The concept of judgment has occupied a place of special importance in the tradition of Western thought. In antiquity and especially in the Enlightenment, judgment served as the rubric under which Western thinkers struggled to come to terms with how the world of human concerns is constituted in thought and, perhaps more important, how humans call for timely and appropriate actions. Recently, judgment has again emerged as a highly contestatory site for philosophical, rhetorical, and cultural reflection and inquiry.This book puts into contact a variety of responses to the question of judgment in...

Essays in the The Prettier Doll focus on the same local controversy: in 2001, a third-grade girl in Colorado submitted an experiment to the school science fair. She asked 30 adults and 30 fifth-graders which of two Barbie dolls was prettier. One doll was black, the other white, and each wore a different colored dress. All of the adults picked the Barbie in the purple dress, while nearly all of the fifth graders picked the white Barbie. When the student s experiment was banned an uproar resulted that spread to the national media. School board meetings and other public exchanges...