Book review - What's left? (Nick Cohen)
Jan. 31st, 2011 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cybermuleThis wasn't actually something I picked up myself, but then happened to wander through my field of vision when I was in the mood for it, so I read it. Politically I seem to have gone straight from apathy to disgust, which is a bit of a shame as I could have done with a nice morally soothing bit in the middle, but the details are and probably will continue to be messily unravelled all over other pages of this journal. FWIW I did pretty much the same hyperspace bypass with religion. I'm continually my own worst enemy when it comes to making myself feel better, it seems.
Anyhoo. This is basically a well-written and quite interesting argument against cultural relativism. It's backcover-noted as a scorching polemic. Firstly, I take exception to the scorching, but then I am a vicious sweary bitch at times; secondly, the whole polemic part of it left me feeling a bit like the author went too far down the road of devil's advocate and ended up shooting himself in the foot. Probably because he was juggling a bag of metaphors at the time :P Basically, I was left feeling really unsure about his whole anti-ant-war thing, but generally agreeing with him. Unsure is ok though - I like to be made to think.
Anyhoo. This is basically a well-written and quite interesting argument against cultural relativism. It's backcover-noted as a scorching polemic. Firstly, I take exception to the scorching, but then I am a vicious sweary bitch at times; secondly, the whole polemic part of it left me feeling a bit like the author went too far down the road of devil's advocate and ended up shooting himself in the foot. Probably because he was juggling a bag of metaphors at the time :P Basically, I was left feeling really unsure about his whole anti-ant-war thing, but generally agreeing with him. Unsure is ok though - I like to be made to think.
