Leo Strauss and Dog Meat
Posted on May 2, 2007 - Filed Under Philosophy | 1 Comment
I could pretend to have put plenty of effort into this, but that would be dishonest. In any event I’m more interested in what other people think, so please leave your thoughts below.
While reading the introduction to Leo Strauss’ Natural Right and History this evening I was struck by his forceful denunciation of contemporary (that is, contemporary in 1954) political science, which Strauss argued was under the malign sway of cultural relativity, the idea that different civilisations do different things and that no one civilisation is in any position to judge another. This ideology is perhaps best summed up by Jeff Bridges’ character in The Big Lebowski, the Dude, who responds to an assertion with which he disagrees with the immortal words “Yeah, well, you know that’s just like, your opinion, man.” Anyway, according to Strauss this is not a very helpful position to adopt because, even if in fact it is correct, it will inevitably result in slide towards nihilism, which is not to be desired.
Strauss’ attack on relativism struck me as unusually harsh, since most of the (admittedly few) philosophers I’ve encountered who have dealt with this issue have either embraced relativism or sidestepped the issue with poorly disguised have-your-cake-and-eat-it subterfuge. Anyway, when considering this matter I tend to take the example of dog meat. As you may know, I’m heading to China in the summer, and two of my companions have already declared their intention to sample dog meat. Obviously, as a dog owner (neither of them keep dogs), I find this disgusting and entirely beyond the pale. However, cultural relativity argues that this is just my Western upbringing speaking and nothing more.
Dog meat is a very bad example with which to argue against cultural relativism, but it illustrates something Strauss touched on in the introduction, namely, do we really want to embrace such a colourless ideology, even if reason dictates that we should (this is not Strauss’ argument against cultural relativity, btw, just a throw-away thought of his in the introduction)? However illogical my objection to dog meat might be, it’s not something I would ever shift my position on. Therefore, I don’t mind being illogical in this regard. I imagine that well-educated religious people experience something similar in relation to their faith and certain ‘unscientific’ aspects of it. Of course, this line of thought can be put to foul uses, for example Nazis saying ‘Well, we don’t like Jews, no matter how illogical that may seem’, but to me it seems fallacious to dismiss it on such grounds.
I suppose what I’m asking is, should we always aim to be strictly rational, or are some matters best left to the gut to decide?
Dog meat on Wikipedia.
Dog meat on Slate.
Comments
One Response to “Leo Strauss and Dog Meat”
Leave a Reply
Maybe I’m missing the point, but you might be able to argue that there is a difference between something like eating dog meat and say, allowing women to vote.
My thinking is something like this:
It is difficult to imagine a scenario where logic would dictate that you eat dog meat. Unless you were to construct an extreme scenario, I don’t know, a man puts a gun to your head and tells you to eat some dog meat or be shot, where it is unlikely that you wouldn’t eat the dog meat.
But when we get rid of such silly examples, what you’ve got comes down to taste.
If I happen to like the taste of pork then there is no rational reason for me not to eat it (lets assume the vegetarians are wrong for purposes of simplicity)
If however, I find pork to taste disgusting, then (barring extreme examples) I have no rational reason to eat it either.
That’s why I think it’s important that when you consider something like moral relativism, you emphasise the ‘moral’ part of that phrase. We are trying to consider whether morality is itself relative, having accepted perhaps that some things are and other things are not relative. We can perhaps separate your gut reaction to eating dog meat, and your gut reaction to something like female suffrage by saying that one comes down to a subjective opinion (which cannot be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’), while the latter can be tied to some sort of objective reality where we argue that it is morally/rationally correct to allow women in a society to vote.
Personally I believe I see the dangers of moral relativism, which is why Kant’s approach appealed to me last year. Unless I’m mistaken, his view suggests that the rational thing to do (which is objective) is essentially always the same thing as the morally correct thing to do. I’m pretty sure Utilitarianism has a similar view, though I’m reluctant to advocate it for obvious practical reasons if nothing else.
The tricky part is that sometimes people will hold moral beliefs which are founded on either subjective, or mistaken premises and that’s where morality potentially becomes relative.
That’s why I feel the best possible framework to have is one where we can essentially have our cake and eat it to an extent, by finding rational justifications for our morals and if same cannot be found, modifying or discarding them as appropriate. If this is successful, we can rely on objective reasons for making judgements about any culture, while also recognising that some things are indeed relative (like eating dog meat) and as such, neither the Chinese nor yourself are wrong in your ‘gut’ opinions.
Or maybe not….