Publisher's Synopsis
Much has been written on the subject of prejudice, but Rethinking Prejudice offers the first philosophical monograph on the concept of prejudice. It takes its start from a study of Enlightenment thought, and pursues the topic to the reassessment of prejudice in contemporary hermeneutics. Yet history of ideas is a means rather than an end in this book. Dorschel analyzes the debates about prejudice from the 17th century onwards in order to shed light upon present concerns. - - Prejudice is not something peculiar to racists and similarly sinister figures, Dorschel argues; rather, it is an indispensable part of everyone's intellectual repertoire. Racial prejudice, for example, has to be rejected not because it is a prejudice, but because it is racist. So why is it popular to reject racism on the grounds that it is a prejudice? The economy of transforming a whole complex of ethical problems into one apparently simple problem of epistemology is certainly understandable. But such transformation plays down phenomena like racism. If they are prejudices, then this is a common feature they share with a host of innocuous and even reasonable attitudes. The critical standard, Dorschel concludes, must be taken from elsewhere: if relevant phenomena are to be criticized, a genuine moral stance cannot be avoided. - - Rethinking Prejudice introduces and explores a topic of wide interest, particularly to those researching within the fields of philosophy, history of ideas, cultural studies, and social and political theory. - - Andreas Dorschel is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of East Anglia, UK. -
