Judging and being judged: rehabilitating moral evaluation in comparative religious ethics.
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Authors
Robinson, Seth P.
Issue Date
2011-11-23T15:49:07Z
Type
Thesis
Language
en-US
Keywords
Comparative ethics. , Comparative religion , Moral evaluation , Undergraduate research. , Undergraduate thesis.
Alternative Title
Rehabilitating moral evaluation in comparative religious ethics.
Abstract
Scholars of comparative ethics—who inquire into a crosscultural span of moral systems,
both religious and secular—typically take a “neutral” approach to their subject matter that
tries, through careful exercise of empathy, to get at accurate representations of others’
moral beliefs and practices. Such a methodology seems to command “Judge not, lest you
be judged!”: take no moral stand, lest you be branded an intellectual imperialist. But what
if empathy only smuggles the scholar’s own covert assumptions into interpretation under
the guise of neutrality? What if we can’t help using the categories we’ve inherited from
our respective traditions in order to make sense of others? In this study, I recommend
that students of comparative religion junk their pretentions to empathy and seek instead
a form of sympathetic understanding that makes explicit the norms and purposes each of
us brings to cross-cultural comparison. I treat the process of casting off maladaptive
methods and dissolving conceptual confusions as a kind of pragmatist therapy that aims
to rehabilitate the practice of moral evaluation in comparative work without either marginalizing
our lived experiences (ours and our subjects’) or relapsing into untenable epistemologies.
Description
iii, 166 leaves : illustrations (some color)
Bibliography: leaves 157-166.
Thesis -- Departmental honors in Religion.
Bibliography: leaves 157-166.
Thesis -- Departmental honors in Religion.
Citation
Publisher
Wheaton College; Norton, Mass.