This one’s from Nick Cohen‘s lovely book What’s Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way. Written in 2007, it’s a prescient and still timely criticism of Regressive Leftism. Cohen is a superb and clear writer, and his views are so congenial to mine that I almost feel as if he’s speaking directly to me. (Yes, I know I’m “reading from the choir,” but give me a break: I spent several years reading theology!) Wikipedia gives a decent precis of the book.
Here’s a quote about identity politics from page 105:
But as many radical intellectuals in the West retreated into the lecture halls before the tide of conservatism they had in part inspired, they fled from universal values. To generalize, the idea that a homosexual black woman should have the same rights as a heterosexual white man was replaced by a relativism which took the original and hopeful challenge of the early feminist, gay, and anti-racist movements and flipped it over. Homosexuality, blackness, and womanhood became separate cultures that couldn’t be criticized or understood by outsiders applying universal criteria. Nor, by extension, could any other culture, even if it was the culture of fascism, religious tyranny, wife burning, or suicide bombing. Each separate cultural group was playing its own “language game,” to use the phrase the postmodernists took from Wittgenstein, and only players in the game, whether feminists or Holocaust deniers, could determine whether what was being said was right or wrong. As epistemic relativism infected leftish intellectual life, all the old universal criteria, including human rights, the search for truth and the scientific method, became suspect instruments of elite oppression and Western cultural imperialism.
The book was re-released to coincide with the rise of the dreadful Jeremy Corbyn, so at least someone made sa few ackers out of our very own Chauncey Gardiner.
I have Cohen’s book on my Amazon Wishlist. I just finished another book, Explaining Postmodernism, that traces the intellectual history of these regressive ideas.
Thanks for noting Explaining Postmodernism, definitely a book to read. I’ll look for it.
Hi Jerry,
How pervasive is this form of epistemic relativism, and how pervasive that accusation of “elite oppression” and “Western cultural imperialism”?
I’ve experienced some appalling accusations by enlightened moralizers. In grad school, a student in the English department was making all sorts of grandiose claims and I asked for empirical evidence. Rolling his eyes, he said that “empiricism was so bourgeois” and the scientific approach “fascistic.” Some years later the Columbia University Death Seminar was devoting time to a discussion of Becker’s The Denial of Death. An anthropologist mentioned that a certain tribe wasn’t afraid of death. I asked how he knew that, and he said “because they said so.” I suggested that if we (hypothetically) take Becker’s argument seriously, it means that we suffer a variety of self-deceptions and fictions (like religious ideas) that absorb and deny the dread of death, so that one couldn’t assume that conscious perception was the whole story. Another member stood up and screamed that I was a fascist — just for raising the question. For how dare I presume to question anyone else’s statements or beliefs. Seriously — just even asking the epistemological question “how do we know?” was considered a fascistic attack on the speech of oppressed populations….
Academia seems riddled by this stuff, but of course it’s difficult to determine how prevalent this is.…
Jer
Some parts of academia perhaps, but not the natural sciences, which is a huge swathe of the total.
I think the response I would make to the student who said, “a student in the English department was making all sorts of grandiose claims and I asked for empirical evidence. Rolling his eyes, he said that ’empiricism was so bourgeois’ and the scientific approach ‘fascistic.'”
Would be:
1. Calling names isn’t a substitute for a sound argument and data.
2. Most importantly, how would you know if your claims are wrong [without empirical evidence]? And if you don’t have a way, why should anyone take your assertions seriously? You’re simply blowing smoke.
Postmodernists aren’t concerned with correctness. They view words as a means of power, nothing else.
As an engineer, I find that attitude utterly mystifying. How do these people think their phones, computers and TVs work? Doesn’t it ever occur to them that those items were designed by people whose greatest concern is correctness, who work in a world where something functions correctly or it doesn’t, and the difference between the two is not a matter of opinion but of cold, hard fact?
You have just explained why it should NOT mystify you! They cannot be espousing these opinions based on reason or evidence as you note. SO why then? Power, just as Scot Draper says. It’s a TACTIC, albeit one internalized.
As also an engineer, I too find it intuitively mystifying. But, according to a book I just read, these people are typically Marxists who were discouraged to see that the real world disproved their theories; that means that to resolve the resulting cognitive dissonance, they had to either give up their the0ries or give up reality. Postmodernists chose the latter.
Just like neo-liberals but they still try to force the world into their theories (mind you so did the Marxists – it didn’t work for them and hopefully will soon backfire on the neo-libs )
I wonder what percentage of ideologues ever accept that they’re wrong?
Personally, I consider myself to be a pragmatist. I’m for whatever works. My observation is that both state control and unbridled capitalism are non-optimal.
It’s also pragmatic. A phone that works better makes more money. A phone that has more memory or stays charged longer for the same money, wins.
In the end, money flows to the things that work. Religion doesn’t do anything. And after a while, you need real stuff.
That’s not entirely true. Advertising and marketing do their best to skew the market. Large companies habitually try to dominate the market and ‘producing the best item’ is not always very high on their strategy.
Agreed that a product that doesn’t work will probably fail, but if all competing products work adequately well, the technically best is not guaranteed to win.
cr
Ortega y Gasset, in his Revolt of the Masses, wrote a lot against people who feel entitled to use the fruits of civilization without giving anything back to it, and perceive automobiles and other achievements of technology as if they are free gifts of nature.
“Academia seems riddled by this stuff, but of course it’s difficult to determine how prevalent this is.…”
Not only is the prevalence of such nonsense unknown, its staying power is also suspect. In the United States, radical movements tend to disappear as the worthy ideas they enunciated are adopted by the major political parties and the rest is quickly forgotten. The New Left movement of the 1960s is a good example. Yes, it helped mobilize support to end the Vietnam War, but its call for radical changes to the economic system went nowhere. Indeed, at the height of student demonstrations in 1968, the nation elected Richard Nixon. I do not know how many 1960s radicals have morphed into conservative Republicans, but I suspect the number is not insignificant.
So, as I have argued before, these regressives are young fools who blather nonsense that someday they are likely to regret. This should happen if and when they enter the world of work as a necessity for survival. But they are hardly a major concern in the list of challenges facing this country. The Republican Party of Trump and Cruz is by far the greatest threat to the welfare of this country, not only economically and in foreign policy, but also to free speech, secularism (particularly Cruz) and democracy. I do not let side issues distract me from focusing on the main threat to my core values.
“In the United States, radical movements tend to disappear as the worthy ideas they enunciated are adopted by the major political parties and the rest is quickly forgotten.”
What are the worthy ideas of those who preach no culture can be criticized “even if it was the culture of fascism, religious tyranny, wife burning, or suicide bombing.”
In the mishmash of radical ideas, some of them are ultimately deemed worthy of being adopted by society at large. For example, at one time social security and Medicare were considered radical. Now, except for extremist conservatives, these programs are universally accepted as part of the social safety net. Interspersed with the panoply of ridiculous and odious ideas promulgated by the college radicals, their call for the respect of LGBT people is now largely accepted by the American people. Be assured that the rest of their nonsense will be quickly forgotten as is almost always the case with ideas that do not stand the test of reason.
Victimhood culture. A good read. The concept of what is harmful has been broadened:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/concept-creep/477939/
Cultural anthropology and physical anthropology were sort of split when I was an undergraduate at McGill. I met some students in that subject in one of Bunge’s classes in the philosophy of social science, and the situation sounded awful.
I encountered some of the resistance to notions of truth, evidence, science, etc. on the part of my friend Raven at first – but she was (like any human) making truth-evaluable claims. So we argued for a bit, and then, exasperated, I said, “is the statement ‘Native Americans encountered racial prejudice at the hands of some Europeans.’ true or not?”
That worked.
How about “That’s my truth, but your truth might be different.”
If truth is not truth for all (in general) then why should one care about bigotry to others?
The resistance seems to come from the *dogmatic presumption* of poorly evidenced *claims* of truth so that people get their hackles up as soon as truth is mentioned. Ditto evidence, etc.
Well, I think their resistance is against even well-evidenced claims. Creationists have incorporated this philosophy into their ideology. All “evidence” is collected by the existing power structures and hence irrelevant.
Don’t forget about the feminist geology that Jerry posted a few weeks ago.
I suppose that without that snowflake, it would have been a nice discussion. Do you remember the name of the tribe?
“His religious and political notions so congenial with those in which Mr.Langton had been educated.”
Boswell’s Life of Johnson
Thanks very much for the heads up. With this paragraph alone I’ll put the book on my reading list.
“he said that “empiricism was so bourgeois” ” Another thing to rip from the bourgeoisie at the first opportunity.
“and the scientific approach “fascistic.””
That’s painting fascism in a good light. Exactly what a fascist would do.”
Is there a chance he meant “factism” ?
“Some years later the Columbia University Death Seminar ”
Oh, my ! What a charming and appealing name. Not the Columbia University Seminar on Death, mind you, nor the Columbia University Seminar on Death in the Social Sciences.
No.
The Death Seminar it will be.
“Another member stood up and screamed that I was a fascist (…) ” Yes… Well,even assuming you are, what’s wrong with the question ?
I have to say I have no idea how anyone becomes one of the people described in the above examples.
They are religious. Creationists of a different stripe. But still creationists.
I have to wonder if some of these people even know what a Fascist was. It seems to be a catch-all label for “anyone whose views I don’t like”.
Someone once told me that Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ is a “fascist book”. It seemed that he couldn’t tell the difference between fascism and feudalism (the political system that was portrayed in the book).
Also, I don’t understand how many people, ostensibly many in *language* departments have unlearned the pathetic fallacy when they went pomo. IOW, it isn’t as if Dune *endorses* any of the political systems depicted. (In fact, it seems to have been intended as a *warning against* some of them. Not that the Derrida-esque folks think that the author’s intentions have any bearing on what they say about anything, but …)
Yes, ‘Dune’ gives a very strong warning of the dangers of having both religious and political power concentrated in the same hands. Now, where do we see that in the world today?
One wonders if he had ever read ‘1984’.
cr
What he was trying to do was paint science with a negative paintbrush by describing it as “fascistic”.
These types usually see science and scientists as some kind of enemy.
I’m really concerned that this could get out of control as other purity driven movements have in the past (Mao’s China, Stalin’s USSR, Jacobins of the French revolution).
Successive waves of purists, more pure than the past re-write history and suppress (or imprison or kill) the not so pure of the past.
Within the past week or so, there was a conference for educators (2016 White Privilege Conference) in Philadelphia to ‘educate them about white privilege’ where speakers explained that expecting promptness, good grades and turning in assignments on time was a form of ‘white supremacy’ and insensitivity to other cultures.
Even this wasn’t enough to the purists. Some of the presenters were attacked for being white (how dare they lecture about privilege). A keynote speaker, respected authority on racism in the Civil War, was attacked for going overtime and using his privilege. When he noted that he spoke only 53 minutes of 1 hour time slot, he was attacked for defending himself he was attacked for ‘a white man’s defensiveness instead of accepting responsibility’
All this could almost be a joke, and may just collapse on itself, but history warns us that is not always the case.
[yes, I’m replying to myself…]
It seems possible that the madness that is ISIS developed out of the repeated distillation of ideological purity till all that was left is the maddest of the mad.
[my wife works at a major university, and has occasional contact with some of the ‘student leaders’. She is not comfortable these days.]
+1 to all of your comments.
I have been thinking the same things. ISIS are just SJWs who want to “change the world” by any means possible. They even “other” the opposition, to the point of murdering them. Your example of what happened at that conference was one of othering. And this othering is justified because whites, white males specifically, are oppressors, by virtue of birth. And othering taken to an extreme can result in atrocities. The atrocities are acted out in “self defense”, from evil oppressors. This is how the rape of Yazidi girls can be seen as righteous. Yazudi men deserve to be murdered and the women sold as sex slaves because they are guilty of oppressing Sunni Muslims *by their very existence*.
And all of the above and your examples are why we must vigorously oppose , mock and ridicule regressives at every opportunity. No ignoring them because they are ” silly kids”. These kind of purity movements can turn dark. Nip it in the bud.
I sometimes wonder if there are any parts of the movements which are deliberately fanned by the reactionary right as well.
Several people who I have encountered over the years seemed to be using pomo as a cover for “I can’t religiously accept what science tells me about the world, so I will latch on to anything that will help me deny it.” It is important to remember that antirealism was basically born this way. Catholic epistemology, or at least Thomism, is realist. (It isn’t naturalistic, of course.) Along comes Galileo, upsetting the apple cart with revolutionary truth claims, and suddenly Bellarmine and others are now anti-realists. Duhem, no realist (in physics at least, as Brad Wray pointed out), pointed this out more than 100 years ago, IIRC.
Similarly, one might wonder if the reactionaries would try to use the movements to have the people (who do seem in some cases to really care about the topics they are discussing or advocating) self-destruct.
In each of the purity movements you cited, the purists controlled the government and hence could implement their beliefs. Such is not the case now and extraordinarily unlikely that it will be. Movements of idiocy such as presenting itself on college campuses always stimulate a reaction that tends to right the ship. So, don’t sweat it. This too shall pass.
“the purists controlled the government and hence could implement their beliefs”
Well, not yet.
Probably not blood bath material, but there have been intrusions into government via Dept. of Education, EEOC and DOJ directives. Nations in Europe have been sliding in that direction, where people posting on social media (critical of immigration for example) have received police visits warning they could be held responsible for any acts of violence that occur (instead, I guess, of the people who actually perform the violence).
Political clout is insidious, which is why these events need to be robustly challenged now, not later when they are embedded in the bureaucratic culture.
It’s not just academia which may be, as Jerry Piven says, “riddled with this stuff.” Extreme epistemic relativism also fits in very comfortably with modern ideas of spirituality and religion. If everything happens for a reason — and that reason involves the spiritual growth of each individual — then nothing is ever “wrong.” To say this is to deny that God is everywhere and Perfect.
The ecumenical claim that all religious paths lead to the same Truth is thus extended into culture and its many “paths.” A friend of mine who teaches classes on Faith once continued to insist that she would not and could not criticize ANY religion or culture, even when I presented increasingly dangerous examples. She seemed to think this was exemplary on her part, a struggle worth winning. The worst thing you can be is “judgemental” — though “imposing your views on others” (which was apparently what I was doing) runs a close second.
This is not “liberalism.” But they think it is.
Yes — it’s quite revealing: “All ideas and values are equally valid….. except your neo-colonialist materialist mechanistic reductionist worldview — that’s objectively wrong!”
+ 1
No, it got worse than that. Neo-colonialist materialist mechanistic reductionist worldview isn’t “wrong” either. It’s all part of the panglossian process of perfection in which everything works out for the best. We all approach God in our own way and in our own time.
But this applies only when the Faith Teacher hat is on, of course. It’s impossible to live monistic idealism without contradicting yourself sooner or later. Fortunately, contradictions simply mean you’re non-dualistic, so that’s okay then.
I wonder how much post-modernism grew out of religious acceptance…
Our societies learned tolerance, and our tolerance lead to greater stability and happiness. Sure, the Goldsmiths may be hellbound jews destined for the lake of fire… but they pay their taxes, and bring good food to the block parties.
Their children, having been raised thinking that the Goldsmiths were good people, took discomfort from the idea that they’d be tortured for eternity. Maybe their road lead to Heaven too…
This pattern extended outside of Abrahamic religions until it covered everyone, where being a good person was more important than being a Christian. But they couldn’t give up their religion. It was still the Ultimate Truth ™. But… maybe there were multiple Ultimate Truths…
And once you allow the ultimate reality defining truth of religion to have multiple truths, why not everything else? Post-Modernism is the answer to religious tolerance becoming acceptance, and everything else is a downhill slide from there.
Now, when you’re an athiest, every problem looks like a religion. So perhaps I’m approaching this wrong. But I have more to say on this subject (I could write at least a decent sized pamphlet), and the biggest issue I had with religion was that it so often and so easily places a blatant un-evidence truth at the core of someones identity, and tells them that believing it despite evidence is virtuous. I don’t think it’s a stretch to see how this central infection could spread to the rest of a person, or societies, ways of thinking.
Good outline of a pamphlet!
Some forms of antirealism are *definitely* religious cover. Duhem and our contemporary, van Fraassen seem to be in this camp. Is v. F. a pomo? Definitely not, but he seems desperately wedded to the idea that science cannot tell us about the way the world actually is (except as it appears to unaided human senses, like any other activity). People have wondered about how eyeglasses fit into this for decades, and as far I know there is no official answer.
And you *do* get out right pomo-adoption by creationists, like J. A. Campbell.
Calling out the Holocaust. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2016/04/21/calling-out-the-holocaust-is-the-logical-end-point-of-the-lefts/
Next up, calling out Martin Luther King day. (or has that been done?)
“Cultural relativism is the death of ethical thought, supporting the right of tyrannical priests to tyrannize, of despotic parents to mutilate their daughters, of bigoted individuals to hate homosexuals and Jews, because it is part of their ‘culture’ to do so. Bigotry, prejudice and violence or the threat of violence are not human ‘values.’ They are proof of the absence of such values. They are not the manifestations of a person’s ‘culture.’ They are indications of a person’s lack of culture.”
-Salman Rushdie
Perfect!
I have seen that over and over. A ridiculous position is placed beyond all possible criticism by declaring all critics to be bigots.
Cohen of course is on the receiving end of a lot of antisemitism, even though he’s not Jewish. Here’s a particularly hilarious/pathetic example in a comment to a review he wrote of a book called Accidence Will Happen: The Non-Pedantic Guide to English Usage. What devious political message could anyone find in a such an article? Well….
Rebekah Lipman
December 19th, 2015
12:12 AM
Touching to see talented Zionists Nick Cohen and Oliver Kamm working together to get their message out. Don’t see enough of this in the western media.
http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/screen-january-february-2016-nick-cohen-grammar-pedantry-how-to-write?page=1
Yeah, it’s sad how often that happens. I remember quoting Cohen on a philosophy group about free speech, and the first response was to ignore everything he said and focus on his support for Israel.
As a card-carrying lefty, the way some of the left has manifested politically alarms me.
Cohen is by no means an unalloyed supporter of Israel. In both of the books I’m reading, he levels strong criticism at the government’s treatment of Palestinians.
The comment about Zionists working together is anti-Semitic, pure and simple.
One A J Kincaid took her to task –
“Rebekah, out of sheer curiosity what *possible* relevance does your comment have on this discussion? Is there some reason you feel the need to call Cohen a Zionist? Are there Zionist and non-Zionist schools of thought surrounding good prose style? I will admit that my writing chops hold not a candle to Cohen’s but I have been writing a long time now and I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a Zionist or non-Zionist philosophy around English prose style. Could you elucidate what the two schools of thought believe? Otherwise, we’re forced to assume you’re just a garden variety bigot but I would very much like to give you the opportunity to not be one.”
cr
One of the things for me that stands out is how those ideas have infiltrated our cultural narratives. Very few people outside of academia, I would wager, would know what relativism entails let alone endorse it. But many cultural narratives are incredibly relativistic in content when you try to make sense of them. Which makes it all the more pernicious, because you really can’t argue against cultural narratives in abstract terms.
Actually, I’m not so sure. It may attract certain young people *prior* to their university experiences. I remember reading an article or two in Teaching Philosophy about how to structure discussions around/in spite of blasé student relativism in introductory ethics classes.
That said, I don’t know where people would encounter *epistemic* relativism prior to university. Maybe it has seeped into language instruction in high schools too?
Jerry wrote:
Agreed. I love that feeling of reading something that just perfectly encapsulates your own views or philosophies. I’ve always gotten it strongly from everything Sam Harris has written. That dude just sends food waves directly into my brain system.
Nick Cohen was great as a guest on the Rubin Report a short time ago. I’m off to order his books…
I guess any good thing becomes bad or idiotic when taken to extreme. Most of these idiocies started off as perfectly justifiable and worthy reactions to real social evils. The problem is, as soon as they became intellectually respectable and (dare I say it) trendy, all the wannabe reformers leapt on board the band wagon and drove it into the ditch.
I think cultural relativism started as a reaction to the arrogance that assumed “our way is advanced / enlightened / correct**, therefore their customs are all inferior”.
(**Besides, Whatever happens we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not).
Since, frequently, ‘our’ way involved slavish worship of Jesus, I think everyone here would agree that was obnoxious BS. Also, frequently, ‘their’ way and customs had evolved to suit their environment and the ‘white’ customs fitted far less well and caused real problems. (As a minor but widespread example, I could cite the difficulties caused by trying to impose a 18th-century European concept of freehold land ownership on the customary tribal land rights in Polynesian societies).
So, very frequently, criticism of of other cultures was blatant cultural arrogance. In that regard cultural relativism is quite valid.
The problem arises when that is extended to forbid any criticism whatever of other cultures, or to assert that all views are automatically equally valid.
You can’t say “Eating people is wrong” just because we don’t do it. You have to back it up with good reasons.
The culturally arrogant would attempt to avoid argument by just saying “Because we don’t do it” (or equivalent) as if that settled the matter. The extreme cultural relativists would avoid argument by completely avoiding the issue.
Both are equally wrong in that respect.
I think the moral is that any criticism, particularly of the ‘not invented here’ or ‘they don’t do it like us’ sort, should be carefully scrutinised. Not dismissed out of hand.
cr