Technology and the End of Authority Quotes

“Let us resolve to have a politics shot through with doubt, so that, if it
ever comes time to do murder for our politics, our very opinions about
politics will make us hesitate, long and hard, before pulling the trigger.
Let us be meta-rational about our politics, and recognize that this is an
area where we humans have constantly gotten things wrong, and where
we have constantly killed and died in vain. Let us adopt a world-view that
accords well with our well-known human failings. Let us tell ourselves—
hopefully with all the allure of an ironclad certitude—that we are prone to
being wrong, and that it is ghastly to kill for a mistake.

With others in the same position, we can share a bond of camaraderie,
regardless of our particular conclusions. We can know the future may
make fools of us all, and that in all probability it will. But we don’t know
just how the future will do it, and anyway, we are still permitted to believe,
as long as we do it modestly. If our beliefs are to be overthrown by something
better, that happy event will arrive only because you and I have
earnestly fought the good fight in the present. And it’s a fight in which, at
any rate, we can now join sincerely and without fear.”
― Jason Kuznicki, Technology and the End of Authority: What Is Government For?

“In our own time, academic history has grown unbelievably diverse,
even to the point of ridicule by conservatives, who may not appreciate that
it is a sign of a culture’s strength, and not its weakness, that it can devote
resources to the study of early American midwives, or transgender people
in the nineteenth century, or the emergence of new forms of urban slang.
In part, these new types of history are just good, if sophisticated, fun. It
can be fascinating and deeply rewarding to read about other human beings
who have had lives radically different from (or similar to) one’s own. But
these new histories also tell stories that have long gone untold, and perhaps
not for any good reason. Perhaps these histories may rouse political
theory from its slumbers, and show it that there are more things in heaven
and earth than are dreamt of in its philosophy.”
― Jason Kuznicki, Technology and the End of Authority: What Is Government For?

“Admittedly, I advance some ambitious theories of my own in this book.
But I must stress that I consider them provisional, and I would urge you
to consider whether I might be mistaken. Please, I would ask, consider
that I might be mistaken particularly if my book makes you feel really,
really good inside. Feelings of exactly this type, shared between author
and reader, seem likely to have led the entire discipline of political philosophy
systematically astray for much of its history. Do not trust them.”
― Jason Kuznicki, Technology and the End of Authority: What Is Government For?