Shouting at the Hebrews: Imperial liberalism v liberal pluralism and the practice of male circumcision

Law, Culture and the Humanities

Volumn 5, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 247-265

  Shweder, Richard A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 65549133218     PISSN: 17438721     EISSN: 17439752     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1743872109102491     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. John Gray, Isaiah Berlin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 152.
2. Sander L. Gilman, 'Barbaric' Rituals,' In S.M. Okin, Is Multiculturalism Bad For Women? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 53.
3. See the wondrous history of Jewish thought about male circumcision in Shaye Cohen's provocatively titled book Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised?: Gender and Covenant in Judaism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005).
4. John Gray, Isaiah Berlin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 152.
5. For a sample of a range of very passionate opinions about genital modifications, male and female, see the comments elicited by two recent New York Times health and science blog postings, available at these web site addresses: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/ the-rights-of-baby-boys/and http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/ 12/05/circumcision-or-mutilation-and-other-questions-about-a-rite-in- africa/; also http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/ a-compromise-on-female-circumcision/#comments
6. Richard A. Shweder, Why Do Men Barbecue?: Recipes for Cultural Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
7. William A. Galston, Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
8. John Gray, Isaiah Berlin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).
9. Deborah Fitzmaurice, "Autonomy as a Good: Liberalism, Autonomy and Toleration" The Journal of Political Philosophy, 1 (1993), 1-16.
10. Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
11. See the essays in Richard A. Shweder, Martha Minow and Hazel R. Markus, eds., Engaging Cultural Differences: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies (New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2002); also see Nomi Stolzenberg, "He Drew a Circle That Shut Me Out: Assimilation, Indoctrination and the Paradox of a Liberal Education," Harvard Law Review, 106 (1993), 581-667, for a brilliant discussion of the scope and limits of liberal tolerance.
12. See Richard A. Shweder, "Customs Control: Some Anthropological Reflections on Human Rights Crusades," Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law 14 (2006), 1-38, where some of the descriptions of circumcision in this section have been previously published.
13. One wonders whether during the "cold war" the Soviet policy should have been viewed as a ground for a USA political asylum claim by Russian citizens, especially Jewish and Muslim ones, who were either denied a circumcision in their homeland or persecuted for having one. The same provocative (even if quite remote) hypothetical asylum question might arise if liberal Denmark or Sweden, in recoil against illiberal Muslim immigrants, ever criminalizes male circumcision, which is not entirely out of the question.
14. For a history of male circumcision in the USA see David L. Gollaher, Circumcision: A History of the World's Most Controversial Surgery (New York: Basic Books, 2000); also Geoffrey P. Miller, "Circumcision: Cultural-Legal Analysis," Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law, 9 (2002), 497-585.
15. Shaye Cohen, Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised?: Gender and Covenant in Judaism (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 2005), 149.
16. D.S. Kim, J.Y. Lee, and M.G. Pang, "Male Circumcision: A South Korean Perspective,". BJU International, 53 (1999), 28-33. Available at http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/kim1/ M.G. Pang, and D.S. Kim, "Extraordinarily High Rates of Male Circumcision in South Korea: History and Underlying Reasons," BJU International, 89 (2002), 48-54. Available at http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/pang1/
17. D.S. Kim, J.Y. Lee, and M.G. Pang, "Male Circumcision: A South Korean Perspective,". BJU International, 53 (1999), 28-33. Available at http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/kim1/ M.G. Pang, and D.S. Kim, "Extraordinarily High Rates of Male Circumcision in South Korea: History and Underlying Reasons,". BJU International, 89 (2002), 48-54. Available at http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/pang1/
18. The imperial liberal's view that liberal values are objectively more valuable than illiberal values is, undoubtedly, subject to several alternative interpretations, of which I will mention just two. It might be interpreted as saying that the liberal value of autonomy is not only just rationally appealing but is the most appealing of all the rationally appealing values, of which there are many in the moral universe. Alternatively it might be interpreted as saying that the ideal of autonomy is the only rationally appealing value. Such an interpretation might be put this way: ALL BUT ONE of the values in the set of things that are valued by a human being are merely subjective preferences or tastes rather than discoveries of what is truly desirable, while the liberal value of autonomy (free choice, expressive liberty) to form whatever preferences one wants is the only really objective value, because it is the value that makes all other valuing possible.
19. Susan M. Okin, "Is Multiculturalism Bad For Women?" In Susan M. Okin, ed., Is Multiculturalism Bad For Women? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).
20. John Gray, Isaiah Berlin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 152.
21. Value pluralism, a theory of moral values developed by Isaiah Berlin, is an account of the moral universe which claims that the moral world consists of multiple, heterogeneous and not necessarily compatible goods or values and that these goods cannot be reduced to a common measure or ranked in a single universal hierarchy of value with some one master value taking precedence over all the rest. Useful philosophical discussions of Berlin's theory and value pluralism more generally can be found in John Gray, Isaiah Berlin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996) and William A. Galston, Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Empirical work on the multiple and heterogeneous domain of moral goods can be found in J. Haidt, S. Koller, & M. Dias, "Affect, culture, and morality, or is it wrong to eat your dog?" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65 (1993), 613-628; Jonathan Haidt and Craig Joseph, "Intuitive Ethics: How Innately Prepared Intuitions Generate Culturally Variable Virtues," Daedalus, Fall Issue (2004), 55-66; Lene A. Jensen, "Habits of the Heart Revisited: Autonomy, Community, Divinity in Adults' Moral Language," Qualitative Sociology 18 (1995) 71-86; Lene A. Jensen, "Different Habits, Different Hearts: The Moral Languages of the Culture War." The American Sociologist 29 (1998) 83-101; Lene A. Jensen, "Through Two Lenses: A Cultural-Developmental Approach to Moral Psychology," Developmental Review, 28 (2008), 289-315; Richard A. Shweder, Manamohan Mahapatra and Joan G. Miller, "Culture and Moral Development": In Jerome Kagan and Sharon Lamb, eds., The Emergence of Morality in Young Children (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 1-83; and Richard A. Shweder, Nancy C. Much, Manamohan Mahapatra and Lawrence Park, "The 'Big Three' of Morality (Autonomy, Community, Divinity) and the 'Big Three' Explanations of Suffering." In A.M. Brandt and P. Rozin, eds., Morality and Health (New York: Routledge. 1997), 119-169. This empirical work raises the possibility that the liberal ethics of autonomy of the sort discussed in this essay is only one of three (or more) major ethical domains that compose the moral universe. Other domains include an ethics of community (where values such as duty, hierarchy, interdependency, loyalty and personal sacrifice are highly valued and the self is conceptualized as an office holder or social status bearer rather than as a individual preference structure rich in wants that deserve to be satisfied) and an ethics of divinity (where values such as sanctity and purity are highly valued and the self is conceptualized as a extension of some elevated and elevating divine realm or sacred ground).
22. John Gray, Isaiah Berlin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 151.
23. John Gray, Isaiah Berlin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 151.
24. The view that autonomy (free choice, expressive liberty) does not invariably take precedence or have the greatest or only claim to genuine value is itself subject to at least two interpretations; although it is something like the second interpretation that Gray has in mind. The first interpretation (one often disparaged as "relativism" or "subjectivism") is that there are no objective values at all; this is the view that human declarations of value are (nothing other than) expressions of desires or feelings or emotions rather than reality seeking representations of moral truth; according to this interpretation even liberal values are merely matters of taste. The second interpretation holds that many values, liberal and illiberal, are objective values and are appealing to rational and morally decent people precisely because in their own way, and applied in the right context, they are truly of value; nevertheless, in a plural moral universe there is no way to rationally choose, in the abstract, amongst the many true (and often conflicting) values in the set of ideals human beings value. According to this interpretation, the values made manifest in one's own way of life may be matters of taste (in the sense of being discretionary and not uniquely dictated by reason) yet they are not MERELY matters of taste, because they express some partial aspect of moral truth.
25. See for example William Galston or John Gray for a discussion of various arguments about the connection between the value of autonomy and the truth of value pluralism. John Gray for example offers a critique of the notion that the truth of value pluralism is itself an argument in favor of liberalism: "If liberal societies are to be commended on the pluralist ground that they harbour [sic] more genuine values than some illiberal societies, does it not follow that the human world will be still richer in value if it contains not only liberal societies but also illiberal regimes that shelter worthwhile forms of life that would otherwise perish?" John Gray, Isaiah Berlin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 152. Also William A. Galston, Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
26. Jomo Kenyatta, Facing Mount Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Gikuyu (London: Secker and Warburg, 1938), 133.
27. See Footnote 5.