Moral Isolationism

Over the past two days I have been reviewing Midgley's article "Trying Out Ones New Sword". In her article, she makes the claim that Moral Isolationism is not a concept that is forced upon cultures, rather it is a position that people maintain due to respect of another's culture. She maintains that if we did not make moral judgments, we would have no framework of our own policy and make no judgments of our own actions. Personally, I see this in relation to reading Plato because one of the levels of thinking about his works is from a historical and contextual background. Having read Midgley's article, I can say that it may help to keep in mind that we may be subject to the influence of moral isolationism. We try to not make judgments about the culture of the Athenians instead of thinking critically about it and creating our own judgments. That said, I think this class is brilliant at seeing past moral isolationism and creating constructive criticisms about our culture in comparison to Athenian culture. When it comes to a review of the historical background, we tend to remain open to it, but overall I think that it is important to keep the idea of moral isolationism in mind so we do not fall complacent to it.

If you would like to read Midgley's article here is the PDF link:

http://www.ghandchi.com/IONA/newsword.pdf