Modern intellectual disputes also reject shared facts and caricature adversaries
Evidence
The intelligent good faith which yet guided mediaeval opinion may be seen more clearly, if we reflect how little different are our attitudes to-day. The controversies which are now conducted by academic personalities and eminent men and women of outstanding culture are frequently based on the refusal to admit the same series of facts as a common basis for argument; moreover, people who have a particular dislike for some school of opinion or belief, or for a particular institution, or party, or sect, or church, or for all churches, or all parties, have their own versions of the beliefs they dislike, versions which the actual adherents of these doctrines are unable to accept or even to recognise as their own. Yet these are differences within a relatively small society; and the area of mutual understanding between antagonistic societies, and between societies with different histories and backgrounds, is to-day still extremely limited. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1381
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to political polarization research showing partisan disagreement partly stems from divergent fact perception, and to the hostile-media phenomenon. — connects to: Modern communal hostilities distort opponents’ views as much as medieval ones did. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1494; Delegitimation rejects knowledge institutions and opposition conventions wholesale. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 87
- SEED: Article angle: the medieval technique of misrepresenting an enemy’s doctrine survives intact in modern academic and political controversy — we still argue against versions of our adversaries’ beliefs they would not recognize.
- DEEPTHINKING: That good-faith people across a wide gulf of belief and history still cannot agree even on what facts are in dispute, and caricature each other while insisting on their own honesty, is a perennial insight stated with unusual clarity.