Who never emails you? Bloom or Ingarten? If Ingarten emails you, does that mean that he's less high on the totem pole than Bloom who apparently doesn't? Is it culturally appropriate for either Bloom or Ingarten to email you if they are professorial muckety-mucks -- I mean, look at you, you email ME for Christsake! Can you blame Bloom or Ingarten for not emailing you? What if it should get out that they email you who is so low on the totem pole that you email me? Culture's have their appropriatenesses and their inappropriatenesses. It would be inappropriate for either Bloom or Ingarten to email you knowing you email me. 'Should' has nothing to do with it. As my psychologist asks: "do you consider that appropriate behavior?" He never asks "don't you think it was wrong to cop a feel on that nun?" It is socially inappropriate to vomit on the city bus. But is it immoral? I don't think so. Social appropriateness can outweigh morality -- and often does. So killing a daughter to protect the family's honor isn't immoral in the eyes of those who believe in the social appropriateness of such measures, in fact, many would think it immoral not to kill the daughter. Kant be damned. Go figure.
Mike Geary socially inappropriate as he thinks he should be in Memphis----- Original Message ----- From: <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "Eric Yost" <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2008 2:17 PM Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Some of you may remember ... ueber-gaffe
Some random reflections on culture, sex, cosmopolitanism, normativeprescriptions, single malt, being Canadian, the poetics of Roman Ingarten, andeven more sex, not necessarily in that order:Can one say that norm or practice P is "culturally appropriate" where the sense of this term is devoid of any reference to one or more "shoulds"? From a nativeperspective, the answer appears to be in the negative. If I say, as a malefaculty member, that it is culturally inappropriate for women to have access to the men's faculty club - where all who enter smoke cigars, sip fine Glenlivet,and relate romantic escapades with the past cohort at New College - then I am saying that women *should not* have access to the club.From an externalist perspective, however, what is "culturally appropriate" is understood simply in empirical terms: ""This is what they do, and they believe they should it." That claim can be made independent of the *assertion* of any normative or prescriptive claim involving a "should." It thus allows for: "They believe women should not have access to the faculty club but they're quite wrong about that and women should have access. After all, some of them appreciate afine malt and cigar, and most have jolly good stories to relate as well." So for an American to say that not remembering where you were on 9/11 is culturally inappropriate would seem to entail the view that Americans (atleast) *should* remember where they were given the extraordinary nature of the event. I don't see how "culturally inappropriate" can intelligibly be divorced from the "should" in this case. But then, it would be odd to say that Canadians,or Armenians or Hungarians could or should not share that same participantperspective. And this suggests that my distinction between the 2 perspectives - participant and externalist - breaks down in this case. And that because, itwould seem, some events are cosmopolitan in nature -i.e., thay are of deep concern to humanity as such, regardless of cultural, national or religious orientation. To say "You're Canadian, hence ..." is quite irrelevant to the case. I had a conclusion when I started this argument but,alas, it now escapes me. Candidate conclusions are most welcome. Walter O. (Not running for government office in Canada.)P.S. OK, so I lied about saying something about the poetics of Roman Ingarten. (Who the hell IS Roman Ingarten anyway?? Is he as famous as Harold Bloom? Henever emails me.) Quoting Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>:Hi, Phil! The "may" does not suggest a significant difference. You may disagree. You wrote: "I find Eric's comments interesting in that he seems to suggest that all Americans _should_ know where they were when they heard about the attacks of 9/11. . . . . I would be interested in Eric's explanation of why all Americans should know where they were on 9/11." Phil, your "should" strikes me as a philosophical land mine, and I'll save my comments on that "should" for the end of the post. My "may" and your "should" ... However, almost all Americans alive during Pearl Harbor knew where they were when they heard the news of the attack. The same with JFK; it's almost a commonplace of American culture that people remembered where they were when JFK was shot. Why should 9/11 differ from -- or be less than -- these other calamities? More were killed on 9/11 than at Pearl Harbor. Its cultural significance is on par with JFK's assassination. That's why Obama's remark is a gaffe: it was condescending and strangely alienated from mainstream ethos. Perhaps he was playing to those who, for political reasons, would marginalize the significance of 9/11. I don't know. Perhaps, because you are Canadian, you also miss the iconic status of "remembering where you were when" this or that major US event happened. It's not your country. Of lesser events, Obama's remark would be germane. For instance, I can remember where I was during the Challenger Shuttle disaster, and many of us do. Now the "should" in your post: the attempt to abstract some Kantian universal. At first, I thought you were merely being a sophist, but after some sleep, I see you are intrigued by the notion of obligation. I can only answer that there is no "should" in play here, merely a sense of the culturally appropriate. For example, if a US citizen, who had attained the age of reason when JFK was shot, could not recall where he or she was that day, they would probably be considered weird or socially retarded. And with some cultural justification. How disconnected and out-of-touch must one be not to have reacted to that event and stored one's relation to it in memory? It's akin to not knowing where one was when one's parent died. Surely you cannot make a moral argument from not knowing, but you can make an argument for cultural deficit or extreme self-centeredness. Best. Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
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