To make a start at tackling this challenge, I will focus on introducing several accounts of the ethical turn in respect to some selected questions that occupy moral philosophers in the hope of instigating a dialogue between both disciplines. I will discuss the bearing of moral anthropology for moral philosophy, and metaethics in particular, on questions about the definition of morality, ethical relativism, moral progress, and debunking arguments in moral philosophy. There are historical and systematic reasons to focus on these questions. Historically, these are questions on which philosophers have often invoked ethnographic data. Systematically, these are questions where cross-cultural data and thick observations of intersubjective phenomena, as provided by anthropology, are crucial. I will briefly introduce the philosophical problem behind each question at the beginning of each respective section.
Cultural Anthropology A Problem-based Approach Robbins.pdf
The problem of "culture" in the process of intercultural understanding is one of the most discussed issues among scholars today. Anthropologists, linguists, literary critics, and philosophers, just to name a few, study this issue using a problem-based and research format. Culture and cultural understanding are hereby presented by demonstrating studies and observations of two cultural anthropologists, R. H. Robbins and Clifford Geertz, a literary critic, Lionel Trilling, and C. S. Lewis, a famous writer of both fiction and non-fiction. Our intention here is to answer the question: how to describe and analyze a culture that is so different from the perspective of our own? In this sense, language and discourse are also analyzed in this paper as part of culture and can indicate some of our own moral perspectives and judgments on others' cultures.
As the problem of "culture" in the process of intercultural understanding is one of the most discussed issues among scholars today, we argue that it is possible to bridge some of Mark Twain's observations presented by Robbins (1993Robbins, R. H. (1993). Cultural anthropology: A problem-based approach. Itasca, IL: F.E. Peacock Publishers, Inc.) along with an anthropological analysis carried out by Clifford Geertz (1983Geertz, C. (1983). "From the Native's Point of View": On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding. In Clifford Geertz. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. pp. 55-70. New York: Basic Books.) in Java in which both try to understand a foreign culture through different lenses. In addition to that, the literary critic Lionel Trilling contributes in this paper to the moral debate with his observations in a lecture entitled, "Why We Read Jane Austen" (1974). Trilling analyzes his students' reactions and confrontations when dealing with Austen's moral and ethical meanings not only in her time but also in the time the lecture was given. In the same way, we will draw from the examples presented by C. S. Lewis (2009Lewis, C. S. (2009). A Note on Jane Austen. In Carson, S. (Ed.), A truth universally acknowledged: 33 great writers on why we read Jane Austen. New York: Random House , pp. 104-115.), in his essay "A Note on Jane Austen", namely, how Austen construes the moral behavior of her characters as well as how she describes the ethical backgrounds in her novels.
In order to have an anthropological understanding of intercultural meanings that pervade our cultural context and the meanings of others, some considerations deserve attention. In this sense, the observations of Robbins and Geertz in the area of anthropology are analyzed and discussed in the beginning of this paper. Robbins (1993) and Geertz (1983) demonstrate certain similarities in ideas about the comparison between the problem of "us and them," ourselves and the Other. Robbins (1993, p. 2) introduces the topic by presenting Mark Twain's impressions through his travels in Europe in 1867, pointing out some striking descriptions by Twain on the people of the Azores, Greece, and Italy by his confrontations with different cultures. In one of the descriptions mentioned by Robbins (1993), Twain did not spare any effort to describe the Greek way of living and being as "everybody lies and cheats - everybody who is in business, at any rate. Even foreigners soon have to come down to the custom of the country, and they do not buy and sell long in Constantinople till they lie and cheat like a Greek" (p. 2). Twain's descriptions of the others could be considered harsh and ethnocentric, but as Robbins notes he was also known as a "gentle" observer and interpreter of his fellow Americans.
In the same way, Geertz (1983Geertz, C. (1983). "From the Native's Point of View": On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding. In Clifford Geertz. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. pp. 55-70. New York: Basic Books.) mentions the case of the work of Bronislaw Malinowski that was released after his death. The book entitled A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term, which was published in 1967, "rendered established accounts of how anthropologists work as implausible" (Geertz, 1983, p. 56). It effectively demolished the work of anthropologists. In his posthumously published book, Malinowski, who was considered one of the most remarkable figures in the history of anthropology, perhaps has gone too far on the way he presents himself as a moral character. Geertz (1983) points out that "he had rude things to say about the natives he was living with, and rude words to say it in. He spent a great deal of his time wishing he was elsewhere" (p. 56). Moreover, Geertz analyzes the issue raised by Malinowski's book not as a moral but as an epistemological issue, because "the moral idealization of fieldworkers is a mere sentimentality in the first place, when it is not self-congratulation or a guild pretense" (Geertz, 1983, p. 56). In stating this, Geertz suggests that anthropologists need to study humankind from "the native's point of view" or, as he puts it, from "a sort of transcultural identification" (1983, p. 56) in which there is a great difference between knowing and understanding someone's culture (Geertz uses the hermeneutical term understanding, in German, Verstehen), a type of feeling oneself into or getting into/projecting oneself into the atmosphere of... (In German, and as used by Geertz, Einfühlen). In this sense, it seems that it is anthropologically important to investigate and analyze the role of someone in his/her culture relating to one or more cultures, but especially taking into consideration the particular way the native lives, feels, and projects himself into the atmosphere and context of the situation he is in. According to Geertz, anthropological analysis could easily be explained by two concepts suggested by the psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut: "experience-near" and "experience-distant" (Geertz, 1983, p. 57).
As an example, Geertz (1983Geertz, C. (1983). "From the Native's Point of View": On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding. In Clifford Geertz. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. pp. 55-70. New York: Basic Books.) describes Javanese culture he studied in the 1950s as having a type of reflective intensity even though for those peoples "the future seemed about as remote as the past" (p. 60). Unlike Twain's observations on the others (Robbins, 1993Robbins, R. H. (1993). Cultural anthropology: A problem-based approach. Itasca, IL: F.E. Peacock Publishers, Inc.), Geertz (1983) gives us a richer reflection precisely because he does so by considering Javanese culture in a broader perspective:
As one can see, the problem of "culture" in the process of intercultural understanding can be analyzed through different types of lenses or frames. The ones presented in this paper may converge with ideas as well as diverge in the approaches presented. For instance, Geertz explains that it is most important to know and understand a culture from the native's point of view. In this sense, we investigate another's culture by examining its main core. In addition, Trilling demonstrates, through his observations on his students' reactions about Austen's works, that one might feel lost in the middle of the moral world portrayed by Austen, but, at the same time, as modern readers of Austen, one can discover oneself intertwined within this imagined world - words, meanings, habits, and moral codes. It might even be claimed that Trilling's students may compare their own ethics with those of Austen's characters in order to achieve and develop a broader and richer intercultural understanding, as humanism has argued.
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species.[1][2][3] Social anthropology studies patterns of behavior, while cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning, including norms and values.[1][2][3] A portmanteau term sociocultural anthropology is commonly used today.[4] Linguistic anthropology studies how language influences social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the biological development of humans.[1][2][3]
Waitz was influential among British ethnologists. In 1863, the explorer Richard Francis Burton and the speech therapist James Hunt broke away from the Ethnological Society of London to form the Anthropological Society of London, which henceforward would follow the path of the new anthropology rather than just ethnology. It was the 2nd society dedicated to general anthropology in existence. Representatives from the French Société were present, though not Broca. In his keynote address, printed in the first volume of its new publication, The Anthropological Review, Hunt stressed the work of Waitz, adopting his definitions as a standard.[19][n 5] Among the first associates were the young Edward Burnett Tylor, inventor of cultural anthropology, and his brother Alfred Tylor, a geologist. Previously Edward had referred to himself as an ethnologist; subsequently, an anthropologist. 2ff7e9595c
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