Human Diversity & Cultural Wars 1 Human Diversity and the Culture Wars: A Philosophical Perspective on Contemporary Cultural Conflict. Contributors: The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Philip E. Devine - author. Publisher: Praeger Publishers. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 1996 Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). HUMAN DIVERSITY AND THE CULTURE 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 WARS Copyright Acknowledgment A Philosophical Perspective on Contemporary The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint the following: Selections from John Kekes, The Morality of Pluralism. Copyright © 1993 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission Cultural Conflict of Princeton University Press. Philip E. Devine -iv- PRAEGER To Patrick Westport, Connecticut London -v- -iii- Contents Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Preface ix Introduction: Taking Diversity Seriously Enough xiii Devine, Philip E. Part I The Cultural Spectrum 1 2 From Neoconservatism to Deconstruction 19 Part II Four Views of Human Diversity 41 Human diversity and the culture wars : a philosophical perspective on contemporary cultural conflict / Philip E. Devine. 3 Strong Multiculturalism 43 4 Weak Multiculturalism 53 p. cm. 5 Cultural Chaos 63 Includes bibliographical references and index. 6 Humanism 73 ISBN 0-275-95205-3 (alk. paper) Part III Implications 91 1. Multiculturalism. 2. Political correctness. 7 The Epistemic Superiority of the Oppressed 93 3. Multiculturalism--Controversial literature. 4. Political correctness--Controversial literature. 5. United States-- Civilization--20th century. I. Title. -vii- BD175.5.M84D48 1996 306′.0973--dc20 96-15319 8 Defining Our National Identity 99 9 Creation and Evolution 105 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. 10 The Politics of Personhood 119 11 The Case against Secularism 135 Conclusion 153 Copyright © 1996 by Philip E. Devine Appendix: Four Problem Concepts 163 Selected Bibliography 173 All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the Index 181 express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-15319 ISBN: 0-275-95205-3 -viii- First published in 1996 Preface Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. I have always been fascinated by the diversity of ways of life and by the differing belief- Printed in the United States of America systems that arise from and justify these ways of life. But I have also been disturbed by the exploitation of diversity to justify a militantly intolerant relativism, which gained strength in American politics after 1972 or 1973 and whose future as I write this is uncertain. My own ∞ + ™ experience has sustained both my belief in the importance of human diversity and my Human Diversity & Cultural Wars 2 conviction that the way such diversity is commonly invoked in politics and the academy is somehow being mistreated" (p. 51 ), leaving it an entire mystery why anyone should think more than questionable. The focus of my discussion is the United States, a highly diverse such a thing. The expression PC was seriously meant by its Leninist originators, though its country and the one I know best. But radical diversitarianism is if anything more troubling if reference was rather different from that now in vogue. It is now, however, generally used by one's perspective includes Nova Scotia, Rwanda, and Bangladesh. Even if we imagine its opponents, and generally though not invariably replacing the United States with larger or smaller political units (or even with both), the problem of human diversity will not go away and may even be intensified. -x- During my graduate school years, I was asked to fill out one of many forms by which I resisted by those to whom it is applied. In fact, the emergence of the word PC signaled a identified my "cultural heritage." Having received a decent education in the Western tradition, significant decline in the power of PC itself. I included both "Jewish" and "Greek" among my answers, though to my knowledge I have neither Jewish nor Greek ancestors--not, I suspect, what the framers of the questionnaire had in mind. From 1972, when I received my Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, In this book, political correctness will be used in the narrow sense of a militant and intolerant to 1990, when I was appointed to my present position at Providence College, I was a gypsy relativism, not (for example) as a general word for orthodoxies and party lines of all sorts. To scholar teaching at a wide variety of colleges and universities. I visited the Harvard Law be sure, not all people called "PC" are relativists: some Afrocentrists believe that it is just School during the academic year 1980-1981, and there observed the battle between plain true that Plato learned his philosophy from Egyptian priests. But even these Afrocentrists are influenced by a relativistic historical methodology that encourages each group to write its own history, and in so doing create a myth that serves its needs. Nor is the -ix- designation of PC as a form of relativism intended as a quick dismissal: relativism of their sort, though heterodox among professional philosophers, has been for some time close to the "crits" and the liberals, before the standards of academic civilization broke down. I taught orthodoxy in the social sciences, and has been accepted as well by many historians, even at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota when it was taken over by the politically correct when they have not drawn the conclusion that antirelativism is a threat to peace. In any faction, who among other things procured a consent decree mandating reeducation sessions event, I believe I have picked out a real phenomenon, and one of some importance in for faculty on affirmative action. contemporary cultural conflicts. Since I am something of a convert to the importance of cultural issues in politics, I need to I will speak of the cultural Left and the cultural Right, while trying hard not to confuse them reaffirm my awareness of the importance of political issues of the conventional ("who gets with the political variety, despite considerable sympathy with Irving Howe's objections to this what?") sort. Yet cultural issues still have a certain priority in my mind. First, if the whole usage. I will speak of Roman Catholics, but shorten the expression to Catholics after its first social enterprise collapses, in one of the many ways contemporary men and women imagine, appearance in each chapter. (Occasionally I will shorten the Roman Catholic Church to the the question of distribution of its burdens and benefits will cease to be of any importance. Church, since, as Lenny Bruce observed, the Roman Catholic Church is, as a matter of Second, our ability to think together about issues such as justice in health care--which cultural-historical fact, "the only the Church.") involve, among other things, our attitude toward death--is now in serious question. For our politics has degenerated into squabbles of the most degraded sort. Americans partly of African descent will be called black people (not blacks), African Americans, and, when I desire especially to emphasize their racially and culturally mixed On a more intellectual level, I have endeavored to avoid the suggestion that cultures-- character, Negroes. Members of the majority race will be called white people (not whites), whether our own or that of the Balinese--are homogeneous, coherent, and isolated entities and sometimes European Americans. Neither American Indians nor Native Americans is independent of the men and women who live in them. We are both social and idiosyncratic completely satisfactory; the two terms will be used as synonyms, as will nonwhites and beings, assimilating in our own distinctive ways the complex and messy heritage within which persons of color. The other two major "racial" groups in the United States will be called we are required to live. It will, indeed, be a core thesis of this book that the Western Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans, even though the former is almost entirely a humanistic tradition, with its emphasis on the dignity and uniqueness of each individual, bureaucratic artifact. I have decided not to use gay to refer to male homosexuals, partly provides the only acceptable resolution of cultural conflict. because I regret the loss of a translation for the German frölich, but more importantly because of its false--and in view of the AIDS epidemic, absurd--suggestion that male homosexuals lead carefree lives. Similarly, straight questionably suggests that heterosexuals One implication of the culture wars is the large number of verbal issues that require attention. are free of sexual or other kinks. I intensely dislike the use of linguistic nuances as badges of partisan affiliation, a dislike increased by a study of the Yugoslav experience, in which one's choice of alphabet became a test of national loyalty. And it is impossible to appease determined ideologues. I have The word progressive refers to those who think of themselves, rightly or wrongly, as attempted to use language in a way in which I am personally comfortable, while at the same contributing to the improvement of the world. I prefer not to use the word reactionary, time avoiding writing anything that will grate on the ears of readers of goodwill. though something of its sense is conveyed by words such as restorationist and traditionalist. Men (though not mankind) will be used of males only, but to avoid the etherealizing tendencies of much contemporary language I will frequently prefer men and women (or Writers on political correctness (PC) tend to content themselves with the vaguest possible human beings) to persons. Human beings is used of members of the human species, definition of their topic.