In Praise of Prejudice. Theodore Dalrymple

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In Praise of Prejudice - Theodore Dalrymple


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      Table of Contents

       Title Page

       Dedication

       Epigraph

       Chapter 1 - Prejudice Is Wrong, So Lack of Prejudice Is Right

       Chapter 2 - The Uses of Metaphysical Skepticism

       Chapter 3 - History Teaches Us Anything We Like

       Chapter 4 - Why We Prefer the History of Disaster to that of Achievement

       Chapter 5 - The Effect of Pedagogy Without Prejudice

       Chapter 6 - Prejudice Necessary to Family Life

       Chapter 7 - One Prejudice Always Replaced by Another

       Chapter 8 - The Cruel Effect of Not Instilling the Right Prejudices

       Chapter 9 - The Inevitability of Prejudice

       Chapter 10 - The Conventionality of Unconventionality

       Chapter 11 - The Overestimation of Rationality in Choice

       Chapter 12 - Authority Necessary to the Accumulation of Knowledge

       Chapter 13 - The Supposed Equality of All Opinions, Provided They are One’s Own

       Chapter 14 - Custom Supposedly Wrong Because It Is Custom

       Chapter 15 - A Partial Reading of Mill Leads to Unbridled Egotism

       Chapter 16 - The Difficulty of Founding Common Decency on First Principles

       Chapter 17 - The Law of Conservation of Righteous Indignation, and its ...

       Chapter 18 - The Paradox of Radical Individualism Leading to Authoritarianism

       Chapter 19 - Racial Discrimination Being Bad, All Discrimination Is Bad

       Chapter 20 - Rejection of Prejudice Not a Good in Itself

       Chapter 21 - The Impossibility of the Mind as a Blank Slate

       Chapter 22 - The Ideal of Equality of Opportunity Necessary to a World Without Prejudice

       Chapter 23 - Equality of Opportunity Inherently Totalitarian

       Chapter 24 - The Rejection of Authority as Egotism

       Chapter 25 - Prejudice a Requirement of Benevolence

       Chapter 26 - The Dire Social Effects of Abandoning Certain Prejudices

       Chapter 27 - The Inescapability of Commandments of Which Justification Is Unprovable

       Chapter 28 - The Exercise of Judgment Unavoidable, Even in the Absence of ...

       Chapter 29 - No Virtue Without Prejudice

       INDEX

       Copyright Page

       To the memory of Peter Bauer

      He said, “Macaulay, who writes the account of St. Kilda, set out with a prejudice against prejudice, and wanted to be a smart modern thinker; and yet affirms for a truth [what everyone already knows], that when a ship arrives there all the inhabitants are seized with a cold.”

      James Boswell, Life of Johnson A.D.1768, Aetat 59

      Starting from unlimited freedom I arrive at unlimited despotism.

      Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Devils

       1

       Prejudice Is Wrong, So Lack of Prejudice Is Right

      THESE DAYS, there is a strong prejudice against prejudice: and this is exactly as it should be, is it not? For what is prejudice, if not wholly reprehensible? According to the Oxford Shorter Dictionary, prejudice is:

      a previous judgement, especially a premature or hasty judgement. Preconceived opinion; bias favourable or unfavourable; prepossession . . . usually with unfavourable connotation. An unreasoning predilection or objection.

      It follows, does it not, that we should strive to be entirely without prejudice?

      The archetypical prejudice is that which relates to race. Indeed, the word race and prejudice go together like Mercedes and Benz, or Dolce and Gabbana. It is difficult to say exactly when this association formed, and certainly there was talk of race prejudice before the Nazis changed our moral outlook and priorities, if not forever (for who can see that far into the future?), at least for a long time to come. To hate, despise, depreciate, or discriminate against someone merely because he belongs to a certain racial group now seems to us the worst of all possible vices. This has helped to create a moral climate in which the expression of virtuous, and the abjuration of vicious, sentiment is mistaken for, or taken as the whole of, virtue itself. Let a man be an unscrupulous villain, so long as he utters the right phrases: that is to say, is not prejudiced.

      No unprejudiced person, however, could deny the significance of racial prejudice in the production of some of the worst evils of


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