From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Fri May 02 2003 - 01:16:29 BST
Phyllis,
Phyllis said:
Second, I will encourage everyone to read philosophers (not the
philosophologists) - very readable ones too. Try Louis Pojman, one is "A
Defense of Ethical Objectivism" the other is titled "Who's to Judge?"
Johnny, I think you'd be very interested in one of Pojman's main points
against the ethical relativism you're advocating (if I'm understanding you
correctly): if it's wrong to go against the mores of one's culture, then
the reformer is always, without exception, morally wrong. Therefore,
Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Jesus Christ were morally wrong in their
actions. Platt - not all colleges and universities, even state schools,
have succumbed to the relativist bandwagon.
Matt:
As someone who gets read as an ethical relativist, like Johnny is here, I'd
like to merely point out on our behalves, that reading us as ethical
relativists buys into an either/or situation that Richard Bernstein calls
"objectivism or relativism": "_Either_ there is a universal, objective
moral law, _or_ the concept of morality is groundless and vacuous." (Beyond
Objectivism and Relativism, p. 13) The same goes for knowledge, for that
matter. Bernstein draws out a thread of conversation, ranging from Kuhn
and Gadamer to Feyerabend and Rorty to MacIntyre and Habermas to Wolin and
Arendt, that he claims is attempting to get _beyond_ objectivism and
relativism. The degree to which they are successful or not may be an open
question, but I think the conversation needs to be paid attention to to get
a concrete understanding of what these thinkers are attempting to
say. Bernstein argues that those that buy into the gigantic Either/Or
situation of objectivism or relativism suffer from "Cartesian Anxiety":
that which people suffer from when they continue to use the metaphor of a
"foundation" to describe morals or knowledge. In this sense, moderns are
those who suffer from Cartesian Anxiety and post-modern thinkers, like
those mentioned above, are those who wish to get beyond the foundation
metaphor. To characterize Johnny and myself as relativists, I think, is to
buy into a metaphor that we have dropped. This means that the epithet
means very little to us because we understand how we are not relativists
and deny that we are.
Matt
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