Think Again: Contrarian Reflections on Life, Culture, Politics, Religion, Law, and Education

by Stanley Fish

Overview

From 1995 to 2013, Stanley Fish's provocative New York Times columns consistently generated passionate discussion and debate. In Think Again, he has assembled almost one hundred of his best columns into a thematically arranged collection with a substantial new introduction that explains his intention in writing these pieces and offers an analysis of why they provoked so much reaction.

Some readers reported being frustrated when they couldn’t figure out where Fish, one of America’s most influential thinkers, stood on the controversies he addressed in the essays—from atheism and affirmative action to plagiarism and postmodernism. But, as Fish says, that is the point. Opinions are cheap; you can get them anywhere. Instead of offering just another set of them, Fish analyzes and dissects the arguments put forth by different sides—in debates over free speech, identity politics, the gun lobby, and other hot-button topics—in order to explain how their arguments work or don’t work. In short, these are essays that teach you not what to think but how to think more clearly.

Brief and accessible yet challenging, these essays provide all the hard-edged intellectual, cultural, and political analysis one expects from Fish. At the same time, the collection includes a number of revealing and even poignant autobiographical essays in which, as Fish says, "readers will learn about my anxieties, my aspirations, my eccentricities, my foibles, my father, and my obsessions—Frank Sinatra, Ted Williams, basketball, and Jews." Reflecting the wide-ranging interests of one of today's leading critics, this is Fish’s broadest and most engaging book to date.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691167718
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	10/20/2015
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Stanley Fish is the author of numerous books, including How to Write a Sentence, There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and Is There a Text in This Class? His most recent book is Versions of Academic Freedom. He is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law at Florida International University and the Visiting Floersheimer Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School. He previously taught at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Duke, and the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Table of Contents

Introduction XI

Part 1 Personal Reflections 1

1.1 My Life Report 3

1.2 ’Tis the Season 7

1.3 Max the Plumber 10

1.4 Is It Good for the Jews? 13

1.5 My Life on the Court 18

1.6 The Kid and Old Blue Eyes 21

1.7 Travel Narrows 24

1.8 I Am, Therefore I Pollute 26

1.9 Why We Can’t Just Get Along 29

1.10 Truth and Conspiracy in the Catskills 32

1.11 Moving On 35

Part 2 Aesthetic Reflections 37

2.1 Why Do Writers Write? 39

2.2 Two Aesthetics 42

2.3 Norms and Deviations: Who’s to Say? 47

2.4 The Ten Best American Movies 52

2.5 Giving Kim Novak Her Due 59

2.6 Larger than Life: Charlton Heston 62

2.7 Vengeance Is Mine 67

2.8 Little Big Men 70

2.9 Narrative and the Grace of God: The New True Grit 73

2.10 Les Misérables and Irony 76

2.11 No Way Out: 12 Years a Slave 80

2.12 Stand Your Ground, Be a Man 84

2.13 Country Roads 87

Part 3 Cultural Reflections 91

3.1 Professor Sokal’s Bad Joke 93

3.2 French Theory in America 98

3.3 Dorothy and the Tree: A Lesson in Epistemology 105

3.4 Does Philosophy Matter? 109

3.5 What Did Watson the Computer Do? 112

3.6 None of the Answers: Charles Van Doren Finally Speaks, or Does He? 115

3.7 Can I Put You on Hold? 120

3.8 So’s Your Old Man 123

3.9 Two Cheers for Double Standards 126

3.10 Favoritism Is Good 129

Part 4 Reflections on Politics 133

4.1 Condemnation without Absolutes 135

4.2 The All-Spin Zone 138

4.3 Against Independent Voters 142

4.4 When "Identity Politics" Is Rational 145

4.5 Blowin’ in the Wind 149

4.6 Looking for Gas in All the Wrong Places 151

4.7 When Principles Get in the Way 154

4.8 Revisiting Affirmative Action, with Help from Kant 157

4.9 Is the NRA Un-American? 162

4.10 All You Need Is Hate 167

4.11 How the Right Hijacked the Magic Words 170

Part 5 Reflections on the Law 175

5.1 Why Scalia Is Right 177

5.2 How Scalia Is Wrong 180

5.3 Intentional Neglect 185

5.4 What Did the Framers Have in Mind? 189

5.5 What Is the First Amendment For? 192

5.6 How the First Amendment Works 198

5.7 What Does the First Amendment Protect? 203

5.8 The First Amendment and Kittens 207

5.9 Sticks and Stones 212

5.10 The Harm in Free Speech 215

5.11 Hate Speech and Stolen Valor 220

5.12 Going in Circles with Hate Speech 225

5.13 Our Faith in Letting It All Hang Out 231

Part 6 Reflections on Religion 235

6.1 The Three Atheists 237

6.2 Atheism and Evidence 242

6.3 Is Religion Man-Made? 246

6.4 God Talk 249

6.5 Suffering, Evil, and the Existence of God 254

6.6 Liberalism and Secularism: One and the Same 260

6.7 Are There Secular Reasons? 266

6.8 Serving Two Masters: Sharia Law and the Secular State 271

6.9 Religion and the Liberal State Once Again 276

6.10 Religion without Truth 281

6.11 Is the Establishment Clause Unconstitutional? 283

6.12 The Religion Clause Divided against Itself 288

6.13 When Is a Cross a Cross? 291

6.14 Being Neutral Is Oh So Hard to Do 294

Part 7 Reflections on Liberal Arts Education 299

7.1 Why We Built the Ivory Tower 301

7.2 There’s No Business like Show Business 304

7.3 Tip to Professors: Just Do Your Job 307

7.4 Devoid of Content 311

7.5 What Should Colleges Teach? 315

7.6 Will the Humanities Save Us? 320

7.7 The Uses of the Humanities 324

7.8 The Value of Higher Education Made Literal 331

7.9 A Classical Education: Back to the Future 334

7.10 Deep in the Heart of Texas 339

7.11 The Digital Humanities and the Transcending of Mortality 343

7.12 Mind Your P’s and B’s: The Digital Humanities and Interpretation 349

Part 8 Reflections on Academic Freedom 357

8.1 Conspiracy Theories 101 359

8.2 Always Academicize: My Response to the Responses 363

8.3 A Closing Argument (for Now) 368

8.4 The Two Languages of Academic Freedom 374

8.5 Are Academics Different? 378

8.6 The Kushner Flap: Much Ado about Nothing 384

8.7 Sex, the Koch Brothers, and Academic Freedom 388

8.8 To Boycott or Not to Boycott, That Is the Question 395

8.9 Academic Freedom against Itself: Boycotting Israeli Universities 402

8.10 Boycotting Israeli Universities: Part 2 407

8.11 So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You 412

Acknowledgments 415

Index 417

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Stanley Fish makes you think. No matter what you thought, or thought you thought, on a given subject—Israel, academia, pickup basketball, American law—Fish will flip it and spin it and dip it and turn it around for you. (And he can be a terrific comedian to boot.) A brilliant book."—Mark Edmundson, author of Why Read?

"This collection of Stanley Fish's New York Times essays amounts to an intellectual autobiography of one of America's most interesting writers. As Fish says, his purpose isn't, as in most op-eds, to tell the reader what to think; rather, it's to illuminate Fish's view of how to think—and to shake readers out of their complacent assumptions about free speech, religion, academia, and other subjects."—Linda Greenhouse, author of The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

Editorial Reviews

"Engaging, provocative, maddening, humorous, and insightful."

Arts Fuse

"[Fish] covers so much ground so thoughtfully. Whether he is writing about French theory, religion, poetry, law, liberal education, or politics in upstate New York—where he tries hard to be just an ordinary guy (in his country home)—Fish is both stimulating and precise."

Chronicle of Higher Education

"Stimulating."

Weekly Standard

"We are rarely in doubt about what Fish intends; there is small danger of his ever saying nothing; and his thoughts continually encourage us to think again as the implications of what he has written expand variously."—-Brooke Horvath, Rain Taxi

From the Publisher

"Think Again is a memorable achievement, offering a standard of argument rarely published in media."

The Australian

"You are not obligated to agree with him and you are not obligated to like him, but if you care about the enlarging necessity of contest in cultural discourse, then you are obligated to read him, not with some magical ‘open mind'—Fish has no patience for that concept—but with the full force of the mind you have."

New Republic

"Stimulating."

The Weekly Standard

"[Fish] covers so much ground so thoughtfully. Whether he is writing about French theory, religion, poetry, law, liberal education, or politics in upstate New York—where he tries hard to be just an ordinary guy (in his country home—Fish is both stimulating and precise."

The Chronicle of Higher Education

"You are not obligated to agree with him and you are not obligated to like him, but if you care about the enlarging necessity of contest in cultural discourse, then you are obligated to read him, not with some magical ‘open mind'—Fish has no patience for that concept—but with the full force of the mind you have."

The New Republic

★ 2015-08-17
A veteran essayist for the New York Times collects some gems from his pile of precious—though not always popular—stones. Fish (Law/Florida International Univ.; Versions of Academic Freedom: From Professionalism to Revolution, 2014, etc.) has arranged his pieces thematically (see subtitle); within each category, he proceeds mostly chronologically. He claims in several places that he's more interested in presenting than in advocating issues, but this is a tad disingenuous: his attitudes generally hum like electricity, even if they are sometimes strung behind the drywall. Fish's more intimate, biographical essays compose the first section, but he's hardly hiding elsewhere. He frequently talks about his readers (and their responses, sometimes hostile), about his myriad teaching experiences, and about popular culture. There are surprises throughout. He says he really loved the recent film Les Misérables, and he calls True Grit (the Coen brothers' version) "a truly religious movie." Fish's focused sections serve both to attract and warn readers. He includes, for instance, some dense essays about legal issues—especially involving the First Amendment, on which he is an authority)—and will either delight or alarm readers with his occasional agreements with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The author also links stand-your-ground laws to the ethos of old Western films, including Shane. Fish lets loose on those he calls the New Atheists: Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and the late Christopher Hitchens. Basically, he calls them superficial, if not stupid. He also argues for defining academic freedom more sharply, urging teachers to discuss any issues they want—but not to proselytize. Fish fiercely advocates for the liberal arts and disdains so-called independent voters. Like other fine essayists, he clearly identifies issues, is both analytical and tendentious (he would not confess to the latter), and will annoy readers on both sides of our current political divide. Lucid, sinewy sentences lash, tickle, and caress.

Kirkus Reviews