Can We Judge Other Cultures: Mary Midgley’s “Trying Out One’s New Sword”

Cultural relativism, in a nutshell, states that we cannot judge other cultures that we don’t belong to because we can’t understand them. Mary Midgley’s essay “Trying Out One’s New Sword” is a critique of this position which shows how the logical conclusion of this position might lead to ‘moral isolationism’ where moral judgments would be few and far between. In this video, we look at Midgley’s arguments, another video critiquing some aspects of Midgley’s essay, and finally there are remarks on that video. The purpose of this video is both to analyze Midgley’s essay but also to present an opportunity for critical reasoning as this essay is popular in intro to philosophy and ethics courses.

Music: Lo-Fi Beats To Philosophize to by D p S C

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