Mary Midgleys Moral Isolationism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Mary Midgleys Moral Isolationism - Essay Example To put it simply, because an outsider rearnot understand other cultures, he or she does not have the right to make judgments about other cultures. Midgley disapproves of this stance as it performs a honorable vacuum that tends to hinder ones critical thinking faculties, mans main evolutionary asset (36). Furthermore, moral isolationism is just another form of immoralism as it leans towards moral skepticism and the relativism of moral and ethical truths as it lays down a general ban on moral reasoning (36).Midgleys argument against moral isolationism is five-fold. First, she presents the contradiction that moral isolationists argue when they ask an outsider to show some respect and stop making judgments of other cultures because they simply cannot understand them due to the fact that they are foreigners. Midgley argues that nobody can respect what is entirely unintelligible to them (35). This poses the question that if morals are ap plicable and legitimate only to ones own culture as he or she cannot understand cultures other than his or her own, then how can one appropriately respect and tolerate cultures that he or she is not a division of? Furthermore, it is a known fact that people have the capacity to understand other people, be they from different countries. And because cultures are made up of the people that create them and make them unique from others, how then can people not have the faculties to understand and respect other cultures and consequently, to make favorable judgments on these different cultures?Midgleys second argument arises from the fact that throughout history, intelligent outsidersanthropologists are a very good examplehave made sense out of former(prenominal) civilizations and cultures that they were not members of.