The Quest for Cosmic Justice 2002
by Thomas Sowell (Author)
4.9 out of 5 stars 873 ratings
Audiobook| Listening Length | 5 hours and 51 minutes |
|---|---|
| Author | Thomas Sowell |
| Narrator | Robertson Dean |
| Audible.com Release Date | September 05, 2017 |
The Quest for Cosmic Justice 11/10/1999
by Thomas Sowell
Hardcover
$114.38
Paperback
$23.99
This is not a comforting book -- it is a book about disturbing issues that are urgently important today and enduringly critical for the future.
- It rejects both "merit" and historical redress as principles for guiding public policy.
- It shows how "peace" movements have led to war and to needless casualties in those wars.
- It argues that "equality" is neither right nor wrong, but meaningless.
- The Quest for Cosmic Justice shows how confused conceptions of justice end up promoting injustice, how confused conceptions of equality end up promoting inequality, and
- how the tyranny of social visions prevents many people from confronting the actual consequences of their own beliefs and policies.
- Those consequences include the steady and dangerous erosion of the fundamental principles of freedom -- and the quiet repeal of the American revolution.
Print length
224 pages
===
About the Author
Thomas Sowell is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute and the author of A Personal Odyssey, The Vision of the Anointed, Ethnic America, and several other books. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, Forbes, and Fortune and are syndicated in 150 newspapers. He lives in Stanford, California.
Product details
Publisher : Free Press; 1st edition (February 5, 2002)
Paperback : 224 pages
Have you notice a redefinition of “justice” today among those who are advocates of Social Justice? Even if you think this doesn’t interests you it is definitely affecting you and costing you directly and indirectly today by the actions of its advocate. These ideas though are nothing new and over the decades of ministry in college campuses I see these ideas discussed in Academia is now being yelled out aloud literally and the consequences being reaped on the streets of America in 2020. This book was originally published in 1999 but reading this in 2020 I was blown away how relevant it is twenty one years later. The observations that the author made and also his refutations is very powerful and I love how factual and data driven the author is. This is probably the most important book I read in 2020 and I’m surprised why more people don’t know about this book. Out of the six books I have read from author Thomas Sowell this to me is one of the best book I have read from him and it is not only compelling but reading this book is a training session of how to think soundly in the realm of social sciences, economics and discussions about what is justice.
The book consists of four chapters and each chapters are gold. Chapter one titled “The Quest for Cosmic Justice.” What Sowell calls “Cosmic Justice” is what today people all “Social Justice” and his analysis of this mindset is dead on. Sowell notes how cosmic justice requires more knowledge than traditional justice with the assumed ability of its advocate or practicioner to be able to compare windfall gains and loss in people’s life, the relative advantage and disadvantages individuals had even though it changes over the years, etc. Not only is cosmic justice advocates arrogant enough to figure out things despite cross-currents of people and influences that are not easily entangled these people also knowingly or unknowingly increases the risk of error of their computation of justice and injustice. When cosmic justice agendas are pursued advocates never take into account costs to third parties not involved and their suffering are either disregarded and/or dismissed. Chapter two looks at the topic of equality and it is one of the most detailed and nuanced discussion about equality and inequality I have ever read. Sowell is not writing this chapter because he likes inequality but here he’s trying to make a discussion between just and unjust inequality along with a critique of assumptions those who support social justice make about what equality looks like or the interpretation of inequality as always being unjust or their incorrect attempt to attribute the culpable fault of why there are inequality. Chapter three is titled “The Tyranny of Visions” and talks about how visionary elites who think they are better and more virtuous than others yet when they have agendas that does not account for the data and reality can bring about much evil and suffering even though the elites feel good just by holding to their ideas. This is a very good chapter that presents the case of study of how pacifisms have the unintended consequences of incentivizing the fascists to bring about a world war. Churchill has once said that World War Two is one of the most horrific war that could have been prevented. The final chapter discuss about cosmic justice in the American context of how the quest for cosmic justice is eroding the American founding principles. I thought he made a good point here that America’s revolution is unique than most of the revolutions in history for being about the procedure of check and balances in government and how to peacefully hand over the government to the next incoming power than being about injustice or quest for justice per se. Yet social justice agendas are tearing down the American experiment; while Sowell focuses on the American context I think the point he makes here is also relevant for any society in which social justice tears down the fabric of society and also how advocates can have sincere desire yet can bring about horrific unintended consequences.
There was so much I learn from this book and I spent a long time reading each page. That’s because the book was packed with so much information and economic thinking that seems counter-intuitive at times until one thinks through it carefully. There’s a lot of things I never thought of before that Sowell got me thinking about in this work. For instance in talking about inequality he talks about Primogeniture which is the practice of leaving an estate to the eldest son. We would consider that unfair with our modern sensibilities but he argues that we should look at it more closely. With the reality of scarce resource there is a reason why Primogeniture was implemented in certain societies. The purpose was to keep estate intact for generations and we see even in modern economic studies that when land gets broken up in small chunks sometimes it does not produce the amount of productivity than if it was intact. Thus we see starvation when government implemented redistribution and land giveaways program. Yet to balance this inequality there is the reciprocal expectation that eldest son has the duty to guide and watch over younger siblings, etc. Insightful! There’s so many of these insights in the book. I highly recommend this book!
6 people found this helpful
HelpfulReport abuse
L. Krug
5.0 out of 5 stars Legal Decision And Your EmotionsReviewed in the United States on April 28, 2022
Verified Purchase
Sowell is one of my favorite authors and people to listen to. He's able to write on different levels and researches his writings with total control. Cosmic Justice is here and we have to deal with it. It's really not anything new in our history. People want to rule their lives through their emotions without looking at the facts or "the big picture". This is dangerous. They just can't stand to settle down and wait for the facts and want to plow ahead with their emotional thinking. This is wrong and shows us how illiterate our people have become in todays world of politics and government. Sowell exposes this and does an excellent job. Must read!
HelpfulReport abuse
Jerry W. Rogers
5.0 out of 5 stars Another timely book by a great authorReviewed in the United States on April 21, 2022
Verified Purchase
Super book. Timely. Explains lots of the ills of the world today. If only people would stop and think things through as Dr. Sowell does, we would have far fewer social issues today. He steps on some toes, but some toes need to be stepped on. A lot of the issues today are semantic. He does not call them such, but you get what he is saying.
HelpfulReport abuse
Igor Vusanovic
5.0 out of 5 stars BalkanReviewed in the United States on April 30, 2022
Verified Purchase
Great book openingmind and thinking. Reccomend to young people. Also good for elders in order to clear some bad communist illusions
HelpfulReport abuse
See all reviews
Top reviews from other countries
Henry
5.0 out of 5 stars A seer for our timesReviewed in the United Kingdom on May 13, 2020
Verified Purchase
Considering this book was first published in 1999 it just shows how far ahead of his time Thomas Sowell is, laying out clearly with at least 15 years before anyone else all the contradictions and problems posed by what we call today 'Social Justice' or as he called it back then 'Cosmic Justice'. From affirmative action to reparations and then on the role of activist members of the judiciary in furthering the myths of 'diversity'n 'redistribution' etc., Sowell demonstrates with hard facts that Cosmic Justice is not only impossible to achieve but also comes with costs (financial and social) that are never taken into the consideration by posturing wannabe intellectuals and that discrimination/ bias *cannot* be inferred by statistical inequalities. Definitely recommend reading this book.
4 people found this helpfulReport abuse
mDs
3.0 out of 5 stars An important contrarian whose writing style can be a bit dry.Reviewed in Canada on November 14, 2019
Verified Purchase
Book arrived quickly. No problems with shipping.
I like Sowell. I enjoy his contrarian viewpoints. I enjoy watching his YouTube videos discussing daily issues and having people think twice about the narrative we're all fed from mainstream media.
However I find at times his writing can be less than entertaining.
He is assertive in his writing, descriptive and direct. However it could use a bit of flourish given it tends to be a bit dry. I'm halfway through this book which reads in a very matter of fact manner.
One person found this helpfulReport abuse
See all reviews
The Quest for Cosmic Justice
Thomas Sowell
====
Jean H. Fetter, Questions and Admissions: Reflections on 100,000
Admissions Decisions at Stanford (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1995), p. 45. This way of looking at the fairness of the college admissions
process is by no means peculiar to Ms. Fetter. See, for example, John
Kronholz, “As States End Racial Preferences, Pressure Rises to Drop
SAT to Maintain Minority Enrollment,” Wall Street Journal, February 12,
1998, p. A24;
Nancy S. Cole, Educational Testing Service, “Merit and
Opportunity: Testing and Higher education at the Vortex,” speech at the
conference, New Direction in Assessment for Higher Education: Fairness,
Access, Multiculturalism, and Equity (F.A.M.E.), New Orleans, Louisiana,
March 6–7, 1997;
Thomas Sowell, Inside American Education: The
Decline, the Deception, the Dogmas (New York: The Free Press, 1993),
pp. 122–126.
====
The Quest for Cosmic Justice Sowell Article
When you try to condense a book representing years of
thought and research into a half-hour talk, a certain amount
of over-simplification is inevitable. With that understood,
let me try to summarize the message of The Quest for
Cosmic Justice in three propositions which may seem to
be axiomatic, but whose implications are in fact politically
controversial:
1. The impossible is not going to be achieved.
2. It is a waste of precious resources to try to achieve it.
3. The devastating costs and social dangers which go
with these attempts to achieve the impossible should
be taken into account.
Cosmic justice is one of the impossible dreams which
has a very high cost and very dangerous potentialities.
What is cosmic justice and how does it differ from more
traditional conceptions of justice—and from the more recent and more fervently sought “social justice”?
Traditional concepts of justice or fairness, at least within
the American tradition, boil down to applying the same
rules and standards to everyone. This is what is meant by a
“level playing field”—at least within that tradition, though
the very same words mean something radically different
within a framework that calls itself “social justice.”
- Words like “fairness,” “advantage” and “disadvantage” likewise have radically different meanings within the very different frameworks of traditional justice and “social justice.”
- John Rawls perhaps best summarized the differences when he distinguished “fair” equality of opportunity from merely “formal” equality of opportunity. Traditional justice, fairness, or equality of opportunity are merely formal in Professor Rawls’ view and in the view of his many followers and comrades.
- For those with this view, “genuine equality of opportunity” cannot be achieved by the application of the same rules and standards to all, but requires specific interventions to equalize either prospects or results.
- As Rawls puts it, “undeserved inequalities call for redress.”
- A fight in which both boxers observe the Marquis of Queensberry rules would be a fair fight, according to traditional standards of fairness, irrespective of whether the contestants were of equal skill, strength, experience or other factors likely to affect the outcome—and irrespective of whether that outcome was a hard-fought draw or a completely one-sided beating.
This would not, however, be a fair fight within the framework of those seeking “social justice,” if the competing
fighters came into the ring with very different prospects of
success—especially if these differences were due to factors
beyond their control.
Presumably, the vast ranges of undeserved inequalities
found everywhere are the fault of “society” and so the redressing of those inequalities is called social justice, going
beyond the traditional justice of presenting each individual
with the same rules and standards.
However, even those
who argue this way often recognize that some undeserved
inequalities may arise from cultural differences, family
genes, or from historical confluences of events not controlled by anybody or by any given society at any given
time.
For example, there was no way that Pee Wee Reese
was going to hit as many home runs as Mark McGwire, or
Shirley Temple run as fast as Jesse Owens.
There was no
way that Scandinavians or Polynesians were going to know
as much about camels as the Bedouins of the Sahara—and
no way that these Bedouins were going to know as much
about fishing as the Scandinavians or Polynesians.
In a sense, proponents of “social justice” are unduly
modest.
- What they are seeking to correct are not merely the deficiencies of society, but of the cosmos. What they call social justice encompasses far more than any given society is causally responsible for.
- Crusaders for social justice seek to correct not merely the sins of man but the oversights of God or the accidents of history.
- What they are really seeking is a universe tailor-made to their vision of equality. They are seeking cosmic justice.
This perspective on justice can be found in a wide range
of activities and places, from the street-corner community
activist to the august judicial chambers of the Supreme
Court.
For example, a former dean of admissions at Stanford University said that she had never required applicants
to submit Achievement Test scores because “requiring such
tests could unfairly penalize disadvantaged students in
the college admissions process,” because such students,
“through no fault of their own, often find themselves in
high schools that provide inadequate preparation for the
Achievement Tests.”1
Through no fault of their own—one of the recurrent phrases in this kind of argument—seems
to imply that it is the fault of “society” but remedies are
sought independently of any empirical evidence that it is.
Let me try to illustrate some of the problems with this
approach by a mundane personal example. Whenever I hear
discussions of fairness in education, my automatic response
is: “Thank God my teachers were unfair to me when I was
a kid growing up in Harlem.”
One of these teachers was
a lady named Miss Simon, who was from what might be
called the General Patton school of education. Every word
that we misspelled in class had to be written 50 times—
not in class, but in our homework that was due the next
morning, on top of all the other homework that she and
other teachers loaded onto us. Misspell four or five words
and you had quite an evening ahead of you.
Was this fair? Of course not. Like many of the children
in Harlem at that time, I came from a family where no one
had been educated beyond elementary school. We could
not afford to buy books and magazines, like children in
more affluent neighborhood schools, so we were far less
likely to be familiar with these words that we were required
to write 50 times.
But fairness in this cosmic sense was never an option.
As noted at the outset, the impossible is not going to be
achieved. Nothing that the schools could do would make
things fair in this sense. It would have been an irresponsible
self-indulgence for them to have pretended to make things
fair.
Far worse than unfairness is make-believe fairness.
Instead, they forced us to meet standards that were harder
for us to meet—but far more necessary for us to meet, as
these were the main avenues for our escape from poverty.
Many years later, I happened to run into one of my
Harlem schoolmates on the streets of San Francisco. He
was now a psychiatrist and owned a home and property out
in the Napa valley. As we reminisced about the past and
caught up on things that had happened to us in between, he
mentioned that his various secretaries over the years had
commented on the fact that he seldom misspelled a word.
My secretaries have made the same comment—but, if they
knew Miss Simon, it would be no mystery why we seldom
misspelled words.
It so happens that I was a high school dropout. But what
I was taught before I dropped out was enough for me to
score higher on the verbal SAT than the average Harvard
student. That may well have had something to do with my
being admitted to Harvard in an era before the concept of
“affirmative action” was conceived.
===
What if our teachers had been imbued with the presentday conception of “fairness”? Clearly we would not have
been tested with the same tests and held to standards as
other kids in higher-income neighborhoods, whose parents
had at least twice as many years of schooling as ours and
probably much more than twice as much money. And
where would my schoolmate and I have ended up? Perhaps
in some half-way house, if we were lucky.
And would that not have been an injustice—to take individuals capable of being independent, self-supporting,
and self-directed men and women, with pride in their own
achievements, and turn them into dependents, clients, supplicants, mascots?
Currently, the Educational Testing Service is adopting minority students as mascots by turning the
SAT exams into race-normed instruments to circumvent the
growing number of prohibitions against group preferences.
The primary purpose of mascots is to symbolize something
that makes others feel good. The well-being of the mascot
himself is seldom a major consideration.
The argument here is not against real justice or real equality. Both of these things are desirable in themselves, just
as immortality may be considered desirable in itself. The
only arguments against any of these things is that they are
impossible—and the cost of pursuing impossible dreams
are not negligible.
Socially counterproductive policies are just one of the
many costs of the quest for cosmic justice.
The rule of law,
on which a free society depends, is inherently incompatible
with cosmic justice.
Laws exist in all kinds of societies,
from the freest to the most totalitarian. But the rule of
law—a government of laws and not of men, as it used to
be called—is rare and vulnerable. You cannot redress the
myriad inequalities which pervade human life by applying
the same rules to all or by applying any rules other than
the arbitrary dispensations of those in power.
The final
chapter of The Quest for Cosmic Justice is titled “The Quiet
Repeal of the American Revolution”—because that is what
is happening piecemeal by zealots devoted to their own
particular applications of cosmic justice.
They are not trying to destroy the rule of law. They
are not trying to undermine the American republic. They
are simply trying to produce “gender equity,” institutions
that “look like America” or a thousand other goals that are
incompatible with the rule of law, but corollaries of cosmic
justice.
Because ordinary Americans have not yet abandoned
traditional justice, those who seek cosmic justice must try
to justify it politically as meeting traditional concepts of
justice.
A failure to achieve the new vision of justice must
be represented to the public and to the courts as “discrimination.” Tests that register the results of innumerable inequalities must be represented as being the cause of those
inequalities or as deliberate efforts to perpetuate those inequalities by erecting arbitrary barriers to the advancement of the less fortunate.
In short, to promote cosmic justice, they must misrepresent what is happening as violations of traditional justice—
as understood by others who do not share their vision. Nor
do those who make such claims necessarily believe them
themselves. As Joseph Schumpeter once said: “The first
thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.”
The next thing the idealist will do is character assassination. All those who disagree with the great vision must be
shown to have malign intentions, if not deep-seated character flaws.
They must be “Borked,” to use a verb coined in
our times. They must be depicted as “A Strange Justice”
if somehow they survive the Borking process.
They must
be depicted as having some personal “obsessions” if they
carry out the duties they swore to carry out as a special
prosecutor. In short, demonization is one of the costs of
the quest for cosmic justice.
The victims of this process are not limited to those targeted. The society as a whole loses when its decisions are
made by character assassination, rather than by rational discussion, and
when its pool of those eligible for leadership
is drained by the exodus of those who are not prepared to
sacrifice their good name or subject their family to humiliations for the sake of grasping the levers of power.
This
loss is not merely quantitative, for those who are willing to
endure any personal or family humiliations for the sake of
power are the most dangerous people to trust with power.
In a sense, those caught up in the vision of cosmic justice
are also among its victims.
Having committed themselves
to a vision and demonized all who oppose it, how are they
to turn around and subject that vision to searching empirical scrutiny, much less repudiate it as evidence of its
counterproductive results mount up?
Ironically, the quest for greater economic and social
equality is promoted through a far greater inequality of
political power. If rules cannot produce cosmic justice,
only raw power is left as the way to produce the kinds of
results being sought.
In a democracy, where power must
gain public acquiescence, not only must the rule of law be
violated or circumvented, so must the rule of truth. However noble the vision of cosmic justice, arbitrary power and
shameless lies are the only paths that even seem to lead in
its direction. As noted at the outset, the devastating costs
and social dangers which go with these attempts to achieve
the impossible should be taken into account
===
Editorial Reviews
Review
Jay Nordlinger National Review The burnished product of a lifetime of thinking, arguing, refining, and -- in essence -- getting it straight.
David Boaz author of Libertarianism: A Primer and editor of The Libertarian Reader No one should pronounce on justice or equality again without grappling with Thomas Sowell's powerful argument. In this book, reflecting a lifetime of wide-ranging research and careful reflection, Sowell makes us understand the difference between results and processes, between "cosmic justice" and traditional justice, between the rule of law and the power to do good. The ratio of insights to words in this book is remarkably high.
Judge Robert H. Bork In The Quest for Cosmic Justice Thomas Sowell once again displays his distinctive combination of erudition, analytical power, and uncommon sense.
Review
Jay Nordlinger National Review The burnished product of a lifetime of thinking, arguing, refining, and -- in essence -- getting it straight.
David Boaz author of Libertarianism: A Primer and editor of The Libertarian Reader No one should pronounce on justice or equality again without grappling with Thomas Sowell's powerful argument. In this book, reflecting a lifetime of wide-ranging research and careful reflection, Sowell makes us understand the difference between results and processes, between "cosmic justice" and traditional justice, between the rule of law and the power to do good. The ratio of insights to words in this book is remarkably high.
Judge Robert H. Bork In The Quest for Cosmic Justice Thomas Sowell once again displays his distinctive combination of erudition, analytical power, and uncommon sense.
About the Author
Thomas Sowell is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute and the author of A Personal Odyssey, The Vision of the Anointed, Ethnic America, and several other books. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, Forbes, and Fortune and are syndicated in 150 newspapers. He lives in Stanford, California.
Product details
Publisher : Free Press; 1st edition (February 5, 2002)
Paperback : 224 pages
Customer Reviews:
4.9 out of 5 stars 873 ratings
Customer reviews
4.9 out of 5 stars
See all customer images
Top reviews from the United States
Victor Bolles
5.0 out of 5 stars Twenty years ago Dr. Sowell identified many of the issues we face todayReviewed in the United States on September 3, 2019
Verified Purchase
Not Woke
September 2, 2019
|
Victor C. Bolles
I just finished reading Thomas Sowell’s book, The Quest for Cosmic Justice. Although it was written in 1999, it presciently addresses many of the issues we face today including identity politics, social justice and entitlements, income inequality, personal truth being more important than reality (sometimes called wokeness or being woke) and the rejection of the American Founding Principles.
Dr. Sowell is a true genius and the personification of the American Dream. The son of a housemaid whose father died shortly after he was born, he was raised by his great-aunt in North Carolina. He had little contact with white people as a child but that changed when he moved to New York City when he was nine. In New York he qualified for the prestigious Stuyvesant High School for the academically gifted (one of the schools that NYC mayor and presidential candidate Bill de Blasio is trying to eliminate, because their students “don’t look like New York City”). He had to drop out of school for financial reasons before graduating and worked odd jobs (and even tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team) before being drafted into the Marine Corps during the Korean War.
After his discharge from the Marines, Dr. Sowell initially attended historically black Howard University before a combination of letters of recommendation from his professors and high marks on his College Board exams got him into Harvard, from which he graduated magna cum Laude. He got his PhD. at the University of Chicago under the tutelage of his mentor Milton Friedman. He is now a professor at Stanford University and a fellow of the Hoover Institution.
Dr. Sowell writes about big issues in this book; cosmic justice, the nature of equality, the tyranny of visions and the impact of these forces on America.
If justice is a good thing, then cosmic justice must be a great thing. But Freidrich Hayek noted that, “nature can be neither just nor unjust.” One family emerges from the wreckage of their mobile home after a tornado and says, “our prayers were answered,” while their neighbors, who prayed equally hard, perished. Both families were equally deserving but suffered different outcomes. Nature isn’t just, nature just is.
Believers in cosmic justice don’t like such unfair outcomes. They cite John Rawls who stated that “undeserved inequality calls for redress.” We see these claims for redress in the demands for reparations for slavery, universal basic income and the Equal Rights Amendment. Dr. Sowell defines cosmic justice as the desire to rectify social inequities that people who, through no fault of their own, lack things which other people receive as windfall gains, through no virtue of their own. We have all seen Senator Elizabeth Warren convulse in anger at these inequities on the campaign trail and promise to redress them with the wealth of the one-percenters.
However, Dr. Sowell points out that the cost of cosmic justice can be very high. And it is not always a cost that can be covered by taxing the heck out of high net worth individuals or large corporations. A good example is the previously cited Bill de Blasio who wants to eliminate testing because the outcome of the testing results in too many white and Asian students and too few blacks and Hispanics in top schools. But the cost of this cosmic justice solution is that all the kids in the New York City School District are condemned to mediocrity. But it is not just the smart kids that pay the cost of this redress of academic wrongs. It is society that suffers from not inspiring the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.
Equality, much like justice, might be a laudable cosmic goal, but in practical terms it is impossible to achieve. There are so many factors that make up each person that it is inevitable that most people will be deficient in some factors and abundant in others. These factors, such as hair color, looks, physical fitness and weight in addition race, gender and sexual orientation, make it impracticable to have complete equality. Plus, you have to define what type of equality you are seeking. Would the search for equality in good looks justify a government entitlement for cosmetic surgery?
Progressives ignore the philosophical impracticality of complete equality and set up arbitrary standards by which to judge equality. We have the previously cited “look like America” standard. We also have the income inequality standard whereby certain identity groups earn less that others, a situation that calls for redress. But keep in mind that that out of the 10 highest paid athletes in the US, 8 come from one identity group (black) and 9 come from one sport (basketball, see; Social Justice Basketball). So, sometimes identity or cultural differences generate different outcomes.
Dr. Sowell points out that wealth is skewed not only by ethnic identity but also by age. Older people who have spent a lifetime saving and working their way up the corporate ladder have more income and wealth than younger people just starting out their professional career. And because the average age of the white population is older than that of blacks and Hispanics, whites would have more income and wealth, not because of the legacy of slavery or the fruit of prejudice, but because of age.
Dr. Sowell asserts that humans create visions (what Yuval Harari calls stories in his book, Homo Deus) of how the world works. This is essential because no human can comprehend all the events and understand all the data that are incorporated into life on earth. Early humans concocted visions (stories) to explain all the events that they could not understand such as; what are the sun and the moon and how do they move across the sky? We now call these visions superstitions or, perhaps, religions and ideologies. Dr. Sowell, however, further explains that when these visions defy the facts, they become dogma.
In modern times we have created numerous visions or dogmas that attempt to explain how a modern society functions. Politicians use these visions to attract followers and rely on the visions to explain why things occur even when there is no evidence to support such contentions. Autocrats use visions to strengthen their grip on power and punish or kill heretics and blasphemers who doubt their vision.
The populists substitute these visions in place of facts or truth and even go as far as denying facts or truth when they do not fit within the scope of their vision. This is why progressives are telling their adherents that they need to define their own truths. For example, Freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated, “I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.” The facts are made to fit the vision – the opposite of the scientific method that was created during the Enlightenment. Of course, visions have also led to accusations of “fake news.”
Finally, Dr. Sowell brings all these trends together to address the “Quiet Repeal of the American Revolution” by comparing the differences between the American Revolution and the French Revolution, noting that the principal difference was in the Rule of Law. The goal of the American Revolution was the liberty of each citizen of the country – a liberty that required limits on the powers of government. The French Revolution wanted to right the wrongs of society and sought to do so by empowering “representatives on mission” with unlimited authority to accomplish their goals.
The Founders of America wanted liberty for the American people and limited the powers of government because an increase in constitutional rights can only occur as a result of a reduction in government power while an increase in social justice (also known as positive rights or entitlements) requires an increase in government power (which, ipso facto, means a reduction in constitutional rights). The United States was not created to seek cosmic justice or complete equality. It was created to limit the power of government in order to guarantee the liberty of the people to seek their own goals.
And it was the limitation of government that allowed the United States to prosper and grow. Because liberty unleashed the human capital of millions of Americans to strive to achieve their own goals (their own unique American Dream). It was the power of that human capital that drove America’s success.
The seekers of Cosmic Justice believe that other values are more important than liberty. Such seekers believe that people’s work must be dedicated to the betterment of society, not for their own ends. And the government, which defines what the betterment of society entails, will use force in order to get people to submit to the government’s will. And all that human capital will become cramped and constrained and society will wither.
Dr. Sowell described the forces working against our liberty twenty years ago. In the interim, those forces have only grown stronger and the defenders of freedom keep silent. Read this book to learn more about what is going on around you. And then speak out. For liberty!
3 people found this helpful
HelpfulReport abuse
SLIMJIM
5.0 out of 5 stars Best Sowell's book I read thus far!Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2020
Verified Purchase
4.9 out of 5 stars 873 ratings
Customer reviews
4.9 out of 5 stars
See all customer images
Top reviews from the United States
Victor Bolles
5.0 out of 5 stars Twenty years ago Dr. Sowell identified many of the issues we face todayReviewed in the United States on September 3, 2019
Verified Purchase
Not Woke
September 2, 2019
|
Victor C. Bolles
I just finished reading Thomas Sowell’s book, The Quest for Cosmic Justice. Although it was written in 1999, it presciently addresses many of the issues we face today including identity politics, social justice and entitlements, income inequality, personal truth being more important than reality (sometimes called wokeness or being woke) and the rejection of the American Founding Principles.
Dr. Sowell is a true genius and the personification of the American Dream. The son of a housemaid whose father died shortly after he was born, he was raised by his great-aunt in North Carolina. He had little contact with white people as a child but that changed when he moved to New York City when he was nine. In New York he qualified for the prestigious Stuyvesant High School for the academically gifted (one of the schools that NYC mayor and presidential candidate Bill de Blasio is trying to eliminate, because their students “don’t look like New York City”). He had to drop out of school for financial reasons before graduating and worked odd jobs (and even tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team) before being drafted into the Marine Corps during the Korean War.
After his discharge from the Marines, Dr. Sowell initially attended historically black Howard University before a combination of letters of recommendation from his professors and high marks on his College Board exams got him into Harvard, from which he graduated magna cum Laude. He got his PhD. at the University of Chicago under the tutelage of his mentor Milton Friedman. He is now a professor at Stanford University and a fellow of the Hoover Institution.
Dr. Sowell writes about big issues in this book; cosmic justice, the nature of equality, the tyranny of visions and the impact of these forces on America.
If justice is a good thing, then cosmic justice must be a great thing. But Freidrich Hayek noted that, “nature can be neither just nor unjust.” One family emerges from the wreckage of their mobile home after a tornado and says, “our prayers were answered,” while their neighbors, who prayed equally hard, perished. Both families were equally deserving but suffered different outcomes. Nature isn’t just, nature just is.
Believers in cosmic justice don’t like such unfair outcomes. They cite John Rawls who stated that “undeserved inequality calls for redress.” We see these claims for redress in the demands for reparations for slavery, universal basic income and the Equal Rights Amendment. Dr. Sowell defines cosmic justice as the desire to rectify social inequities that people who, through no fault of their own, lack things which other people receive as windfall gains, through no virtue of their own. We have all seen Senator Elizabeth Warren convulse in anger at these inequities on the campaign trail and promise to redress them with the wealth of the one-percenters.
However, Dr. Sowell points out that the cost of cosmic justice can be very high. And it is not always a cost that can be covered by taxing the heck out of high net worth individuals or large corporations. A good example is the previously cited Bill de Blasio who wants to eliminate testing because the outcome of the testing results in too many white and Asian students and too few blacks and Hispanics in top schools. But the cost of this cosmic justice solution is that all the kids in the New York City School District are condemned to mediocrity. But it is not just the smart kids that pay the cost of this redress of academic wrongs. It is society that suffers from not inspiring the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.
Equality, much like justice, might be a laudable cosmic goal, but in practical terms it is impossible to achieve. There are so many factors that make up each person that it is inevitable that most people will be deficient in some factors and abundant in others. These factors, such as hair color, looks, physical fitness and weight in addition race, gender and sexual orientation, make it impracticable to have complete equality. Plus, you have to define what type of equality you are seeking. Would the search for equality in good looks justify a government entitlement for cosmetic surgery?
Progressives ignore the philosophical impracticality of complete equality and set up arbitrary standards by which to judge equality. We have the previously cited “look like America” standard. We also have the income inequality standard whereby certain identity groups earn less that others, a situation that calls for redress. But keep in mind that that out of the 10 highest paid athletes in the US, 8 come from one identity group (black) and 9 come from one sport (basketball, see; Social Justice Basketball). So, sometimes identity or cultural differences generate different outcomes.
Dr. Sowell points out that wealth is skewed not only by ethnic identity but also by age. Older people who have spent a lifetime saving and working their way up the corporate ladder have more income and wealth than younger people just starting out their professional career. And because the average age of the white population is older than that of blacks and Hispanics, whites would have more income and wealth, not because of the legacy of slavery or the fruit of prejudice, but because of age.
Dr. Sowell asserts that humans create visions (what Yuval Harari calls stories in his book, Homo Deus) of how the world works. This is essential because no human can comprehend all the events and understand all the data that are incorporated into life on earth. Early humans concocted visions (stories) to explain all the events that they could not understand such as; what are the sun and the moon and how do they move across the sky? We now call these visions superstitions or, perhaps, religions and ideologies. Dr. Sowell, however, further explains that when these visions defy the facts, they become dogma.
In modern times we have created numerous visions or dogmas that attempt to explain how a modern society functions. Politicians use these visions to attract followers and rely on the visions to explain why things occur even when there is no evidence to support such contentions. Autocrats use visions to strengthen their grip on power and punish or kill heretics and blasphemers who doubt their vision.
The populists substitute these visions in place of facts or truth and even go as far as denying facts or truth when they do not fit within the scope of their vision. This is why progressives are telling their adherents that they need to define their own truths. For example, Freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated, “I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.” The facts are made to fit the vision – the opposite of the scientific method that was created during the Enlightenment. Of course, visions have also led to accusations of “fake news.”
Finally, Dr. Sowell brings all these trends together to address the “Quiet Repeal of the American Revolution” by comparing the differences between the American Revolution and the French Revolution, noting that the principal difference was in the Rule of Law. The goal of the American Revolution was the liberty of each citizen of the country – a liberty that required limits on the powers of government. The French Revolution wanted to right the wrongs of society and sought to do so by empowering “representatives on mission” with unlimited authority to accomplish their goals.
The Founders of America wanted liberty for the American people and limited the powers of government because an increase in constitutional rights can only occur as a result of a reduction in government power while an increase in social justice (also known as positive rights or entitlements) requires an increase in government power (which, ipso facto, means a reduction in constitutional rights). The United States was not created to seek cosmic justice or complete equality. It was created to limit the power of government in order to guarantee the liberty of the people to seek their own goals.
And it was the limitation of government that allowed the United States to prosper and grow. Because liberty unleashed the human capital of millions of Americans to strive to achieve their own goals (their own unique American Dream). It was the power of that human capital that drove America’s success.
The seekers of Cosmic Justice believe that other values are more important than liberty. Such seekers believe that people’s work must be dedicated to the betterment of society, not for their own ends. And the government, which defines what the betterment of society entails, will use force in order to get people to submit to the government’s will. And all that human capital will become cramped and constrained and society will wither.
Dr. Sowell described the forces working against our liberty twenty years ago. In the interim, those forces have only grown stronger and the defenders of freedom keep silent. Read this book to learn more about what is going on around you. And then speak out. For liberty!
3 people found this helpful
HelpfulReport abuse
SLIMJIM
5.0 out of 5 stars Best Sowell's book I read thus far!Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2020
Verified Purchase
Have you notice a redefinition of “justice” today among those who are advocates of Social Justice? Even if you think this doesn’t interests you it is definitely affecting you and costing you directly and indirectly today by the actions of its advocate. These ideas though are nothing new and over the decades of ministry in college campuses I see these ideas discussed in Academia is now being yelled out aloud literally and the consequences being reaped on the streets of America in 2020. This book was originally published in 1999 but reading this in 2020 I was blown away how relevant it is twenty one years later. The observations that the author made and also his refutations is very powerful and I love how factual and data driven the author is. This is probably the most important book I read in 2020 and I’m surprised why more people don’t know about this book. Out of the six books I have read from author Thomas Sowell this to me is one of the best book I have read from him and it is not only compelling but reading this book is a training session of how to think soundly in the realm of social sciences, economics and discussions about what is justice.
The book consists of four chapters and each chapters are gold. Chapter one titled “The Quest for Cosmic Justice.” What Sowell calls “Cosmic Justice” is what today people all “Social Justice” and his analysis of this mindset is dead on. Sowell notes how cosmic justice requires more knowledge than traditional justice with the assumed ability of its advocate or practicioner to be able to compare windfall gains and loss in people’s life, the relative advantage and disadvantages individuals had even though it changes over the years, etc. Not only is cosmic justice advocates arrogant enough to figure out things despite cross-currents of people and influences that are not easily entangled these people also knowingly or unknowingly increases the risk of error of their computation of justice and injustice. When cosmic justice agendas are pursued advocates never take into account costs to third parties not involved and their suffering are either disregarded and/or dismissed. Chapter two looks at the topic of equality and it is one of the most detailed and nuanced discussion about equality and inequality I have ever read. Sowell is not writing this chapter because he likes inequality but here he’s trying to make a discussion between just and unjust inequality along with a critique of assumptions those who support social justice make about what equality looks like or the interpretation of inequality as always being unjust or their incorrect attempt to attribute the culpable fault of why there are inequality. Chapter three is titled “The Tyranny of Visions” and talks about how visionary elites who think they are better and more virtuous than others yet when they have agendas that does not account for the data and reality can bring about much evil and suffering even though the elites feel good just by holding to their ideas. This is a very good chapter that presents the case of study of how pacifisms have the unintended consequences of incentivizing the fascists to bring about a world war. Churchill has once said that World War Two is one of the most horrific war that could have been prevented. The final chapter discuss about cosmic justice in the American context of how the quest for cosmic justice is eroding the American founding principles. I thought he made a good point here that America’s revolution is unique than most of the revolutions in history for being about the procedure of check and balances in government and how to peacefully hand over the government to the next incoming power than being about injustice or quest for justice per se. Yet social justice agendas are tearing down the American experiment; while Sowell focuses on the American context I think the point he makes here is also relevant for any society in which social justice tears down the fabric of society and also how advocates can have sincere desire yet can bring about horrific unintended consequences.
There was so much I learn from this book and I spent a long time reading each page. That’s because the book was packed with so much information and economic thinking that seems counter-intuitive at times until one thinks through it carefully. There’s a lot of things I never thought of before that Sowell got me thinking about in this work. For instance in talking about inequality he talks about Primogeniture which is the practice of leaving an estate to the eldest son. We would consider that unfair with our modern sensibilities but he argues that we should look at it more closely. With the reality of scarce resource there is a reason why Primogeniture was implemented in certain societies. The purpose was to keep estate intact for generations and we see even in modern economic studies that when land gets broken up in small chunks sometimes it does not produce the amount of productivity than if it was intact. Thus we see starvation when government implemented redistribution and land giveaways program. Yet to balance this inequality there is the reciprocal expectation that eldest son has the duty to guide and watch over younger siblings, etc. Insightful! There’s so many of these insights in the book. I highly recommend this book!
6 people found this helpful
HelpfulReport abuse
L. Krug
5.0 out of 5 stars Legal Decision And Your EmotionsReviewed in the United States on April 28, 2022
Verified Purchase
Sowell is one of my favorite authors and people to listen to. He's able to write on different levels and researches his writings with total control. Cosmic Justice is here and we have to deal with it. It's really not anything new in our history. People want to rule their lives through their emotions without looking at the facts or "the big picture". This is dangerous. They just can't stand to settle down and wait for the facts and want to plow ahead with their emotional thinking. This is wrong and shows us how illiterate our people have become in todays world of politics and government. Sowell exposes this and does an excellent job. Must read!
HelpfulReport abuse
Jerry W. Rogers
5.0 out of 5 stars Another timely book by a great authorReviewed in the United States on April 21, 2022
Verified Purchase
Super book. Timely. Explains lots of the ills of the world today. If only people would stop and think things through as Dr. Sowell does, we would have far fewer social issues today. He steps on some toes, but some toes need to be stepped on. A lot of the issues today are semantic. He does not call them such, but you get what he is saying.
HelpfulReport abuse
Igor Vusanovic
5.0 out of 5 stars BalkanReviewed in the United States on April 30, 2022
Verified Purchase
Great book openingmind and thinking. Reccomend to young people. Also good for elders in order to clear some bad communist illusions
HelpfulReport abuse
See all reviews
Top reviews from other countries
Henry
5.0 out of 5 stars A seer for our timesReviewed in the United Kingdom on May 13, 2020
Verified Purchase
Considering this book was first published in 1999 it just shows how far ahead of his time Thomas Sowell is, laying out clearly with at least 15 years before anyone else all the contradictions and problems posed by what we call today 'Social Justice' or as he called it back then 'Cosmic Justice'. From affirmative action to reparations and then on the role of activist members of the judiciary in furthering the myths of 'diversity'n 'redistribution' etc., Sowell demonstrates with hard facts that Cosmic Justice is not only impossible to achieve but also comes with costs (financial and social) that are never taken into the consideration by posturing wannabe intellectuals and that discrimination/ bias *cannot* be inferred by statistical inequalities. Definitely recommend reading this book.
4 people found this helpfulReport abuse
mDs
3.0 out of 5 stars An important contrarian whose writing style can be a bit dry.Reviewed in Canada on November 14, 2019
Verified Purchase
Book arrived quickly. No problems with shipping.
I like Sowell. I enjoy his contrarian viewpoints. I enjoy watching his YouTube videos discussing daily issues and having people think twice about the narrative we're all fed from mainstream media.
However I find at times his writing can be less than entertaining.
He is assertive in his writing, descriptive and direct. However it could use a bit of flourish given it tends to be a bit dry. I'm halfway through this book which reads in a very matter of fact manner.
One person found this helpfulReport abuse
See all reviews
=====
Good Reads Reviews
The Quest for Cosmic Justice
by Thomas Sowell
4.37 · Rating details · 2,440 ratings · 253 reviews
This book is about the great moral issues underlying many of the headline-making political controversies of our times. It is not a comforting book but a book about disturbing and dangerous trends. The Quest for Cosmic Justice shows how confused conceptions of justice end up promoting injustice, how confused conceptions of equality end up promoting inequality, and how the tyranny of social visions prevents many people from confronting the actual consequences of their own beliefs and policies. Those consequences include the steady and dangerous erosion of fundamental principles of freedom - amounting to a quiet repeal of the American revolution. The Quest for Cosmic Justice is the summation of a lifetime of study and thought about where we as a society are headed - and why we need to change course before we do irretrievable damage. (less)
---
Write a review
Amora
Aug 10, 2020Amora rated it really liked it
Shelves: political-science
When John Rawls published his famous treatise on justice he popularized the view that if a group doesn’t have the same prospects as another group then that’s an example of injustice. However, as Sowell shows in this classic using history and economics, equal prospects are neither logical nor possible. This book is a damning indictment of Rawlsian thinking and it’s a shame Rawls never got the chance to debate Sowell. I’m sure they would’ve had a blast.
Edit: Oh dear, I cringed so hard returning to this review. Now that I understand Sowell better I know that Sowell definitely wouldn't have enjoyed debating John Rawls lol (less)
flag93 likes · Like · 4 comments · see review
Amy
Nov 19, 2020Amy rated it it was amazing
Shelves: free-market, made-me-think, jurisprudence, summit-oxford, philosophy, audio, law, thomas-sowell
Thomas Sowell is remarkable. Even though a lot of the arguments in this book felt familiar since I run in the circles that quote him often, I continually find something more to learn. Highly recommend.
flag14 likes · Like · comment · see review
Yibbie
Jan 21, 2022Yibbie rated it really liked it
Shelves: politics
Man is not God. No one on this earth can ever have complete equity or give another human complete equity. But if you do try to play God and provide perfect justice for one, or even one group, are prepared to face the unintended consequences? Do you even care what the real-world results are? Or are you just elated over the simple results, or seeming successes, your meddling creates in one or two cases?
This book forces you to look at the results of such meddling from the unchanging facts of the past. It is certainly humbling. Do you need a reminder that the human mind is finite? That experts are can’t be experts in all areas of knowledge? This would be a good book for you.
It was a wonderful defense of the rule of law and traditional justice. I couldn’t agree with it more. Still, it left me feeling that it left too much unsaid. This book builds a case for a return to the rule of law on logic and historical examples of its success or failure. It completely leaves out the final basis for any universal law. It doesn’t really answer why there is a universal set of laws, standards, morals that apply to all men, rich or poor, powerful or oppressed. It is a secular book. It certainly doesn’t have any answer to the problem of envy that it so rightly identifies as motivating so many of the movements today. Without an answer to any of those questions this book feels a little empty. I find those answers in the Bible, and strongly recommend you look there for them as well.
(less)
flag12 likes · Like · 2 comments · see review
===
Jeremy
May 03, 2009Jeremy rated it really liked it
Shelves: econ
“A society that puts equality – in the sense of equality of outcomes – ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.” Milton Friedman
“In short, traditional justice is about impartial processes rather than either results or prospects.”
“The challenge of determining the net balance of numerous windfall advantage and disadvantages for one individual at one given time is sufficiently daunting. To attempt the same for whole broad-brush categories of people, each in differing stages of their individual life cycles, in a complex and changing society, suggest hubris.”
“Even those who proclaim the principles of justice, and call these principles more important than other benefits, as Professor Rawls does, seem unlikely to act on such principles in real life, given the costs of doing so. Imagine that a ship is sinking in the ocean with 300 passengers on board and only 200 life-preservers. The only just solution is that everyone drown. But most of us would probably prefer the unjust solution, that 200 lives be saved, even if they are no more deserving than those who perish.”
“We can, of course, create new injustices among our flesh-and-blood contemporaries for the sake of symbolic expiation, so that the son or daughter of a black doctor or executive can get into an elite college ahead of the son or daughter of a white factory worker or farmer, but only believers in the vision of cosmic justice are likely to take moral solace from that.”
“Recognizing that many people “through no fault of their own” have windfall losses, while those same people – and others – also have windfall gains, the time is long overdue to recognize also that taxpayers through no fault of their own have been forced to subsidize the moral adventures which exalt self-anointed social philosophers.”
“The abstract desirability of equality, like the abstract desirability of immortality, is beside the point when choosing what practical course of action to follow. What matters is what we are prepared to do, to risk, or to sacrifice, in pursuit of what can turn out to be a mirage.”
“However, most income cannot be redistributed because it was not distributed in the first place. It is paid directly for services rendered and how much is paid is determined jointly by those individuals rendering the service and those to whom it is rendered.”
“But to invoke the blanket slogan ‘Question Authority’ is to raise the question: By what authority do you tell us to question authority?”
“Virtually no one seriously questions the principle of equal regard for human beings as human beings…It is the fatal step from equal regard to equal performance – or presumptively equal performance in the absence of social barriers – that opens the door to disaster.”
“On issue after issue, the morally self-anointed visionaries have for centuries argued as if no honest disagreement were possible, as if those who opposed them were not merely in error but in sin. This has long been a hallmark of those with a cosmic vision of the world and of themselves as saviors of the world, whether they are saving it from war, overpopulation, capitalism, genetic degradation, environmental destruction, or whatever the crisis du jour might be.”
“The British, American, and other Allied soldiers who paid with their lives in the early years of the war for the quantitatively inadequate and qualitatively obsolete military equipment that was a legacy of interwar pacifism were among the most tragic of the many third parties who have paid the price of other people’s exalted visions and self-congratulation.”
“…it is necessary to explore what purposes are served by these visions, by their evasions of particular evidence, and – especially in the case of the humanities – by their denigration of the very concepts of evidence and cognitive meaning.”
“Desperately ingenious efforts to evade particular evidence, or to denigrate objective facts in general, are all consistent with the heavy emotional investment in their vision, which is ostensibly about the well-being of others but is ultimately about themselves.”
“The prerequisites of civilization are not an interesting subject to those who concentrate on its shortcomings – that is, on the extent to which what currently exists as the fruits of centuries of efforts and sacrifices is inferior to what they can produce in their imagination immediately at zero cost, in the comfort and security provided by the society they disdain.”
“It may easily be seen that almost all the able and ambitious members of a democratic community will labor unceasingly to extend the powers of government, because they all hope at some time or other to wield those powers themselves.” Alexis de Tocqueville
“As Aristotle said, ‘things that are true and things that are better are almost always easier to believe in.’ In short, the truth often seems ‘simplistic’ by comparison with elaborate attempts to evade the truth.”
“There is no way to specify in precise general rules, known beforehand, what might be necessary to achieve results that would meet the standards of cosmic justice.”
“Just as freedom of the press does not exist for the sake of that tiny minority of the population who are journalists, so property rights do not exist for the sake of those people with substantial property holdings.”
“The inefficiency of political control of an economy has been demonstrated more often, in more places, and under more varied conditions, than almost anything outside the realm of pure science.”
“For the courts to strike like a bolt from the blue hitting an unsuspecting citizen, who was disobeying no law that he could have known about beforehand, is the essence of judicial tyranny, however moral or just the judges may imagine their innovation to be.”
“In other words, the federal government may do only what it is specifically authorized to do, while the people or the individual states may do whatever they are not specifically forbidden to do.” (Referring to the 10th amendment)
“Schemes to extend federal power into the nooks and crannies of local and even private activities are never publicly advertised as expansions of federal power, much less erosions of the Tenth Amendment, but always in terms of the wonderful goals they are said to achieve – ‘universal health care, ‘investing in our children’s futures,’ ‘insuring a level playing field for all,’ etc.”
“The much-vaunted ‘complexity’ of constitutional law comes in most cases not from the Constitution itself but from clever attempts to evade the limits on government power set by the Constitution.”
“The rise of American society to pre-eminence as an economic, political, and military power in the world was thus the triumph of the common man and a slap across the face to the presumptions of the arrogant, whether an elite of blood or books.” (less)
flag11 likes · Like · comment · see review
===
Nico Alba
May 06, 2018Nico Alba rated it it was amazing
Finally read my first Thomas Sowell book; picked this one up based on a recommendation by @jimmy__delacruz. To put it simply, Sowell is a giant who is way ahead of his time. His story is a remarkable one--Southern-born and Harlem-raised, Sowell's father died before he was born and he was raised in poverty by his aunt. As the first person in his family to study beyond the 6th grade, Sowell dropped out of high school to provide for his family but eventually went on to receive his PhD in Economics from Univ of Chicago.
In The Quest for Cosmic Justice, Sowell shows how misguided notions of equality and justice end up producing inequality and injustice. He shows how the tyranny of visions produces self-exalting "solutions" to social problems that not only ignore contrary empirical evidence, but ignore the actual consequences of enforced policies on the ostensible beneficiaries and on 3rd parties. He discusses the difference between cosmic justice and traditional justice—a terribly important distinction—with incredible clarity. His input is data, and his output is facts—facts that tend to crush the souls of the "morally anointed". The man is 87 years old and has written 30+ books, but he's still kicking and I'm incredibly excited to read more. (less)
flag11 likes · Like · comment · see review
Terrence D.
Apr 17, 2018Terrence D. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
I am utterly "Sowelled out" at this point, after reading three other Sowell books before this one, but I have to say something about this magnificent work. Contrary to what one reviewer stated, Sowell is not obsessed with economics. Rather, he is obsessed with facts and data that run contrary to the prevailing "vision" (narrative) in controlling society. I appreciate his works for this reason alone; Sowell cares about making distinctions and he cares about logic and facts when combating fallacies. He is meticulous, perspicuous, and intelligent without being condescending.
Despite his erroneous views on "libertarianism" as being too atomistic (an error often made by people who misidentify libertarianism as a Randian philosophy despite its origins in Murray Rothbard and ongoing work in Hans Hermann-Hoppe), the book was overall an excellent indictment against self-anointed authoritarians with their vain pursuits to correct "cosmic injustices" via the State. (less)
flag10 likes · Like · comment · see review
Kris
Sep 13, 2020Kris rated it it was amazing
Shelves: politics, audiobooks
A fantastic exploration of the meaning of justice. He focuses on the consequences of trying to implement a kind of social justice (and the tradeoffs for freedom). He touches on lots of areas like war, gender equality, pacifist movements, educational funding, affirmative action, racial disparities, income inequality, and taxes. Sowell is very well spoken and obviously experienced, and I loved listening to his opinions. This is the first time I've read him, and I look forward to picking up more of his work in the future.
Also on my list: The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (less)
flag9 likes · Like · 1 comment · see review
===
Matthew
Jan 15, 2013Matthew rated it it was ok
It took me a decent while to figure out what was so strange about this book.
I was reading it, would be like "Yeah, that makes sense -- good point. Good argument. Valid idea." Then I'd put it down and immediately think "something seems fishy here."
Eventually I determined what was bothering me: there was a distinct lack of a sufficient counter-argument. The information and argument were presented in such a way that anyone who denied them was someone ridiculous, someone who is blind, someone who won't listen no matter what. A lot of ad hominem, a lot of whining. This is not to say that I didn't find a lot of his arguments fascinating -- I thought what was presented neatly was very well done -- but some of it (I'd argue a majority) was just sloppy. Many of the arguments that Sowell presents are very hard to counter until you realize that his claims are sometimes riddled with the same "cherry-picking" holes that he accuses his "intelligentsia" opponents to have.
Bottom line: It's a good book to read to see an interesting view of justice, but don't expect it to do justice to the whole argument. (less)
flag8 likes · Like · 2 comments · see review
===
Toe
Jun 12, 2009Toe rated it really liked it
Shelves: nonfiction
Sowell discusses two very different conceptions of justice in this thoughtful and important book. The traditional conception is that the rules or standards are known to all participants and applied equally. Rewards and punishments are doled out based on these widely known, equally applicable rules. Sowell argues that this is the conception known to the founding fathers and the one that works best in practice. The amount of knowledge required to implement this form of justice is manageable—one need only know the rules and whether these rules have been violated in a given situation. This consistent principle allows people to behave and plan with reasonable certainty, which leads to economic growth and relative societal harmony.
Cosmic justice, on the other hand, is the idea that humans should be judged based on all factors that impact their lives, including the circumstances and events over which they had no control. This latter conception of justice is part of what is meant by "social justice" and seeks to take into account literally everything; it seeks to equalize nature, which is inherently unequal. For example, when a man named Richard Allen Davis in 1996 brutally murdered a 12 year old girl named Polly Klaas, his difficult childhood was brought into consideration even though the victim, the girl, did not cause his past difficulties. Only cosmic justice would consider Davis's past relevant. Another illustration: those born with physical or mental handicaps obviously did not choose these disabilities. But, in the quest for cosmic justice, some attempt to force others to hire these disabled people no matter what additional costs must be borne by th
e employer. The law requires "reasonable" accommodations, but the employer is better positioned than anyone to know the costs of their business. Cosmic justice is much more difficult for humans to sift through and tally. Sowell is correct when he argues that it is beyond the capabilities of humans to know or implement cosmic justice. Those who advocate it do so out of a sense of self-righteous moral superiority. They never consider the additional costs that others must bear, the perverse incentives it creates, the uncertainty it generates, and the trampling of some people’s freedoms that invariably ensues.
After introducing these two different views of justice, the rest of this work exposes how these two competing visions are mutually exclusive, why the traditional conception is better and the cosmic conception is impossible and undesirable, the motivations of those supporting cosmic justice, and specific examples of the harm brought about in the attempt to implement cosmic justice. Sowell specifically discusses:
1. Equal processes are replaced by an attempt to generate equal results that those with the cosmic vision of justice mistakenly believe would occur naturally, despite a complete lack of evidence for this belief;
2. Property rights are infringed to the detriment of all;
3. Judicial activism and all its related uncertainty arises;
4. Burdens of proof are shifted to the accused in cases such as anti-trust law, employment discrimination, environmental law, tort liability, sexual harassment, and others; and
5. The erosion of the Constitution.
As always, Sowell peppers his general analysis with relevant data to support his claims. The following are specific examples from this book, many of which are unfortunately drawn from Sowell's earlier efforts.
Sowell points out that slavery is not the cause of many of the social problems faced by modern blacks. The data does not support this simplistic and incorrect causal explanation. For instance, many try to argue that it is the legacy of slavery that has created such large numbers of illegitimate black children. But the marriage rates of blacks living chronologically closer to slavery (the late 1800's and early 1900's) were on par with and sometimes higher than whites living at the same time. It wasn't until the 1960's, when so many of America's problems first arose, that black illegitimacy rates skyrocketed. Stated a different way: If slavery is indeed the explanation for or cause of illegitimacy, then it only makes sense that blacks actually living under slavery or those living closer to it would have higher illegitimacy rates, much like the damage from a volcano or hurricane is greatest at the epicenter and dissipates as the distance from the epicenter increases. The data, however, do not support this explanation.
Sowell blasts the concept of proportional representation here as he has done elsewhere. Many legal rulings and pieces of legislation operate under the assumption that in the absence of discrimination, the demographics of any profession or subset of the population will be distributed in a manner equal to the demographic makeup of society as a whole. So, for instance, if blacks make up 13% of the American population, then they should make up 13% of the PhD's, medical doctors, engineers, software engineers, etc. Women, constituting half of the population, should make up half of every profession. Cubans should make up their proportion, Asians, etc. Many courts, operating under this assumption, have reversed the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" in these cases. In other words, the plaintiffs are often not required to actually prove discrimination, but the defendants must prove they are NOT discriminating given the racial breakdown of their employees. Of course, one can never prove a negative, so many companies take the economically rational route and just settle, which activists then cite as evidence of discriminatory practices. Sowell does what so many refuse to do when considering this argument: he looks at the facts. Nowhere throughout human history has there been this equal proportional distribution. In different places and in different times across the globe, various groups of people have excelled in certain areas or professions. Here are some examples Sowell gives:
1. More than 80% of doughnut shops in California are owned by people of Cambodian ancestry.
2. During the 1900s, over 80% of the world's sugar-processing machinery was made in Scotland.
3. As of 1909, Italians in Buenos Aires owned more than twice as many food and drinking establishments as the native Argentines, more than three times as many shoe stores, and more than ten times as many barbershops.
4. During the decade of the 1960s, the Chinese minority in Malaysia supplied between 80 and 90 percent of all university students in medicine, science, and engineering.
5. In the early twentieth century all the firms in all the industries producing the following products were owned by people of German ancestry in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul: trunks, stoves, paper, hats, neckties, leather, soap, glass, watches, beer, confections, and carriages.
There are many more examples, but all have the same theme: none of these extraordinarily overrepresented people were themselves in a position to discriminate. They were minorities who simply out-competed others in their various industries. I would add to Sowell's list the overrepresentation of blacks in modern professional American sports. No one argues that these athletes are discriminating against whites, Hispanics, or Asians. Everyone just accepts that Kobe Bryant is a better basketball player than John Doe, Juan Doe, or Jian Doe, who didn't make the cut for the L.A. Lakers. Why then is it so difficult to accept that some groups are simply better at taking the MCAT, LSAT, SAT, or firefighters' exams in Connecticut?
Society benefits most when the rules are known by all and apply equally to all. America is about putting the best person in the job regardless of ethnicity, religious affiliation, age, gender, income level, childhood advantages or disadvantages, and all the other innumerable factors that impact a person's life and skills. Sowell maintains that disregarding standards, lowering standards, or shifting standards to meet some elusive conception of cosmic justice is detrimental to human progress and peaceful coexistence in a heterogeneous society. We should celebrate our strengths and abilities--from whatever source derived--and enjoy the fruits of other people's skill. We can all watch Kobe Bryant or Tiger Woods compete at the highest level of sport on a TV made by Sony's engineers while sipping a Shiner Bock distilled from centuries of German brewing knowledge. We acquire the means to pay for these products, the best humankind has to offer, by marketing whatever particular skills we have.
Freedom is a higher ideal than equality. They are also incompatible. Despite the self-congratulatory desires of some to make a name for themselves regardless of the costs or harm they impose upon others, it's neither possible nor meaningful nor desirable to have equality in any sense other than opportunity. The quest for cosmic justice, a world devoid of any “unfairness,” is a Quixotic and dangerous one.
Memorable Quotes:
"We better start doing something about our defenses. We are not going to be lucky enough to fight some Central American country forever. Build all we can, and take care of nothing but our own business, and we will never have to use it. Our world heavy-weight champion hasn't been insulted since he won the title." - Will Rogers
"Nature can be neither just nor unjust. Only if we mean to blame a personal creator does it make sense to describe it as unjust that somebody has been born with a physical defect, or been stricken with a disease, or has suffered the loss of a loved one." - Friedrich Hayek
"A society that puts equality--in the sense of equality of outcome--ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests." - Milton Friedman
"You do not take a man who, for years, has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, and bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, 'You are free to compete with all others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair." - Lyndon Johnson
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.” – Anatole France
"We must begin with the universe that we were born into and weigh the costs of making any specific change in it to achieve a specific end. We cannot simply 'do something' whenever we are morally indignant, while disdaining to consider the costs entailed."
"Such a conception of justice [cosmic justice:] seeks to correct, not only biased or discriminatory acts by individuals or by social institutions, but unmerited disadvantages in general, from whatever source they may arise."
"Cosmic justice is not about the rules of the game. It is about putting particular segments of society in the position they would have been in but for some undeserved misfortune. This conception of fairness requires that third parties must wield the power to control outcomes, over-riding rules, standards, or the preferences of other people."
"Implicit in much discussion of a need to rectify social inequities is the notion that some segments of society, through no fault of their own, lack things which others receive as windfall gains, through no virtue of their own. True as this may be, the knowledge required to sort this out intellectually, much less rectify it politically, is staggering and superhuman."
“What the American Constitution established was not simply a particular system but a process for changing systems, practices, and leaders, together with a method of constraining whoever or whatever was ascendant at any given time. Viewed positively, what the American revolution did was to give to the common man a voice, a veto, elbow room, and a refuge from the rampaging presumptions of his "betters".”
“James FitzJames Stephen pointed out in 1873 that every law and every moral rule, being general propositions, ‘must affect indiscriminately rather than equally.’”
“Too often this confusion has been made a virtue with claims that the “complexity” of the issues precluded a “simplistic” choice. But irreconcilability [between traditional and cosmic justice:] is not complexity. Nor are attempts to square the circle signs of deeper insight. More generally, there is no a priori reason to prefer complex resolutions over simpler ones for, as Aristotle said, ‘things that are true and things that are better are almost always easier to believe in.’ In short, the truth often seems “simplistic” by comparison with elaborate attempts to evade the truth.”
“Judge-made innovations are, in effect, ex post facto laws, which are expressly forbidden by the Constitution and abhorrent to the very concept of the rule of law. For the courts to strike like a bolt from the blue hitting an unsuspecting citizen, who was disobeying no law that he could have known about beforehand, is the essence of judicial tyranny, however moral or just the judges may imagine their innovation to be. The harm is not limited to the particular damage this may do in the particular case, great as this may sometimes be, but makes all other laws into murky storm clouds, potential sources of other bolts from the blue, contrary to the whole notion of ‘a government of laws and not of men.’” (less)
flag7 likes · Like · 1 comment · see review
Ross David Bayer
Nov 06, 2014Ross David Bayer rated it liked it
For me, the book had two main counterpoints:
1) THE GOOD
The book presents a very interesting core hypothesis, one I'd never actually encountered before, which is that when people casually use the words "justice" and "equality", there are actually two fundamentally different meanings for these words - and amazingly, not just different but also *incompatible* with each other. The consequences of this range from the lesser, like friends talking past each other in an argument at a complete loss as to how the other person can have such a different worldview (assuming of course that they have the same hidden meaning of the word "justice"), to the greater, like split decisions and multiple rounds of repeals of decisions in local, state, federal, and ultimately Supreme Courts for both as judges use different conceptions of justice. I found this very compelling and I think it will actually very concretely change how I approach conversations about justice and equality, and stories about such legal questions in the news.
2) THE BAD
After making this initial point very well, the author proceeds to set about essentially arguing that attempts to enforce "cosmic justice", one of the two main types, has inevitably led to undesirable consequences. His point is generally fair, but he goes about trying to prove it by bringing up case after case of historical incident in which the underlying context is explained poorly (so often I felt like I just didn't understand enough to even get his point, and didn't feel like researching every single case he goes through), and then he makes very broad pronouncements/judgements about complex cases without citing real evidence, oftentimes without even citing a reference! It left the skeptic in me often just responding, "ok, well that's a bold claim without anything backing it up - guess I'll ignore that". This tendency, together with a clearly libertarian bias (which would be perfectly fine *if* the arguments were actually presented in well-a argued-with-clear-evidence-and-logic form), made the second half of the book really drag on and even grate for me a bit.
Overall, I feel mixed. I think the core concept is well worth understanding and a real eye-opener for me, and probably would be for many others who care about issues like this. But the actual book is not particularly enjoyable to read. I think that if someone were to read just the first chapter (of the four chapters in the book), they would get almost all of the value of it. And I think even more ideal would be a concise article just summarizing the main idea. Nonetheless, the book must get some chops for actually changing the way I will think about core issues of justice, and how many books can claim a tall order like that. So overall, I come out mixed and give it a 3/5. (less)
flag7 likes · Like · 1 comment · see review
Tristan
Sep 04, 2019Tristan rated it really liked it
Sowell is the best exponent of the principles of conservatism that I’ve come across. Progressivism takes risks, throwing prudence and tradition to the wind when something seems amiss. In contrast, conservatism sticks to time-tested principles, always wary of unintended consequences. This tension is what much of The Quest for Cosmic Justice is about (with Sowell siding almost exclusively with the conservative camp).
Even though I disagree with much of his politics, it’s always a treat reading his take on the dangers of left-wing progressive thought. He is a beautiful writer and his rhetorical skills are unmatched in the world of non-fiction writing. That said, he often fails to assess the more moderate strands of left-wing thought, which makes conservatism seem like the only sane stance (eg. instead of a mixed economy vs. a more free market state, he looks at old-fashioned socialism vs. capitalism).
Progressives and conservatives alike should read Sowell. The former, so that they can better appreciate that not all conservatives are evil, and the latter, so they can rediscover the respectable basis that’s been lost in modern conservative politics. (For those who’ve never read Sowell, I’d recommend starting here. It reads less academic than some of his other stuff.) (less)
flag6 likes · Like · comment · see review
Bryan
Mar 29, 2019Bryan rated it it was amazing
Another great work by Thomas Sowell. He covers a combination of economics, history, and politics, and is surely one of the most significant economic authors of our time. This book is no exception. This is a good book for those who want to hear a rational response to why "social justice" and "equality of outcome," while sounding noble, have very significant flaws.
The quest for cosmic justice, or social justice, tends to occur with a corresponding loss of freedom. Historically countries that have the most freedom are among the most prosperous. A greater amount of growth occurs, and a significant amount of the population will rise in their living standards. He warns about the dangers of pursuing equality of outcome, and echoes Milton Friedman, that people who give up freedom to obtain equality end up with neither. Freedom leads to prosperity, but that prosperity often comes about unequally. The poor in the US today enjoy a standard of living far above all but the very richest at the start of the 20th century. The inefficiency of political control of the economy has lead to many middle class citizens of those countries still have a lower standard of living than the poor in free countries. This may be best showed in the difference between East and West Germany, and North and South Korea. In these cases similar populations have followed two very different political and economic structures, and the result has been night and day.
One example he gives drives home the point with the sinking of the Titanic. Some lifeboats were launched from the Titanic, but not nearly enough for everyone onboard. Some people got on lifeboats while others did not. The most equitable solution in this case would have been having nobody get on a lifeboat (and resulting in a greater tragedy). However, rational people will clearly say that the having some people saved through lifeboats was the better outcome, despite it being a clearly unequal outcome.
He addressed some other common used phrases like "through no fault of their own" that have made their made their way into political discourse, and points out the flaws and inconsistencies they hold.
I would recommend this book to anyone, and easily give it a 5 star rating. (less)
flag4 likes · Like · comment · see review
===
Bob Nichols
Dec 08, 2021Bob Nichols rated it liked it
The (1999) book foreshadows the contemporary American political divide. Sowell contrasts two forms of justice. In one – and one that he vigorously subscribes to – “traditional justice is about impartial process rather than either results or prospects.” This is closely aligned with equality: Everyone plays by the same rules and you either make it or not on your own. This view is contrasted with those who believe that government’s role is to “mitigate and make more just the undeserved misfortunes arising from the cosmos, as well as from society. It seeks to produce cosmic justice, going beyond strictly social justice, which becomes just one aspect of cosmic justice.”
Cosmic/social justice types not only give preference to those down on their luck but they also seek to redistribute benefits from those who have to those who don’t. Thus, equality becomes equity. For Sowell, this ostensible an effort to give everyone a fair opportunity to compete is the argument for victimhood, entitlement, free riders and the welfare state; and it’s the argument for punishing those who have taken responsibility for their lives and have done well. These advocates want to make everyone the same (same results) even if, in Sowell’s mind, they didn’t work for or deserve it, and regardless of the cost on the rest of society. The cosmic justice mentality extends to foreign affairs. The peace and harmony that can be imagined becomes peace at any price. And defense expenditures are morally wrong. The money should be used to help the poor. For these advocates, “the quest for peace, like the quest for cosmic justice…exalts them morally.” It becomes “the vision of morally anointed visionaries.
This is the politics of today in the USA. On the one (and Sowell's) side, it’s the survival of the fittest mentality. You make it or you don’t; few excuses are allowed. On the other, it’s to rectify grievance. Sowell’s argument is enlightening, though it comes across as a near rant that I found distracting. Just as he sees the quest for cosmic justice as extreme, the same could be said for his point of view. It ignores these fundamentals: (a) one can’t compete fairly when the odds are stacked against one from the start; (b) unequal power leads to the slanting of rules, including for electoral success, that leads to further inequality of power and inevitably to greater and intolerable Hobbesian-like division; (c) racial discrimination continues and his white social Darwinism justifies doing not much about it; and (d) in this country’s polarized extremes, we’ve lost our common sense.
(less)
flag3 likes · Like · 1 comment · see review
===
مُهنا
Oct 26, 2020مُهنا rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: favorites
This made me think hard on what justice really is. How justice to some is sometimes injustice to others, how trying to do justice by some people will only cause them harm since we are applying our own definitions of justice disregarding the beliefs of those we are trying to help and what they want.
I think this is an important book for anyone heavily involved in social justice (whatever side of it you think you are) as it could identify issues with some of their ideologies that they might not have considered. (less)
flag3 likes · Like · comment · see review
Kim M
Nov 18, 2021Kim M rated it it was ok
Shelves: listened-to-audiobook, nonfiction, poc-authors
We as humans (myself included) excel at pointing out flaws in the values and logic of those who oppose us, but we are not so good at recognizing those exact same flaws in our own logic and values. I’m currently trying to read more books with a conservative lean to them to broaden my perspective, and thus far, that fact is the biggest takeaway. As I read conservative thinkers attacking progressives for some of the very same reasons that I myself criticize conservatives, it helps me realize that I can be just as blind as “the other side.”
In this book in particular, one of the main points that keeps coming back is the idea that those pursuing social justice are clinging to a vision with no regard for facts, and Sowell presents these people as having self-aggrandizing moral superiority and caring more about their vision than about actual people.
I have a lot to say about this.
First of all, this is a large generalization. Sowell does bring up some isolated cases that show specific progressive individuals caring more about their vision than facts and real people, and if the book were about the problematic nature of any one of these specific cases, I could be on Sowell’s side. However, he uses these isolated cases to create swooping claims about anyone fighting for social justice, and that just doesn’t sit well with me.
Secondly, there are people on all sides who cling to a vision with no regard for facts. The progressive leaning books I’ve read (which is, admittedly, not a lot) tend to focus on a specific issue and then dive deeply into the issue. They’ve all had deep, nuanced arguments that are rooted in academic literature with long works cited sections at the end. I’m sure there are plenty of conservative-leaning books like this, too, though I haven’t read them yet, and I’m also sure that you can find books by progressives that are as divisive and shallow as Candace Owens’s Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation. So the fact that Sowell is using this critique against ALL progressives and NO conservatives is deeply flawed.
Take, for example, the housing crisis. This was an example Sowell used to show that progressives care about the vision more than the people, and that they fight for their vision with no regard for facts. Just this year I read the book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond, which does a fantastic job of painting the personal nature of the housing crisis in the USA as well as presenting a research-based discussion of what can be done about it with an analysis of consequences. I suppose the book leans left, if only because our divisive two-party system (and books like The Quest for Cosmic Justice) tells us that only Democrats are allowed to care about social justice. But the point is that it’s an example of someone who leans left using research and analysis to make a case for social justice in the very area that Sowell is trying to use to discredit all who fight for social justice.
And thirdly, Sowell spends most of the book condemning progressives as being self-righteous and of caring about their vision first and logic/data second. Interestingly, this is essentially the premise of another book I read this year called The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt. However, Haidt’s book is a far less biased discussion of how this flaw is part of ALL humanity, not just one side of the USA political system. So if you’re interested in learning more about human self-righteousness and retroactive reasoning in a much less biased, offensive, and hypocritical manner, THAT is the book I recommend that you read.
Overall, I was less impressed than I thought I could be. Sowell spends most of the book in a blindly hypocritical attack against progressives as well as reminding us that it’s too hard to achieve cosmic justice so we shouldn’t even try. I would’ve been much more interested if the book had been focused on the negative consequences that a blind, well-meaning quest for cosmic justice can bring about if the discussion hadn’t turned into a broadly generalized “party vs party,” “good guys vs bad guys,” “progressives are self-righteous and dumb” kind of argument. He had some decent points to make, but instead of trying to communicate them in a way that would make a progressive individual think, he presents them in a self-righteous, lemme-just-pat-myself-on-the-back kind of way. (less)
flag3 likes · Like · comment · see review
