Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Prejudice Is Wrong, So Lack of Prejudice Is Right
Chapter 2 - The Uses of Metaphysical Skepticism
Chapter 3 - History Teaches Us Anything We Like
Chapter 4 - Why We Prefer the History of Disaster to that of Achievement
Chapter 5 - The Effect of Pedagogy Without Prejudice
Chapter 6 - Prejudice Necessary to Family Life
Chapter 7 - One Prejudice Always Replaced by Another
Chapter 8 - The Cruel Effect of Not Instilling the Right Prejudices
Chapter 9 - The Inevitability of Prejudice
Chapter 10 - The Conventionality of Unconventionality
Chapter 11 - The Overestimation of Rationality in Choice
Chapter 12 - Authority Necessary to the Accumulation of Knowledge
Chapter 13 - The Supposed Equality of All Opinions, Provided They are One’s Own
Chapter 14 - Custom Supposedly Wrong Because It Is Custom
Chapter 15 - A Partial Reading of Mill Leads to Unbridled Egotism
Chapter 16 - The Difficulty of Founding Common Decency on First Principles
Chapter 17 - The Law of Conservation of Righteous Indignation, and its ...
Chapter 18 - The Paradox of Radical Individualism Leading to Authoritarianism
Chapter 19 - Racial Discrimination Being Bad, All Discrimination Is Bad
Chapter 20 - Rejection of Prejudice Not a Good in Itself
Chapter 21 - The Impossibility of the Mind as a Blank Slate
Chapter 22 - The Ideal of Equality of Opportunity Necessary to a World Without Prejudice
Chapter 23 - Equality of Opportunity Inherently Totalitarian
Chapter 24 - The Rejection of Authority as Egotism
Chapter 25 - Prejudice a Requirement of Benevolence
Chapter 26 - The Dire Social Effects of Abandoning Certain Prejudices
Chapter 27 - The Inescapability of Commandments of Which Justification Is Unprovable
Chapter 28 - The Exercise of Judgment Unavoidable, Even in the Absence of ...
Chapter 29 - No Virtue Without Prejudice
To the memory of Peter Bauer
He said, “Macaulay, who writes the account of St. Kilda, set out with a prejudice against prejudice, and wanted to be a smart modern thinker; and yet affirms for a truth [what everyone already knows], that when a ship arrives there all the inhabitants are seized with a cold.”
James Boswell, Life of Johnson A.D.1768, Aetat 59
Starting from unlimited freedom I arrive at unlimited despotism.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Devils
1
Prejudice Is Wrong, So Lack of Prejudice Is Right
THESE DAYS, there is a strong prejudice against prejudice: and this is exactly as it should be, is it not? For what is prejudice, if not wholly reprehensible? According to the Oxford Shorter Dictionary, prejudice is:
a previous judgement, especially a premature or hasty judgement. Preconceived opinion; bias favourable or unfavourable; prepossession . . . usually with unfavourable connotation. An unreasoning predilection or objection.
It follows, does it not, that we should strive to be entirely without prejudice?
