On Mon, 7 Feb 2005, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> --- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
>
> Love that rhetoric. Strutting. Savages, etc.
Coming from a lawyer, I'm not sure how to take that--
>
> But you know, Miles, relativism isn't a tolerant
> doctrine. If it is true for us but for them, it's true
> for us, so we take it as true. Ergo, since we agree --
> you too! -- that it's a wicked thing to do to
> multimate women to deny them sexual pleasure, it is in
> fact true for us that it is a wicked thing.
Yep, I agree.
> So why should we be relativists? Why not just say:
> this is an awful thing, but that's not a jsutification
> for imperialism? That way we avoid the irrelevant
> metadiscussion.
Again, I agree. I just want to emphasize that issues like this are in fact often used to justify imperialism (e.g., freeing the women in Afghanistan from the cruel Taliban). I have no problem with people making the moral argument; we just need to be careful about linking the moral argument to political decisions, especially when we're dealing with people who don't share our moral concerns.
Miles