The Trouble with Principle - Hardcover

Fish, Stanley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674910125 ISBN 13: 9780674910126

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1999

Synopsis

Stanley Fish is an equal opportunity antagonist. A theorist who has taken on theorists, an academician who has riled the academy, a legal scholar and political pundit who has ruffled feathers left and right, Fish here turns with customary gusto to the trouble with principle. Specifically, Fish has a quarrel with neutral principles. The trouble? They operate by sacrificing everything people care about to their own purity. And they are deployed with equal highmindedness and equally absurd results by liberals and conservatives alike.

In this bracing book, Fish argues that there is no realm of higher order impartiality--no neutral or fair territory on which to stake a claim--and that those who invoke one are always making a rhetorical and political gesture. In the end, it is history and context, the very substance against which a purportedly abstract principle defines itself, that determines a principle's content and power. In the course of making this argument, Fish takes up questions about academic freedom and hate speech, affirmative action and multiculturalism, the boundaries between church and state, and much more. Sparing no one, he shows how our notions of intellectual and religious liberty--cherished by those at both ends of the political spectrum--are artifacts of the very partisan politics they supposedly transcend. The Trouble with Principle offers a provocative challenge to the debates of our day that no intellectually honest citizen can afford to ignore.

About this title

About the Author

Stanley Fish is Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His many books include There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It's a Good Thing Too.

Reviews

American democracy rests its freedoms and legal procedures on principles that are impersonal and universal (e.g., freedom, equality). A good idea? No, says Fish. He argues vigorously that universal principles actually impede democracy. Counterintuitive as his claim may appear, Fish makes a strong and lucid case. The trouble with principle, he explains, is this: it disregards history, tradition and contexts of every sort that shape understanding. According to FishAa controversial literary scholar and theorist who has applied his theories of interpretation to the study of lawAwe can never find a neutral position that will fully transcend our prejudices, commitments and beliefs. And worse yet, high-minded abstractions can be used to mask undemocratic privilege. He offers the current controversy over affirmative action and reverse discrimination as a case in point. Those who agitate for an end to affirmative action usually do so on the principled grounds that it ignores "merit." But what is merit? It describes, says Fish, "whatever qualifications are deemed desirable for the performance of a particular task, and there is nothing fixed about those qualifications." Fish supports affirmative action because he believes we must take into account the history of oppression suffered by the groups that affirmative action is meant to benefit. Yet Fish is no liberal. In fact, he devotes most of his book to the problems entailed in the liberal understanding of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Liberals, he says, duck behind the comforting fictionAor "principle"Athat we are all the same underneath. FishAhard-nosed, unflinching and persuasiveAmaintains that differences are real and must be faced squarely without recourse to timeless, abstract principles. His cautiously reasoned argument, not easily dismissed, will excite controversy. (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

By turns ludicrous and shrewd, a polemic against ``neutral'' principles like free speech, freedom of religion, and nondiscrimination. Continuing his pilgrimage away from his origins as a literary critic, Fish (Dean/College of Liberal Arts and Sciences/Univ. of Illinois, Chicago; There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It's a Good Thing Too, 1993, etc.) plays political philosopher here, applying his own brew of postmodern pragmatism to analyses of current public issues. He wants to expose as a sham what he calls ``neutral principle''''abstractions like fairness, impartiality, mutual respect.'' These, he says, are inherently empty of meaning, which they acquire only when invoked in the service of a ``partisan agenda,'' at which point they are no longer neutral. Fish doesn't mind using these principles when they serve the agenda he favorsleft-centrist concerns like enhanced opportunities for minorities and womenbut is annoyed when they are used to support causes he opposes, such as the repeal of affirmative- action laws. Largely to discredit the ``hijacking'' of these principles by right-wingers and other foes, he deconstructs neutral principles in many forms: First Amendment law, multiculturalism, religious tolerance, foundationalist philosophies. Many chapters have previously been published as separate articles, and their presentation here is sometimes repetitive. Fish is, nonetheless, an entertaining writer, adept at close reading and handy with a barb (the ACLU, ``that curious organization whose mission it is to find things it hates and then to grow them''). Still, his neo-Machiavellianism will repel anyone who does believe in principle, and his arguments are rife with muddy concepts and self-contradiction. How, exactly, do you tell the difference between ``neutral principle'' (bad) and ``moral principle'' (good)? And how can Fish deny the existence of a neutral point of view while insisting he does so from a neutral point of view? Fish likes to think of himself as appealingly ``provocative'' and ``perverse,'' but the appeal may escape some readers, leaving him merely perverse. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674910125
• ISBN 13: 9780674910126
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336