On 8/25/06, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yoshie:
> I don't think so. Adopting other peoples' customs temporarily is what
> an anthropologist does professionally, and that doesn't necessarily
> make her really "one of them."
going to a seminary (which is what you were talking about when I
brought up the hijab) is not the same as going on an anthropological
expedition.
Until relatively recently in human history, seminaries were among the
destinations of nobles' sons who weren't their parent's first sons.
I'm sure few of them took religion seriously -- it was livings they
were after. That's one of the things that Jonathan Swift made fun of
in his satire "An Argument against Abolishing Christianity":
<blockquote>It is likewise urged, that there are, by computation, in
this kingdom, above ten thousand parsons, whose revenues, added to
those of my lords the bishops, would suffice to maintain at least two
hundred young gentlemen of wit and pleasure, and free-thinking,
enemies to priestcraft, narrow principles, pedantry, and prejudices,
who might be an ornament to the court and town: and then again, so a
great number of able [bodied] divines might be a recruit to our fleet
and armies. This indeed appears to be a consideration of some weight;
but then, on the other side, several things deserve to be considered
likewise: as, first, whether it may not be thought necessary that in
certain tracts of country, like what we call parishes, there should be
one man at least of abilities to read and write. Then it seems a wrong
computation that the revenues of the Church throughout this island
would be large enough to maintain two hundred young gentlemen, or even
half that number, after the present refined way of living, that is, to
allow each of them such a rent as, in the modern form of speech, would
make them easy.
<http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/swift/jonathan/s97ab/></blockquote>
BTW, my father-in-law almost attended Columbia, but he missed the
application deadline and attended Union Theological Seminary instead
and became a Presbyterian pastor. :->
And contrary to the anthropologists' pretensions, if they
have them, such expeditions change them and their lives (while of
course not making them "one of them").
In the same way that any study of a foreign language, economics,
biology, whatever, can change a person.
> One can certainly take interest -- even profound interest -- in other
> peoples' beliefs, customs, etc. without adopting them as one's own.
right. That's why I don't see you as an apologist for Tehran the way
some do. You're just studying it.
Any time anyone says anything positive about Iran, or puts negative
things about it in its regional or international context, or doubts
this or that allegation about it, one is said to be apologizing for
it. All anyone is allowed to be interested in Iran is its problems.
Just like the Cold War, except the name of the evil changed from
Communism to Islam.
Nowadays, the Reds have declined so much that we don't even get Red-baited. :-0
> In fact, that's what thinking persons should do. "One seeks a midwife
> for his thoughts, another someone to whom he can be a midwife: thus
> originates a good conversation," said Nietzsche. Those who already
> think like you can't be a midwife to your new thoughts.
nice quote, poor source.
Hey, take a look at this:
Ishay Landa, "Nietzsche, the Chinese Worker's Friend,"
New Left Review I/236, July-August 1999
<http://www.newleftreview.net/?page=article&view=1997>.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
