barbaric, unacceptable, or flat wrong?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Liberal MP Justin Trudeau is being pilloried in the Canadian press for objecting to the term “barbaric” as used to describe practices such as female circumcision, recommending the less pejorative term “unacceptable”. Both sides reject the view that such practices are neither barbaric nor wrong, but simply different, a view that  Philosophy considers under such rubrics as cultural relativism, which in various guises has enjoyed a vogue in recent years, especially in the academy. Ronald Dworkin wrote his  essay “Objectivity and Truth” in the mid-nineties, in order to confront Richard Rorty’s neo-pragmatic formulation of relativism. We are discussing that essay in PHIL 382 in connection with Dworkin’s critique in Justice In Robes of Rorty-style jurisprudence. By reference to Dworkin’s view, I want to suggest that neither Trudeau nor his critics get the issue quite right. Trudeau’s preference for the term “unacceptable” implies that what is wrong with the practices in question is that we dislike them, whereas the point is that what’s wrong with them is that they are wrong, period. As for those who favor the term “barbaric”, they cross over from properly making the point about wrongness to gratuitously casting aspersions on a culture. So they too miss the target. Two cheers for Trudeau and as many for his critics, and three cheers for Dworkin.