What’s incredible about Thomas Sowell, a professor at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, is how accurately he diagnosed the intellectual and social foibles of our time with exceptional prescience. Cosmic Justice, which was the first book I read by him (and was published in 1996), describes and makes sense of the social justice movement and the progressive left – both its worldview and application in academia and the world at large. Intellectuals and Society, which is a hefty 550 pages compared with the slim Cosmic Justice, widens the lens to look at many aspects of the way intellectuals and the progressive left understand, and fatally misunderstand, Western society.
But let’s take a step back. An intellectual, in Sowell’s view, is someone who looks at the world through ideas, and forces the world to fit into those ideas. Their ideas are not the tested hypothesis of the scientist, but are ideas about what the world should look like, rather than what it is. These two steps lead to a whole host of troubling consequences. In the social realm it means expecting that society (and this often means government) can make a world that is ideally just. This is noble, and has a deep morality embedded in it. Yet, little attention is paid, first, as to whether this is possible (e.g. can one really centrally plan and have good economic and social outcomes?), and second, who is at ‘fault’ (e.g. is American society today responsible for the choices their ancestors made to have slaves? Or, how much does culture play a role is group success, rather than the deterministic and reductive categories of race and racism?). Those who oppose such a vision are labeled as immoral or worse, even when there are good reasons for such opposition.
Sowell, who adopts a Burkian conservatism, thinks that the world is foundationally tragic, which is to say, that it will never be perfect, and is always flawed. This means that inequality and injustice, which should be worked against, are a feature, not a bug, of human society. Not every form of injustice is intentional, nor is there always a remedy when it occurs. He doesn’t read this as an excuse for bad behavior, but rather a realism against thinking some perfect social justice can be achieved, or reasonably attempted.
He is also Burkian in the sense that he thinks decisions are best made in the aggregate, through diffuse, local decision making, based on the needs of those actors, not at the central level, based on what people in the intellectual or political “center” think. This is the foundation of his approach to why capitalism and federalism are the best systems (if not ideal systems), even though he never addresses the ways in which central government policy seems to on balance be better than strictly local decision making.
His analysis can, I think, be similarly applied to two kinds of religious world views. In one, the facts of the external world have to fit into Torah categories; in the other, an experience of the world has some impact on one’s religious thinking (though how much is a question). Zionism is a good example of this. Does the existence of the State of Israel, an experience within history, have a place in religious life (even if this could look a lot of different ways), thus granting a place for history to enter our religious conversation? Rav Soloveitchik said it did, as he discusses in his book, Kol Dodi Dofek, as well as the author of Em Ha’banim Se’meicha, Rabbis Yisachar Shlomo Teichtal. Or do we see it only through traditional categories, such that the State’s presence can once be seen through ahistorical (or perceived ahistorical) religious categories?
Sowell explores a host of areas where his approach applies, including race, pacifism, capitalism, and more. It is an expansive argument. He is also an entertaining writer – never dry, generally caustic, and not academic in the conventional sense. He meticulously footnotes or quotes his interlocutors, following his own dictum that one cannot simply assert ideas and yet object when others push back against them (one of his core accusations of the illiberal left). Rather one must make arguments and support them, which he certainly does. I’m very curious what a counter argument to Sowell looks like.
Sometimes Sowell gets a bit carried away with his own approach, praising conservatives and their decisions, which, in the fullness of time (and a more dispassionate analysis) are less compelling than he makes them out to be. And yet, reading a book published in 2009, and uncannily describing 2025 is an amazing feat of social and intellectual insight and analysis. If you find yourself instinctively pushing back in your mind against any of the above, all the more reason you should read Sowell’s work. You will understand yourself, and our world, better as a result.
Just Because I Liked It:
- Half of what’s said on the QB School “Youtube channel” makes no sense to me, but I love it anyway! If you enjoy watching football, the host breaks it all down, which is awesome to watch.
- Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Wieder created an incredibly interesting new siddur that reflects incredible research into the history of the siddur, as well as images of the early manuscripts upon which our version is based. Take a listen to this interview on Seforim Chatter, and take a look at his website here.