There's a new book featured on the NPR website called "Cosmopolitanism: Finding a Moral Middle Ground". The first chapter is accessible here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5168294&ft=1&f=1032
The last paragraph of the the first chapter really sums up the author's thesis:
"The temptation is to look for a rule book that could tell you how to arbitrate conflicts like that -- but then you' d have to agree on the rule book. And even if you did, for reasons I' ll be exploring later, there' s no reason to think you' d be able to agree on its application. So there has long been a seductive alternative. Perhaps, even if we agree on all the facts, what' s morally appropriate for me to do from my point of view is different from what' s morally appropriate for you to do from your point of view. Burton, with his mastery of thirty-nine languages, was something of a freak of nature in his ability to penetrate different cultures -- to "go native," as we say, and do so time and time again. But most of us have that ability to some lesser degree: we can often experience the appeal of values that aren' t, exactly, our own. So perhaps, when it comes to morality, there is no singular truth. In that case, there' s no one shattered mirror; there are lots of mirrors, lots of moral truths, and we can at best agree to differ. Recall the words of Burton' s Haji Abdu:
There is no Good, there is no Bad;
these be the whims of mortal will.
Was he right?"
Sounds like this guy is simply proposing a new version of postmodernism. Nothing is true, everything is true, whatever you want to believe just as long as you don't offend anyone.
1 comment:
Thanks for turning my attention to this - it seems like an interesting read.
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