ABSTRACT
This chapter describes three distinct elements of a critical theory of prejudice: Firstly, prejudices lack experience; secondly, the self should be in control of its beliefs, which is the case if these are founded in its own experience; thirdly, therefore prejudices should be abandoned. Prejudice, then, is simply failure to think for oneself, or intellectual lieteronomy. As a number of Enlightenment authors have plausibly pointed out, authority is a major source of prejudice. Prejudice, Duelos, Edmund Burke and William Hazlitt maintained, forms an indispensable part of knowledge. The ideal of the siecle des lumieres, elimination of prejudice, then, would be self-defeating: it would result, in effect, in the destruction of knowledge. The economic justification of prejudice is both limited and problematic. In truth the objection under discussion is not an argument against the economic justification of prejudice.
