In yesterday's post about philosophical hubris, I mentioned Alexandre Lefebvre's proposal to regard liberalism as a way of life. Astute readers might have noticed that words like liberalism, neoliberalism, and fascism don't appear prominently in my writings. Beyond the fact that I tend to avoid political topics, there's another reason: I find these words to be extremely slippery. Indeed, they are often so ill-defined as to be void for vagueness, which might be why it's so easy to hurl them as epithets. Yet isms are not the only such words in our increasingly partisan culture. Similar in their effects are terms like feminazi, Islamophobic, woke, denier, and a host of others. If you think about them carefully, can you be sure that they provide a solid basis for clear thinking, mutual understanding, and respectful communication? I have my doubts...
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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