I Feel, Therefore I Am: The Triumph of Woke Subjectivism

–John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary Magazine

As you read these words, a war is being fought. The battlefields are classrooms and courtrooms, newsrooms and boardrooms, bedrooms and bathrooms. At stake is nothing less than the nature of truth. Bestselling author, political columnist, and college professor Mark Goldblatt explains how a perennial philosophical error—the belief that truth is what your spirit desires rather than what reality demands—has gotten the upper hand, and how that error is undermining the intellectual and moral values of liberal democracy.

Advocates for Critical Race Theory, the Me Too movement, and transgender-recognition, often grouped under the umbrella term “Woke,” share more than a perpetual sense of grievance, an attraction to street theater, and an intense dislike of straight white guys who drink cheap beer and wear their baseball caps backward. They share a devotion to subjectivism. Their gathering principle is the idea that subjective belief, if it is heartfelt, trumps whatever objective, verifiable evidence may be brought against it. For these social justice warriors, if you sincerely and passionately believe an injustice is being done, then the effort to determine whether that belief corresponds with reality is a further injustice.

In I Feel, Therefore I Am, Goldblatt takes both a scalpel and a sledgehammer to Woke subjectivism, analyzing not only its false premises and logical fallacies, but also the many absurdities to which it leads. The topics are philosophical, yet the tone is conversational. It’s that rarest of books that forces you to think while making you laugh out loud.