I think thinking is so important

[altariel]

communicator links to a list of the ten most harmful books compiled by a "panel of 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders". In a particularly nice touch, the links to the books are to versions you can buy on Amazon rather than to online copies, where available.

The idea of a harmful book is meaningless to me, although I imagine that if I dropped a hardback of Das Kapital on my toe it would probably hurt a fair old bit.

Whilst it didn't make the top ten, two or more of the judges listed On Liberty by John Stuart Mill as a harmful book. Ah, but then Mill knew all about this "peculiar evil", didn't he?:

"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. [...] [T]he peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error." (On Liberty, chapter 2).

I'm particularly grateful that a list of these miserably misnamed "scholars" is provided at the end of this article so that I can heckle take the opportunity to engage in mutually constructive debate should I be unlucky enough to come across any of them again. Shame on them.

Comments

[aervir.livejournal.com]

Thanks for providing this quote from J.S.Mill!

The link to the list seems to be going the rounds on the Internet right now; I, too, had seen it and frothed at the mouth in my own LJ over so much (academically sanctioned) idiocy, but the passage from On Liberty is probably the very best antidote to that kind of braindead polemics.

The funny thing is that even John Milton -- not only John Stuart Mills -- would appear like a flaming liberal next to the person who wrote the article and the scholars who must have endorsed it. While Milton adhered to the notion of "harmful" and "dangerous" books, he still advocated engaging with their ideas.

I can't see any intellectual engagement here, only oversimplifying condemnations à la "The Nazis liked Nietzsche" (well, their own watered-down version of some of his ideas without the philosophical background/context), "There were over 10 million copies of Mein Kampf in Germany" (not arguing that the content of this book turned out to be very harmful, only pointing out that you simply got Mein Kampf for free on many occasions during the Third Reich), "Betty Friedan was a radical left-wing journalist" (so what?) and "she did not choose a career as a housewife and mother" (I've read an article about her that described how her husband used to beat her, but also stated how proud she was of her son).

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Good points about Nietzsche, and thank you for that extra information on Betty Friedan. I probably shouldn't get so worked up about something which, as you say, as very little intellectual engagement but - grr! it gets my goat!