tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13144649.post114326709280473596..comments2023-10-21T08:02:56.571-07:00Comments on No Dhimmitude: Cultural Relativism, briefly.Daghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13144649.post-1143420855171599742006-03-26T16:54:00.000-08:002006-03-26T16:54:00.000-08:00It's hard to respond sometimes to comments because...It's hard to respond sometimes to comments because to do so would require a lengthy book.<BR/><BR/>At a guess, I suggest that social science is an analogy, nonsense cooked up by philosophes in France that eventually spread to America through the natural philosophy departments, and all of it based on Artistotlean analogies rather than science in the Baconian sense. It is, I suggest, Scholastic in approach. Democracy doesn't devolve when rational men act in their own best self-interest in the public marketplace of ideas. It does devolve when ideologues and phantasists kerb the discourse and phantasise and police in the sacred-word tradition. Intellectual pursuit becomes Scholastic Aristotleanism. This is like that, therefore this is that; and if we look at the evidence we can see it based on this, therefore that; thus it is proved; and given the sacredness of the texts, truth is self-evident regardless of people mucking it up.<BR/><BR/>I'll cover a bit more of this in an up-coming post. Once again, you make me wnder about things I might not have had I been writing without contributions.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13144649.post-1143405172672301822006-03-26T12:32:00.000-08:002006-03-26T12:32:00.000-08:00Good stuff, Dag.Cultural Relativism is a natural o...Good stuff, Dag.<BR/><BR/>Cultural Relativism is a natural outgrowth of Anthropology, if the Anthropologists are being intellectually honest. Once recognized it becomes necessary to enact a method to strip away the layers of cultural prejudices in the pursuit of truth.<BR/><BR/>Physicists, and Astronomer, occasionally find themselves up against the same problem when bends and twists in light and gravity distort their findings, they must work to see through the perspective of the Earth and of whatever else it is they are looking through.<BR/><BR/>But, of course, this is not the same thing as when a culture decides it has no access to truth, because it's perspective is that of a windowless Monad (since you brought up Leibniz).<BR/><BR/>It would actually be interesting to also look into whether moral relativism is perhaps a natural outgrowth of Democracy. Is it not true that, if people are voting, albeit guided by a Constitution, over time they will vote according to popular tastes, dictated by trends, and the changing necessities spurned by technological innovation. Isn't it then natural that mistakes would be made, and that we may find ourselves asking, "Well, how did I get here?"Pastoriushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03169561459129778670noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13144649.post-1143320000509261042006-03-25T12:53:00.000-08:002006-03-25T12:53:00.000-08:00I think that without moral absolutes in ones perso...I think that without moral absolutes in ones personal life that life is banal and frivolous and meaningless. There's room here to go deeply into the mire of p.c. ideologies that we often take for granted as the way things are and have always been, concepts such as "moral contingencies." I shriek.<BR/><BR/>No one who knows me would ever mistake me for a moral or even an ethical man, but never you mind, I am adamant that morality, regardless of me, is universal and absolute. I might edge into shrill on occasion when confronted with moral and cultural relativism, and it does upset some of our reraders here, but they have no counter to universality. I'm not able to lay it out like Liebnitz's universal moral language attempts, but that's my purpose in witing this blog, and I will succeed somehow. All this inquiry into fascism is a way of seeing how we are consistently wrong; the point is to find a way to make right the mistakes we make. I hate failure. I will, therefore, succeed.<BR/><BR/>I know when I'm wrong. If I somehow miss that I can learn. I won't settle for anything less, and I'll struggle for this victory till the end. We must all do so. That moral authority is the nature of the point. It's why we're here.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13144649.post-1143317473946763162006-03-25T12:11:00.000-08:002006-03-25T12:11:00.000-08:00Without absolutes in the moral code, a culture can...Without absolutes in the moral code, a culture cannot survive as a cohesive entity.<BR/><BR/>Moral relativism is the undoing of our society.<BR/><BR/>What you have explicated here shows how deep the roots of these ideologies are, especially in academia, and helps to explain what so many turn away from examining the realities of Islam.Always On Watchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01216119321836479641noreply@blogger.com