Overview

What do social critics do? I How do they go about doing it? Where do their principles come from? How do critics establish their distance from the people and institutions they criticize? Michael Walzer addresses these problems in succinct and engaging fashion, providing a philosophical framework for understanding social criticism as a social practice. Walzer maintains that social criticism is an ordinary activity-less the offspring of scientific knowledge than the ""educated cousin of common complaint""-and does not depend for its force or accuracy upon any sort of high theory. In his view, the social critic is not someone radically detached and disinterested, who looks at society as a total stranger and applies objective and universal principles. The true social critic must stand only a little to the side of his society-unlike Jean-Paul Sartre during the Algerian war, for example, who described himself as an enemy of his own people. And unlike Lenin, who judged Russian society against a standard worked out with reference to other places far away. The ""connected"" critic is the model Walzer offers, one whose distance is measured in inches but who is highly critical nevertheless. John Locke is one example of the connected critic who argued for religious toleration not as a universal right ordained by reason but as a practical consequence of Protestant theology. The biblical prophets, such as Amos, were also men of their own day, with a particular quarrel to conduct with their fellows; the universalism of that quarrel is our own extrapolation. Walzer explains where critical principles come from, how much distance is ""critical distance,"" and what the historical practice of criticism has actually been like in the work of social philosophers such as Marx, Gramsci, Koestler, Lenin, Habermas, and Rawls. Walzer posits a moral world already in existence, a historical product, that gives structure to our lives but whose ordinances are always uncertain and in need of scrutiny, argument, and commentary. The social critic need bring to his task only the ordinary tools of interpretation. Philosophers, political theorists, and all readers seriously interested in the possibility of a moral life will find sustenance and inspiration in this book.

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9780674459717

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Reviews

[ Interpretation and Social Criticism ] is learned, cogent and provocative. It avoids the pretensions of both scientific certainty and grand theory and treats social criticism as the educated cousin of common complaint. It also succeeds brilliantly in making an ancient religion relevant to the contemporary political imagination, which perhaps confirms Santayana's point that the prophet is he who draws truth from fable. -- John Patrick Diggins New York Times Book Review

[ Interpretation and Social Criticism ] is learned, cogent and provocative. It avoids the pretensions of both scientific certainty and grand theory and treats social criticism as the educated cousin of common complaint. It also succeeds brilliantly in making an ancient religion relevant to the contemporary political imagination, which perhaps confirms Santayana's point that the prophet is he who draws truth from fable.--John Patrick Diggins New York Times Book Review

A rich and lyrical reflection on the practice of social criticism and interpretation, and on the formation of moral standards, by one of our finest social thinkers. It is a little book, divided into three elegant chapters, but it packs a big wallop. Walzer begins by arguing that reliable moral criteria can be based only on interpretations of what people already know and have experienced morally in their cultures, rather than upon any kind of abstract or invented wisdom. The second chapter on social criticism flows from this simple principle. According to Walzer, model social critics must be connected people who earn their authority by arguing with their fellows from inside a shared and particular culture. Such critics, in other words, must not be marginal or detached but willingly immersed in the tensions of the culture they criticize, seeking to interpret and elaborate the larger meanings of the cultural system they share with others, and to urge people to live up to the promise of those meanings. As Walzer says, model social critics perform their functions a little to the side but not outside the moral order they share with others. Conversely, disconnected critics share little with the culture they criticize; they try to invent new principles of behavior, and to impose them on others through manipulation and coercion. Walzer singles out the Bolsheviks as examples of disconnected critics. In the last chapter, Walzer offers an illustration of a connected critic in the figure of the Jewish prophet, Amos, a man embedded in his own particular culture, who judged the internal character of his people's society, and who reminded his fellows to live up to their most revered principles on an everyday basis (in particular, to live up to their inherited commitment to eliminate the oppression of the poor ). Every culture, Walzer says, if it is to thrive, must listen to the voices of its own prophets. Wonderfully clear, and informed by a deep commitment to democratic values. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Michael Walzer is Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

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