Wer definiert denn, was Muslimen heilig ist? Müssen wir da immer auf die konservativsten Stimmen hören?Google translates that question as:
Who defines what is sacred to Muslims? Do we have to always listen to the most conservative voices?Taylor's answer:
Was wir brauchen, ist eine größere Sensibilität. Multikulturalismus setzt gegenseitiges Lernen voraus und ein gewisses Gespür dafür, wie weit man gehen kann. Man muss natürlich immer ein bisschen zu weit gehen, um die Grenzen zu testen.Google translates this as:
What we need is a greater sensitivity. Multiculturalism implies mutual learning and a certain sense of how far one can go. We need to go, of course, always a bit too far to test the limits.Of course I have taken his answer out of the context - extracted it from their dialog.
I want to return to this topic in terms of the philosopher as theist and three topics in western theology: papal infallibility, immaculate conception and the physical ascension - the first notably contested by a philosopher.
Of greater interest to me personally is the chapter in Jerome Kagan's book, "An Argument For Mind" entitled "Celebrating Mind". Kagan's chapter is terribly flawed by his high esteem for certain dated views in the philosophy of physics - but they are not flaws which I find off-putting. I would not hesitate to recommend reading that chapter of his book.
Compare the closing chapter, "Conclusion", of Taylor's massive set of lecture notes: Hegel.
"This [modern, western] civilization is in a sense the heir of the Enlightenment" (my insertion)That this secular world is just such is presented in his other two great compendia of lecture notes: that on the self and that on the "secular age".
Most retired philosophers, even if they reach emeritus, must fend for themselves in retirement: but not those few whose views strike a chord with certain well-endowed foundations. Taylor is one such lucky fellow.
On that same page 539 we read:
"The objectification extends beyond external nature to englobe human life and society and the result is a certain vision of man, an associationist psychology, utilitarian ethics, atomistic politics of social engineering, and, ultimately a mechanistic science of man."Hogwash. Twaddle. Sophomoric babble.
When as a young student of philosophy and psychology - having just studied Taylor's attack on behaviourism in his "The Explanation of Behavior" - I was suggested [ by Glenn Argan] his article attacking behavioirism in political science of three years earlier in the journal Social Research, I was very taken. Here was a Canadian philosopher embracing the "Geisteswissenchaften", "les sciences humaines".
In the intervening years a great deal changed. In the case of non-linear dynamics, the simple notions of 18th Century mechanists are gone. No view of neural activity can ignore the phenomena of wave's cresting or piles of sand collapsing.
Specifically with behaviorism, the answer has been patience: at least a generation of students, become professors, had to retire, their mentors die, before the trend had run its course.
This is not the case with theology. If Lutherans join with Episcopalians and the latter join with Anglicans in a return to the one, true Catholic Church, the three key recent doctrinal revisions which philosophers should question are doctrines unlikely to change.
I can see no such quandary in the sciences. Were a philosopher to return to a science rather than a religion in his or her retirement, they would not find any such dilemmas facing them: there is not question of having to embrace a faith which has voluntarily and against protest adopted indefensible doctrines.
Social relations. Kagan has a long-standing involvement here as does Taylor. I have now spent more time in the Twin Cities of Minnesota than the decade that I spent reading philosophy and psychology in the libraries of Montreal. My impressions follow.
The Twin Cities (hereafter, MSP) of Minneapolis (MPLS) and St Paul (SP) are notable for their friendly nature as big American cites. Each has one or two "dangerous" neighborhoods but neither approach the wide-spread social problems and crime of Memphis, Cleveland or numerous other cities lying between the longitudes of Boston and Denver.
I have a few theses. SP is a Catholic town with an Irish heritage. It is a noticeable friendly place, but somehow rather conservative. MPLS and its western suburbs in a Lutheran agglomeration and rather "liberal". Both areas were ethnically German before being their respective Irish and Scandinavian centers. Why the liberal ethos which characterizes both? "Progressive" social programs which are rare elsewhere in America are common-place in MSP. "Progressive" federal political figures have emerged from Minnesota, yet the current governor is Republican and the previous was a populist fool. Why these many contradications?
What is most notable for someone moving from Montreal to MPLS would be the social distance in public transport and in elevators. Unlike Montreal, a crowded MPLS office elevator - one which people in a hurry will not enter - looks very roomy and empty. In SP this is somewhat less evident. In MPLS, people are very friendly in a startlingly superficial way: they will talk with you but you need not expect an invitation to their homes. In MPLS, most ethnic Scandinavians live only mile from where their grandparents lived; home is for old friends and church members. Very notable is that you will not get to know the parents of your children's best friends except in a very superficial manner. This contrasts sharply with both Boston and Montreal.
My first thesis is that the two cities work in a strange tandem: SP would be a very conservative town were it not for its neighboring town (SP has a history of laxity where organized crime was concerned - very different from the same laxity in Boston and in Montreal.) MPLS would be a very conservative urban area were it not for its Irish Catholic neighbour. Either in isolation would be quite different: neither would have the "liberal" social programs which are so surprising even for a resident from socialist, populist Saskatchewan.
Demographics indicate a worrisome trend: the children of Democratic voters in affluent suburban MPLS are trending towards conservative Republicanism. There are signs of growing religious fundamentalism foreign to both the Evangelical Lutherans and the Irish Catholics.
Understanding the leaders of movements for change and the social organizations which tolerated change -adapted to demands, suggestions and petitions for change - would require multi-disciplinary science and history. It would not just be a question of behavior, either "social behavior" or "political behavior".
MPLS saw decades go by before the rejuvenation of the area which fell victim to rioting on the occasion of the assassination of MLK Jr. MPLS is the city which had the Jews gold course in its Golden Valley suburb. SP sits in a county which has managed to preserve some natural space; MPLS has a western suburb, Plymouth, exercising domain over hilly woodlands with an eye to a mall and business tax base. Social challenges abound.
MSP does not fit some simple cliché of the midwest Bible-belt. Perhaps had the twin cities arisen a few more miles apart there would be little to distinguish them from other parochial, narrow-minded midwest towns.
But the result of the interaction of these two urban areas could not be predicted, but neither does understanding and appreciating MSP require or even suggest the derogation of science.
Who should we hope studies these phenomena, a student of Chicago CT or a student of Harvard JK. I know my preference, although one is philosophically more sophisticated than the other.
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