PositiveNew RepublicHow different, really, are the generations? Does it make sense to understand our political future through the lens of generational war? Bobby Duffy asks these questions, and his answers are worth listening to ... Duffy’s book is a case study of how generational thinking obscures the issue of race. For most of the book, race is simply ignored, and the question of how racial minorities might have a different generational trajectory is not asked. The two (short) passages in the book where he discusses race show this blind spot most clearly ... The Generation Myth explicitly aims to show the analytical limits of generational thinking, and it succeeds. It is just as successful, even if accidentally, at showing its political limitations ... Alliances will be impossible to create if lazy generational thinking continues to cloud political judgment. It does matter when you are born, obviously—but, as Duffy’s subtitle indicates, it matters \'less than you think\'.
David Wootton
MixedCommonwealThis is decidedly not a traditional history of the Enlightenment as a philosophical or political project. In place of a doctrinal history, Wootton traces instead the emergence of what he calls \'the Enlightenment paradigm\' ... This is a book that paints with a broad brush: Wootton proposes no less than a moral history of the present, by way of an idiosyncratic account of the Enlightenment ... Perhaps recognizing that a claim as bold as this could not withstand direct explication, Wootton’s approach is more circuitous. The chapters themselves are subtle and often witty explorations of Enlightenment texts, many of which are familiar and some of which are not ... This might seem pedantic, and at certain moments it is, but the larger impression is charming and often persuasive. With detours such as these, Wootton provides an unusual but fascinating foray into all the great themes of moral and political philosophy, from happiness to politics to commerce to love ... Wootton’s take on the Enlightenment, then, is quite distinct from those offered in today’s Enlightenment wars. And yet, because it is rooted in such a blinkered account of the present, it is not necessarily more compelling, or more useful ... More importantly, though, Wootton commits the sin that the best exemplars of the Enlightenment itself did not: he does not heed the evidence of the world around him. We heirs of the Enlightenment do not lead lives as dismal as Wootton thinks. The boilerplate critiques of our degraded moral universe have little purchase in the world of religious exploration, familial intimacy, and political idealism that we actually inhabit ... the Enlightenment needs and deserves a stouter defense than this.
