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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: The Right and Wrong Ways of Thinking Controversy continues over Senator Rick Santorum comments comparing homosexuality with incest as he argued for the government's concerns in regulating sexuality. Here is the complete the transcript of Sen. Rick Santorum's controversial interview available on http://Salon.com if you want to make up your own mind about what he said, but one quote stands out to me: Again, it goes back to this moral relativism[emphasis mine ;p], which is very accepting of a variety of different lifestyles. And if you make the case that if you can do whatever you want to do, as long as it's in the privacy of your own home, this "right to privacy," then why be surprised that people are doing things that are deviant within their own home? If you say, there is no deviant as long as it's private, as long as it's consensual, then don't be surprised what you get. You're going to get a lot of things that you're sending signals that as long as you do it privately and consensually, we don't really care what you do. And that leads to a culture that is not one that is nurturing and necessarily healthy. I would make the argument in areas where you have that as an accepted lifestyle, don't be surprised that you get more of it. What I find interesting here is the invocation of that dread philosophy "moral relativism", something that has become a rather naughty word in post 911 America. So, what is moral relativism? It must be French . This is how the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains it Moral relativism, as opposed to other forms of relativism, is the view that moral standards are grounded only in social custom. The most famous statement of relativism in general is by the ancient Greek sophist Protagoras (480-411 BCE.): "Man is the measure of all things," or in a more complete and contemporary translation, "A human being is the measure of all things - of things that are, that they are, and of things that are not that they are not." This reflects the view of many of the sophists that social convention (nomos) has a status above nature (physis). Although Protagoras's claim applies to any proposed standard of knowledge, moral values are at least part of his position. David Hume (1711-1776) hints at the notion of moral relativism in his brief essay "A Dialogue," appended to his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). However, for much of the history of moral philosophy, moral relativism was a controversial position that stood in sharp contrast to more conventional theories that advocated an ideal standard of absolute morality. At times, the notion of moral relativism was developed more by philosophical critics of relativism, rather than by overt philosophical defenders of relativism.[emphasis mine ;p] There are several things I find interesting here. The first is that if you do a search in Google on the term, "moral relativism" you will get a slew of websites, the majority of which are conservative sites telling us what moral relativism is and why it is ruining the country. Most interesting is http://www.moral-relativism.com, a website whose mission is: By God's grace, our mission is to win souls and disciple them. We strive to deliver compelling evidence for the Christian faith to seekers, believers, and a skeptical world. We seek to be non-threatening, practical and informative, using the technology of the Internet to answer tough questions about God, Jesus Christ, the Bible and Christianity. This site is proud of their moral, Christian stance and certainly isn't hiding it. After 911 - the attack on postmodern philosophy and certainly relativism went full-force with everyone from government officials, the Wall Street Journal, and Sunday school teachers, proclaiming that relativism is somehow destroying the moral fabric of the universe. Stanley Fish, dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois defended, not moral relativism, but the ideas behind philosophical discourse. Fish wrote in his now famous essay Don't Blame Relativism ... if by relativism one means a condition of mind in which you are unable to prefer your own convictions and causes to the convictions and causes of your adversary, then relativism could hardly end because it never began. Our convictions are by definition preferred; that's what makes them our convictions, and relativizing them is neither an option nor a danger. (In the strong sense of the term, no one has ever been or could be a relativist for no one has the ability to hold at arm's length the beliefs that are the very foundation of his thought and action.) But if by relativism one means the practice of putting yourself in your adversary's shoes, not in order to wear them as your own but in order to have some understanding (far short of approval) of why someone else-in your view, a deluded someone-might want to wear them,then relativism will not and should not end because it is simply another name for serious thought.Serious thought is what many intellectuals, among them postmodernists, are engaging in these days. Serious thought is what is being avoided by those who beat up on people for suggesting that it would be good to learn something about where our adversaries are coming from. These self-appointed Jeremiahs forsake nuanced analy-sis for the facile (and implausible) pleasure of blaming a form of academic discourse for events whose causes reach far back in history and into regions of the world where the vocabulary of postmodernism has never been heard. Saying "the postmodernists did it" or "the postmodernists created the climate that led to its being done" or"postmodernism has left us without the moral strength to fight back"might make these pundits, largely ignorant of their quarry, feel good and self-righteous for a moment. But it won't help us understand what our next steps might be or how to take them. In the controversy over Santorum's remarks, some conservative publications have stepped up to defend his comments, noting that the liberal media has taken them out of context and that Santorum is really concerned about "the slippery slope" of moral relativism - that somewhere along the lines, *culture*, which in this context is really *civilization*, must take a moral stand. But it seems to me that the only people talking about not taking a moral stance in life, is in fact the group who want to tell us what the right and wrong way of thinking is. I think that's dangerous. That's a group who abhors the notion of ambiguity in life - that there are wide ranges of beliefs and disbeliefs within a community and within individuals themselves. That's a group who is monotheistic in their thinking (not necessarily merely in their religion). That's a group that argues with me that I have to take a stand either pro or against some moral outrage, whether its the War in Iraq or the War about Abortion Rights or be condemed as a moral relativist. But I take up Fish's thoughts and I believe that serious thought requires the acceptance of ambiguity in life - that life is multifaceted - that there are polytheisms going on in a monotheistic world. That doesn't mean that I don't take moral stands in life - that I don't have positions on such things. It just means that in an intellectual discourse, I'm going to stay ambiguous in order to open up layers of possible meaning rather than to shut down any conversation into binarisms of right and wrong. I'll leave it to Santorum's constituents to decide if he's equating homosexuality with incest or merely decrying the slippery slope of moral relativism. In either case, however, I'll hold to my (eek!) postmodernist stance and stay ambiguous in life.
Poster Comment: I don't think Macary explained herself very well in this article. I think what she's trying to say is that you can be unable to see the other's point of view, which is associated with narcissistic, black-or-white, either good-or-bad thinking (fundamentalist thinking) or "moral relativism," in which you cn imaginatively put yourself in another's place, without necessarily aggreeing with them. We are being ruled by people who lack imagination and cannot see other people's point of view. Hence, we were attacked "for our goodness," not because we've been attacking them for 50 years.
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#3. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
From a hive perspective, homosexuality is not so good but it can be tolerated for as long as the individuals pay taxes and recognize the State as their master - and they do when they spend all that energy to get recognized by the State as 'married', 'just like normal people are'. The hive is a lot less tolerant of polygamy, because it would force the State to pay a lot more benefits to potentially non-working wives and widows. The hive can't accept the in-taking of prohibited substances, because they tend to diminish the productivity of potentially productive individuals who would not be good soldiers, workers or propaganda consumers while 'under the influence'.
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