Abstract

It is a personal matter, a point of autobiography, but it illustrates something that beats in the heart of Cillian McBride’s compact and quietly ambitious book, that I cannot myself choose to value, that I cannot myself choose to esteem, racial or homophobic bigotry. Hence bigots cannot justifiably demand that I recognize the alleged value of their bigotry; nor can they demand such recognition from society more generally, esteem being tied in this way to sincere evaluation. Although a failure to obtain social recognition might result in a loss of self-esteem for some bigots, and although this would in a way be bad, this negative result would be, in another way, simply too bad for bigotry.