmatist because she is not committed to a dogmatic
defense of her starting frameworks (which may direct her research or activist interests at
first), and because she is not looking for a totalizing definition of the true state of the
natural world when so many practical considerations are at hand, is open to acknowledging
that at sometime her framework may be inappropriate for obtaining the goals of
preservation and protection of the environment. On some issues the ontologist must defer
to the materialist for example, when questions of social structures are on the table.
AKH1738 ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS HASN'T EFFECTED ENVIRONMENTAL
POLICY
Andrew Light, University of Alberta Philosophy Professor, ENVIRONMENTAL
PRAGMATISM, 1996, p.1.
On the other hand, it is difficult to see what practical effect the field of environmental
ethics has had on the formation of environmental policy. The intramural debates of
environmental philosophers, although interesting, provocative and complex, seem to have
no real impact on the deliberations of environmental scientists, activists and policy-makers.
The ideas within environmental ethics are, apparently, inert -- like Hume's Treatise, they
fall deadborn from the press.
AKH1739 PRAGMATIC MUDDLING THROUGH IS THE BEST APPROACH TO THE
ENVIRONMENT
Bryan Norton, Georgia Tech Philosophy Professor, ENVIRONMENTAL PRAGMATISM,
Light, ed., 1996, p.123-4.
Lee also shows that the Deweyan approach is usefully complemented by the creative work
of policy analysts on "bounded rationality," who have recognized that arriving at improved
policies is often a matter of "muddling through" rather than a matter of establishing
idealistic goals and instituting decisive and abrupt changes to achieve those goals. The
pragmatic approach recognizes that there is great uncertainty in both human knowledge
and human valuations and attempts to nurture processes and institutions that seek
compromise and incremental change and improvement of understanding and goals. In the
process both information and values will be adjusted to become more appropriate and
adaptive to particular situations.
AKH1740 ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY DOESN'T RESULT IN PRACTICAL
SOLUTIONS
Andrew Light, University of Alberta Philosophy Professor, ENVIRONMENTAL
PRAGMATISM, 1996, p.3.
The failure of this unified vision to effect practical policy should give us further pause.
Viewing this problematic situation, it is the conclusion of environmental pragmatists that
it is time for environmental ethics to consider some new positions in the field, and more
importantly. to reassess its direction. The small set of acceptable approaches to
environmental ethics may be inapplicable to the development of an acceptable
environmental policy -- it may be necessary to explore other possible sources and
foundations for a truly moral environmentalism. Thus methodological dogmatism may
account for the failure of environmental ethics in the realm of practical affairs.
AKH1741 THE SERIOUSNESS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS REQUIRES
PRAGMATISM
Andrew Light, University of Alberta Philosophy Professor, ENVIRONMENTAL
PRAGMATISM, 1996. p.172.
So now I will focus on the latter form of pragmatism. It is different in kind from the
straightforward philosophical view: it is used more like a yardstick (perhaps a heavy one
wielded overhand) to say to people, "All right, enough with some of these debates, they
are going nowhere and a lot of this stuff is not very interesting as a philosophical or
political problem." Because it is still an environmental metaphilosophical pragmatism
though, the reason appended to this argument is the serious nature and immediacy of the
area to which we have drawn our philosophical attention. Like Kvaloy's version of
eco-philosophy, this strategy is in a sense not freely chosen, but appears as a "necessity --
as a response required by the total (environmental) system crisis we are experiencing in
the world."
AKH1742 ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHIES FREEZE THE ENVIRONMENTAL
DEBATE
Andrew Light, University of Alberta Philosophy Professor, ENVIRONMENTAL
PRAGMATISM, 1996, p.11.
The application of ethical theories fails to resolve the dispute because it serves to freeze
the debate: its main result is to provide each side with a robust theoretical argument for the
policy they favor. Thompson thus argues against the traditional "application" of theory for
the resolution of policy conflicts; he prefers a solution based on James' idea of necessity
and Dewey's notion of the reconstruction of community.
 The Anti-Kritik Handbook 154
AKH1743 ENVIRONMENTAL PRAGMATISM PRODUCES THE BEST POLICY AKH1749 RUSSIA OFFERS THE PRIME CASE FOR FOREIGN POLICY
Andrew Light, University of Alberta Philosophy Professor, ENVIRONMENTAL PRAGMATISM
PRAGMATISM, 1996, p.12. William Hyland, Editor of Foreign Affairs, FOREIGN AFFAIRS (AMERICA AND THE
But the fruits of this philosophical enterprise must be directed towards the practical WORLD issue), 1991-92, p.48-9.
resolution of environmental problems -- environmental ethics cannot remain mired in It may be years, if not decades, before Russia will know its fate. if there were ever a case
longrunning theoretic debates in an attempt to achieve philosophical certainty. As Mark for prudence and pragmatism, Russia is it. Pragmatism translates into restraint in rushing
Sagoff has written: "[W]e have to get along without certainty; we have to solve practical, aid for this or that economic scheme or for this or that political leader, including Russian
not theoretical, problems; and we must adjust the ends we pursue to the means available President Boris Yeltsin. Most of the money will be wasted, as it already has been.
to accomplish them. Otherwise, method becomes an obstacle to morality, dogma the foe Long-term technical assistance makes sense, but only if it is clearly recognized that the
of deliberation, and the ideal society we aspire to in theory will become a formidable payoff may not be evident for years, if ever. And it is doubtful that American opinion will
enemy of the good society we can achieve in fact." In short, environmental ethics must sustain a long-term program in a period of economic difficulties at home.
develop for itself a methodology of environmental pragmatism -- fueled by a recognition
that theoretical debates are problematic for the development of environmental policy. AKH1750 PRUDENCE AND PATIENCE ARE CRITICAL WITH REGARD TO
RUSSIA
AKH1744 PRAGMATISM BEST PROTECTS THE ENVIRONMENT Alvin Rubinstein, Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, ORBIS,
Andrew Light, University of Alberta Philosophy Professor, ENVIRONMENTAL Winter 1997, p.38.
PRAGMATISM, 1996, p.179. And in all things touching on Russia, prudence, patience, and realistic expectations are in
A metaphilosophical pragmatist, of whatever origin, when looking at a political. ecological order, for there more than anywhere else the United States would do well to heed
situation, takes politics in general to be a constantly shifting contested terrain. This view Talleyrand's advice: surtout pas de zele (above all, no zeal).
follows from their non-essentialist approach to practical political questions. But again, the
environmental part of this pragmatism forces such assessments within the context of
constructing the best approach that accords with established ecological principles. Looking
out at the wealth of political theories, the environmental pragmatist (here concerned with
constructing a DPE) is going to use the theory that best embraces the fact of the contested
terrain of politics towards the goal of laying the foundation of egalitarian practices which
are in the best interests of the long-term health of the environment.
AKH1745 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY SHOULD BE GUIDED BY PRAGMATISM
William Hyland, Editor of Foreign Affairs, FOREIGN AFFAIRS (AMERICA AND THE
WORLD issue), 1991-92, p.45.
All of this means that for some years the guiding force of American policy will not be
ideology or high principles, but a far greater pragmatism. Policymakers will have to placate
nationalistic sentiment at home and satisfy several overlapping centers of power abroad.
On occasion there will have to be compromises on issues such as free trade, the crusade,
for democracy, human rights and the rule of law -- the very principles of the new world
order. Much like the policy of containment, a prolonged pragmatism may be necessary to
finally realize those laudable goals.
AKH1746 NEW CIRCUMSTANCES REQUIRE A PRAGMATIC FOREIGN POLICY
William Hyland, Editor of Foreign Affairs, FOREIGN AFFAIRS (AMERICA AND THE
WORLD issue), 1991-92, p.46.
The same sense of prudence also governs the debate about aid to the former Soviet Union.
A strong case can be made that it is in the American interest to aid Russia. The mayor of
Boston, however, defined the context for this issue much better than his fellow Bostonians
at Harvard when he suggested that for every dollar sent to the old U.S.S.R., one dollar
should also be sent to American cities. The world of the 1990s will resemble nothing in
America's previous experience. The United States will be required to conduct a foreign
policy for which there is almost no historical precedent, and to do so with limited resources
in an increasingly competitive world in which the threat that held together the various
American alliances will have vanished.
AKH1747 FOREIGN POLICY PRAGMATISM SHOULD PREVAIL IN ASIA
William Hyland, Editor of Foreign Affairs, FOREIGN AFFAIRS (AMERICA AND THE
WORLD issue), 1991-92, p.49.
The case for pragmatism is also strong in Asia. America fought three wars in Asia, but fifty
years after Pearl Harbor, and almost twenty years since Vietnam, America still cannot
define its proper role there. The problems are the same as they have been for almost a
century -- our uneasy relations with Japan and China. Usually, we have managed to have
good relations with one or the other, and recently with both. But currently our relations
with both are in danger of deteriorating.
AKH1748 PRAGMATISM SHOULD GOVERN MIDDLE EAST POLICY
William Hyland, Editor of Foreign Affairs, FOREIGN AFFAIRS (AMERICA AND THE
WORLD issue), 1991-92, p.51.
The other area most affected by the end of the Cold War is the Middle East. Here, too,
pragmatism rather than principle is beginning to govern the conduct of the parties involved
in the conflict, as well as the United States, the only outside power of any consequence in
this area.