Plagiarism: The Trouble with Principle

Stanley Fish is a generally sharp thinking atheist, who here hoes into pluralism. It's all been said before, but rarely so well. Enjoy the clarity of his prose, I bid you.

" . . . [R]eligion can be part of university life so long as it renounces its claim to have a privileged purchase on the truth, which of course is the claim that defines a religion as a religion as opposed to a mere opinion.

It's a great move whereby liberalism, in the form of academic freedom, gets to display its generosity while at the same time cutting the heart out of the views to which that generosity is extended . . . . [It] asks you to be morally thin; and it does this by asking you to conceive of yourself not as someone who is committed to something but as someone who is committed to respecting the commitments of those with whom he disagrees.

. . . .

[T]he strong multiculturalist faces a dilemma: either he stretches his toleration so that it extends to the intolerance residing at the heart of a culture he would honor, in which case tolerance is no longer his guiding principle, or he condemns the core intolerance of that culture (recoiling in horror when Khomeini calls for the death of Rushdie), in which case he is no longer according it respect at the point where its distinctiveness is most obviously at stake.

. . . .

[And besides,] [h]ow respectful can one be of 'fundamental' differences? If the difference is fundamental - that is, touches basic beliefs and commitments - how can you respect it without disrespecting your own beliefs and commitments? And on the other side, do you really show respect for a view by tolerating it, as you might tolerate the buzzing of a fly? Or do you show respect when you take it seriously enough to oppose it?"

Stanley Fish, The Trouble with Principle, pages 40, 41, 61, 66