Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay

I took a break from reading fiction to pick up a thread I started on earlier this summer when I read Kindly Inquisitors by Jonathan Rauch. Rauch and the authors of Cynical Theories are both concerned with defending classical liberal principles against attacks from the left, an issue which has concerned me, too, lately.

Liberalism (i.e. classical liberalism not the political left liberal) is a method for resolving conflict, gaining knowledge, and advancing society toward goals of peace, liberty, and justice. The method of liberalism begins by encouraging the free exchange of ideas. Conflict is expected. A wide range of different, opposing ideas are welcomed onto the playing field. In politics liberalism at play looks like democracy. In economics the playing field would be called “the market” where independent actors negotiate the values of goods and services. Science uses the liberal method by proposing numerous hypotheses, testing, publishing results, and refining ideas through subsequent rounds. Rauch generalizes the liberal method as “Liberal Science” and applies it to any field where truth is sought.

In the game of liberalism, no person or tradition is privileged, all can play and all must follow the same rules. The play requires each participant to defend their ideas through evidence and reason. The idea most convincingly argued wins the day, but only provisionally. No truth is final. A President can be voted out of office. An inventor can build a better mousetrap. A scientific theory can be overthrown when a new theory challenges orthodoxy and proves itself on the field. The worth of an idea is measured by how successfully it corresponds to reality shown by predicting the outcome of a future test in science or by improving human lives in the social sphere. In this way beliefs or propositions become knowledge, humanity gains a closer approximation of reality, erroneous beliefs are corrected and laws and cultural norms based on those wrong beliefs are rewritten and overturned, suffering eases, society progresses.

Liberalism works. The advancements in human society over the last 500 years under the liberal method are undeniable: science, medicine, technology, human rights. But liberalism’s progress can also be criticized. In fact, liberalism invites criticism; the method depends on it. Every new truth is provisional. Every achievement creates the space to tackle a new problem. Liberalism is a method not an ideology; it’s a process not an end. Liberalism’s progress is often slow, frustratingly slow, sometimes. Liberalism changes society but by degree not revolution. As lives improve under liberalism, some suffering continues, which can feel intolerable. And the progress of liberalism doesn’t always move in a straight line. The process of proposing and testing ideas and then discarding bad ideas means that some bad ideas will flourish for a time until they can be overcome.

Thus liberalism leaves the door open for perpetual challenge, and, thus, liberalism must be perpetually defended, not against challenging ideas, (which are always welcome) but against challenges to the liberal method itself. Kindly Inquisitors addresses the challenges to liberalism from the political left’s over-eager desire to be inclusive (including mere beliefs where only tested knowledge should be allowed as in Creationism in a science class) and the left’s desire to avoid offense (the liberal game can be tough and the rules don’t say you won’t get your feelings hurt when critics find the flaws in your hypothesis). Cynical Theories addresses the challenge to liberalism from today’s Social Justice Theory as it developed out of post-modern thought.

In the first half of the 20th century, humanity was confronted with several disasters that cast doubt on the continual progress promised by the liberal system: two world wars, the holocaust, the atom bomb. Slavery ended in the U.S. but race-based discrimination and violence continued. The colonial period collapsed exposing the colonial powers to the brutality of the exploitation they had perpetrated and encouraging them to new respect for the non-Western, non-white cultures they had previously overrun.

Post-modernism, emerging in the 1960s and evolving over the next 50 years, responded to these perceived failures of liberalism by challenging liberalism itself. Pluckrose and Lindsay delineate two principles and four themes that characterize postmodernism. The “Postmodern Knowledge Principle” denies the possibility of objective knowledge, holding that all knowledge is culturally constructed. The “Postmodern Political Principle” claims that social power is contained and maintained through impersonal systems and structures. The four postmodern themes identified by Pluckrose and Lindsay are: 1) blurring of boundaries; 2) the power of language; 3) cultural relativism; and 4) the loss of the individual and the universal.

Once these foundations are laid out, Pluckrose and Lindsay show how these two principles and four themes express themselves in several academic fields that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s. They devote separate chapters to each: postcolonial theory, queer theory, critical race theory and intersectionality, feminisms and gender studies, and disability and fat studies. In each chapter, the authors show that the original postmodern philosophy of Foucault and others: skeptical, nihilist, and cynically playful; was recast as actionable; a means to probe and criticize (deconstruct, problematize, or “queer”) our thinking in these various fields, and then, since 2000 how the separate theories have been reified into Social Justice Theory (capitalized to distinguish the Theory from the goal of social justice itself).

Their writing is academic and detailed. Especially the first few foundational chapters are difficult. Fortunately, ideas from the first chapters are repeated in later chapters where they are applied to concrete examples, so the ideas become clearer as the book progresses. The book is heavily notated. The two authors have read widely. Their analysis is pointed, obviously, but fair. The examples are occasionally extreme but not invented to be straw men. I found the book illuminating, frightening, entertaining. It made me mad. It also made me laugh. And I wanted to read quotes to my husband constantly.

Ironically, Pluckrose and Lindsay point out that the greatest advancements for anti-discrimination: the civil rights legislation that ended legal discrimination based on race and sex, the decriminalization of same-sex sex acts, and one they don’t mention: the Americans with Disabilities Act, all came about through following liberal principles and following the liberal method. The development of postmodern theory did not further the advancement of non-discrimination; it interrupted it.

By denying objective knowledge, and assigning reason and science to western culture (the providence, therefore, of white, men only), Social Justice Theory eliminates the possibility of resolving conflict peacefully and infantilizes most of the people of the world. By locating power in impersonal, unconscious systems, Social Justice Theory implicates everyone with guilt but offers little opportunity for effective action to overcome these pervasive, invisible, systems. By emphasizing group identity over individual experience or shared humanity, Social Justice Theory instantiates rather than eliminates the treating of different people differently (the definition of discrimination). Policing of language, and claims of “harm” or “violence” resulting from speech, constricts discussion, repels potential allies, steals focus from more grave forms of suffering, and denies the possibility of refining and improving a theory through confrontation with a good opposing argument.

This is what is at stake, then, that both Rauch and Pluckrose and Lindsay warn us about if the current ascendancy of Social Justice Theory continues to control our conversations and politics about racism and other forms of discrimination and suffering. Because Social Justice Theory is illiberal, we lose the best, proven, tool humanity has had for overcoming injustice, easing suffering, and advancing human society toward peace, liberty, and justice.

I find Cynical Theories to be both an excellent and an important book. Kindly Inquisitors is the same. After coming of age in the era of AIDS activism and working for marriage equality and on issues of immigration and economic justice with my congregations later on, I have felt frustrated and despairing over the direction of social justice activism over the last ten years. The theory invites a lot of introspection and performance, little action that actually relieves suffering. The slogans get more refined and the shouting louder but the strategies which would actually effect change never get articulated or enacted. The goals I hear envisioned seem disconnected from reality and don’t describe a world I actually want to live in. And when I’m in rooms where social justice issues are discussed, it’s clear that only assent to the dominant theory will be tolerated.

These books have given shape to my frustration. The liberalism I grew up with, love, have used and relied on, and experienced actually improving my life and the lives of people I care about and others throughout the world I don’t even know about, is being challenged, insulted, and denied. Life has actually gotten better in the last 50 years for people of color, women, gays and lesbians, disabled persons, and certainly over the last 500 years. Why should we abandon the method that has been so effective for so many for so long?

I’m used to seeing challenges to liberalism from the political right: religious fundamentalism, strongman authoritarianism, anti-science, white-identity politics. I wasn’t looking for challenges to liberalism from the political left. But there it is. Social Justice Theory is a fundamentalist and authoritarian power privileging some voices, silencing others. It is anti-science, not only skeptical of logic and reason but disparaging of them. It offends principles I hold dear by raising group identity above individual experience or our shared humanity . These books ease my despair by helping me see that progress in social justice is still possible, once we get out of Social Justice Theory, and by revealing what exactly is under attack: liberalism, while affirming that it is still possible to overcome the attacks.