Ep. 29: Noelle Mering: Awake Not Woke: A Personalist Alternative to Thinking About Social Justice

In this episode, I speak with Noelle Mering about her new book, Awake Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology.

Noelle analyzes the concept of "woke" and identifies four characteristics of the contemporary social justice movement and how they influence the way we think about justice and society:

1. Group over Person
2. Will over Reason
3. Power over Authority
4. The Crowd and the Victim

We discuss the intellectual history of the social justice movement from Hegel and Marx, Frankfurt School thinkers like Adorno and Marcuse, and contemporary proponents. We discuss how the sexual revolution connects to progressive social justice, which leads to deep incoherence and more injustice against women and children. Noelle has a chapter on victims and contagion and the work of Rene Girard, so we discuss that as well.

Mering does not deny that there exist real injustices in the world that need to be addressed, but she argues that the contemporary social justice movement is the wrong way to address the problems of injustice and has often made them worse. She instead offers a personalist approach that stresses the importance of being known and in relationship with others as an alternative of how to think about and address justice and injustice.

Visit https://www.themoralimagination.com/episodes/noelle-mering for show notes and resources.

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