25. Sep. 06, 14:03
Cultural Relativsm
Saturday the libary was closed (cry out loud: I was so eager to work and then the circumstances made me just check e-mails :-)
Well, since my personal health depends on being connected to the wooooorld wide web, I was sitting outside the students restaurant. I probably scared some tourists who were on search for Goethe but I enjoyed the wind going through the trees, the birds whistling and me working (yes, I grew up in the country side and I hate being locked into buildings all day long, working outside is a compromise - welcome to the life of a split personality).
Anyway: I'm still with the book on Politics and Culture and the articles are still a little off topic and I'm still a very slow reader but I actually believe to improve day by day (no! you can't see that yet but I feel it :-)
The text was from C.B.Becker on Cultural Relativism which she examines taking the Declaration of Human Rights as an example.
Cultural Relativism is based on Philosophical Relativism which states (I hope I got that right; definitions always seem very abstract to me) that all experience is subjective and that knowledge is limited to the conditions of knowing (compare p.80). Cultural Relativism follows this idea by defining further that each culture's system of knowing is different:
Relativism teaches that people believe what thier culture teaches them to believe, and that they act in accordance with those beliefs. Also, relativism teaches that the only way to understand another culture is from the point of view of the members of that culture. (p.81) It reminded me very much of the statement of this one native Indian who said that we shouldn't judge another person before we hadn't walked in his shoes for so and so long.
The Declaration of Human Rights lives on the idea that there is a definition of human rights that is universal. This is only possible if the definition is held rather broad/minimal allowing very different regional interpretations. That is Cultural Relativism in practise. The dangers are obvious: where is the border between tolerance and blindness?
But: cultural relativism assumes that true beliefs arise from shared interpretations (p.83). It allows to start off with different interpretations and then move together toward an universal theory, to establish a common truth. In German there is the image of "Leute ins Boot holen" for this. Thinking about everday international politics shows what an enervingly slow process that is ...
Well, since my personal health depends on being connected to the wooooorld wide web, I was sitting outside the students restaurant. I probably scared some tourists who were on search for Goethe but I enjoyed the wind going through the trees, the birds whistling and me working (yes, I grew up in the country side and I hate being locked into buildings all day long, working outside is a compromise - welcome to the life of a split personality).
Anyway: I'm still with the book on Politics and Culture and the articles are still a little off topic and I'm still a very slow reader but I actually believe to improve day by day (no! you can't see that yet but I feel it :-)
The text was from C.B.Becker on Cultural Relativism which she examines taking the Declaration of Human Rights as an example.
Cultural Relativism is based on Philosophical Relativism which states (I hope I got that right; definitions always seem very abstract to me) that all experience is subjective and that knowledge is limited to the conditions of knowing (compare p.80). Cultural Relativism follows this idea by defining further that each culture's system of knowing is different:
Relativism teaches that people believe what thier culture teaches them to believe, and that they act in accordance with those beliefs. Also, relativism teaches that the only way to understand another culture is from the point of view of the members of that culture. (p.81) It reminded me very much of the statement of this one native Indian who said that we shouldn't judge another person before we hadn't walked in his shoes for so and so long.
The Declaration of Human Rights lives on the idea that there is a definition of human rights that is universal. This is only possible if the definition is held rather broad/minimal allowing very different regional interpretations. That is Cultural Relativism in practise. The dangers are obvious: where is the border between tolerance and blindness?
But: cultural relativism assumes that true beliefs arise from shared interpretations (p.83). It allows to start off with different interpretations and then move together toward an universal theory, to establish a common truth. In German there is the image of "Leute ins Boot holen" for this. Thinking about everday international politics shows what an enervingly slow process that is ...
