[lit-ideas] Re: SoS-Chapter 2, Moral Frameworks

  • From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 00:29:11 -0700 (PDT)


--- John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 
> But what catches my eye is this passage:
> 
> "To know who I am is a species of knowing where I
> stand. My identity
> is defined by the commitments and identifications
> which provide the
> frame or horizon within which I can try to determine
> from case to case
> what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done,
> or what I endorse
> or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within
> which I am capable
> of taking a stand."
> 
> This language is all...so geometrical. And, yet so
> seemingly archaic.

*Sounds more geographical than geometrical to me. But
how does this approach survive a change of geographic
location and an encounter with a culture radically
different from the one which had hitherto provided
"the frame or horizon within which I can try to
determine from case to case what is good, or valuable,
or what ought to be done, or what I endorse
or oppose" ? Does one simply continue to follow the
norms of her own culture, regardless of the
difficulties and misunderstandings that are bound to
occur ? Or does one simply adopt the current
geo-cultural horizon as the relevant determining
framework, a.ka. "when in Rome, be a Roman" ? This
view of geographical location as determining one's
identity seems slightly provincial. 

O.K.

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