Reason in multicultural society

Basically, it’s nonexistent. As suggested in my last post, in order to reason about things we need to be able to identify them. We need to sort out experience and apply concepts to it that tell us what things are and what they mean. The problem is that the ability to do so depends on experience, and in the case of things that are complex and subtle—human and social relations, for example—on social experience or tradition. Multicultural society denies the authority of every particular tradition, since to make one tradition authoritative would slight all the others. That means that complex and reliable moral and political conceptions—which can exist only as part of a tradition—become mere private opinions that can’t guide how people should deal with each other. Human relations and social life therefore become cruder and cruder, a matter of marketing, spin, propaganda, intimidation and crude impulse. Which is what we see around us.

Leave a Comment