Trying Out One's New Sword: Mary Midgley (1981) Ethics and Contemporary Issues Professor Douglas Olena
Trying Out One's New Sword: Mary Midgley (1981) Ethics and Contemporary Issues Professor Douglas Olena
New Sword
Mary Midgley (1981)
Ethics and Contemporary Issues
Professor Douglas Olena
Moral Isolationism
27 Understanding other cultures is problematic.
Midgley describes one way of dealing with this problem.
“It consists in simply denying that we can ever understand
any culture except our own well enough to make judgments
about it.”
“Respect and tolerance due from one system to another
forbids us ever to take up a critical position to any other
culture.”
This is moral isolationism.
Moral Isolationism
27 Midgley suggests that this view is “not forced on us” and
“makes no sense at all.”
People feel this attitude is respectful.
However Midgley argues that in order to respect something
we need to know something about it, and if we claim that we
respect an entirely unintelligible culture, we must be
mistaken.
In order “to make a favorable judgment, however general and
tentative,” we need to have knowledge.
Example: tsujigiri