Think again : contrarian reflections on life, culture, politics, religion, law, and education
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Think again : contrarian reflections on life, culture, politics, religion, law, and education
Princeton University Press, c2015
Available at 3 libraries
Note
Articles originally published in the New York Times between 1995 and 2013
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
From 1995 to 2013, Stanley Fish's 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. Some readers reported being frustrated when they couldn't figure out where Fish, one of America's most influential thinkers, stood on the controversies he addressed in the essays--from atheism and affirmative action to plagiarism and postmodernism. But, as Fish says, that is the point. Opinions are cheap; you can get them anywhere. Instead of offering just another set of them, Fish analyzes and dissects the arguments put forth by different sides--in debates over free speech, identity politics, the gun lobby, and other hot-button topics--in order to explain how their arguments work or don't work. In short, these are essays that teach you not what to think but how to think more clearly.
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 today's leading critics, this is Fish's broadest and most engaging book to date.
Table of 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 Aesthetic 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 Miserables 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 101 359 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
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