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A review by orangejenny
Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff
3.0
Intriguing and powerful argument, but a little bit unsatisfying.
The bulk of the book describes two alternative metaphors for morality. The metaphors are coherent and described thoroughly. There are clear explanations of how the two metaphors apply to liberal and conservative viewpoints on a number of issues. The issue discussion is a little dated, but it's not too bad for being 25 years old, and even the dated parts do a decent job of demonstrating how the metaphors can be applied to reality. I'm not convinced that these two metaphors are 100% comprehensive, but they do cover a lot, and Lakoff does mention a few other metaphors that come up in political thought.
The general idea of metaphors as structuring thought is very compelling. One way to use this book is an introduction to Lakoff's general work on metaphors. It's dry, but not as dry as [b:Metaphors We Live By|34459|Metaphors We Live By|George Lakoff|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388194058l/34459._SX50_.jpg|34433] (which is excellent, just a little hard to get into).
The unsatisfying piece is the lack of discussion of how and why specific people use these metaphors. There's nothing about why one metaphor or another resonates with a particular person or how people unconsciously decide which metaphor to use in a given situation. Lakoff's desire to reach a broad audience limits the effectiveness of the latter parts of the book, which ultimately make an argument for liberalism.
A conservative view, in the broadest sense of preferring the status quo, is going to be attractive to people who feel the current system is working, which is going to include a lot of people in power, but Lakoff describes approximately this idea as the "cynical liberal view" and makes it sound a bit like a conspiracy theory.
It also bugged me that Lakoff says "strict father" but uses the gender-neutral "nurturant parent" to describe what's really the stereotypical mother role. He does discuss feminism briefly and notes that what he calls the "strict father" metaphor is essentially patriarchy, but says he avoided that word as too ideological. That makes his final recommendation in the afterword - to promote "nurturant parenting" - hollow, since he can't discuss any feminist work on the barriers to promoting this highly feminized concept.
The theoretical parts of this are good. The practical application parts need to be supplemented with other works.
The bulk of the book describes two alternative metaphors for morality. The metaphors are coherent and described thoroughly. There are clear explanations of how the two metaphors apply to liberal and conservative viewpoints on a number of issues. The issue discussion is a little dated, but it's not too bad for being 25 years old, and even the dated parts do a decent job of demonstrating how the metaphors can be applied to reality. I'm not convinced that these two metaphors are 100% comprehensive, but they do cover a lot, and Lakoff does mention a few other metaphors that come up in political thought.
The general idea of metaphors as structuring thought is very compelling. One way to use this book is an introduction to Lakoff's general work on metaphors. It's dry, but not as dry as [b:Metaphors We Live By|34459|Metaphors We Live By|George Lakoff|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388194058l/34459._SX50_.jpg|34433] (which is excellent, just a little hard to get into).
The unsatisfying piece is the lack of discussion of how and why specific people use these metaphors. There's nothing about why one metaphor or another resonates with a particular person or how people unconsciously decide which metaphor to use in a given situation. Lakoff's desire to reach a broad audience limits the effectiveness of the latter parts of the book, which ultimately make an argument for liberalism.
A conservative view, in the broadest sense of preferring the status quo, is going to be attractive to people who feel the current system is working, which is going to include a lot of people in power, but Lakoff describes approximately this idea as the "cynical liberal view" and makes it sound a bit like a conspiracy theory.
It also bugged me that Lakoff says "strict father" but uses the gender-neutral "nurturant parent" to describe what's really the stereotypical mother role. He does discuss feminism briefly and notes that what he calls the "strict father" metaphor is essentially patriarchy, but says he avoided that word as too ideological. That makes his final recommendation in the afterword - to promote "nurturant parenting" - hollow, since he can't discuss any feminist work on the barriers to promoting this highly feminized concept.
The theoretical parts of this are good. The practical application parts need to be supplemented with other works.