ANTHROPOLOGY: What is it?

Richard Shweder of the University of Chicago, whose paper started this discussion, has sent as an attachment a paper "Moral Maps, 'First World' Conceits and the New Evangelists" which appeared in Culture Matters, edited by two WAISers, Samuel Huntington and Lawrence Harrison. The paper is long, but Richard Shweder summarizes his views thus:

"In between the radical relativist view that "whatever is, is okay" and the monistic absolutist view, so reminiscent of late 19th century "White Man's Burden" attitudes, that "the West is best" there is plenty of room for objective versions of pluralism. In other words one can reject radical relativism without embracing any one of the (conspicuously ethnocentric) monisms (Western or otherwise) currently available on the intellectual scene. It is fascinating seeing the replay of late 19th century debates generated by your original message."

My comment: I believe there is an absolute moral standard which we have not yet discovered, but which, evolving from the Judaic-Christian ethic, departs from it. That ethic cannot be dismissed as the white man's burden, and to describe it as an expression of northern Europe is unhistoric and ungeographic.

Ronald Hilton - 8/31/00