WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2025
Why we can't have nice things: Greedily, we fell upon a book review in today's New York Times. The principal headline on the piece caught our eye:
NONFICTION
A Philosopher Gives the Old Idea of Universalism a Radical New Spin
Omri Boehm’s new book argues that both the left and the right must abandon divisive identity politics and embrace the transformative power of Enlightenment ideals.
We're always ready to see what the philosophers would have us do. Boehm's new book may be very good. This is the new book's title:
RADICAL UNIVERSALISM: Beyond Identity
Radical universalism? What in the world is that?
Boehm's new book may be quite good. But based upon the review in the Times, we can't say we're real sure.
For one thing, we were puzzled by the term "universalism," with which we weren't familiar. The term never quite gets explained in the review. Instead, jargon almost seems to be rolling down like the water of a mighty stream:
A Philosopher Gives the Old Idea of Universalism a Radical New Spin
[...]
The Declaration of Independence is one of the texts that Boehm explores in his compact and readable treatise on universalism, an idea that has fallen out of fashion with identitarians on the right and on the left. In contemporary politics, parochialism reigns: “The right fights in terms of traditional values, the left fights in the name of gender and race.“
This initially sounds like the kind of both-sidesism that political centrists find appealing. But Boehm finds fault with centrists, too, who have done their part to hollow out the idea of universalism. They have been so enthralled by the concept of “rights” that they have neglected the concept of “duty.” Universalism, properly understood, doesn’t just rest on some minimal understanding of the “right” to act in your own “interest.” In fact, he argues, universalism entails a duty that sometimes requires people to act against their interests.
[...]
Before I started reading this book, the title “Radical Universalism” struck me as an oxymoron. I associated the word “universalism” with an inclination toward complacency—an approach that deployed the tepid vocabulary of reform and individual rights to preserve the status quo.
Universalism has allegedly fallen out of favor with the identitarians. Meanwhile, the reviewer does seem to have a general idea of what "universalism" is. But she never defines the term, and the leading authority on the concept explains it in various ways.
"This is why we can't have nice things," Paula Poundstone once said. In the final lyric of his Graceland album, Paul Simon took an even gloomier tack:
"That's why we must learn to live alone," he somewhat gloomily said.
You'll forgive us if we postpone our current series, SQUALOR RED, SQUALOR BLUE. We don't know what made us think that we'd want to proceed on this New Year's Eve day, especially after we journeyed to our mechanic's shop to retrieve what's left of our car.
On the brighter side, we journeyed there on the Purple Route of the Charm City Circulator. Free buses already exist in American cities! (You may have heard it here first.)
We expect to resume on Friday morning. With respect to those widely maligned free buses:
Today, in a nod to an incoming mayor, we successfully journeyed on one. We rolled to the north, free of charge, then skillfully drove home from there!
ReplyDelete"Universalism has allegedly fallen out of favor with the identitarians."
To you TDS-suffering BlueAnons everything's out of favor, except for your rabid TDS idiocy. I'm sorry to say.
Grrrrrt
DeleteAffirming identity is a plank in the Democratic Party platform and part of what makes liberals liberal. When someone knocks it, like @11:24, you know they are right wingers. They are generally against tolerance and are these days trending toward eliminationism, so that any identity they do not themselves hold is suspect and must be deported, jailed, persecuted, and otherwise banned from our society's mainstream.
DeleteI doubt that is what this philosophy book is arguing, but it seems to be what this troll, and Somerby (on other occasions) are arguing. Awhile back, Somerby spent a few weeks arguing that our political divide arises because there is too much heterogeneity in America, that diversity obstructs democracy because differences among people cannot be resolved. This was before Trump and his push toward expelling everyone not whitebread. It is Nazi-light. Somerby blamed identity politics, and identity itself for destroying democracy.
At the time, I argued that our nation was born diverse, built a government system containing methods for resolving issues despite diversity of opinion and identity, and was built to deal with the explicit diversity upon which our nation was founded, including immigration. Now, the Ken Burns documentary "The American Revolution" begins by showing the unusual amount of diversity existing in the colonies in the years leading up to our declaration of independence. That is its theme. Somerby doesn't interact with commenters, so he never responded to that idea. Perhaps Burns will inspire him to think differently about American diversity and the preservation of identity as a strength not a liability.
"Boehm's new book may be quite good. But based upon the review in the Times, we can't say we're real sure.
ReplyDeleteFor one thing, we were puzzled by the term "universalism," with which we weren't familiar. The term never quite gets explained in the review. "
Somerby has made this mistake before. You don't read a book review to learn the content explained in the book itself. You read it to decide whether you wish to purchase and read the book, to pursue its subject yourself.
That confusion over the purpose of a review leads Somerby to complain that he cannot understand, from the review, what "universalism" means. The author has written an entire book explaining this, but Somerby thinks he should know without reading the book, based solely on a review which has other purposes, such as explaining where the topic fits among other topics in philosophy, describing the background of the author, giving his or her own reaction to the book, and perhaps describing how the book as been received by others in the field. The review places the new book in the context of other books on the subject. But Somerby thinks it should explain universalism, an old topic (according to the author), well enough so that Somerby need not buy or read the book itself. In the short space allotted to a book review in a newspaper.
Somerby has written this kind of essay many times before. He likes to target books on technical subjects, complaining that he cannot understand them himself (lacking background in the subject) and arguing that the authors are misleading the public by suggesting they can learn anything from their books. It is an attack on the concept of expertise, not just on the authors, but the implication is that the authors are making false promises and casual readers shouldn't try to read such books -- and sometimes he argues that no one can learn from them. My favorite was when Somerby suggested that Einstein did not understand his own ideas because he hadn't explained them so that Somerby could grasp them. More of the same today.
Somerby commits his own howler today. He says:
"Meanwhile, the reviewer does seem to have a general idea of what "universalism" is. But she never defines the term, and the leading authority on the concept explains it in various ways."
We can be absolutely certain that the author of the book, Boehm, defines universalism, because that is what authors do when they are writing on a topic. But today, Somerby blames the reviewer for not defining it. Oddly, he never mentions that reviewer's name in his entire essay. Boehm is the book author, not the reviewer. So who reviewed this book? We aren't told by Somerby.
We do know that the reviewer is female. Somerby refers to her as "she" a couple of times. That could have been predicted with confidence, since Somerby saves his most caustic complaints for women writing reviews on scientific topics. Academic philosophy is probably the most male-dominated field in terms of hiring female philosophers. At the undergrad level it consists of aggressive male students arguing with each other and ignoring what their female classmates have to say. I switched my own major early on from philosophy to history because of this dynamic. But ignoring a female reviewer to the point of criticizing her work but never mentioning her name carries invisibility to a ridiculous extreme. And I have no doubt that Somerby is unaware that he showed his bias to that extent.
Then Somerby rips a Paul Simon lyric from its context in order to draw a conclusion that I am certain the book author did not intend either.
But why be surprised by this omission. For some coy reason, Somerby doesn't want to name Mamdani either. It isn't cute to do that, just confusing to those less familiar with what is happening on the East Coast.
For those who are not regular Somerby readers, "the leading authority" refers to Wikipedia. Somerby should say so. No one with serious interest in any topic regards Wikipedia as "the leading authority" in their field, but it is a handy starting place and summary for casual learners. There is a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that is a better source. Somerby, as a former Harvard philosophy major should know it.
ReplyDeleteUsually, when Somerby knocks a book, I go buy a copy and read it to see whether it deserves his scoffing. Generally the books do not. This year, I spent my discretionary money on Christmas and I don't care about anyone who tells us to ignore identity, so I am not buying this book. But I think that, in fairness, Somerby should, to see whether his ritual knocking of other people's thoughts is valid in this specific case. He also owes us the name of the reviewer. She probably has better credentials than Somerby himself and that would indicate we should take her word over Somerby's about whether this book is worth reading.
jargon definition: "special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand"
ReplyDeleteExperts invent jargon when there are not existing words in a language to describe or reference an idea or object. Language evolves and develops new words as needed. It is not a bad thing to do this. It facilitates conversation among those interested in a specific topic.
Basic education teaches children the words needed to converse with others in our culture. Higher education generally begins by defining the jargon of a specific field. The concepts and words are introduced together in introductory classes at the university level.
Somerby seems to resent it when people in specialized fields requiring higher education use words that he does not understand. Sometimes these words are hard to understand even after being defined, because there are concepts they describe that require some previous background in a field to comprehend. Somerby is lazy and does not put in the effort to look up and study what he doesn't immediately grasp. He thinks that work should be unnecessary and when he doesn't get something, it is the fault of the speaker, not himself.
There are points in learning where everyday language cannot be used to explain specialized concepts because the words do not exist in our language to do so. There may be experiences, demonstrations, needed to understand the concepts described by jargon.
I do not understand why a 79+ year old man cannot grasp that words have specific meanings that need to be learned along with the words themselves. People are not inventing needlessly complicated secret words to shut out others, as seems to be Somerby's belief. People are inventing new words to describe things in the world that did not previously have descriptors, in order to communicate more precisely using fewer words with others who have educated themselves on that topic.
As with all words, people are shut out by their own ignorance. Even old people can attend open entry community college to take advanced course. Even old people can read books that introduce them to a subject, as preparation for going more deeply into some area of interest.
Today, Somerby uses Wikipedia as a reference when he could have used the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. There are encyclopedias devoted to highly specific fields, such as color or the horse or emotion or physical science and technology. Wikipedia is easy to use, but it is intended for people who don't know anything and want a quick and dirty intro, not for someone trying to understand an advanced topic in philosophy, or color perception or anything else. Somerby's frustration that a quick visit to a source like wikipedia cannot make him an instant expert, is his problem. I think perhaps it reflects a larger personality trait and attitude toward life, but that is another topic.
Trump is the least curious man on the planet. He is interested in nothing outside himself and his greed, and he does nothing to seek information or know more about the world. As a result, he says things that people laugh at, and doesn't realize his own mistakes on every topic. One cannot lie if they have no actual truth or knowledge to begin with, thus every sentence they say is wrong in some major way.
Somerby got pushed into educating children as a way to avoid the draft. He may have been well enough educated to teach little kids, but that ended when the kids started to know more than he did. As self-described, he reads the same books over and over, even though he has already read them. A person with genuine curiosity would read new ones and think new thoughts and visit unfamiliar places and make new friends, and would not be afraid of diversity or self-protective among those who know more than he does. Somerby makes a pretense of intellectuality, referring to those old books he read at Harvard, but he does not have an inquiring mind. That means it will be harder for him to engage with new books, like the one he complains about today.
IMO it's true that candidates run less on the issue of what's good for all of us. More on what's good for some group, like trans. Or more commonly, they run on what's BAD, e.g., Trump.
ReplyDeleteBut, one doesn't need whole book full of jargon to say that.
Nah, that's not it. You see, "universality", is something like "...not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character", while "Identitarianism" is liberal idiocy of essentializing gender, race 'n shit.
Delete