I think that there is a natural tendency for professional philosophers to look at the book by Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay from the standpoint of how well it captures a philosophical position that the reviewer has studied extensively. That is not how I evaluate the book. I want the book to help me understand what you might call the “folk beliefs” that non-philosophers distilled from the academics.

By analogy, suppose somebody were to attempt a history of Keynesian economics with a goal of understanding how Keynesian economic policy came to be conducted. It is not so important to get “what Keynes really meant” (in fact, that is an endlessly debatable topic) or to provide a definitive account of the various Keynesian models that appeared in academic journals. Instead, what is important is to explain how the “folk Keynesianism” of journalists and political leaders developed and evolved.

I take the view that it is unlikely that the arcane academics have much direct cultural influence. So arguing with Pluckrose and Lindsay (PL) about their analysis of the arcane academics is beside the point.

The people who are in a position to directly influence the culture are those who hold high-leverage positions in our society. They include college administrators who write policies and implement training programs, public school curriculum writers, corporate human resource departments, journalists, and career officials in government. I believe that one can be confident that PL are accurately characterizing the “folk ideology” of these influential bureaucrats. That “folk ideology” seems plausibly derived from some of the academic philosophy that PL discuss, even if there is room to quibble with the treatment of academic philosophy in PL–and there is always room to quibble with someone’s treatment of any school of philosophy.

For me, Cynical Theories does not stand or fall on the quality of it scholarly interpretations of Foucault, Derrida, or subsequent philosophers. It stands or falls on its ability to explain and predict the rhetoric, modes of argument, and behavior of the bureaucrats who employ what PL refer to as Theory with a capital T.

Here is what I see as the gist of PL’s claims:

1. Liberalism and Theory are incommensurate. Liberalism presumes that we should pursue truth objectively, using logical deductions and empirical observations. From the liberal perspective, some of the propositions held by Theorists, concerning sex for example, are false and even ridiculous. Theory presumes that truths are contingent on identity, so that a white male may hold to a different “truth” than a black female. From the Theory perspective, liberal concepts of logic and empiricism are primarily tools used to perpetuate the privileged in a power structure. They are not necessary or sufficient for the pursuit of truth.

2. Theory developed in three phases. I think of these as razing a village, designing a new housing development, and building a new housing development.

3. The first phase was post-modernism. According to PL, post-modernism developed two principles, a knowledge principle of radical skepticism that objective knowledge or truth is attainable, because knowledge is culturally constructed; and a political principle that society can be viewed in terms of power and hierarchies, and these culturally construct knowledge.

4. The second phase PL call “applied post-modernism.” This looked into specific topics, including colonialism, race, and gender, and looked at how the language and cultural practices in these areas could be interpreted as reflecting and protecting power structures.

5. The third phase PL call “reified post-modernism.” That means taking the ideas into the real world and trying to do something about the power structures. That is what all of the bureaucrats are doing. But one irony that the book emphasizes is that the first phase declared that there was no certainty in knowledge, but the final phase treats the analysis of power based on identity groups as if it were absolute Truth. In terms of my metaphor, when the original village was razed, it was with the view that nothing could stand up. But the new housing development discards that extreme skepticism (although it still does not think that the old village has any legitimacy).

Let me reiterate my first point. The rhetorical defenses of Theory are impregnable to the attempts by liberalism to appeal to what it considers to be reason. To put it starkly, the Theorists refuse to be reasoned with. They would say that someone like me is merely trying to uphold privilege, either consciously or otherwise.

Liberalism seeks to deal with dissent by listening to it, debating it, and co-opting it. But Theory does not have those mechanisms. Silencing dissent is its modus operandi, one might even say its mission. Regular readers know that I describe it as the religion that persecutes heretics. Left-leaning liberals have a hard time processing the threat that this represents. They would much rather focus on the threat that they perceive comes from Donald Trump.

I am reading Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories. I would describe it as a solid critique of the social justice movement and a stalwart defense of liberalism.

An excerpt:

Liberalism accepts criticism, even of itself, and is therefore self-correcting; Theory cannot be criticized. Liberalism believes in progress; Theory is radically cynical about the possibility of progress. Liberalism is inherently constructive because of the evolutionary processes it engenders; Theory is inherently corrosive because of its cynicism and attachments to methods it calls “critical.”

If I could recommend one book to a student about to enter the indoctrination center known as a contemporary university, this would be it. In fact, I will be recommending it to a wide range of people, including readers of this blog.

My main takeaway is that the threat to conservatism on college campuses may not be as significant as the threat to liberalism. Liberalism’s natural reaction to dissent is to co-opt it. Liberalism accepts what it can of a dissenting point of view without losing liberalism itself. But the new ideology is so antithetical to liberalism that it cannot be co-opted.