Jim D. writes >Right. We have to learn how to steer between the Skylla of ethnocentrism and the Charybdis of cultural relativism.< Absolutely right. > We have to figure out how to learn from and apply Enlightenment values while respecting other cultures. < This seems to me off the mark. In any such interaction, I would be participating not primarily as an inheritor of Enlightenment values but as a revolutionary Marxist advocate of socialism whose credibility derives at least in part from a commitment to opposing exploitation, oppression and injustice. Part of that commitment has entailed a struggle to transcend an ethnocentric perspective among other things. Of course, such transcendence is inevitably incomplete and partial, but I don't think I would stand as the representative of one system of cultural values confronting the representative of another system of values. The specificity of the other person or persons is also involved. The positions will not be morally symmetrical. Socialist values are not the same as other values. At least in relation to the struggle for justice and the good society, the socialist value system is superior to other value systems. This is not a matter of self-righteousness, but has been established concretely, in history, by generations of popular struggle. This doesn't mean we shouldn't constantly listen carefully to other people's perspectives and show respect, but to pretend to be completely open minded in advance of the discussion is in the end pretty phoney in any case. >Consider so-called "female circumcision" (i.e., genital mutilation). How do we (elitist Euro-American white celtic ex-Unitarian male heterosexual nontransgenderal types like myself) criticize this crime (by our Enlightenment standards) without ethnocentrism? < I know Jim is being a bit ironic here but I don't think this is a remotely adequate description of the moral standing Jim would bring to a discussion of female genital mutilation. >two answers I can think of: rather than preaching, we can talk to others. We have to listen to their criticisms of us at the same time we ask them to listen to ours. We can't be rude, for example, assuming that the "other" people have specific opinions without trying to understand exactly what those opinions are. Respect is central.< I agree with this as long as it is not implying that the pro and anti female genital mutilation positions carry some sort of abstract ethical equivalence. Let's be honest. They don't. Cultural relativism doesn't allow us to establish this kind of ethical hierarchy. The international class struggle does. >and, we have to remember that the "other" is not a monolith (just as with "our" culture). There are victims (the mutilated) and victmizers. Both sides of this relationship of oppression have a right to be heard. Both sides have a right to define the aspects of the common culture that they want to maintain.< What? Did both Jews and Nazis "have a right to define the aspects of the common culture that they want to maintain." I know this is an extreme example but Jim seems to be straining after a liberal position here. >In the end, it's only the oppressed (the mutilated) that can truly liberate themselves from the oppression. All we elitist etceteras can do is help they do that. We can't do it for them.< Pragmatically this is probably the case. I suspect however that in a socialist legislature in a country where a small cultural minority was engaging in the practice of genital mutilation, Jim would have trouble voting against a law seeking to ban the practice. I'm certain as socialist legislators we wouldn't allow a cultural minority to continue to practice slavery, even in the absence of slave revolt. >The problem with Enlightenment thinkers is often not the thoughts they had, but the way in which their thoughts were applied, as a top-down imposition by folks who thought that they "knew better," missionaries, imperialist freebooters, corporations, etc. < Terry McDonough
