3 - “Seriously to study another way of life”: Understanding another society

Summary

Seriously to study another way of life is necessarily to seek to extend our own – not simply to bring the other way within the existing boundaries of our own.

(Winch 1972: p. 33)

The paradox of tolerance

Those, and particularly those, living in nations that had colonial pretensions suffer conflicting intuitions. On the one hand, aware of the ways in which we imposed our own values and patterns of social life on others, we take it as axiomatic that we should respect differences in other cultures. That pushes us to tolerance. Then we note that a society embodies practices that we find repugnant, such as female circumcision, slavery or the selling of female children into marriage or labour. A moral hesitation occurs and we are immobilized between the impulse to tolerate and the impulse to condemn. That situation becomes more pressing when we find that there are apparently alternative cultures in our own territorial space, the matter being brought most prominently to our attention when the practices of a culture within a society come into conflict with the law, as when the wearing of turbans precludes obedience to the requirement that crash helmets be worn. As I shall show in this chapter and the next, the work of Peter Winch throws light, and optimistic light, on these vexing problems.

Universal reason

Deep tides run through these issues. A pervasive feature of our culture is a strongly held commitment to rationality. One requirement thought to be imposed by that commitment is that, when there is some disagreement, in art, morality, science, there be procedures, binding on everyone, that are guaranteed to resolve it. Thus science and mathematics, are thought rational because they embody methods, deduction and induction, for conclusively resolving disputes. Lacking such decision procedures, ethics and aesthetics are thought irrational. Why else would there be continuing disagreements about such things as abortion?