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The Dialogue of Cultural Traditions:
a global perspective
Dialogue, Cultural Traditions and Ethics
Lecture 5
The Possibility of Moral Knowledge
William Sweet
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Culture as ways of living, ways of
meaning, and ways of knowing
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Relation of culture and traditions and
practices
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Ethical traditions as cultural traditions
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How to respond to challenges?
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Criticism / response
Providing a positive view
Criteria:
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Meaning
Truth
Relevance
Sufficient evidence
The tradition of reason and rationality
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a) foundationalism
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b) the turn to the subject
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Its criticisms of religious and ‘tradition-based’ ethics
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i) rationalist-based natural law
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ii) Enlightenment (and post-Enlightenment)
rationalism and scepticism
Some contemporary ‘post modern’ approaches
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Alasdair MacIntyre
Jurgen Habermas
John Rawls?
Kai Nielsen
Jean Ladriere?
Postmodern criticisms (a summary)
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a) versus rationalism
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b) versus anthropomorphism
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c) versus essentialism, natures and natural laws,
universal character of morality
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d) historicity
We cannot know nature or reality in itself
Truth is not a correspondence of thing to the world
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And if it were, how does ‘morality’ fit with the world; what is?
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There is no ‘ground’ for any of our beliefs
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We can provide only explanations and narratives
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There can be explanations, but they are made within a context
We can try to ‘awaken’ or ‘educate’ the sentiments
We can provide sentimental education
The aim is ‘solidarity’ in ethics
There is moral progress
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Responding to post modern approaches
We can know reality
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Not all opinions are ‘on a par’
There is a purpose to sentimental education
We look for explanations of our feelings
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footprints
Why are babies worth more than bugs?
Is solidarity ‘reasonable’?
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Responding to skepticism
What is moral knowledge?
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How do we acquire this knowledge?
Relation of moral theory and moral education
Why dialogue? What kind of dialogue?