"Each pursues his own theory, little solicitous to correct or improve it by an attention to what is advanced by his opponents"
About this Quote
Dogma doesn’t just live in churches; it thrives in footnotes. When Malthus observes that “each pursues his own theory, little solicitous to correct or improve it by an attention to what is advanced by his opponents,” he’s diagnosing a professional pathology: the tendency to treat argument as a trench, not a workshop. The sting is in “pursues” and “solicitous.” This isn’t neutral curiosity; it’s careerist momentum, a will to advance a system even when contrary evidence is tapping on the glass.
Context matters. Malthus wrote in an era when political economy was crystallizing into a public battleground: poor laws, wages, food supply, population growth. These debates weren’t abstract; they implicated policy, class anxiety, and the legitimacy of reform. In that environment, theory becomes identity. To “attend” to an opponent is to risk conceding not just a point but an entire moral posture.
The subtext is quietly accusatory: intellectuals are not merely mistaken; they’re selectively inattentive. Malthus doesn’t claim opponents lack intelligence. He implies they lack the discipline of self-revision, the hardest virtue in any analytical field. The line also functions as a preemptive defense of his own controversial population arguments: if critics won’t genuinely engage, their outrage is less a refutation than a reflex.
What makes it work is its modesty. No grand sermon about truth. Just a clipped portrait of how debates actually rot: not through lack of information, but through an unwillingness to let information reorganize one’s loyalties.
Context matters. Malthus wrote in an era when political economy was crystallizing into a public battleground: poor laws, wages, food supply, population growth. These debates weren’t abstract; they implicated policy, class anxiety, and the legitimacy of reform. In that environment, theory becomes identity. To “attend” to an opponent is to risk conceding not just a point but an entire moral posture.
The subtext is quietly accusatory: intellectuals are not merely mistaken; they’re selectively inattentive. Malthus doesn’t claim opponents lack intelligence. He implies they lack the discipline of self-revision, the hardest virtue in any analytical field. The line also functions as a preemptive defense of his own controversial population arguments: if critics won’t genuinely engage, their outrage is less a refutation than a reflex.
What makes it work is its modesty. No grand sermon about truth. Just a clipped portrait of how debates actually rot: not through lack of information, but through an unwillingness to let information reorganize one’s loyalties.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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