On 8/11/06, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I am not sure what kind of help you are seeking, but for what it's worth I think that political judgements entail moral judgements. More specifically, they seem to include judgements on which ends are desirable (i.e moral) and practical judgements on whether these ends are attainable and how they are to be attained. It's mistifying to me then how moral judgements can contain components that are absent from political judgements.
One empirical possibility is that the scope of morality is restricted to the range of what Meyer Fortes (a British social anthropologist) labeled "the axiom of amity," i.e., that set of social relations that fall within the boundary that divides kin from non-kin. Where kinship is perceived, morality applies. Non-kin have no right to assert moral claims.
This pattern is a familiar one in tribal and traditional societies where kinship and humanity are equivalent, so that non-kin equals non-human and exploiting, torturing or killing non-humans is, thus, not a moral issue.
From this perspective, liberal moral squeamishness reflects our embrace of the Kantian proposition that moral judgments should be universally applicable, at least in regard to members of the human species.
Tangentially, this may, at least in part, explain the attachment of conservative thinkers to scriptural literalism and Linnaean classificaitons. Darwinian evolution is, among other things, a ground for regarding every member of the species homo sapien as kin; thus falling within the boundary to which moral judgments apply.
Regardless, however, of philosophical wisdom, the persistence of our basic "tribal" mindset is evident from the labeling and images that appear whenever armed conflict between human groups occurs:"Barbarians," "Huns," "Japs," "Gooks," now "Hadjis" are only a few familiar examples.
John
=====
John McCreery The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
US CITIZEN ABROAD? YOU'RE THE DECIDER! Register to Vote in '06 Elections www.VoteFromAbroad.org ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
