Can white people be victims of racism? Is it sexist to say ‘men are trash’? Should we worry about ‘cancel culture’? Tired of having the same old arguments? Kicking yourself for not being able to justify your views? Wondering whether individuals can bring about meaningful change? Now imagine that instead of losing another hour of your life in a social media spat or knowing that the only way to make it through lunch was by biting your tongue, you could find a way to talk about injustice and, just possibly, change someone’s mind. Many of us know what we think about inequality, but flounder when asked for our reasoning, leading to a conversational stalemate, especially when faced with a political, generational, or cultural divide. But living in echo chambers blunts our thinking, and if we can’t persuade others, we have little hope of collectively bringing about change. In Arguing for a Better World, philosopher Arianne Shahvisi draws on examples from everyday life to show us how to work through a set of thorny moral questions, equipping us to not only identify our positions but to carefully defend them.
