tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post4743291691877714276..comments2024-03-28T08:57:53.180+00:00Comments on Darwinian Conservatism by Larry Arnhart: Fuambai Ahmadu on Female CircumcisionLarry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-2928785924191099982009-11-15T11:43:39.891+00:002009-11-15T11:43:39.891+00:00Paul,
Thank you for this instructive comment.
I ...Paul,<br /><br />Thank you for this instructive comment.<br /><br />I agree that in societies where parents force their daughters to be circumcised, the parents are expressing their natural desire to care for their children and do what is best for them as they understand it. That's why I suggest the best strategy for reform is not to condemn them, as if they were intentionally abusing their children, but to arrange for them to learn about the consequences of female circumcision and that there are alternatives. Where this has been done--in Senegal and elsewhere--villages have made collective decisions to eliminate female circumcision.<br /><br />It is true that our natural moral sentiments and desires often come into conflict with one another. We then learn by trial and error how to resolve those conflicts or how to manage the tensions. Sometimes we face tragic moral conflicts that cannot be resolved without great pain.<br /><br />There is plenty of evidence that many of the people who enforce female circumcision abhor the practice, but they force it on their daughters because they fear their daughters will be socially ostracized and unable to marry.<br /><br />The moral concerns for purity and holiness are connected with what I call the natural desire for religious understanding. Female circumcision is sometimes associated with religious belief, but sometimes not.<br /><br />As Ahmadu suggests, adopting "rituals without cutting" or with only minor nicking of the genitals would be a way of preserving the symbolism of ritual purity but without the harm from the severe forms of female circumcision.Larry Arnharthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-61386389479293919552009-11-15T06:07:29.863+00:002009-11-15T06:07:29.863+00:00I think that I understand your point about how som...I think that I understand your point about how some natural moral sentiments, especially those about unfairness and concern for the well-being of other humans, serve as the basis for the emergence of "natural rights" as a potent concept in human societies, and one that is potentially uniform across cultures. However, I am mystified that you don't appear to recognize as moral emotions any others than those concerned with caring for other human beings and a sense of outrage at injustice. Feelings of disgust and awe(especially towards what has been called divine) as well as strong preferential feeling towards one's own family are all moral emotions. If the cultural relativists are wrong, then none of those emotions, which are present in various forms in all societies, are also all part of a Darwinian moral naturalism. So those societies which force women to have circumcisions are acting on the basis of natural, moral emotions, just as much as Westerners are acting on the basis of natural moral emotions when they condemn female circumcision. <br /><br />I am not saying that the Westerners aren't right. I think the fact that delegations from all over the world were able to agree on a universal declaration of rights shows that human beings can agree about the significance of their intuitions or sentiments about fairness, injustice, and their desire to prevent human beings from harming other human beings. And for a lot of people, mainly liberals(take a look at the work of Jonathan Haidt of U.Va.), that is all that they consider to be within the purview of ethics and morality. For others, one's relationship to holiness, one's purity or impurity and the purity of those around you, your membership in a group(maybe a polis?) and your loyalty to its values and institutions, all of these are considered part of morality and ethics. They are considered to be a part of morality and ethics because they spring from natural moral sentiments, sentiments which are likely still felt by liberals but dismissed or ignored as not worthy of attention or cultivation. <br /><br />It is cultural imperialism for Westerners not to recognize that reprehensible acts like female circumcision are rooted in natural moral sentiments, just because some Westerners have decided that only some moral sentiments should determine what is moral and what isn't. To dismiss the concerns of non-Westerners about the purity of themselves and their society, about the loyalty of its members to its core values, and about the relationship of societies and individuals to the Gods raises a question; are all of our natural moral emotions compatible with each other? And if not, how do we go about choosing which ones to emphasize and which to de-emphasize?Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03918578746540002029noreply@blogger.com