Threefold response: I have empathy, I can read, and from the standpoint of my Judeo-Christian heritage, God’s two Great Commandments. That’s my polite way of answering what we of the left have allowed to happen within ourselves.
I do believe that I can never _fully_ understand the lived experience of, say, a black American in Minneapolis, or that of the woman I love…but, fortunately, I do not have to do so in order to act decently.
I think practical embrace of the less-than-absolute is what is in order. I feel honest saying, for example, that I can not _fully_ understand the lived experience of a lesbian Latina-American woman, but I should have enough common experience, enough analogous experience, and enough imaginative wit to bridge the gaps well enough that I can see where we have common concerns, e.g. not letting the country fall into the hands of 'Christian' authoritarians, and work with her toward them.
[EDIT: one 'works toward' goals, not concerns—maybe '[…]work with her for the sake of what we can agree were best.'?]
I appreciate the care and thoughtfulness on display in this excerpt; Mounk does not take the position of sneering dismissiveness that is common in critiques of so-called "identity politics." I also think the emphasis on empathy is important (if somewhat skewed in the way it is applied, since it assumes liberalism facilitates empathy across experiential differences while "identity" perspectives do not. I don't think that's the case.)
But I will say that this excerpt doesn't yet adequately grapple with the longer and larger backdrop to what I think is behind the friction between liberalism and its critics on the left. To put it reductively: Because of its emphasis on proceduralism, liberalism tends to rely on a convenient amnesia about what it has explicitly or implicitly licensed in history. Why did leading Enlightenment and liberal thinkers in the past actually rationalize colonial conquest and racial domination of various kinds, expressly in the name of helping humanity? Liberal thinkers who don't squarely face those contradictions are not likely to adequately understand why critics on the left wonder if liberals are reasoning from an adequate epistemology.
I'm persuaded by thinkers like Paul Gilroy (and, from an earlier era, Williams James) who argue that empathy across epistemological divides are possible and absolutely necessary––but that our best guides to those instances of epistemological "bridging" have occurred in what he calls the colonial margins in history, the sites where different peoples had no choice but to try to forge new ways to create shared concepts and practice epistemological humility and flexibility.
The reduction is too simplistic, but think of "experiential knowledge" and it's claims as emotion and "propositional knowledge" as fact. We can work together on facts. Working with, and particularly deferring to, what I "feel" is doomed to failure, as Mounk points out so nicely, and as tRumpism illustrates so beautifully. GREAT piece, thanks.
Something that has occurred to me in recent years is that basically any ideology or epistemology is fated to be reduced to a “folk” version that gets large chunks of it wrong and will fail in every predictable way that its critics can conceive of.
Too often, those who claim to speak on behalf of their identity group abuse their identity status to speak on behalf of some other interest. One of the clearest examples of this happened a few years ago during the protests against the Castro regime. Even though the Cuban protesters were mostly black and were voicing racial concerns, Black Lives Matter sided with the Castro regime against them. While pretending to speak for Black people, BLM demonstrated that it was, first and foremost, an advocate of anti-American authoritarian socialism, and it was willing to sacrifice Black people and their stated concerns for the sake of its radical political ideology.
Threefold response: I have empathy, I can read, and from the standpoint of my Judeo-Christian heritage, God’s two Great Commandments. That’s my polite way of answering what we of the left have allowed to happen within ourselves.
I do believe that I can never _fully_ understand the lived experience of, say, a black American in Minneapolis, or that of the woman I love…but, fortunately, I do not have to do so in order to act decently.
I think practical embrace of the less-than-absolute is what is in order. I feel honest saying, for example, that I can not _fully_ understand the lived experience of a lesbian Latina-American woman, but I should have enough common experience, enough analogous experience, and enough imaginative wit to bridge the gaps well enough that I can see where we have common concerns, e.g. not letting the country fall into the hands of 'Christian' authoritarians, and work with her toward them.
[EDIT: one 'works toward' goals, not concerns—maybe '[…]work with her for the sake of what we can agree were best.'?]
I appreciate the care and thoughtfulness on display in this excerpt; Mounk does not take the position of sneering dismissiveness that is common in critiques of so-called "identity politics." I also think the emphasis on empathy is important (if somewhat skewed in the way it is applied, since it assumes liberalism facilitates empathy across experiential differences while "identity" perspectives do not. I don't think that's the case.)
But I will say that this excerpt doesn't yet adequately grapple with the longer and larger backdrop to what I think is behind the friction between liberalism and its critics on the left. To put it reductively: Because of its emphasis on proceduralism, liberalism tends to rely on a convenient amnesia about what it has explicitly or implicitly licensed in history. Why did leading Enlightenment and liberal thinkers in the past actually rationalize colonial conquest and racial domination of various kinds, expressly in the name of helping humanity? Liberal thinkers who don't squarely face those contradictions are not likely to adequately understand why critics on the left wonder if liberals are reasoning from an adequate epistemology.
I'm persuaded by thinkers like Paul Gilroy (and, from an earlier era, Williams James) who argue that empathy across epistemological divides are possible and absolutely necessary––but that our best guides to those instances of epistemological "bridging" have occurred in what he calls the colonial margins in history, the sites where different peoples had no choice but to try to forge new ways to create shared concepts and practice epistemological humility and flexibility.
The reduction is too simplistic, but think of "experiential knowledge" and it's claims as emotion and "propositional knowledge" as fact. We can work together on facts. Working with, and particularly deferring to, what I "feel" is doomed to failure, as Mounk points out so nicely, and as tRumpism illustrates so beautifully. GREAT piece, thanks.
Something that has occurred to me in recent years is that basically any ideology or epistemology is fated to be reduced to a “folk” version that gets large chunks of it wrong and will fail in every predictable way that its critics can conceive of.
Too often, those who claim to speak on behalf of their identity group abuse their identity status to speak on behalf of some other interest. One of the clearest examples of this happened a few years ago during the protests against the Castro regime. Even though the Cuban protesters were mostly black and were voicing racial concerns, Black Lives Matter sided with the Castro regime against them. While pretending to speak for Black people, BLM demonstrated that it was, first and foremost, an advocate of anti-American authoritarian socialism, and it was willing to sacrifice Black people and their stated concerns for the sake of its radical political ideology.