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eBook details

• Title: On Comparing Cultural Forms (Essay)
• Author : Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies
• Release Date : January 22, 2009
• Genre: Religion & Spirituality,Books,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 216 KB

Description

1. Can we validly compare forms and ideologies belonging to different cultures, traditions and Weltanschauungs? (1) The conventional answer is that we can only to the extent that we are in possession of universal, rational standards, enabling us to assess cultural forms and values in a non-parochial way. In fact, the very existence of such standards has been called into question times and again and some philosophers claim that one has to reject it altogether. Cultural comparisons are neither objectively valid, nor morally legitimate, they argue. What comparisons amount to is to covertly impose the standards of those who initiated them in the name of some allegedly universal rule or principle. As no such rule or principle, independent of one's own community and tradition, really exists, they say, most, if not all cultural comparisons lead to an unfair game, forced by the powerful on the weak: the former extract the benefits from the comparison, while the latter are always harmed and wronged. For instance, this is what Jean-Francois Lyotard, like many postmodern thinkers, believes to be the case, as we learn from his "differend" theory:

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