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Culture and Morality Revisited Tom Claes Cultural Dynamics 1990; 3; 349 DOI: 10.1177/092137409000300402 The online version of this article can be found at: http://cdy.sagepub.com
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CULTURE AND MORALITY REVISITED TOM CLAES
Rijksuniversiteit Gent Aspirant N.F.W.O.
1.
Anthropologists and Moralists
In a review essay on morality and culture, Mary Douglas pointed out that there exists little communication between anthropologists writing on morals and the (Western) moral philosophers. Anthropological findings enter the ethical discussions as ’exotic examples.’1 She expects this situation to last for quite some time: Two conversations are running parallel, one the philosophers’, about the rational foundation of ethics, one the anthropologists’, about the interaction between moral ideas and social institutions. The conversations, as they are set at the present time, will never
converge.2
I think there is much truth to these observations and, like her, I believe that each can benefit by taking the other more seriously. I do not, however, fully agree with her analysis regarding the background of this lack of communication. According to her, the greatest responsibility for this division arises from the unwillingness of the moral philosophers to take anthropological data
seriously. As she
it, moral philosophy begins from an acultural homunculus, all cultural influences and limitations. This way moral philosstripped-off ophers can continue to work out the rational foundations of ethics, because the only thing the homunculus is not stripped off is his rationality and personal freedom. Viewed thus, cultural anthropology becomes a threat to moral philosophy. Typically, cultural anthropologists are concerned with the culturally determined way in which morality is forced upon the individual, stressing thereby the suit of clothes in which the philosophers’ homunculi come to us. If the debates go this way, they will never meet. Mary Douglas sympathises with the anthropologists. Philosophers should take anthropological findings more seriously and they should incorporate the latter’s findings. How this sees
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CULTURE AND MORALITY REVISITED
should be done remains unsolved but I do not think it to be surprising. As things stand now, it is impossible that it could ever happen and Douglas herself hints at this possibility. I would like to defend the claim that moral philosophy, at least for now, should not try to incorporate the findings of the anthropologists because there is not much to learn from them. This might appear provocative because it seemingly carries the suggestion that anthropologists should accommodate themselves to moral philosophy. This is not entirely true. My second claim is that cultural anthropologists, for the moment, should not try to incorporate the findings of moral philosophy either because they too have nothing to learn from latter. Making bold claims is easy, defending them is something else. To this, I will now turn.
only way I can try to defend these suggestions is by showing why anthropologists and philosophers have so little to learn from each other. The answer to this question lies in the fact that neither speaks about what the other wants to hear. Anthropologists are confident that they are speaking about the role of culture in human life and societies. Moral philosophers are sure that they are discussing moral issues. So far so good. But the problem begins when anthropologists turn to the investigation of the morality of a culture and when philosophers try to account for the role of culture in the formation of morality. The central difficulty has to do with the way the relation between morality and culture is perceived. In fact, the problem is more fundamental than Douglas assumes. According to her, it is possible to reduce the gap between anthropologists and philosophers if the latter were to give up some of their (culturally determined) views on morality. True, but this is not the whole story. The anthropologists have difficulties too while accounting for the morality that philosophers speak The
about.
This is the theme I treat in the next four sections. In section two, three, four, and five we investigate possible candidates for a debating ground between anthropologists and moral philosophers. If two parties can learn something from each other, it is because what they say is relevant to each other’s domain of investigation. This means that they talk about issues of mutual interest. There is no requirement that their methods be the same. Different viewpoints on the same matter is all that is needed, not the identity of the research-project. The relation between anthropologists and moralists is a troubled one. We will argue that the assumption that the one can contribute to the project of the other often rests on a misapprehension, and that where a contribution is made at all, it is not of a kind that gives rise to fundamental questions about the project of the other. In section two, we will argue that a large portion of the project of moral philosophy does not coincide with cultural anthropology, and that they
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CULTURE AND MORALITY REVISITED
independent of each other to a great extent. In section three and four, we will investigate whether anthropology of morals poses a challenge to Western moral philosophy. Anthropologists claim that culture is important in the formation of morality, but their account of morality does not have to endanger the project of Western moral philosophy. As far as the philosophers are concerned, the influence of culture is marginal, restricted to the colouring of a full-blown, elaborated version of morality. According to the views of philosophers on morality, what morality minimally involves is not subject to cultural variation. As we will see, anthropologists do not really challenge this. Another hot issue in the debate between moralists and anthropologists is the problem of relativism - cultural and moral. We will argue that the way the anthropologists investigate the universality of morality often leads to a confusion between the factual universality of the moral phenomenon and the feature of universalization in the Western moralities. We will see that in conceptual anthropology the problem of the universality of morality is clumsily solved. In section five we will evaluate the contribution of philosophers to the anthropologists their domain. are
The main intuition behind this article is the idea that culture somehow eludes of the formation of a society. Culture is credited with a lot but an account of its influence - whatever anthropologists might contend - remains superficial in most anthropologies. It seems very difficult to get a grip on what culture is and what it exactly does. We will argue that although culture is a special factor in the genesis and the sustaining of a society, it is not represented as something special, either in philosophy or in anthropology. Sections two to five are critical in tone. We do not want to end in a negative way. We think culture is important in the formation of morality and that moral philosophers can learn something from the anthropologists. For this to be the case, however, a fundamentally different approach to culture is needed. What is needed is a rethinking of the relation between culture and morality. In section six we review our findings and ask how cultural anthropology could pose a challenge to Western moral philosophy. an account
2. Anthropology and Ethics: The Nature
of Man
Cultural anthropology, as an investigation into the cultural formation of man, contribute to a theory on the nature of man and thus can be of interest to those who practice philosophical anthropology. In this section, we will argue that this is not the same project as normative ethics, in which the most important element is the justification of behaviour but not the construction of a model of man or a theory of human nature. can
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CULTURE AND MORALITY REVISITED
Douglas seems to think that, as things stand now, the discussion between moralists and anthropologists is blocked because of two reasons. The first reason is that the moralists are working with an incorrect model of man: a bad (philosophical) anthropology. The second related reason has to do with the alleged fear of philosophers when confronted by an alternative anthropological image, which suggests that they will have to rethink their arguments about morality. For instance, it may entail giving up central notions like freedom, equality, moral autonomy etc., thus abandoning traditional moral problems and
philosophy. According to Douglas, the philosophical anthropological model of the philosopher is that of the culture-free homunculus, a multilayered view of the human person, with an unchanging and universalistic core, surrounded by a culturally determined periphery. Moral philosophy is said to be uniquely concerned with this core, which is taken to be rational and free. This explains why the moralists ignore the information of the cultural anthropologist; it is not essential information since the locus of morality is situated at the core, not in the periphery. The central concept of morality seems to be freedom and personal autonomy. This freedom, according to Douglas, is threatened from two sides: biology and culture. Culture and biology place constraints on what is considered essential to morality. It is clear to Douglas that this traditional anthropological image is false and the only argument in its favour is that it is useful to block dissonant information from anthropology and biology. Reluctance to abandon their usual business makes the philosophers stick to this model. But is this portrayal of the background for the absence of communication correct? Construed this way, the (possible) discussion is about philosophical anthropology, regarding human nature, and the locus of morality. To a large extent, these are factual problems: what is the ’correct’ model of man and where to ’locate’ the locus of morality? Anthropologists do very useful work here. Human beings are far more ’open’ and are subject more to cultural variation than some moralists presume. In an anthropological discussion, moralist can learn something from the cultural anthropologists. However, they do not have to rely solely on the anthropologists. Moralists have often acknowledged the importance of a correct view on ’human nature,’ or what is involved in being a moral agent (see e.g. Derek Parfit on the concept of a person 3). But this anthropological discussion is not the same as the one the moralists are interested in. The search for a ’rational justification of moral behaviour’ is more than a factual problem, it is a moral quest. The rational foundation of moral behaviour as carried out in philosophical ethics is not the same project as that of philosophical anthropology. They stand in strong relation to each
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other. It is
a common place that normative moral philosophy should take into both the limits imposed on us by our constitution and the world we live in. To most of the moral philosophers, ought implies can. To formulate meaningful moral recommendations, principles, or moral advice, we need to know what we can reasonably expect from the other. Were it to be a fact that humans always, without exception, would buy their self-interest short-sightedly and that they, given their nature, could not do otherwise, then it would be nonsensical to try to get them to behave otherwise. We can only expect people
account
to do what
they can do. This way philosophical anthropology is important for moral philosophers. Anthropology claims that they have valuable information at this level. Anthropology provides us with a view on the limits of the abilities of man as man. But even when we possess ’the correct view on human nature,’ the ’correct anthropological model,’ we would not have justified a behaviour morally. Something more needs to be done. Moralists and anthropologists are therefore not always participants in the same debate. Why then should the absence of communication be to the ’detriment of the philosophers’? Why should they be interested? (Douglas herself notices twice that many of the writings of anthropologists are not interesting for moral philosophers, or that they do not touch upon what are central issues for the latter.) Anthropological data enter the philosophical debate as ’exotic’ examples, alongside curious historical examples, because they are illustrations in a discussion on the rational foundation of what to do. In a way, anthropological data on divergent practices can never endanger the ’rational constructions’ of the moralists. Most people do not live their lives as moral theories prescribe (as though there could be a ’complete guide to better living’ after all). This is no reason to change the theory but the moral agents. Utilitarians have been attacked because their ’theory’ is not realistic. Most people do not live like perfect utilitarians. But when the possibility of a utilitarian outlook on life is minimally established, the utilitarianists can go on to argue that it would be better for people if they lived as utilitarians. Sidgwick4 defended utilitarianism by showing how it is not contradictory to ordinary practice and common morality. Moralists are less concerned with what is the case than with what should be the
3.
case.
Anthropology of Ethics : The Nature of Morality
We are looking for debating grounds between anthropologists and philosophers of morals. Anthropologists think they are contributing to the philosophy of morals by providing pictures of ’differing moralities’ and by illuminating the role of culture in the shaping of moralities. Anthropologists speak about
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CULTURE AND MORALITY REVISITED
morality from their own background, their field of expertise: culture. Looking from the side of the philosophers we get a different picture. In making a possible contribution to anthropology, they are not so much looking for other moralities, but rather trying to account for culture. In the culture and morality issue both parties focus on what is central to the other their discipline. At least this is the picture we get. This way they think they contribute to the project of the other. In the following sections we will evaluate these contributions by means of role-reversal. We will ask, taking the role of an interested anthropologist, what the value is of the contributions of philosophers, and vice versa. We will use some authorities in the field as example. What we have to say about their work applies to others too, who go unmentioned. The key point to keep in mind is: are the opponents really a challenge? This means as much as: are questions formulated, problems generated that forces one to review ones own theoretical framework? a
We will elaborate some common intuitions. In the first cluster of intuitions e.g. that we all think that culture is somehow important; that more than one culture exists; that cultures are not reducible to each other; and that culture shapes morality (whatever that may mean). The second set of intuitions has to do with morality. It is regarded as something important and considered quasi necessarily present, resulting in the idea of the universality of the moral phenomenon. When we combine these intuitions something strange comes about. Taken apart they seem obvious, but put together they trigger some theoretical problems that, up till now, have not been met. We can summarize them in two questions: how does culture influence morality?; and, what do different moralities look like? It could be said that all we have to do to answer these questions is to look at the existing literature. But it is not as simple as that. We will argue that &dquo;one culture and one morality&dquo; provides the overall framework for the research done and the views that are defended. If culture is something fundamental and cultures differ, then, to the extent that culture shapes morality, moralities should differ fundamentally too. But we have no model, nor even an idea of what a different morality would look like. The second question remains unsolved, hence the first does not even get a semblance of an answer. If we ever hope to solve the question, we will have to solve them together, or leave them both unanswered. This complication will be further elaborated in the sixth section of the article. we find
Not all moral philosophy is exclusively ’forward-looking,’ that is to say, interested in trying to provide good grounds for acting. Philosophers sometimes pose the question: ’what is morality?’ Is it here perhaps that the anthropologist and the moralist meet? May be, this is the debating ground that
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Douglas is after. Let us look at what this kind of moral philosophy is up to and whether the homunculus argument holds this time. Interesting contributions should somehow challenge the ’received view’ of the other. What then is this view on morality and on culture? When we turn to culture we find ourselves in a swamp of definitions and approaches. It is very hard to find a common ground in those. (cfr. Kroeber’s inventory of definitions.5) At first sight this situation resembles the one in ethics. But this is not entirely true. Some attempts at providing a picture of this received view exist. We will postpone the treatment of the received view on culture (should there be one) to sections five and six, and turn towards morality first. see
G. Warnock distinguishes three ways of investigating the nature of morality.6 The first begins from the obvious fact that practices, some of them labelled ’moral,’ differ from group to group, from society to society, from culture to culture. Not only do practices differ, so do the views on those practices. What is held to be right or wrong differs too. Apparently one and the same practice, e.g. abortion, can be wrong in one culture, right in the other. In this option, morality is everything regarding these views. This is a sort of ’face-value’ approach to morality. It starts from a collection of data and whenever an evaluation is made of those practices, we can speak of morality. The range of views is immense; this does not, however, imply that moralities have to differ on a fundamental level. Diversities of view can exist in one moral system. It is possible that different cultures share one moral system while differing in appreciation concerning concrete issues. A second way of investigating morality consists of looking behind those diverse views. Morality has to do with appraisal; therefore we can construct a ’general theory of appraisal or evaluation.’ Whereas the first way of looking at morality is highly specific, focusing on what is considered moral, the second method is very general. The first assimilates morality to culture, the second goes after the generalities. Both methods are, however, indifferent to what morality really is. Listing evaluated practices, cataloguing differences in evaluations, and looking at evaluation leaves us with a highly indeterminate view on the peculiarities of morality. The most we can learn is that there are differences, but we already knew that; and that evaluation has some characteristics which have to apply to moral evaluation too. But we are interested in what makes moral evaluations moral, not what makes them evaluations. I can evaluate a picture, a football game, as well as saving a life. All of these are instances of evaluation, but only the last is a moral evaluation. What then is peculiar to moral evaluation? Good and bad are evaluative terms, but they can be used outside moral evaluation too, as in ’this is a good soccer player.’
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morality tackles just this problem. One tries to describe or demarcate ’the moral point of view.’7 What is the mark of the moral? The first two lines of inquiry assume that all cultures have a morality. You only have to look carefully in order to see what is moral and what is not. This as an open question for the third. When morality is something specific, it could very well be that some cultures or some people do not know of morality. The amoral individual and the amoral culture are logical possibilities. When philosophers embark on the first type of inquiry, their path is very similar to that of the anthropologists. The problem in this case is to determine the moral meaning of selected practices. Nearly everything can be moral because evaluative and prescriptive language has wide application. How can we be sure that what is presented as a moral practice or a moral view is really one? We need to have some views on what morality is before we can identify moral views. Our research has to be directed some way or another. Otherwise, we are arbitrary in selecting moral practices. The models of morality that guide this kind of investigation are more fundamental than the data their use delivers. They mould the viewer and the basis of selection. Either we stay at a descriptive level and we do not single out ’moral views,’ or we do select them but then we immediately bring in our view on what morality is. The anthropologist cannot avoid having a view on what morality is. Those views have to start somewhere for a large part they are taken from moral philosophy (e.g. morality as a system of prescriptions.) Put this way, the only way philosophers can learn something from the anthropologists they could not predict from their own work ’at home’ - diversity of views - is if the latter were to develop a model of morality that alters those of the philosophers. But this is not as easy as it seems at first sight. (Piecemeal tinkering on the boundaries of moral theories is not enough.) How can the anthropologists do that? By investigating the applicability of the models of philosophers, and not by presupposing them. But then, anthropologists have to do some moral philosophy themselves. The problem what morality is, or, better still, what it minimally presupposes has to be solved. These presuppositions, i.e., this model of minimal morality, is the object of the third line of inquiry. What is minimally involved in morality, and consequently, what is left open to cultural variation? What, if anything, is special to morality? When are evaluations moral evaluations? What is involved in being a moral agent? To these difficult questions, G. Warnock has proposed an interesting answer. We will briefly outline his answers to the three questions: what is morality for? (the object of morality), who is it for? (the moral agent) and how is it practised? The tricky problem is to evade definite views on morality as they are formulated and defended in distinct ’moral theories,’ say, in utilitarianism. A third way of
looking
at
-
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Such views represent specific positions on what morality is or should better be; but they can be easily questioned, as the ongoing debates between the members of different schools illustrate. Warnock stays at a higher level of generality enabling us to relate the different ’theories of morality’ to the general view on morality. Of course, one can always say that ’morality’ has no specificity, no special object, no minimal conditions and the like. Then morality becomes everything seems to me, there is no further need to in it. One might as well go fishing. be interested investigate morality, has some When ’morality’ determinate content, what can this be? Morality has to do with evaluation. But, as said earlier, not all evaluations are moral evaluations. The object of these evaluations are, according to Warnock, the actions of rational beings. In what light are they evaluated? As rational actions contributing to the betterment of the human predicament. Warnock has a gloomy idea of the human condition, the human predicament. Things are liable to go badly. People have needs and wants which they want to fulfil; they live in a fairly hostile natural and social environment; and humans have their own limitations too. Morality is a way of enabling a better survival, of making a better life possible in this situation. Human beings encounter many difficulties that can worsen their situation, such as limited resources, limited information, limited intelligence, limited rationality and limited sympathies.8 For his analysis, the details of which I will not explicate, limited sympathy is fundamental. When all other limitations on the human predicament disappear, it is still possible that some of us would make the most of us worse of. In this sense, the countervailance of limited sympathy is fundamental to human well-being. one
wants it to be. But
then, it
or even to
the ’general object’ of morality, appreciation of which may enable us to understand the basis of moral evaluation, is to contribute to betterment - or non-deterioration - of the human predicament, primarily and essentially by seeking to countervail ’limited sympathies’ and their potentially most damaging effects....its proper business is to expand our sympathies, or, better, to reduce the liability to damage inherent in their natural tendency to be narrowly ...
restricted.9
So this is what
words,
morality is about. At whom is it directed? Who, in other agent? Every rational being who can contribute to the
counts as a moral
betterment of the human
predicament:
be a ’moral agent,’ the kind of creature capable of acting morally well or and therefore liable to moral judgement in the light of his actions, is, as a ill, necessary condition, to be a rational being in just this rather limited sense namely, that one is able to achieve some understanding of the situations in which one may be placed, to envisage alternative courses of actions in those ...
to
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CULTURE AND MORALITY REVISITED
situations, to grasp and weigh considerations for and against those alternatives, and to act
accordingly....It will be obvious that rationality, even in this rather limited sense, is a matter of degree ... 10 A moral agent is one who can rationally perform moral actions, and moral actions are those which countervail the inherent limited sympathy. Next
the
question: how morality necessarily
those actions carried out? Is there any comes about, e.g. as a system of rules, or special way obligations? Warnock does not go this far. When morality has to do with ameliorating the human predicament, it is important that people would want to make those decisions. What is needed therefore in morality on a minimal basis, again, is the disposition to behave morally. When we combine the idea of disposition with the specific kinds of actions that are morally important, we can construe very general types of moral ’virtues.’ A lot of harm follows from doing harm for no reason, from abstaining from doing good, from discrimination and from deceiving other people and oneself. So we get four minimal virtues: non-malefiance, beneficence, fairness and non-deception. This is a view on what is, according to Western moral philosophers, very minimally, involved in morality.ll As you can see, it says a lot, but also very little: there is room left for cultural variation. Whatever variations, it all boils down to this crude, basic structure. From this model of morality, we get a different picture of what a ’homunculus’ can mean. It is not so much the ’core’ of an anthropological image, but rather a way of grouping the minimal conditions of morality and moral agency that, much perhaps to the disappointment of the anthropologists, are universal. Without these conditions there is no
comes
are
morality. 4.
Anthropologists on Morality
How do
anthropologists challenge philosophers? We will look into their presentations of differing moralities 12 and add another topic as well - a topic resulting from our intuitions: the universality of morality. 4.1. Anthropologists on different moralities Do anthropologists take this minimal morality for granted or do they question it? If the latter, what does it entail? We will answer these questions by taking a critical look at the work of Richard Shweder on the development of morality in young children. Especially, I want to focus on an article by Shweder, written in collaboration with Manamohan Mahapatra and Joan G. Miller in which they report on moral development in different cultural set-
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tings.13 Here, the strength and limitations of two well known theories about the origins and development of moral understanding are assessed: the cognitive developmental theory of L. Kohlberg and the social interactional theory of E. Turiel. After critically reviewing the validity of those theories, Shweder and his collaborators develop a ’social communication’ theory on the development of moral understanding as an alternative.
Shweder’s research is moulded by his aims. He wants to test both Kohlberg’s and Turiel’s assumption that the occurrence and the distinction between conventional and moral obligations is a universal. To classify obligations he uses two types of criteria: relativity vs. universality and alterability vs. unalterability. Universal moral obligations are universal and unalterable (universally binding and not changeable by social consensus); context-dependent moral obligations are relative (tailored to specific requirements of societies) and unalterable; conventional obligations are alterable and relative. A fourth class is labelled as ’incoherent’ (alterable and universal). The moral domain consists exclusively of universal and context-dependent obligations. According to Kohlberg, the awareness of conventional norms is a necessary phase before the child learns of non-conventional norms. Turiel too assumes the universality of the distinction but believes that both are present from the earliest beginnings of moral understanding. A second aim of Shweder is to assess the impact of culture on the conceptualization of morality. As is well known, non-Western cultures score low on Kohlberg’s hierarchical model. Does this mean that the morality of other cultures is in some sense less mature? By proving that the distinction between the conventional and the moral obligation is not a universal, and by constructing a plausible model by means of which he can show that those different moral codes are nevertheless rational, he hopes to paint a better picture of moralities of other cultures. Shweder compares the answers of two populations, one Indian, and the other on questions designed to evaluate the appreciation of social practices. His conclusions are as follows: 14 There are no substantive grounds to distinguish between moral and conventional events, nor even are there grounds to assume the existence of an universal class of inherently non-moral events. Every practice can be moralised in one way or another. His work with the Indians suggests that on a world scale, when we take into account non-Western cultures, the idea of conventional obligations plays a relatively minor role in everyday understandings of obligations.
American,
From his findings we can conclude several things concerning morality and culture. The most crucial is that some of the most influential (psychological) theories on the development of moral understanding are bad instruments because their presuppositions are not universally applicable. There can be no
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doubt that his research is important, both for psychologists and for those moral philosophers who do not like to theorize in the air. The impact of culture on morality has to be taken seriously. Moral philosophers, so it seems, can learn something from the anthropologists. But can they learn something more than the platitude I have just written down? How does culture interfere with the construction of the moral domain? How fundamental is this influence? And what will an intercultural theory of morality look like? These are the questions an interested moral philosopher wants too see answered. Let us take a closer look at Shweder’s own theory and see whether it can answer some of those
questions. Shweder criticizes Western theories about the origins of moral understanding. They are not confirmed by non-Western data. The reason for their inapplicability are the Western biased assumptions on which they rest. He then constructs a model that can account for differences in moralities without loosing the rationality of the moral code.
Shweder tries to explain the low frequency of post-conventional thinking in non-Western cultures. The reason for this lies not in the inability of non-Westerners to think morally, but in the cultural biased conceptual starting point of Kohlberg’s model: &dquo;there may be alternative conceptual starting points from which rationally to construct an objective morality.&dquo;15 According to Shweder, a moral code is built out of ’mandatory’ and ’discretionary features.’ The mandatory features are basic to every rationally defensible moral code. There are at least three such: the abstract idea of natural law, the abstract principle of harm, and the abstract principle of justice. Those features are the cultural universals of moral codes. Cultural variation enters at the level of the discretionary features. Shweder identifies six, which are inherent in the Kohlberg model:
conception of natural law premised on natural ’rights’; a conception of natural lawpremisedon ’voluntarism,’ ’individualism,’ anda ’priorto society’ perspective; a particular idea of what or who is a ’person,’ a particular conception of where to draw the boundaries around the ’territories of the self’; a conception of justice in which likeliness are emphasized and differences overlooked; and finally, a rejection of the idea of divine a
authority. 16
Since the rationality of the code is guaranteed where the mandatory features present, variation on the discretionary level and the resultant differing perspectives on morality do not mean that it is a less developed morality. Shweder makes many interesting remarks on those cultural variations when he works out the discretionary features of the Indian moral code. Thus far it seems as though Shweder really is presenting interesting data on non-Western moral codes. But is he? are
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Shweder starts from
a
basically Western model of morality:
the
obligation
system, identified by Bernard Williams as the ’Morality System.’17 According to
Shweder, the prominent role of conventional obligation (and the very of the notion?) has its origin in a specific cultural setting; why not
occurrence
then the specific type of obligation, identified as moral too? Why stop at the so called mandatory features? There are indications that the basic features of the model of morality that Shweder uses is at least as Western as the discretionary features he identifies in the theory of Kohlberg: his emphasis on unalterable obligations as the core of morality. As a result of this adherence to the ’morality system,’ the only place where cultural influences play a role have to do with the discretionary features and not the mandatory features. He never questions the latter. By not testing the universality of the applicability of the mandatory features, he restricts his investigation into the relation between culture and morality. For the moment, this suffices. In the next section, we will see that Shweder not only begins by assuming the minimal conditions of morality, but also misunderstands the nature of moral universalizability. The expectations of the interested moral philosopher - he who hopes to get better view on what fundamentally different moralities look like - are not met. It seems as though the anthropologist lost the morality, the non-Western morality he was looking for in the first place. The data of the anthropologist do not contradict the core of the ’common view’ on morality. a
4.2.
Anthropologists on the universality of morality
Let us summarize what we have got up to now. We tried to find out what the discussion between moral philosophy and cultural anthropology could be about. We noticed that while it is clear what cultural anthropologists investigate, there are two different, although not altogether unconnected, projects in moral philosophy. The first is one of justifying moral behaviour, better known as normative moral philosophy or normative ethics. A second project is the investigation of ethics itself. This is sometimes referred to as ’meta-ethics.’ Douglas complained that the moralists start from an inaccurate view on man: the anthropological homunculus. We know now that this homunculus is not so much an anthropological model of man, but rather a concept in which all the minimal conditions for morality are united. The concept does not rule out that there exist specific moralities that differ from society to society, or culture to culture. However, for the notion of morality to be meaningful at all, a common ground must be present in all those ’moralities.’ We introduced Warnock’s view as a possible minimal formulation of this common ground. Presenting a (elaborated) model as the model encounters difficulties within one culture too,
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the never ending discussions between members of rival moral schools illustrates. What is the real problem - or at least a part of it - between anthropologists and moralists? Why are the former irritated by the disinterestedness of the latter? It has to do with that one word most anthropologists shiver when they hear it pronounced in the field of morality - but also on other occasions: ’universality.’ as
Anthropologists and others often make two mistakes in dealing with the universality of morality.18 The first mistake is the easiest to uncover and consists in confusing factual universality and (normative) universalizability. The second is more complicated. The property of universality of moral principles is often taken to be a defining mark of the moral. We will see that this feature can easily be misunderstood and that this has some serious consequences for the anthropology of morals. I know of no culture - except perhaps the IK19 - that is labelled as amoral, in the sense that they do not know of morality at all. Nevertheless, anthropologists and readers of anthropological literature sometimes encounter descriptions of situations that the ’normal Western moral thinker and agent’ can hardly recognize as morally important ones. I am inclined to agree with the proposition that all cultures have a morality, as it has to do with being human and living together. It is a result of our human predicament. I think amoral persons exist, but that they are pathological exceptions. A pathological culture is imaginable too, but highly improbable, given the fact that morality is a factor in the survival although perhaps not the most important - of cultures and societies. I can agree too that as cultures differ, so do moralities too to a certain degree. However, I feel very uneasy when invited to accept practices like infanticide, clitorectomy or the like as morally just. The examples are known. Perhaps this is the result of my morality, and the problem lies with me. Perhaps I should become a relativist, and it could be true that everything can be morally just, depending on your moral system and on the angle of justification. Can I claim my morality to be universally valid or not? Is there a world-wide substantial agreement on some moral problems? Is this the result of coincidence or from the nature of morality? If there is no agreement, should there be one? What is it to be universally valid? Does that mean the same as ’universally acknowledged’ ? It seems as though you are either a relativist or a universalist, an amoralist or an imperialist Claiming universal validity for our moral judgements is different from claiming that our morality is completely like other moralities. The universalization tendency of our moral claims is grounded in the minimal conditions of our morality. It applies to every rational being, whatever views it may have. -
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363
As rational beings they are able to perform moral actions. Nobody claims that our morality is exactly like the morality of other cultures. The universality of morality as it is expressed in its moral propositions or its principles can be interpreted in several ways. (Our) morality is universal to the extent that the minimal conditions are universal. This is still an open question. It is possible that this minimal level lies at the basis of all possible kinds of moralities, but it might be the case that those conditions are only a specific way of presenting a still more fundamental level. It is hard to imagine what would be left of the specific content of the notion of morality when this should be the case. Such a deeper level is possible and, as we will see, plausible. The universality of morality on this minimal, or minimal-minimal level is a factual question, unless you make it universal by definition, but this is not very fruitful. The universalization tendency of our morality, the claim that whatever is right or wrong ought to be right or wrong for all moral agents is no factual, but a normative claim. It cannot be rebutted by pointing at another morality, or to an amoral community. It is not because somebody or some culture does not know of our morality, and perhaps has another one, that we have to give up evaluation of this person or culture altogether. Such cases are far more complex than intracultural evaluation and one can raise doubts whether somebody can be blamed for doing something he knew no alternatives for. (Gilbert Harman’s ideas on relativism centre round just this issue.2°) The key point, however, is that claiming universal validity cannot be identified with the idea that (our) morality has a world-wide spreading. Variations, and perhaps even amoral persons and cultures, can exist. The second mistake, the misapprehension of moral universalizability, is complex. Shweder identifies universality as a feature of moral obligation. In his research on moral obligations he has to be able somehow to track this aspect. What is his procedure? He selects practices and asks questions about them to his informants. The first three questions of his questionnaire are designed to asses the existence and the importance of an obligation which is associated with the practices; they go as follows:
more
1. Is (the behaviour under consideration) 2. How serious is the violation?
3. Is it a
wrong?
(...)
sin?21
Questions 5, 6 and 7 check the moral/conventional nature of the obligation, (we skip the unimportant 4th and 8th question): 5. Would it be best if everyone in the world followed (the rule endorsed by the informant)?
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CULTURE AND MORALITY REVISITED
6. In (name of a relevant society) people do (the opposite of the practice endorsed by the informant) all the time. Would (name of relevant society) be a better place if they stopped doing that? 7. What if most people in (name of informant’s the practice). Would it be okay to change it?22
society) wanted to (change
A lot is wrong with this questionnaire. One of the problems is the use of &dquo;wrong&dquo; as a selection device for obligations. Writing a text with a lot of mistakes is also &dquo;wrong&dquo;, and it can be very serious when it is done during an examination. Imagine Shweder asking me those questions, and imagine also that the selected practice is &dquo;not thinking about something nice, every evening before you go to sleep&dquo;. I always try to avoid that, and I am sure a lot of my friends do too. So I answer ’yes’ to the first question, although I do not find it a serious ’violation’ (of what?, I can ask myself). Is it a sin, you ask, but since I am not a believer I answer ’no’ (if something is immoral only when seen as a sin, a lot of my friends are amoral). According to Shweder, I now know of an obligation &dquo;to think of something nice before going to sleep&dquo;. Imagine him going further and asking me the next questions. I find no trouble in answering the 5th and the 6th question affirmatively and since I am rather fond of this
practice I answer question 7 negatively. Answers like mine are not stupid, when confronted with a questionnaire like this. Nobody told me that morality was involved, and even were I to know this, I could still intelligibly answer the way I did. However, not many would construe this obligation as a moral obligation, but according to the research device it definitely is one. Imagine now a researcher on morals, who is not yet familiar with my morality, getting answers like these. At first sight, something a-moral is labelled by me as moral. How could this happen? According to Shweder the unalterability of an obligation is a necessary feature of moral obligations. When we take a look at question 7,1 can without hesitation answer ’no.’ Of course the question could be improved by replacing ’most’ with ’all.’ But this is not the main problem. The fundamental difficulties lie with question 5 and 6, designed for identifying universality. They fail in doing this. An obligation or a rule is not universalizable when I say &dquo;that the world would be a better place if everyone would do like me - granted that I follow the rule&dquo;. Furthermore, the world could be a ’better’ place in many different ways without being morally better. The latter can be the case if and only if moral actions are executed by moral agents i.e., moral ’rules’ are followed by all. Universalizability does not follow from my doings and likings. It is the other way round. I do something because the rule is universalizable, because it is moral. But this is never investigated. The justification is left to the anthropologist. Perhaps he/she assumes that I am somehow unable to
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CULTURE AND MORALITY REVISITED
365
provide one. Perhaps I live in a culture which has a low level of reflexivity and, perhaps, I can only legitimize my answers by saying that thinking about nice things is my tradition. This way, the informant is unfairly treated twice: the ’universalizability’ is not what moral universalizability is about and my answers incorrectly become answers about morality; and my own legitimation is neither taken seriously nor investigated into. Shweder does not inquire why the behaviour under consideration is wrong. He can only assume that it is wrong - morally wrong that is. He is convinced that his questionnaire tracks morality. It can; but, as we just saw, it does not have to be successful in doing this even in the West. I answered in all sincerity and I did not endorse a moral rule at all. Something similar can occur when the questionnaire is used in other cultures. Imagine now an anthropologist dealing with my answers. No doubt he will be very puzzled with my answers, but he does not need to be disturbed by them. Since he did not ask me for a justification of my answers he can go on treating my answers as though the talk is about moral obligations. He is convinced of two things. Firstly, that I have a morality (morality is in this sense universal), and secondly that his questions can track this morality accurately. 4.3. The
humanizing effects of conceptual anthropology
The challenges anthropologists can pose for the philosophers are not met. But that does not take away the intuitions that guided their search. these are too deep rooted to be erased as easily as that. They have to be confronted. The failure of the challenge, however, is not identified as such. Naturally, the anthropologists will try to connect their answers to the intuitions somehow. How do they do this?
Anthropologists often show a very ambiguous relation towards the universality of morality. Denying that a culture has a morality - besides contradicting one of our intuitions - easily equates with degrading that culture to a level of inhumanity. We do not have to look far to see the effects of labelling somebody as amoral. When we use the word to describe a person’s attitude it can hardly be more damning.23 Mass-murderers and rapists fit such a description. It is understandable that ’condemning’ another culture to amorality is not easily done. It takes a lot of guts to frame ’the universality of morality’ as an assumption that needs to be investigated. But leaving the question open for further investigation, and treating it as a hypothesis could perhaps instil more caution in anthropologists. Research conducted from this ’humane perspective’ often leads to absurd conclusions - as we will see - and the price of ’granting morality’ is the transformation of members of other cultures into moral imbeciles and intellectual idiots. The main instrument in performing this task is the pet toy of anthropologists: concepts.
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Cultural variation in morality is not without limits. Not everything can become an object of moral evaluation. The first thing we have to notice is that there are two kinds of implausibilities. When infanticide is considered morally just in some culture, then we have a case where we have a difference on a specific matter. I can hardly imagine a legitimation of infanticide, although we could envisage exceptional situations where such an act is carried out. (Moral philosophers are fond of seeking such possible exceptions.) When we differ in opinions, the object about which opinions differ is common to us both. In our case, it is the treatment of infants. Also we make a distinction between morally relevant situations and situations which are not morally important. Your sleeping position is normally not seen as a morally relevant issue, who you are sleeping with, however, can be one. There is a difference between what is morally important and how we evaluate this situation, and between the object and the outcome of evaluation. Differences in view are common. In short: there are striking differences between the outcome of moral evaluation, moral views, and what is morally evaluated. the second. When I answered Shweder’s about: I seem to hold the moral obligation questions something strange to think about something nice before going to sleep. This might seem strange to you but Shweder offers us a way out of this puzzlement: I want to focus attention
on
came
while we have discovered that some principles and practices (...) are strong candidates for universal features in any moral code, we are far less confident that there exists a universal class of inherently non-moral events. Those ’deep’ moral principles that are shared across cultures do not characteristically lead to similar judgements about what is wrong or right in particular cases. Any event can be made moral by appropriately linking it to a deep moral princi-
ple. 24 This is very much of a blank cheque in the hands of the anthropologists. For example, could my answers be moralized? Surely they can. Pick out a ’deep principle,’ e.g. ’that we ought to serve God as well as we can’ (for the Christians) or that ’we ought to contribute to the general happiness’ (for the utilitarians). It is not hard to connect my practice to these principles. Thinking about something nice helps me sleep well so that I can better worship God in the morning (another possibility: thinking about something nice could mean praying), and by increasing my own happiness I contribute to the general happiness. The concept of a Christian God or the utilitarian concept of general happiness serve as a bridge between my seemingly moral practice and the ’deep moral principles.’ We can thus incorrectly moralize practices. Something similar occurs when Shweder talks about India. According to Shweder, food habits are morally very important in India. Did you know that in India it is
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CULTURE AND MORALITY REVISITED
considered
a
very serious moral breach when the
367
day after the death of one’s
father, the eldest son eats chicken? That if widows eat fish two or three times a week, this is a serious wrongdoing? And that these are far more serious immoralities than not helping someone who comes to a hospital in an emergency because he cannot afford the treatment; or that someone who applies for a job gets it because he is a relative of the interviewer instead of another candidate who scored better on a test? Such odd results pose no problem to Shweder. The discretionary features of the Indian moral code make such
findings acceptable as moral data. This way everything can be moralized depending on how the discretionary features are filled in. The notion of morality itself becomes empty. To him, results like these are an accurate account of the Indian morality. We have a culture here that finds it more important to regulate what you eat, than fairness and benevolence. To us this seems strange. We are not doubting that the Indians answered Shweder honestly; we need not doubt the facts but what becomes of them. Confronted with such, prima facie, highly strange morally important habits, the anthropologist provides us with an explanation for this. We are told e.g. that the dead are offended when you do something wrong, and eating something you should eat not is an instance of this general, moral principle. We can now understand why the anthropologists stress so much the importance of culturally related ’concepts,’ and their strange abhorrence towards ’the universality of morality’ that moralists write about. Both themes are related. Anthropologists encounter situations that can baffle a ’normal Western moral thinker and agent.’ Various practices cannot be explained in terms of our everyday moral understanding; infanticide, when practised in a different culture, is not so much a sign of backwardness as it is a sign of a ’different rationality in morality.’ Apparent fundamental differences are ’explained away’ by introducing the conceptual level, identified as the cultural level. In so doing, the anthropologists show a strange ambiguous relation towards the philosophers’ homunculus. You can hardly find an anthropologist claiming that there exist cultures with moralities that differ at the fundamental minimal level. The strange results, however, do not make them suspicious about the ways in which the ’morally important’ situations are selected. It is not that, because concepts differ from culture to culture, morally important situations can differ indefinitely. Arriving at paradoxical findings should be a reason for examining one’s methodology instead of explaining away the strange nature of the findings by introducing concepts. I am not saying that concepts do not differ from culture to culture, much less that they are irrelevant. I am only suggesting that, given what morality is about and the fact that some anthropological data seem highly strange, this is a reason for doubting the validity of the way data were collected (a questionnaire
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CULTURE AND MORALITY REVISITED
tailored to
obligations). My
criticism is not
a
methodological
one
which
challenges the ’statistical’ (or otherwise) correctness of Shweder’s questionnaire. It is a philosophical point that suggests why Shweder does not have what he believes he has.25 From where we are now, one could get the impression that the moral philosophers had it right from the start, and that culture does not make such a difference when morality is the issue. But that is not the right picture. We never had to intention to claim that culture is of no importance to morality. As things stand now, anthropologists misconceived this relation. They wanted to break loose from traditional moral philosophy because they do not agree with the universality claims it makes. But this is not what is at stake.
5.
Philosophers on Culture
Let us now turn towards the philosophers their contribution to the domain of the anthropologists. We earlier situated their possible contribution at the level of accounting for the influence of culture. We will investigate into this by means of analyzing some positions in the cultural and moral relativism debate.26 We can roughly identify two philosophical approaches to culture. In the first type culture is identified with a belief system, in the second with (clusters of) conceptual schemes. B. Williams is an example of the first, R. Arrington 27 and H. Rosemont Jr. 28 as two opposing advocates of the second. One of the factors that contributes to the genesis of cultural and moral relativism is that culture has a special influence, a decisive impact, on morality. Practices that we do not tolerate within our own culture, when performed by a member of another culture (in their own culture), do not provide us with reasons to blame him/her, because they are considered ’moral’ by them. The validity of morality seems to stop at the cultural boundaries. When we ask why we do not blame him/her, the answer is that they are living in a different culture. We want to know why inter-cultural variation is more important than intra-cultural variation.
question is difficult and requires careful attention. &dquo;Now we have got the you&dquo;, anthropologist could say to the moralist, &dquo;You philosophers speak about the universality of morality, but here we have a different moral system in which it is possible to rationally justify practices that fundamentally conflict with yours. Perhaps we misapprehended the homunculus as an anthropological model and perhaps morality is universal in the minimal sense. From the moment, however, when we go to more specific, substantial problems we see a radical incommensurability of moral systems. You should therefore not speak The
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CULTURE AND MORALITY REVISITED
of the universality of morality.&dquo; I think that this is the relation between universality and relativity.
an
369
incorrect construction of
Let us for a moment assume that other cultures too have morality and that they differ from ours on a ’fundamental level’ -I put it between scare quotes because it is not clear any more what it precisely means. From this, a moral relativism on the intercultural level is assumed to follow. Tolerance is the only defensible strategy in dealing with other moralities and with other cultures.29 Again, a lot more should be said to sort out all the difficulties and mazes in the relativism debate but I only want to look at how culture is presented in this discussion. Perhaps, when we find out how culture is supposed to contribute to morality we will have a clue about the role of culture in morality. One of the lucid contributors to this issue is Bernard Williams. We will take him
as an
example. Williams starts by identifying the condition that have to hold before the problem of relativism can be raised at all. He describes two of them. Firstly, &dquo;there have to be two or more systems of beliefs (Ss) which are to some extent self-contained,&dquo;3o and &dquo;Sl and S2 have to be exclusive of one another.&dquo;31 S can cover any sort of belief system, be it a scientific theory or a culture. The most problematic condition is the second. How could one know that two Ss are exclusive of one another? More restrictedly, how to identify the differences? Williams proposes to tackle this problem by asking whether differing consequences follow from the Ss. It is not enough when a question is asked to members of Sl and S2, the one answers ’yes,’ the other ’no.’ One of them could be mistaken. Something more is needed, namely &dquo;that the answering of a yes/no question of this sort in one way rather than the other does not constrain either the holder of Sl or the holder of S2 to abandon the positions characteristic of Sl and S2.&dquo;32 This resembles the claim of the anthropologists and the relativists that members of different cultures can make rationally justified but opposing moral statements. But as we know, this can happen within one culture as well. Williams then considers the case in which two Ss are not that easily comparable in terms of conflicting consequences. Granted that such a situation could occur, for the notion of exclusivity to have any content at all, we must be able to make a distinction between intra-cultural and inter-cultural differences some way or another. Williams suggests that we can conclude that we are dealing with exclusive Ss when we realize that we cannot live in both. So, when we are confronted with another S, at least we can pose the question: can we live in such an S? This individuating criterion for exclusive Ss becomes his main instrument for assessing the problems of relativism. The confrontations between Ss can be notional or real, depending on whether the other S to us is an unreal or a real option.
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S2 is a real option for a group if either it is in their S or it is possible for them to go over to S2; where going over to S2 involves, first, that it is possible for them to live within, or hold, S2 and retain their hold on reality, and, second, to the extent that rational comparison between S2 and their present outlook is possible, they could acknowledge their transition to S2 in the light of such
comparison.3
The notion real option is a social notion. Not everyone of the group is meant. Personal eccentricities can occur, as with the modem scientist who still believes phlogiston theory to be true. The first thing to note is that Williams deals with the results, with the products (in his terminology: the consequences) of cultures: moral views and social organisation. The question why these differences come about is not solved except by saying that ’they have a different cultural background.’ We confront a multitude of different views, some coming from a different culture, yet others not. Relativism is only appropriate when we are in a notional confrontation. The reason why a confrontation is notional is specified in social terms: we cannot live in the alternative, our standard of living and our established views on the world (e.g. scientific views) make the alternative ’not a real option.’ Culture disappears twice. Firstly, the origin of the alternative, the different cultural background, is of no importance; secondly, the reason why an option is not a real option is linked to a non-cultural factor. Williams notes that we cannot live the life of a Samurai, nor can we live the life of an exotic African tribe. I can add to this: nor can I live the life of my grandparents, although they definitely share my culture. The ’truth in relativism’ does not relate to culture, but to situations, practices, views, all of them united in the notion ’belief system.’ Relativism only applies when we have notional confrontations, because we can withhold appraisal. Moral relativism is appropriate when the morality of another culture is no real option for us. But, according to Williams, today &dquo;all confrontations between cultures must be real confrontations.&dquo;34 Does this mean that the moralities of different cultures are real options for us, or that
there is no room left for cultural moral relativism? Can I decide to become a Hopi Indian? Sure, I can take over some of their views and ideas, but can I take over their culture, or can I consider doing this? I do not doubt that some people live at the cross-roads of cultures, perhaps they can in one way or another handle two cultures. It seems however counterintuitive to say that I can become an Indian. How should I do that? By taking over some of their views? Or all of their views and concepts and forget about mine? Cultures have a history. I share some, but not all of the views of my grand-parents, but I definitely share their culture. Should one want to become a Westerner, is it enough to take over
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CULTURE AND MORALITY REVISITED
371
should one take over older views too? Taking over a culture does not fall together with taking over different views. Culture resides at a deeper level. We cannot become African tribesmen, but are we real options to them? Williams argues that the notion of real option is not a symmetrical notion. It is not because we cannot go over to another life style, that the others cannot adopt ours. In a world where cultural contact is systematically deepened and my views,
or
strengthened by world-media, politics and trade, cultural cooperation, cultural adaptation becomes more and more important. At first sight, the leading models in this evolution are few: the ’Western,’ the ’Asiatic’ and the ’African’ cultural way of life. How resistant these cultures will be to each other is an open question. Williams notices this evolution too. His asymmetrical construction of the notion ’real confrontation’ is based on a specific view on moral knowledge, the details of which are not important for us. He distinguishes between reflexive ethical knowledge and non-reflexive ethical knowledge made up from culture specific ’thick moral concepts.’ Reflexive knowledge destroys the other kind of knowledge. The first type is dominant in the West, the other elsewhere. On a world scale, the first will come to replace the other. According to Williams a process of wold unification takes place. The Western morality will crush other moralities. Now we can understand what Williams meant in saying that all cultural confrontations are real confrontations. They are real confrontations for those cultures who are at a lower level of reflexivity, not for the Westerners. We can also understand why there is no moral relativism any more between cultures: Western morality is a real option for all. How can this be? Because our morality is the world morality. Williams takes a lot for granted. Western morality is the only reflexive morality; Western morality is the only mature morality. This is a curious colonial aspect in William’s ideas. At least, Shweder tried to think about morality in such a way that cultures are no longer hierarchized. He attacked Kohlberg just for this reason and tried to construct a model of morality that was able to explain how and why different mature moralities could exist side by side. He failed in doing this, we argued, but his point of departure is a lot less imperialistic and at least takes cultures more seriously. In Williams’ view culture disappears, or more correctly: only one cultures finally survives and differences fade out of view. The identification of culture with a belief system seriously empties the notion of culture. Why does Williams treat culture as belief systems? Why does he only speak of the results of culture and why does he use social feasibility as a criterion to distinguish notional from real confrontations? I think the answer is simple. Williams cannot imagine that cultural differences are more fundamental than differences in concepts and views. (This way, someone who
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CULTURE AND MORALITY REVISITED
lives in the Middle-Ages and thinks the world is flat lives in another culture what becomes of cultural traditions then?) Morality, to Williams, is universal and cultural moral differences are like intra-cultural differences.
Williams analyzes relativism at a high level of generality. Why the issue of relativism was raised at all (because there are cultural differences which lend meaning to the question), disappears. Just as anthropologists lose contact with moralities of different cultures, a philosopher cannot account for the cultural origin of differing moral views: the other culture.
Only the incompatibility of the belief systems is important. Culture becomes knowledge system about the world, not the factor that gives rise to alternative organisations of living. The fact that rival moral systems or practices are moral systems of a different culture is not important when problems of relativism are discussed. Culture does not bring in something special. The criteria to distinguish between moral systems are not linked to the fact that they are culturally varying systems. The fact that they are moral systems is less important than the fact that they are belief-systems, and moral systems behave in much the a
same way, and stand in the same relation towards each other, as scientific theories, or political ideologies do. Culture is however more fundamental than an ideology. It is the womb in which the latter can develop. But this aspect is not grasped by Williams. He enlarges the field of ethics, thereby acknowledging a wide variety. At the same time, those varying systems become less
of a challenge. The ’threat’ of different cultures disappears. Culture enters the discussion as a belief system. Cultures are like scientific theories and the problems that arise between such theories are the ones that arise between cultures.35 What happened to culture here? It sort of disappeared. Williams, like many others, cannot account for the cultural determination of morality below the elaborated level. Williams, and with him most philosophers failed the challenge The question how those beliefs are formed, what makes them cultural beliefs never raised. We will elaborate on this further in the next section. We will use two other philosophers on culture as a route towards this. is
Robert Arrington and Henry Rosemont Jr. situate the impact of culture on the conceptual level. (Note: we never questioned the fact that in different cultures different concept are present; we only want to show how an identification of culture with the conceptual level (a) never makes clear how culture influences anything; and (b) is not productive in the search for a theory about culture.) Except for this, they draw very different conclusions about morality and culture.
Arrington
notes that for
morality to be meaningful at all, some concepts morality is made up of Western moral con-
should be present. Our Western
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CULTURE AND MORALITY REVISITED
cepts. When you take all of these together, you get ’the concept of morality.’
Nothing new so far. Anthropologists like Shweder roughly take the same path. Arrington is not keen on paying the high price of ’stretching’ this concept as far as Shweder does: there are limits to what we are willing to call morality. Morality has to do with personal autonomy and integrity, respect for persons, avoidance of harm to persons and similar notions. (...) Our moral system constitutes morality; nothing else does.36 ...
He does not deny that people in other cultures can claim that they too have morality, but these can only be the ’so-called moralities.’ We could never have a moral discussion with representatives of those so-called moralities. a
I think Arrington is very interesting because of his honesty. When you identify morality with Western morality - which is the case with those who start from the minimal conditions of morality we identified - things that do not comply with our morality cannot rightly be called morality at all. Arrington draws this stern conclusion, - something which a lot of his fellow ’conceptualists’ are afraid to do (especially the anthropologists). Arrington is also interesting because he brings out a possible implication of equating culture with conceptual systems. ’Possible’ implications because they follow only when combined with some fixed view on what morality is about. When we want to find out how different moralities look like, we cannot identify morality with a specific cluster of moral concepts, without giving in to our intuitions. What goes wrong then? H. Rosemont provides us with a part of an answer. He tackles the issue of moral relativism and variation from a different angle. He notes that &dquo;a great many of the world’s languages have no words that connote and denote uniquely a set of actions ostensibly circumscribed by the pair ’moral-immoral,’ as against the nonmoral. &dquo;37 This is a well known fact. But something more is lacking: But now consider as a specific example the classical Chines language in which the early Confucians wrote. Not merely does that language contain no lexical item for ’moral’, it also does not have terms corresponding to ’freedom’,
’liberty’, ’autonomy’, ’individual’, ’utility’, ’rationality’, ’objective’, ’subjective’, ’choice’, ’dilemma’, ’duty’, ’rights’, and probably most eerie of all for a moralist, classical chinese has no lexical item corresponding to ’ought’ -
prudential or obligatory.
38
And he concludes: the Confucians not only cannot be moral ethical philosophers either.39 ...
philosophers, they
cannot
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Up to this point he seems to be going in the same direction as Arrington does. But he takes his intuitions seriously and he articulates a well known feeling, present among moral philosophers, that ’classical ethical texts’ are seemingly no ethical texts; at least they do not seem to deal with what we now recognize as ethics. 40 Instead of giving up the idea that other cultures and times have/had morality, he affirms this. Writing on the alleged absence of morality in Confucian ethics and noting the lack of the aforementioned concept-cluster, he states: But this contention is absurd; by any account of the Confucians, they were clearly concerned about human conduct, what consequences would follow from that conduct, and what constituted the good life. If these are not ethical considerations, what are?41
Arrington surrenders to Western morality, but Rosemont is not willing to do this. He draws a ’moral’ from this apparent paradox, namely that &dquo;the methodological question needs to be reformulated&dquo;42 as &dquo;... to what extent do these texts suggest that we should be asking very different philosophical question?&dquo;43 We want to take Rosemont’s suggestions seriously. Perhaps we were asking the wrong questions all the way, not only in the anthropology of morality, but in culture theory altogether. 6. The Absence
of Culture in Anthropology and Ethics
Why do anthropologists fail to frame questions able to track fundamental cultural differences? Why do philosophers fail in accounting for culture? Why are they unable to step out of the minimal view on morality? Answers to these questions are essential to having a better view on what the relation between anthropologists and philosophers is like. But they are even more important. They guide us in developing a better view on what the relation between morality and culture is. By answering these questions we can make a beginning in developing an alternative view on culture and its effects. overwhelming experience one gets from meeting another culture, from confronted with ’the other,’ cannot be ignored. The strangeness of some being culturally varying practices stays. Culture is important, but how? How could culture influence morality? What could be a philosophically interesting difference in morality? The
Let us first ask whether we can situate the impact of culture on morality. We
have, assumedly, a universal core of minimal conditions of morality. Take, as an
example, morality in Western culture. It is presumed that a virtue-based morality slowly came to be replaced or enriched by a morality of law
Greek
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rights. (cfr. MacIntyre44) This is an evolution in time. We also have a during the same period. What we call morality in our culture is a probably sort of mixture of remnants of older types of morality combined with more modem notions. All these are practically entwined. A certain degree of inconsistency can be expected. Different elaborated theories of morality single out some of the existing notions and leave out others. This is probably the result of a reductionist tendency in thinking about ethics, namely the tendency to present one concept, be it virtue, rule, happiness or obligation, as the fundamental moral notion. This way we have one minimal morality and different elaborated moralities, as they are reflected in the different theories about morality. If we stick to this picture, culture can be of importance at the elaborated level. But we have already seen that this was an uninteresting contribution of culture to morality. The really interesting impact of culture has to be situated ’underneath’ that alleged universal level. If culture is theoretically interesting at all, it has to be because, in some way or another, the minimal conditions themselves, not the elaborated versions of it, are culturally deterand
variation
mined. This gives us two different accounts of what culture can be and what it does. Locating the impact of culture on the elaborated level implies that we know what culture is about: culture is the sum of different concepts, the different content of the general categories, and the different beliefs. Take e.g. the concept of a person and the concept of dharma. It is said that in the East there is a different content to the concept of a person (cfr. Shweder’s discretionary features) and a concept we do not have: dharma. Both play an important role in giving form to the ’Indian morality.’ When we take all the concepts together we can relate their morality to the minimal morality, we can make sense of what we see they are doing and we can understand the meanings those practices have (to whom? Us or them?). The cultural level is the conceptual level which gives rise to different beliefs about the world - beliefs which sometimes can seem ’apparently irrational beliefs.’ Let us call this approach to culture the Culture 1 approach. When culture, on the other hand, is situated somewhere ’underneath’ the minimal morality, when it gives rise to a different minimal morality, culture is not the sum of the concepts we find in a culture, but something that causes something to be. Culture no longer colours something that is already there; their concepts which we do not have no longer function as a means to relate the elaborated level to the minimal. The impact of culture is largely unknown. Culture is no longer the totality of concepts but something that causes these concepts to be. Concepts function in a lived reality, whose parts they are. Let us call this approach to culture the Culture 2 approach.
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The
anthropologists correctly stress the role of culture in morality, but mistakenly situate it at the elaborated level. The anthropologists begin from an interesting and intriguing question, but never deliver the goods. If there is an interesting form to cultural variation, it has to be situated at the level of the minimal conditions. Because there is no alternative model of morality challenging those minimal conditions, anthropologists never really get a grip on the other culture. They never could predict how fundamentally differing moralities would look like. How come? It seems as though the problem is not restricted to morality alone. This inability of the anthropologists has something to do with difficulties in dealing with culture in general. Why does culture seem to escape from view? In this section, we will tentatively outline a possible answer that might also redirect the research into culture. Let us look back at Shweder. First, some observations: a questionnaire, designed to track the universal obligations of a culture leads us to a view of a culture where food habits appear to be more important than ’fundamental moral values.’ From a moral point of view, the spice you put on your food is more important than helping a ’fellow moral agent’ in need. Morality, we said earlier, does something in a society. It enables living together. But could a society survive when its most important moral recommendations are about food and eating-habits? Shweder’s research is paradoxical. One of his aims is to prove that conventional (non-moral) obligations are less frequent in India than in the West. But when we look at his findings, what he presents as moral, universal obligations in India are those recommendations we think of as conventions. This is a clue. Indians are not stupid. They understand questions (Shweder’s questions) and it is not likely that Shweder was cheated. They seem, however to make a ’mistake.’ What to us seems outside the moral domain, is to them morally important. I would like to suggest that we take this as our starting point. Instead of ’pulling’ those seemingly extra-moral actions into the moral domain by connecting them by means of culturally differing concepts to the minimal morality, why not think of their moral domain, their object of morality, and their way of morality as fundamentally differing from ours? Given what the minimal conditions of morality are to us, not everything is morally important. We now have a case in which extra-moral practices are fit for moral considerations. Minimal morality, we can conclude, does not hold in India. We should therefore not try to ’implement’ it some way or another, but we can try to paint another picture of culture and morality. This means a rethinking of the relation of culture to morality, and a different outlook on culture and morality themselves. How to get a view on the morality of another culture when their concept of morality does not relate to ours? This is part of the challenge the anthropologists can formulate for the philosophers. But both parties have difficulties in
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framing it as a challenge, in presenting it as disturbing and in trying to solve it.
What could a different morality look like? From where should we start? Inside or outside the minimal morality? The most promising point of departure seems to be outside our minimal morality. We identified the minimal morality as follows. It is about actions that relate to special issues: the countervailance of the effects of limited sympathy (egoism, self-interest or whatever you would like to call it); it requires an agent endowed with rational capacities in making choices and that has a tendency to purchase its own interest (otherwise the object would not be clear) and who can be held responsible for its doings; morality is carried out in evaluating actions by means of relating them to universalizing principles and norms that are designed to implement values into our life. We can negate some or we can negate all. In the maximal version we get a very strange picture. Morality is no longer about actions, nor about agents and there is no place in it for universalizing principles. From our side of the fence it would be like looking at Martians. Perhaps they go about in their world without actions and without actions and agents to be evaluated and still be moral creatures. When we would add the non-rationality that would follow from negating the minimal conditions it becomes even more disturbing. There is one lesson that we can draw from this thought experiment. When we want to present the other as an other instead of a variation of ourselves we should not start from the categories that make up our world, like person, agent, ’self-interest’ and the like and then giving them different cultural clothes. Perhaps cultures are not variations on seemingly culture-free, general categories. As you see, the reproach of Douglas against the homunculus could also hold the other way round. Anthropologists also start from seemingly culture-free categories and then fill them up with cultural content.45 The thought experiment makes it clear that the inability to picture a different morality is connected with the trouble of giving an account of culture in general. We hinted at this when we discussed Rosemont. Following the Culture 1 approach cannot provide this picture. But how to tackle the problem of accounting for culture in the Culture 2 approach? Problems in dealing with morality lead us to the necessity of reviewing our theory of culture itself. To this we turn now. What options are open to us for investigating culture? If we cannot negate the minimal morality and take this as a starting point, what else can be done? We think there is another way. But first let us take a look at the relation between theories, facts and observations/descriptions. It is a common-place to say that descriptions are not yet facts and that facts are not yet theories. Most of the time, in scientifically gathering knowledge, we start from the edges of this trio. Let us start from ’theory’ first. When we have a
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theory, we predict consequences and check them by observations/experiments. Having a theory means that you know what you are talking about. This does not have to mean that every term has to be ’onto logically clear’: e.g. what is ’gravity.’ It is a force, but what is ’force’? Is it of the same sort as a table? Having a theory means that you can set up experiments or that you can predict facts that can be checked. In this sense, there is no culture-theory yet. The most we can say is that if cultures differ, the people in those cultures will differ culturally. This sets the machinery of gathering differences and comparing them at work.
Is there an alternative culture theory available at the moment? Anthropologists want us to believe just this. You can claim that in order to study culture we do not need a theory in the sense just described. Perhaps culture cannot be framed in such a ’theory-prediction-fact’ model. Culture-theory is no science that aims at prediction and control. When we study cultures, you could continue, what we see and can describe is not enough. Those practices are carried out by subjects and whatever they do has a meaning to them that goes beyond external description. One may want to say that culture has to do with meanings.46 Culture is foremost in the head: how do they make sense of what we see? I think that such
approach to culture is not very fruitful. It all ends in interpreting interpretations of interpretations... When we ask an Indian whether it is a sin to eat beef he interprets our question (11) and answers it. We interpret the answer (12) as an answer to our interpretation of what the question is about (il). The indian from his side also interprets not only our question but also what the question is about (i2). Interpretation 11 gets accommodated to il. The interviewer knows what he is questioning about and presupposes that the other an
knows this too. This way il and i2
taken to coincide. The answer to the question becomes just that: an answer to a question and not an interpretation of what the interviewer takes it to be about. We are never sure that the other answers our question in a meaningful way unless he shares to a certain degree il, but that is just the whole problem.47 are
This does not have to mean that we can never come to understand the other. The ’interpretation-interpretation-interpretation’ model functions well between me and my friends. I have the impression that I can understand them. The interpretations of my friends do not have to be identical with mine in order for me to be able to understand them. If this identity were to be the case between people - if it ever could be the case that such interpretations could coincide completely - from different cultures, that would eliminate all the cultural influences.
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The 1-1-1 model easily give rise to relativist or universalist views on cultures. If everything we have are prejudiced interpretations which the other does not
share, we cannot but become relativists and the possibility of communication becomes difficult to explain. It is as though we understand each other by accident. If we start from the other side and claim that there exists communi-
cation, we become universalists. It is no accident that we understand each other, because somewhere our interpretations are compatible. Universalism and relativism follow from a specific approach to culture. Interpretive anthropology forces us into either the universalist or the relativist camp.48 The relativist claims defeat our intuition that we are able to understand other people, the universalist defeats our intuition that cultures differ. But what about understanding the differences? Is this not what cultural anthropology is all about? Perhaps interpretive anthropology is the best ’theory’ we have, but we can do better.
People in different cultures differ culturally. What can this mean? That they have different views? This is not enough. Some of my friends believe that there exists a personal God who created the universe. Personally, I do not share their view. Does this mean that I have a different culture? It is highly counterintuitive to say I have. Something more is needed. Views are not enough to demarcate cultures. Concepts, then? Individuating cultures by means of shared concepts fails for the same reason. But, we know that cultural differences exist. Why do anthropologists think they are dealing with another culture, when differences in views and concepts do not have to be signs signalling different cultures? When anthropologists confront a ’new people,’ how do they go about identifying ’the culture of that people’? Everything that is seen and heard is important. Culture pervades everything, consequently, everything is a sign of culture. You just have to gather the data, and then look for the unifying background. You have to construct a cultural description in which all facts fit. It resembles assembling a jigsaw-puzzle without knowing its solution. This gives us two related dogma’s of anthropology: everything is a sign of culture; and culture is the superframe in which everything gets meaning. Every practice, every sentence, has a distinct cultural property, a flag, or to continue the image used: everything has a mark to show that it belongs to the puzzle. This is very hard to believe. Imagine a non-Westerner confronting Westerners, and doing anthropology using the two dogma’s to track our culture. Saying that the earth is flat, that purchasing our own interest benefits society (or the reverse), etc. all are indications of culture. What could non-Western anthropologists, using this method, make of the culture of the West? Different cultures would be the result. The ’culture of the West’ would become a multitude of cultural models, some useful in accounting for some practices (by discarding dissonant
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others) some useful for others. Anthropology itself would become a collection of ’views.’ (Indeed, some have tried to construct an anthropology of anthropologies - it is to be expected) Not only would this kind of approach give rise to multitude of cultures when we expect to find one; there is something wrong as well. The idea that all views have a cultural flag or property is dubious. It rests on the assumption that culture influences everything, ergo it has to explain almost everything. Everything has a cultural property because culture pervades everything, and culture is present in everything because we see in everything a cultural property. But when we ask why this is an indication of culture, we cannot get further than saying ’it is a different view,’ or ’concepts are used that are absent with us.’ That will not do. We can only assume that there is a cultural property and identify it after we got an idea of the picture behind the puzzle. a
Anthropologists encountering a fresh culture look at everything they can see, they do not know what to look for. It takes an artistic skill to paint a picture that explains the facts. We now realise from whence the utmost importance laid on ethnographic field work and detailed description. It is a result of the absence of a theory in anthropology. One cannot predict how culture will reveal itself, one cannot specify what it does, so it is made to reveal itself in everything. The theory in this kind of ’culture theory’ is summed up by the two dogma’s referred to earlier. But this can hardly be called a theory. Interpretive anthropology is connected to the Culture 1 approach. Perhaps it is true that in this type of approach, the ’theory-fact-observation’ model is because
usable. When we discussed Williams, we saw how a focus on beliefs led him to treat cultures on the same level as scientific theories. A phlogiston-thenot
oretician has different concepts and beliefs than a modem scientist. But that does not make them into members of different cultures. Does the ’theory-factobservation model’ fare better when connected with a Culture 2 approach? Not really. Culture in this approach is something that is as yet unknown. We want to get a grip on it; but we cannot start from definite ideas of what it is or what is does, otherwise we would have a theory and this is not the case. We have some trivial ideas: culture does matter, it somehow shapes our lives, social and intellectual, and it is basic. When we know about culture, when we have a theory, we should be able to explain the differences in all cultural fields, and we should be able to predict consequences. Were it not for the first we would not be talking about something basic; were it not for the second, we would not be working with a theory. I think such a theory is possible. Let us turn towards the other edge of the trio. For the moment it seems that we cannot study cultures from a theory that is able to reveal us more than variations on themes. We should perhaps take a step back and begin at the less ambitious level: the descriptions. Suppose that
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cultures do differ, and that the difference is important. How to get a clue about those differences? Culture influences how we live, how we act and think etc. We can interpret ourselves and others. It is a common experience that whatever we do, we sometimes think differently about it than those who observe our actions. When I help someone, other can interpret this as doing something else, e.g. manipulating someone. Friends often learn about themselves and the others in these confrontations. Friends, however, often share the same cultural background. Something similar can occur between members of different cultures. Friends teach us to see things in a different way. Sometimes, the information we get changes our views and heightens awareness of ourselves. This is all we need to get the business of learning about culture going. Learning about the other should be in confrontation, not on the basis of assimilation of what we see to a common denominator, an acultural level of general concepts. The description others give of us and we of them should be taken seriously. When we see food-habits figuring predominantly in Indian morality, and we cannot get an intuitive grip on why this is the case, we can question the adequacy of our morality for them. If their morality is about food (to put it provocatively) then we can raise two questions: What is morality that it can be about food? and What is their culture like that this kind of morality makes sense? If we do not appropriate the first question to ’how are the minimal conditions of morality embedded in their culture?’ we can hope to answer the second question and get through to the cultural level.
When someone claims that he is liberating Kuwait and the other that he is defending a regained province, we do not feel the need to assimilate both claims to a ’right interpretation.’ We see what we see: they fight. Why then do we feel the need to capture the Indian into our interpretation? We see what we see: they do not eat it. If morality regulates the behaviour of agents, the impact of culture is just this: it determines what behaviour is and what agents are. What is behaving, acting and what is it that acts? Culture shapes ways of acting/behaving. You might think that we now have reached a level of thinking about culture where culture becomes meaningless. That is the reason why we need the description of the others and by the others. If culture does anything at all we must be able to see it, to read it from the descriptions. Culture is not about beliefs about the world, but about what makes those beliefs possible. Members of another culture can explain and interpret their own beliefs, but that does not guarantee us that we are mapping their culture when we collect those views on their own practices. They should describe us, and when we do not agree with their description, when we do not understand them, we have a clue to the cultural level. One of the clues to another culture is their description of us. This means that anthropology can never be the monopoly of one culture. If it does,
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it will fail. Only culturally theory of culture
differing cultural anthropology can lead towards a
7.
Concluding Questions
We began this article by taking seriously the worries of Douglas concerning the absence of discussion between moral philosophers and anthropologists. Douglas was right in thinking that anthropology could be of use to the philosophers. Her intuition was right, but she, together with many others, misconceived the nature of the interesting contribution that anthropology could make to moral philosophy. We claimed that moralists had nothing to learn from the anthropologists, and vice versa. But we specified that this was not principally so. As things stand now, we said, they cannot learn anything interesting from each other. We tried to analyze the reasons for this situation. Many anthropologists seem to think that their material should disturb the philosophers and wake them up from their provincial slumber. It was false alarm. Philosophers were never compelled to claim that there is a universally acknowledged elaborated morality, nor do they have to give up their universalisation tendency inherent in Western morality. They only claimed the universality of a minimal core of morality, and this the anthropologists never denied in their work. Philosophers could not learn anything that endangered the universality of this minimal morality.
We then argued that an interesting contribution of anthropology to moral philosophy is possible if the former were to investigate the cultural determination of this minimal morality itself. To pick up the image we used at the beginning of the article, culture influences not only the clothes in which the moral homunculus comes to us, but it also determines the moral homunculus itself. The question is: how far does it influence this homunculus? Is there anything left of the universality of morality? Some work is already done for Western morality. At least we have a clear view on what in the West minimally morality is about and we do have some ideas about its cultural background. Our morality, for instance, is a fundamentally religion-based morality. This explains the obligation-centred image of morality. We have an unconditional obligation towards God and his commandments. The universalisation-tendency as it is shown in our morality is related to this. This feature itself could be culturally determined. Can we imagine a morality does not universalize its claims? Can we imagine a morality that has a different view on moral agency than expressed in our minimal morality? There is something to be done by anthropologists. The Western philosophers would better take note of them where and when they investigate the relation
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between
383
and culture on this fundamental level, rather than saving a specific root-model of morality by introducing concept after concept to make sense of the strange results that follow from applying minimal or elaborated Western morality as a guide for intercultural moral anthropology.
morality
NOTES 1
2 3
4
DOUGLAS, Mary. "Morality and Culture." Ethics, 93, 1983, pp. 786-91. Idem, p. 786. PARFIT, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. SIDGWICK, Henry. The Methods . of Ethics London: Macmillan & Co., 1962 (7th ed.)
(1874). 5
KROEBER, A.L. and Clyde KLUCKHOHN. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. New York: Random House, 1963. 6 WARNOCK, G.J. The Object . of Morality London: Methuen, 1971. 7 See e.g. BAIER, Kurt. The Moral Point of View: A Rational Basis of Ethics. Ithaca/ New York: Cornell University Press, 1958. A part of this book is reproduced in a well balanced reader on the definition of morality: WALLACE, G. and A.D.M. WALKER, (Eds.). The Definition of Morality. London: Methuen, 1970. 8
Idem, pp. 20-21. Idem, p. 26. 10 Idem, p. 144. 11 J.L. MACKIE Ethics. Inventing Right and Wrong. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, ( 1990, (1977)) coins this minimal morality as ’morality in the narrow sense,’ and places Wamock’s account in the tradition of Protagoras, Hobbes, and Hume. He himself states 9
that: There is no point in discussing whether the broad and the narrow sense of ’morality’ is the more correct. Both are used (...). However, I am certain that something (...) as morality in the narrow sense will be an important part of any reflectively acceptable morality in the broad sense. (p. 107)
A sympathetic but critical account of this way of thinking about morality can be found e.g. in LUKES, Steven. "Taking Morality Seriously." In: HONDERICH, Ted (Ed.). Morality and Objectivity. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985, pp. 98-109. 12
On comparing moralities: from a philosophical point of view: EDEL, Abraham. Method in Ethical Theory. Indianapolis/New York: The Bobbs-Merril Comp., 1963 (esp. Part One: "Comparative Method"); from a sociological point of view: BARNSLEY, John H. The Social Reality of Ethics. The Comparative Analysis of Moral Codes. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972; and from an anthropological viewpoint: MACBEATH, A. Experiments in Living. London: Macmillan & Co., 1952. The problem of comparing cultures, in view of recent trends in anthropology, is dealt with in: HOLY, L. (Ed.). Comparative Anthropology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987.
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13
SHWEDER, Richard A., MANAMOHAN, Mahapatra, and Joan G. MILLER. "Culture and Moral Development." In: KAGAN, Jerome and Sharon LAMB. The Emergence of Morality in Young Children. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987, pp. 1-83. One could argue that it would have been better to take a more ’classical’ example from the anthropology of morals like e.g. Brandt or Ladd. (BRANDT, Richard B. Hopi Ethics. A Theoretical Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954. And: LADD, John. The Structure of a Moral Code. A Philosophical Analysis of Ethical Discourse Applied to the Ethics of the Navaho Indians. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957.) But, as will become clear, the general, and philosophical point made against Shweder apply to these works as well. We prefer to focus on Shweder and the like, and not e.g. on the research mainly concerned with value orientations. The - often sociologically and psychologically inspired - reduction of morality to value systems opens up horizons of comparative research of some sort, but are we still comparing moralities then? It would not be difficult to work this question out as a solid objection. (cfr. KLUCKHOHN, Florence, and Fred STRODTBECK. Variations in Value Orientations. Evanston: Row, Peterson & Comp., 1961; GOLDSCHMIDT, Walter (Ed.). Exploring the Ways . of Mankind New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977; and more recently Carolyn Pope EDWARDS, in SHWEDER, et al., 1987.) 14
SHWEDER,
15
Idem, p. 18. Ibidem.
16
et
al., pp. 34-35, in: KAGAN, J and S. LAMB (Eds.), 1987.
17 In WILLIAMS, Bernard. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. (Fontana Masterguides) London: Fontana Press/Collins, 1985, pp. 175-196. 18 For a useful collection of papers on universality and universalizability, see: POTTER, Nelson T. and Mark TIMMONS (Eds.). Morality and Universality. Essays on Ethical Universalizability. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publ. Comp., 1985. 19
TURNBULL, Colin M. The Mountain People. London: Cape, 1973. See e.g. HARMAN, Gilbert. "Moral Relativism Defended." Philosophical Review, 84, 1975, pp. 3-22. (Also in: MEILAND, J.W. and M. KRAUSZ, 1982, see note 23); "Relativistic Ethics: Morality." In: FRENCH, Peter E., Theodore E. UEHLING Jr, and Howard K. WETTSTEIN (Eds.). Midwest Studies in Philosophy; Vol III, Studies in Ethical Theory. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1980, pp. 109-121; and "Is There a Single True 20
Morality?" In: KRAUSZ, M. (Ed.), 1989, (see note 23) pp. 363-386. 21
SHWEDER et al.,
22
. Ibidem
1987, p. 42. In: KAGAN, J. and Sharon LAMB (Eds.), 1987.
23
Which probably explains the relatively high frequency of Martians in the literature moral relativism. 24
on
Idem, p. 34, my italics.
25
I know of only one successful attempt to evade the objections we make, namely: BALAGANGADHARA, S.N. "Comparative Anthropology and Moral Domains: An Essay on Selfless Morality and the Moral Self." Cultural Dynamics, Vol I, 1, 1988, pp. 98-128. 26 A collection of papers on ethical relativism can be found in: LADD, John (Ed.) Ethical Relativism. Lanham: University Press of America, 1985. One of the founding fathers of relativism is, of course, Melville J. Herskovits. A collection of essays can be found in
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385
HERSKOVITS, Frances (Ed.). Melville J. Herskovits. Cultural Relativism. Perspectives in Cultural Pluralism. New York: Vintage Books, 1973. For follow up: MEILAND, Jack W. and Michael KRAUSZ (Eds.). Relativism. Cognitive and Moral. Notre Dame/London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982. And KRAUSZ, Michael (Ed.) Relativism. Interpretation and Confrontation. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989. 27 ARRINGTON, Robert L., Rationalism, Realism, and Relativism. Perspectives in Contemporary Moral Epistemology. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989. 28 ROSEMONT, Henry Jr., "Against Relativism." In: LARSON, Gerald James and DEUTSCH, Eliot, Interpreting Across Boundaries. New Essays in Comparative Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. 29 HATCH, Elvin. Culture and Morality. The Relativity of Values in Anthropology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. 30 WILLIAMS, B., 1985, p. 132. 31 Idem, p. 134. 32
Ibidem.
33
Idem, p. 139. WILLIAMS, 1985, p. 163.
34
35
We
can
witness this too in the work of other philosophers. Richard Rorty writes:
Part of the force of Quine’s and Davidson’s attack on the distinction between the conceptual and the empirical is that the distinction between different cultures does not differ in kind from the distinction between different theories held by members of a single culture. The Tasmanian aborigines and the British colonists had trouble communicating, but this trouble was different only in extent from the difficulties in communication experienced by Gladstone and Disraeli. The trouble in all such cases is just the difficulty of explaining why other people disagree with us, of reweaving our beliefs so as to fit the fact of disagreement together with the other beliefs we hold. The same Quinean arguments which dispose of the positivists’ distinction between the analytic and the synthetic truth dispose of the anthropologists’ distinction between the intercultural and the intracultural.(p. 26)
RORTY, Richard. "Solidarity
or Objectivity." In: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 21-34. 35
ARRINGTON, 1989, pp. 252-254.
36
ROSEMONT, 1988, p. 60.
37
Idem, p. 61. Idem, p. 64.
38
See for instance: EDEL, May and Abraham EDEL. Anthropology and Ethics. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1959; ("We dare not say that Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is not a work on ethics!", p. 266); and ADKINS, Arthur, Merit and responsibility. A Greek Values Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960 : "The research from which this book Study in . 39
has developed was originally undertaken in the hope that it might make clear to me why I could not understand the moral philosophy of Plato and Aristotle; not, that is to say, the answers to individual questions, which frequently seemed clear enough; but the reason why Plato and Aristotle should have elected to answer these questions rather than others which seemed to me more interesting and more relevant." (p. 1)
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CULTURE AND MORALITY REVISITED
40
ROSEMONT, 1988, p. 64.
41
Idem, p. 66. Ibidem, my italics.
42
MACINTYRE, A. After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory. London: Duckworth, 1981. See e.g. CARRITHERS, Michael; Steven COLLINS and Steven LUKES (Eds.). The Category of the Person. Anthropology, Philosophy, History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Also: SHWEDER, Richard A. and Edmund J. BOURNE. "Does the Concept of the Person Vary Cross-Culturally?" In: SHWEDER. R. A. and LEVINE, Robert A. (Eds.). 43
44
on Mind, Self, and Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University 158-199. Press, 1984, pp. Essays of Richard Shweder are collected in Thinking Through Cultures. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Culture
Theory. Essays
45
Cfr. SHWEDER, R. and LEVINE (Eds.), 1984. anthropologists agree with this orientation, however, e.g. O’MEARY, J. Tim. "Anthropology as Empirical Science." American Anthropologist, Vol 91, n 2, 1989, pp. 354-369.
Not all
46
Carola Sandbacka criticizes J. Ladd’s analysis of the ’Navajo ethical code’ along similar lines ("Some Problems of Prescriptivism in Navaho Ethics." Inquiry , Vol. 27,1981, pp. 260-289.) J. Ladd interprets the "Navaho Ethical Code" as an example of "ethical egoism." She points at the dangers associated with starting from the idea that morals have to be systemized in codes: It is, I believe, true that the idea of morality as a code as such tends to lead our thoughts in a certain direction; for if morality is a code, then it must have a certain character; for instance, that of ethical egoism." (p. 267, italics added) 47
are aware of the provocative tone in this part of the article. We are familiar with attempts from anthropologists to transcend the dichotomy between universalism and relativism in some way or another. (Cfr. GEERTZ, C. "Anti-Anti-Relativism." In: KRAUSZ, (Ed.), 1989, pp. 12-34.) These attempts seem, however, to lead to the production of highly strange and uninformative texts (due to their ’over-informative’ nature perhaps, cfr. thick
We
recent
description). Geertz’s interpretation of a Balinese burial ritual is but one example of this. In "Found in Translation: On the History of the Moral Imagination." ( Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic Books, 1983, pp. 36-54) he invites us to consider the cruel ritual as an example of ’moral imagination’ thereby loosing, I think, all moral authenticity an earlier witness of the burial still felt when he cried out: To the British rule it is due that this foul plague of suttee is extirpated in India. (...) Works like these are the credentials by which the Western civilisation makes good its right to conquer and humanize barbarious races and to replace ancient civilizations." (p. 39)
Moralizing the ritual, and not condoning it, is an instance of moral relativism, however hard you might try to interpret away your own unease and the other’s strangeness.
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