Belief and resistance

the long version

Truth, reason, and objectivity - can we survive without them? What happens to law, science, and the pursuit of social justice when such ideas and ideals are rejected? These questions are at the heart of the controversies between traditionalists and "postmodernists" that Barbara Herrnstein Smith examines in her wide-ranging new book, which also offers an original perspective on the perennial - perhaps eternal - clash of belief and skepticism, on our need for intellectual stability and our experience of its inevitable disruption.