Question Since philosophy is a product of Greco-Christian culture, are all its conclusions circumscribed by a tacit limitation ("true only for Westerners"), particularly, perhaps, in the field of ethics?

Accepted:
November 2, 2007

Comments

Thank you for your question. First of all, it is not true that philosophy is a product
of Greco-Christian culture. There are Buddhist, Chinese and Islamic philosophies (among others) that are not products of Grec0-Roman culture. (Granted, Islamic philosopies were influenced by, for instance, Aristotle, but it's an overstatement to describe them as *products* of Greek culture.) While these philosophies are not as well known in the West as the traditions that trace back to Greek thought, they are complex, innovative and fascinating traditions in their own right. (For a treatment of just one, see Siderits' _Buddhism as Philosophy, published by Hackett_.)

But second, and more important, it is hard to see why being a product of a culture would circumscribe a field's conclusions. For instance, it would not be terribly convincing to argue that since Pythagoras was Greek, his Theorem only applies to a certain culture or tradition. Instead, it seems a lot more plausible that his Theorem applies to right triangles no matter the culture from which you contemplate them. If this is right, then *just* the fact that a person of a certain culture makes a claim, does not show that his or her claim is only valid with a certain domain. At the very least, more needs to explain why the claim in question only holds within certain limits.

Might the situation be any different for the case of ethics? Insofar as ethics attempts to answer such questions as, What makes right acts right?, and What sort of character is virtuous?, it attempts to provide answers that transcend any given culture. Ethicists do not in general try to say what it is for a modern urban Westerner to act rightly, but would widen the scope of their inquiry to all people no matter the time, location, or cultural milieu. Of course, this makes their inquiry very hard, and it's certainly an occupational hazard of ethics to generalize from one's own parochial conditions to theories of right action across the board. That's an ever-present danger, and many ethical theories have foundered as a result of their author's not having done his or her anthropological homework. This, however, doesn't show that the task is impossible. At most it shows it's very hard to produce sufficiently general ethical theories. My main point, however, is that there seems no reason in principle why an ethical theory *must* be parochial in the way you worry about. If we come across some ethical theories that are, I suspect our conclusion should be: Keep trying!

Mitch Green

Question Since philosophy is a product of Greco-Christian culture, are all its conclusions circumscribed by a tacit limitation ("true only for Westerners"), particularly, perhaps, in the field of ethics? Accepted:November 2, 2007

Question Since philosophy is a product of Greco-Christian culture, are all its conclusions circumscribed by a tacit limitation ("true only for Westerners"), particularly, perhaps, in the field of ethics?

Accepted:
November 2, 2007