Critical Social Justice

Description

Steven J. Lawrence:

"In the fall of 2020, Helen Pluckrose and Dr. James A. Lindsay released a book that addresses the underlying ideas that are fueling the current social and political climate. The book is aptly titled Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody. It explores the world view and theoretical foundations of a very specific ideological framework called Critical Social Justice (CSJ). In their book, Pluckrose and Lindsay refer to Critical Social Justice as simply “Social Justice” (note the capitalization) to distinguish CSJ from the general aims of what some call social justice and others call civil rights—movements dedicated to human rights, fairness and a just society in which all people have the potential to thrive free from bigotry, oppression, tyranny and unfair treatment.

In 1848, the term social justice was coined by Sicilian Jesuit scholar Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio, who was greatly influenced by the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. Over the years the originally Catholic term was adopted by various secular movements related to human rights, climate change, anti-war efforts, racial and gender equality and economic justice. Since, the middle of the 20th century, and especially during the first decades of the 21st century, the term social justice has come to be defined by the specific set of doctrines of Critical Social Justice (CSJ), which has specific ideas about the world, the nature of humanity, and even the nature of knowledge itself (the study of which is sometimes referred to as epistemology).

At the core of the CSJ ideology is an approach to analyzing and responding to reality that is called “Critical Theory”, which has been broken down into several sub-theories or “studies” such as queer theory, fat studies, critical race theory, intersectionality, and other critical theories. The authors of Cynical Theories group these theories/studies together throughout the book and apply to them the simple label of “Theory”." (https://groundexperience.substack.com/p/one-we-are-part-i)