The objection — “If you criticize society, why do you participate in it?” — is not only illogical, it’s historically and morally incoherent. By that standard, one would have to instruct every critic of injustice, from Socrates to Frederick Douglass, that their dissent was invalid because they continued to live within the society they criticized. Should they have simply stopped breathing?
The slave who decries slavery is still a slave. The factory worker who condemns exploitation must still work to eat. The citizen who opposes corruption still drives on public roads. Even Orwell, who dissected the brutality of British imperialism, wrote his books in English and cashed royalties in pounds sterling.
Participation in a system one critiques is not endorsement — it is the unavoidable condition of living. The argument collapses when applied anywhere else: If you oppose pollution, why do you breathe? If you object to corporate power, why do you wear shoes? If you’re against state violence, why do you live under a government?
This is a rhetorical trick, not an argument. Its purpose is not to advance understanding, but to silence. Once you see its structure, you realize how empty it is.
Lien: Sophismes