My favorite bourgeois intellectual

Tyler Cowen may be my favorite bourgeois economist, but title of my favorite bourgeois intellectual goes not to him but instead to Stanley Fish. The reason is that he wholly embraces the value fragmentation of modern society that has always been a central concern of bourgeois thought. He refuses to paper over that fragmentation with liberal platitudes, nor does he offer a way to transcend it. He instead asserts it as an insurmountable fact of life, in a seemingly radical move that is actually an apology for political cynicism.

This is usually most visible in his discussions of the academy--specifically, the humanities--in which he pleads guilty on behalf of the whole intellectual enterprise to the charge that it has no justification for its existence aside from being intrinsically interesting. This week, though, he displays a different twist, by resisting the convention of political debate in which one aside highlights something offensive said by a member of the other side, and then that side accuses the first of a double standard for not raising a fuss when one of their members had said something similar previously. The occasion was the Limbaugh shit from this past week, and this is where he ends up:

If we think about the Rush Limbaugh dust-up from the non-liberal — that is, non-formal — perspective, the similarity between what he did and what Schultz and Maher did disappears. Schultz and Maher are the good guys; they are on the side of truth and justice. Limbaugh is the bad guy; he is on the side of every nefarious force that threatens our democracy. Why should he get an even break?

There is no answer to that question once you step outside of the liberal calculus in which all persons, no matter what their moral status as you see it, are weighed in an equal balance. Rather than relaxing or soft-pedaling your convictions about what is right and wrong, stay with them, and treat people you see as morally different differently. Condemn Limbaugh and say that Schultz and Maher may have gone a bit too far but that they’re basically O.K. If you do that you will not be displaying a double standard; you will be affirming a single standard, and moreover it will be a moral one because you will be going with what you think is good rather than what you think is fair. “Fair” is a weak virtue; it is not even a virtue at all because it insists on a withdrawal from moral judgment.

I know the objections to what I have said here. It amounts to an apology for identity politics. It elevates tribal obligations over the universal obligations we owe to each other as citizens. It licenses differential and discriminatory treatment on the basis of contested points of view. It substitutes for the rule “don’t do it to them if you don’t want it done to you” the rule “be sure to do it to them first and more effectively.” It implies finally that might makes right. I can live with that.

The final two sentences are truly exemplary. Instead of playing along with the make-believe of liberal intellectuals that there is such a thing as a potentially neutral political sphere, he not only denies its existence but also refuses to concede that that is some sort of tragedy. "Might makes right, but I can live with that." What choice do we have!