Question Authority: A Polemic about Trust in Five Meditations

Philosopher Mark Kingwell thinks about thinking for yourself in an era of radical know-it-all-ism.

＂Question authority,＂ the popular 1960s slogan commanded. ＂Think for yourself.＂ But what started as a counter-cultural catchphrase, playful in logic but serious in intent, has become a practical paradox. Yesterday’s social critics are the tone-policing tyrants of today, while those who claim ＂colourblindness＂ see no need to engage with critical theory at all. The resulting crisis of authority, made worse by rival political factions and chaotic public discourse, has exposed cracks in every facet of shared social life. Politics, academia, journalism, medicine, religion, science--every kind of institutional claim is now routinely subject to objection, investigation, and outright disbelief. A recurring feature of this comprehensive distrust of authority is the firm, often unshakeable, belief in personal righteousness and superiority: what Mark Kingwell calls our ＂addiction to conviction.＂

In this critical survey of the predicament of contemporary authority, Kingwell draws on philosophical argument, personal reflection, and details from the headlines in an attempt to reclaim the democratic spirit of questioning authority and thinking for oneself. Defending a program of compassionate skepticism, Question Authority is a fascinating survey of the role of individual humility in public life and illuminates how we might each do our part in the infinite project of justice.

Mark Kingwell is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine. His most recent works are Singular Creatures: Robots, Rights, and the Politics of Posthumanism (2022), The Ethics of Architecture (2021), On Risk (2020), and Wish I Were Here: Boredom and the Interface (2019), which won the Erving Goffman Prize in media ecology. His columns and essays appear in the New York Times, Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, the Literary Review of Canada, Gray’s Sporting Journal, and Harper’s, among others.