What’s Wrong with Being an Extremist? On Clarke and Coady’s Conceptual Arguments Against Anti-Extremism

Bibliographic Data

ID21701680
AuthorsMichael Lück (0000-0002-2452-5560, Charles Sturt University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume28
Issue5
Pages743-761
Publication date2025-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthical Theory and Moral Practice (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1386-2820 • E-ISSN: 1572-8447
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10677-025-10516-w
OpenAlexW4414514543
LanguageEN
References cited18

Extremism often carries “an unmissable and inescapable negative connotation” (Cassam 2021, p.34) and has become “an increasingly convenient insult” (Berger 2018, p.2). But what exactly is wrong with being an extremist? One answer is that the wrongness of being an extremist comes, at least in part, from the extremeness of their beliefs. I assess two arguments, offered by Clarke (2019) and Coady (2024), which reject this view and go further by suggesting that being an extremist is never, in itself, wrong. Drawing on two contrasting accounts of what it means for a belief to be extreme (the edge and outlier accounts) I reconstruct Clarke and Coady’s arguments and explore their implications. I conclude that, although their defence of extremism overreaches, there are nonetheless reasons to challenge the idea that holding extreme beliefs is wrong

Ontology · Philosophy of medicine · Philosophy of science · Political philosophy · Quine · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence · War, Ethics, and Justification

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