Think Again: Contrarian Reflections on Life, Culture, Politics, Religion, Law, and Education - Hardcover

Fish, Stanley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691167710 ISBN 13: 9780691167718

Verlag: Princeton Univers. Press, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

From 1995 to 2013, Stanley Fishs provocative New York Times columns consistently generated passionate discussion and debate. In Think Again, he has assembled almost one hundred of his best columns into a thematically arranged collection with a substantial new introduction that explains his intention in writing these pieces and offers an analysis of why they provoked so much reaction. Brief and accessible yet challenging, these essays provide all the hard-edged intellectual, cultural, and political analysis one expects from Fish. At the same time, the collection includes a number of revealing and even poignant autobiographical essays in which, as Fish says, "readers will learn about my anxieties, my aspirations, my eccentricities, my foibles, my father, and my obsessions - Frank Sinatra, Ted Williams, basketball, and Jews." Reflecting the wide-ranging interests of one of Americas leading critics, this is Fishs broadest and most engaging book to date.

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Stanley Fish is the author of numerous books, including How to Write a Sentence, There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and Is There a Text in This Class? His most recent book is Versions of Academic Freedom. He is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law at Florida International University and the Visiting Floersheimer Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School. He previously taught at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Duke, and the University of Illinois, Chicago.

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"This collection of Stanley Fish's New York Times essays amounts to an intellectual autobiography of one of America's most interesting writers. As Fish says, his purpose isn't, as in most op-eds, to tell the reader what to think; rather, it's to illuminate Fish's view of how to think--and to shake readers out of their complacent assumptions about free speech, religion, academia, and other subjects."--Linda Greenhouse, author of The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

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Think Again

Contrarian Reflections on Life, Culture, Politics, Religion, Law, and Education

By Stanley Fish

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2015 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-16771-8

Contents

Introduction, XI, 
PART 1 PERSONAL REFLECTIONS, 1, 
1.1 My Life Report, 3, 
1.2 'Tis the Season, 7, 
1.3 Max the Plumber, 10, 
1.4 Is It Good for the Jews?, 13, 
1.5 My Life on the Court, 18, 
1.6 The Kid and Old Blue Eyes, 21, 
1.7 Travel Narrows, 24, 
1.8 I Am, Therefore I Pollute, 26, 
1.9 Why We Can't Just Get Along, 29, 
1.10 Truth and Conspiracy in the Catskills, 32, 
1.11 Moving On, 35, 
PART 2 A ESTHETIC REFLECTIONS, 37, 
2.1 Why Do Writers Write?, 39, 
2.2 Two Aesthetics, 42, 
2.3 Norms and Deviations: Who's to Say?, 47, 
2.4 The Ten Best American Movies, 52, 
2.5 Giving Kim Novak Her Due, 59, 
2.6 Larger than Life: Charlton Heston, 62, 
2.7 Vengeance Is Mine, 67, 
2.8 Little Big Men, 70, 
2.9 Narrative and the Grace of God: The New True Grit, 73, 
2.10 Les Misérables and Irony, 76, 
2.11 No Way Out: 12 Years a Slave, 80, 
2.12 Stand Your Ground, Be a Man, 84, 
2.13 Country Roads, 87, 
PART 3 CULTURAL REFLECTIONS, 91, 
3.1 Professor Sokal's Bad Joke, 93, 
3.2 French Theory in America, 98, 
3.3 Dorothy and the Tree: A Lesson in Epistemology, 105, 
3.4 Does Philosophy Matter?, 109, 
3.5 What Did Watson the Computer Do?, 112, 
3.6 None of the Answers: Charles Van Doren Finally Speaks, or Does He?, 115, 
3.7 Can I Put You on Hold?, 120, 
3.8 So's Your Old Man, 123, 
3.9 Two Cheers for Double Standards, 126, 
3.10 Favoritism Is Good, 129, 
PART 4 REFLECTIONS ON POLITICS, 133, 
4.1 Condemnation without Absolutes, 135, 
4.2 The All-Spin Zone, 138, 
4.3 Against Independent Voters, 142, 
4.4 When "Identity Politics" Is Rational, 145, 
4.5 Blowin' in the Wind, 149, 
4.6 Looking for Gas in All the Wrong Places, 151, 
4.7 When Principles Get in the Way, 154, 
4.8 Revisiting Affirmative Action, with Help from Kant, 157, 
4.9 Is the NRA Un-American?, 162, 
4.10 All You Need Is Hate, 167, 
4.11 How the Right Hijacked the Magic Words, 170, 
PART 5 REFLECTIONS ON THE LAW, 175, 
5.1 Why Scalia Is Right, 177, 
5.2 How Scalia Is Wrong, 180, 
5.3 Intentional Neglect, 185, 
5.4 What Did the Framers Have in Mind?, 189, 
5.5 What Is the First Amendment For?, 192, 
5.6 How the First Amendment Works, 198, 
5.7 What Does the First Amendment Protect?, 203, 
5.8 The First Amendment and Kittens, 207, 
5.9 Sticks and Stones, 212, 
5.10 The Harm in Free Speech, 215, 
5.11 Hate Speech and Stolen Valor, 220, 
5.12 Going in Circles with Hate Speech, 225, 
5.13 Our Faith in Letting It All Hang Out, 231, 
PART 6 REFLECTIONS ON RELIGION, 235, 
6.1 The Three Atheists, 237, 
6.2 Atheism and Evidence, 242, 
6.3 Is Religion Man-Made?, 246, 
6.4 God Talk, 249, 
6.5 Suffering, Evil, and the Existence of God, 254, 
6.6 Liberalism and Secularism: One and the Same, 260, 
6.7 Are There Secular Reasons?, 266, 
6.8 Serving Two Masters: Sharia Law and the Secular State, 271, 
6.9 Religion and the Liberal State Once Again, 276, 
6.10 Religion without Truth, 281, 
6.11 Is the Establishment Clause Unconstitutional?, 283, 
6.12 The Religion Clause Divided against Itself, 288, 
6.13 When Is a Cross a Cross?, 291, 
6.14 Being Neutral Is Oh So Hard to Do, 294, 
PART 7 REFLECTIONS ON LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION, 299, 
7.1 Why We Built the Ivory Tower, 301, 
7.2 There's No Business like Show Business, 304, 
7.3 Tip to Professors: Just Do Your Job, 307, 
7.4 Devoid of Content, 311, 
7.5 What Should Colleges Teach?, 315, 
7.6 Will the Humanities Save Us?, 320, 
7.7 The Uses of the Humanities, 324, 
7.8 The Value of Higher Education Made Literal, 331, 
7.9 A Classical Education: Back to the Future, 334, 
7.10 Deep in the Heart of Texas, 339, 
7.11 The Digital Humanities and the Transcending of Mortality, 343, 
7.12 Mind Your P's and B's: The Digital Humanities and Interpretation, 349, 
PART 8 REFLECTIONS ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM, 357, 
8.1 Conspiracy Theories, 101, 
8.2 Always Academicize: My Response to the Responses, 363, 
8.3 A Closing Argument (for Now), 368, 
8.4 The Two Languages of Academic Freedom, 374, 
8.5 Are Academics Different?, 378, 
8.6 The Kushner Flap: Much Ado about Nothing, 384, 
8.7 Sex, the Koch Brothers, and Academic Freedom, 388, 
8.8 To Boycott or Not to Boycott, That Is the Question, 395, 
8.9 Academic Freedom against Itself: Boycotting Israeli Universities, 402, 
8.10 Boycotting Israeli Universities: Part 2, 407, 
8.11 So Long, It's Been Good to Know You, 412, 
Acknowledgments, 415, 
Index, 417, 

CHAPTER 1

My Life Report

OCTOBER 31, 2011

Last week my colleague David Brooks made a request I couldn't refuse. He asked people over seventy to "write a brief report on your life so far, an evaluation of what you did well, of what you did not do well, and what you learned along the way." Well, here I am, reporting in.

My father was an immigrant from Poland, a taciturn, massive man who began with nothing and became a major force in the plumbing and heating industry. Once when I locked myself in the bathroom because I had done something bad — I had either set a fire under the gas tank of a car parked in a vacant lot or pushed my baby sister's carriage off the porch with her in it, I can't remember which — he knocked down the door with a single blow of his fist. My mother was a volatile woman with a fierce but untutored intelligence and a need to control everything. She and I were engaged in a contest of wills until the day she died after having, willfully, refused treatment for congestive heart failure.

We were far from well off — I still remember the eight-dollar secondhand bike I got as a birthday present; I loved it — but we were, like everyone else we knew, upwardly mobile, and that meant college, even though no one in my family had ever been there. I was not bookish; I spent most of my time playing sports badly, playing cards a little better, and lusting after girls and cars. But I was lucky, and that, I believe, made all the difference.

My first and decisive bit of luck (in addition to having parents who wanted their children to succeed) was to have had Sarah Flanagan as an English teacher in high school. It was the time when adults were asking me a terrifying question: "What are you going to be?" or, in another version, "What are you going to do with your life?" The implication was that I was not yet anything and that, unless something happened quickly, my life would come to naught.

What happened was that Miss Flanagan told me, not in so many words, that writing papers about poems was something I was good at, and since I was desperate to be good at something, I took what she said to heart and began to think of myself as someone who could at least do that.

My next bit of luck was to have had Maurice Johnson as an English teacher at the University of Pennsylvania (one of only two schools that admitted me). Johnson was an urbane man of dry wit who offered me a model of what the academic life might be like, if I could only learn to dress better and develop a taste...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton Univers. Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691167710
• ISBN 13: 9780691167718
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 448
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar