Rethinking Prejudice

About this book

"Rethinking Prejudice 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."--Jacket.