Philosopher views
The problem of manipulation
Download 5.81 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- RELATIVISM IS EPISTEMOLOGICALLY FLAWED
The problem of manipulationThe final problem with relativism is perhaps its most serious shortcoming, namely that those who invoke “tolerance” for other practices or cultures are often apologists for horrible things which are unacceptable even by the standards of the cultures that relativists purport to defend. I want to give an example, which, while seemingly extreme, is nevertheless a real example of where relativism was invoked in the defense of practices unacceptable even within the cultures in question. The example involves “female genital surgery.” In certain Islamic African cultures, young women are subject to female circumcision, a painful and medically unnecessary procedure that seems unacceptable to most of the rest of the world. Outsiders view the practice as repugnant and patriarchal, since its goal seems to be the sexual control of women by men. Defenders of the practice, however, reply that it is integral to the cultures in question. These defenders are often critical of “Western” attempts to criticize or prevent female genital surgery. In response, legal scholar Mary M. Sheridan points out that “cultural relativism” has become a kind of shield to guard tyrants and chauvinists. She writes: “Those who support the continuance of female circumcision…hide behind the shield of ‘cultural relativism’ by arguing that others should not pass judgment and condemn the traditions and practices of cultures different from their own” (Sheridan, 71 St. John’s University Law Review 433). Similarly, Catherine Annis holds that the young girls subject to mutilation are not given the choice to live under a certain culture, but they suffer just the same. She writes: “The young girls who are at risk of female genital mutilation have the right to experience an adolescence and adulthood free of physical and psychological brutality. When the effects of female genital mutilation are honestly faced, nothing can justify it. Not culture. Not tradition. Not parental rights. Nothing” (Annas, 12 Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy 325). Anti-FGS activists similarly point out that many women in the very cultures described are so opposed to the practice that they flee their countries, send their daughters away, or take more extreme measures to avoid it. Is this a clear cut case of “universal rights” trumping “cultural sovereignty?” Is it a case of “western” notions of rights misunderstanding cultural uniqueness? I believe it is neither, but I also think that the relativists have more questions to answer than the feminists. If the victims of this practice so frequently oppose it, then there seems to be a weak basis at best for relegating it to the realm of cultural uniqueness. This does not mean that western notions of rightness are always right. It does not mean that cultures should not check their notions of universality against obvious differences. It does mean, however, that there is no real monolithic “culture” anywhere that can claim authority over its members. And if that is true, cultural relativism cannot be the basis of a sound ethic of rights or duties. This fact should not make us unreasonable absolutists, but it should make us suspicious of claims that “each culture is entitled to their own practices,” particularly when those pronouncements come from the elites in that culture, who have the most to gain from having their own human rights practices ignored or excused. Conclusion Relativism began as an effort to ethically admonish us to stop killing each other with absolutes. Because of this, relativism seems like a beautiful, liberating, democratic project. It is not. Tolerance, on the other hand, is a value which ought to be universal, and which can check the excesses of absolutism. But tolerance does not require the abandonment of the collective project to make the world a better place. BIBLIOGRAPHYArrington, Robert L. RATIONALISM, REALISM, AND RELATIVISM: PERSPECTIVES IN CONTEMPORARY MORAL EPISTEMOLOGY (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989). Brown, Donald E. HUMAN UNIVERSALS (Philadelphia: Temple University, 1991). Cook, John W. MORALITY AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Dilley, Roy. THE PROBLEM OF CONTEXT (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999). Donnelly, Jack. UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989). Fishkin, James S. BEYOND SUBJECTIVE MORALITY: ETHICAL REASONING AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). Fleischacker, Samuel. INTEGRITY AND MORAL RELATIVISM (New York: E.J. Brill, 1992). Harman, Gilbert and Thomson, Judith Jarvis. MORAL RELATIVISM AND MORAL OBJECTIVITY (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996). Harvey, David. JUSTICE, NATURE, AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF DIFFERENCE (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1996). Hurd, Heidi M. MORAL COMBAT (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Krausz, Michael. RELATIVISM: INTERPRETATION AND CONFRONTATION (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989). Moser, Paul K., and Carson, Thomas L. MORAL RELATIVISM: A READER (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Regal, Philip J. THE ANATOMY OF JUDGMENT (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990). Washburn, Wilcomb E. AGAINST THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL GRAIN (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1998). Wong, David B. MORAL RELATIVITY (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). RELATIVISM IS EPISTEMOLOGICALLY FLAWED1. RELATIVISM IS OUTDATED: ALL SOCIETIES HAVE NOW BEEN EXPOSED TO JUSTICE Martha C. Nussbaum, professor of law and ethics, University of Chicago School of Law, IDAHO LAW REVIEW, vol. 36, 2000, pp. 392-3. As a normative thesis about how we should make moral judgments, relativism has several problems. First, it has no bite in the modern world, where the ideas of every culture turn up inside every other, through the Internet and the media. The ideas of feminism, of democracy, of egalitarian welfarism, are now "inside" every known society. Many forms of moral relativism, especially those deriving from the cultural anthropology of a previous era, use an unrealistic notion of culture. They imagine homogeneity where there is really diversity, agreement or submission where there is really contestation. 2. MORAL JUDGMENTS ARE INEVITABLE: RELATIVISM IS AN ILLUSION Harry M. Clor, legal scholar, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE, vol. 45, 2000, p. 48. I am calling complacency the view that this way of life is viable and good enough for liberal America. At the root of this complacency is the assumption that a relatively respectable ethical existence can be maintained without any public morality or, indeed, without any serious attention to moral questions and the prerequisites of a good life. One just believes what one believes and others do, too, and it all works out harmoniously and nicely without a need for moral reflection or collective evaluation. If this is what tolerance means, then it is inseparable from shallow ethical self-satisfaction. ("Judge not that ye be not judged" becomes "Live and let live" or "different strokes," which becomes "I'm OK; you're OK.") Morally serious persons cannot avoid making judgments-about themselves and others too, because they care about good and bad, better and worse in social as well as personal life.
Joseph Grcic, professor of philosophy at Indiana State University, DIALOGOS 74, 1999, p. 128. One must still explain why there are moral values at all and why do they have the similarities they have. Is this just a coincidence? No, the existence of moral norms and similarities can best be explained as the solution to the problem of human co-existence in a socially enduring manner. Morality is the answer to the problem of maintaining social order among members of a species which both need others and at the same time are not genetically programmed (as, say, bees are) to cooperate. Moral norms channel human impulses and actions into ordered relations with the actions of others. They constitute a structure of instrumental rules or guidelines which define appropriate means for the achievement of human ends in a social environment. In other words, moral norms correspond to necessary social structures wherein a group of individuals with some anti-social tendencies continue to exist as a society with minimal conflict and inefficiency in meeting the needs of its members.
Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 5.81 Mb. Share with your friends:
|