Here are a couple hypotheticals. Both have to do with the ways people may take offense selectively.
First, say I am a political theorist who greatly admires the Federalist Papers (which I am not) and the arguments found there about the need for a Constitution that specifies the branches of a new federal government and their powers. If someone came along and said that federalism was the most wicked political notion ever known to man because it violated the divinely ordained rule of monarchs, would I not object because of my federalist convictions? In other words, would it matter to my federalist convictions that the attacker of federalism did not name John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, or James Madison explicitly? Wouldn’t I understand an attack on federalism to include those figures most identified with developing federalist thought (at least in the United States)?
Second, say I am a huge fan of the Coen Brothers’ movies (which I am) and someone comes along and tells me that the Coen brother’s are some of the least gifted and most adolescent of indie American directors who dabble merely in fashionable postmodernism, would I not feel my aesthetic toes trod upon even if this critic of the Coens did not mention their two best movies by name, “Miller’s Crossing” and “Hudsucker Proxy”? I mean, is a general put-down of the Coen brothers easier to take simply because it is general and lacks specifics? Or is the general rejection more sweeping because it lacks specifics that might provide wiggle room for hurt feelings? Continue reading “Ad Hominem or, How to Read Criticism”
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