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1/03/2003 03:10:00 PM | Timothy offensiveness and race. Jon, I did not think my post on race and offensiveness was a complete non-sequitur. Here I am, talking about arguments against eating baby flesh, and then I switch to talking about how we should ask if people are offended. I knew the latter argument would seem silly even contradictory following the former (devil's advocate) line, but I wanted to post it nonetheless because I had taken so long. I mean, if people can't take justifiable offense to talk of eating babies, what can they? I suppose debate is different, but i'm not sure. But Jon brought up a different link than I had thought of. Jon argues that "We are deciding if eating a dead baby is morally wrong, not whether it is offensive. If I set up a table in Collis upon which sat a barrel of dog feces, this gesture would certainly be offensive to the Collis patrons. However, I question whether or not it is morally wrong in the same way that turning Jews into soap is morally wrong." Well yes, morally wrong and offensive ARE different categories. That was my point! Or to be more precise, somethings things are offensive without being morally wrong, and we should condemn some offensive things, even if they aren't strictly speaking 'morally wrong.' Jon, please correct if I am wrong in saying this as I seem to have been misreading your other points recently, but your position seemed to be that any offensive thing worth condemning should be condemned on he grounds that it is wrong, not that it is offensive to other people. But I'm arguing that while some things that are also offensive are best condemned as morally wrong (say Trent Lott), there are some offensive things not morally wrong that are worthy of condemnation. Trent Lott said at first: I'm sorry if anyone misinterpreted me and was offended, and offensive does seem like an excuse. My sugesstion was to put forth was a notion of justifiable offense: you understand why people are rightly offended. And sometimes that involved learning in conversation. Jon seems to say: "this isn't morally wrong, so don't talk about offense." In saying the concept of justified offense is still useful, I am also saying that concepts of morality develop in the inclusion of minority groups. So we shouldn't always assume that our current moral standards are complete and we have all the facts. As for the baby thing, I hope you can understand why someone would take offense at this, I you wouldn't talk about it in front of someone who just has a baby who died. Context matters, and I've justified this by saying it's like parliamentary debate and no greiving mothers are likely to read this. For example, Jon, making a photoshop picture elephant humping a donkey from behind may be extremely funny in private, but it wouldn't be wise to offend so many by putting that in print (even if it's not morally wrong-- well, the picture at least, you know what i mean!). We can't say that simply because something is offensive, you shouldn't say it. But we can't say all offensive things can be reduced to 'morally wrong' for the reasons I've mentioned, and for many others. So I don't have answers, but I'm suggesting we need to think about what 'justifiable offense' means... perma link |
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