General Forum - Forums about everything!




Philosophy/Psychology "Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits."-William James

Go Back   GeneralForum.com > Serious Discussion > Philosophy/Psychology

Waterproof
Hearing Aid
Your Ad Here! Online Colleges
& Degrees
WOW Gold Buy WOW Gold

» Sponsored Ads
 



  
You are currently viewing our forums as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions, articles and access our other features.

By joining our free community you will have access to post threads, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, take part in contests, and access many other special "members only" features.

Registration is fast, simple and absolutely FREE so please, join our community today!

If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact support.

Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools
Old 08-20-2008, 06:34 AM   #11 (permalink)
ExpectantlyIronic
©Veidt Enterprises
ExpectantlyIronic's Avatar
Posts: 1,688
My Mood:
Quote:
Originally Posted by kittykate789
For instance, Female Genital Mutilation is horrific, yet completely acceptable in many cultures, so can we condemn it.
“The fundamentalist parents of our fundamentalist students think that the entire ‘American liberal establishment’ is engaged in a conspiracy. The parents have a point. Their point is that we liberal teachers no more feel in a symmetrical communication situation when we talk with bigots than do kindergarten teachers talking with their students ... When we American college teachers encounter religious fundamentalists, we do not consider the possibility of reformulating our own practices of justification so as to give more weight to the authority of the Christian scriptures. Instead, we do our best to convince these students of the benefits of secularization. We assign first-person accounts of growing up homosexual to our homophobic students for the same reasons that German schoolteachers in the postwar period assigned The Diary of Anne Frank... You have to be educated in order to be ... a participant in our conversation ... So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours ... I don’t see anything herrschaftsfrei [domination free] about my handling of my fundamentalist students. Rather, I think those students are lucky to find themselves under the benevolent Herrschaft [domination] of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents ... I am just as provincial and contextualist as the Nazi teachers who made their students read Der Stürmer; the only difference is that I serve a better cause.” -Richard Rorty

I like that quote, because you have Richard Rorty--a rather extreme relativist--coming right out and saying that he would impose his morals on others because his morals are better. In that light, I would say that it is perfectly reasonable for non-absolutists to speak out against female circumcision, because there can be no doubt that it is a cruel practice whether or not we would want to say it is ultimately right or wrong. I think we can safely ignore such abstracts in the face of such cruelty.

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire

Last edited by ExpectantlyIronic; 08-20-2008 at 06:42 AM.
ExpectantlyIronic is offline Add to ExpectantlyIronic's Reputation   Reply With Quote


Reply

  GeneralForum.com > Serious Discussion > Philosophy/Psychology

Tags
absolutism, moral

Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
“Repay to the living that it is they find themselves owing the dead” coberst Philosophy/Psychology 3 01-03-2008 03:12 PM
Should sex ed be a public or private matter? Hinata Political News 90 09-24-2007 10:43 AM
Moral Hate Speech Godfearingsecular Philosophy/Psychology 10 04-25-2007 04:51 PM




All times are GMT -6. The time now is 03:33 PM.

Your Ad Here

Powered by: vBulletin | Copyright ©2000 - 2007, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
SEO by vBSEO 3.1.0
Site designed and maintained by NURV® Original Concepts, Graphics, and Design Copyright © NURV® 2008
All user submitted content, threads and posts becomes the copyright-protected property of GeneralForum.com unless previously copyrighted.
The views and opinions expressed on this site are not necessarily the views of the staff or administration.
We are not responsible, nor can we be held liable for information posted on this site, or what it influences you to do.
Rules & Privacy Policy

Waterproof Hearing Aid | Poker Design | Web Design | Game Forum | Pop Culture News | Money Forum | Money Complex | Stephen King