Mary Midgley – Trying Out One’s New Sword

February 26, 2010 ayamiz
Tags: moral isolation

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Moral-Problems-8th-Eighth/dp/B001F6L2JQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264996150&sr=8-3-spell

Quote: “It consists in simply denying that we can ever understand any culture except our own, well enough to make judgments about it.

What I Expect to learn: I expect to learn about moral isolation and how it affects people’s perception of other cultures.

Review:

Moral Isolation is being judged by people because they find the culture of a certain person to be something that they are not used to. They are judging it because they don’t understand the culture of that person, so that’s make them isolated. The culture we only understand and can fully follow is our culture only, so we don’t have the right to judge it. That’s why Midgley, called moral isolation as being immoral. An example that I can give is that, in Japan, the way they eat their “soba” or noodles, is with a slurping sound, it is their way to give respect for the food that they eat. But foreigners find it weird and find it as something which is very disrespectful when eating. We should not, in the first place, condemn and say anything bad about their culture, because in the first place, we don’t understand them, so we are not in the right place to give them judgments. What should people do is that they should not isolate themselves from the cultures of other people, but instead learn to be open and understand their culture wholeheartedly. Since we are all living in the same world, it is just fit for us to understand one another and avoid condemning each other, because we are all human, but with just different cultures. We must learn to accept and understand that there are different beliefs and cultures in each country, but we are living in the one world, and we have to accept and understand whoever they are, so that we won’t be left alone and isolated.

What I learned:

• Moral isolation definition and application
• Moral isolation is immoral
• We are living in the same world, so we must understand cultures of people.
• We should not condemn cultures of other people, because we don’t understand them in the first place.

Integrative Questions:

1. What is moral isolation?
2. Why is moral isolation immoral?
3. Why do most people condemn other cultures?
4. Why is it important to understand other people’s culture?
5. Is moral isolation a good or a bad practice? Why?

Entry Filed under: Contemporary Moral Problems

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