Ch. 6 - Blaming It on the Sixties

Please use this thread for discussing Chapter 6.

I borrowed the book and have to return it. I didn't read the last several chapters, partly because there didn't seem to be interest shown in them on this forum. My general comment on the book is that the title doesn't fit what the author has written. Unreason is not in any explicit sense the unifying topic. In fact, there isn't a unifying topic. Jacoby has written a cultural critique of our time. This critique fails to prove that unreason characterizes our society, despite her attempt to make it seem so by constantly using the words "intellectual," intellectualism," and "anti-intellectualism." These are not categories that mean anything to me. What is intellectual seems often to be what she approves of; what in anti-intellectual, what she doesn't. I also get the feeling she is writing the book to settle scores with the folks (sorry,Ms. Jacoby) she despises. I found the book didn't lend itself well to open discussions, it was so much the personal political and cultural views of the author.

Will