3 ms·

I didn’t say the same, I said mostly the same. Cultures consist of a consensus. When the consensus shifts, the culture shifts. Politics operates within an agre

by simonh 3y ago

I didn’t say the same, I said mostly the same. Cultures consist of a consensus. When the consensus shifts, the culture shifts. Politics operates within an agreed framework at any given time. At the time of the founding of the USA some people had misgivings about slave owning, but even some of them still owned slaves. 100 years later there was a civil war over it. Today in the US slavery is almost universally maligned and only exists as a covert criminal activity. Was there a diversity of opinion at the time of the revolutionary war, and is there now? Sure. Was there a consensus then and now? I don’t see how you can argue otherwise.

bambax 3y ago
At the time of the civil war there was no country-wide consensus on the question of slavery, obviously. Today, on that specific question, there seems to be a consensus (although one can argue it's largely a legal consensus: the song "Rich men north of Richmond" is choke-full of dog whistles advocating for a return to the good old times of pre-civil war in the South, and its runaway success shows it resonates with many people). But there are a lot of other ethical topics where there is zero consensus, in the US, today. Guns, abortion, immigration, to name a few.
- simonh 3y ago
  >At the time of the civil war there was no country-wide consensus on the question of slavery, obviously. There was a consensus in the South. There was a consensus in the North. It's the existence of consensus at all that is the problem for Foucault's unconstrained relativism. The very fact that individual societies do have consensus moral frameworks demonstrates that individual moral frameworks are not unlimited by constraints such as environment and culture. This is why he says relativism is incoherent. The fact that it accepts that cultural moral frameworks exist, and that there are reasons for that, kills this hard form of extreme relativism stone dead. After all if human ethics were truly unconstrained, how can cultural norms exist? It is true that individuals can vary greatly, most people are not psychopaths but some are. Most do not experience extreme abuse as children that warps their perspective, but some do. Even so, these individuals have their ethical frameworks very largely determined by factors outside their control. A psychopath can't choose not to suffer from psychopathy, an abuse victim cannot just choose not to be warped by that abuse. They do of course have autonomy within a range, and it's not the same range as most of us, but it's still a range and these ranges are set somehow.

by simonh 3y ago

bambax 3y ago

At the time of the civil war there was no country-wide consensus on the question of slavery, obviously. Today, on that specific question, there seems to be a consensus (although one can argue it's largely a legal consensus: the song "Rich men north of Richmond" is choke-full of dog whistles advocating for a return to the good old times of pre-civil war in the South, and its runaway success shows it resonates with many people). But there are a lot of other ethical topics where there is zero consensus, in the US, today. Guns, abortion, immigration, to name a few.

simonh 3y ago
>At the time of the civil war there was no country-wide consensus on the question of slavery, obviously. There was a consensus in the South. There was a consensus in the North. It's the existence of consensus at all that is the problem for Foucault's unconstrained relativism. The very fact that individual societies do have consensus moral frameworks demonstrates that individual moral frameworks are not unlimited by constraints such as environment and culture. This is why he says relativism is incoherent. The fact that it accepts that cultural moral frameworks exist, and that there are reasons for that, kills this hard form of extreme relativism stone dead. After all if human ethics were truly unconstrained, how can cultural norms exist? It is true that individuals can vary greatly, most people are not psychopaths but some are. Most do not experience extreme abuse as children that warps their perspective, but some do. Even so, these individuals have their ethical frameworks very largely determined by factors outside their control. A psychopath can't choose not to suffer from psychopathy, an abuse victim cannot just choose not to be warped by that abuse. They do of course have autonomy within a range, and it's not the same range as most of us, but it's still a range and these ranges are set somehow.