Everybody agrees about everything hurrah
Terry Eagleton says wrong things again.
The basic moral values of the average Muslim dentist who migrates to Britain are much the same as those of a typical English-born plumber. Neither is likely to believe that lying and cheating are the best policy, or that they should beat their children. They may have different customs and beliefs, but what is striking is the vast extent of common ground between them on the issue of what it is for men and women to live well.
Is he joking? No, apparently not, he apparently means it – he means that ‘the average Muslim dentist’ and the ‘typical English-born plumber’ and, presumably, by extension, everyone else in the world is unlikely to believe that they should beat their children. Really?! There’s a universal consensus that people should not beat their children? The inadvisability of beating one’s children is uncontentious? Who knew!
Or to put it another way, what a ridiculous claim. Of course it’s not – it’s not an uncontentious claim even in the US or UK, and it’s certainly not one in places average migratory Muslim dentists are likely to come from. Especially, I would point out, ever so tactfully, if the children in question have the bad judgment to be daughters.
So what does he mean by his very next words? ‘They may have different customs and beliefs’ – right, such as beliefs about whether or not it’s a good idea to beat children, and customs about beating children. Yet all the same, they have the same basic moral values, which just happen to bear an uncanny resemblance to the basic moral values that Terry Eagleton would like them to have, such as the error of beating children. And even happier and pleasanter and more delightful, there is a vast extent of common ground between them on the issue of what it is for men and women to live well. At least according to Eagleton. I would have said he was wrong about precisely that point, but there you go.
David Thompson comments too, and so does Tom Freeman.
Update: Rosie Bell (our friend KB Player) also comments, as does our friend Ed.
I commented too, although far less articulately than anyone else. Does he just write for the sake of writing?
Eagleton: “They may have different customs and beliefs, but what is striking is the vast extent of common ground between them on the issue of what it is for men and women to live well.”
Meanwhile, earlier in the week: “Mohammed Riaz made every conceivable attempt to prevent his wife and daughters enjoying their Westernised lifestyle. He destroyed their clothes…t[T]he labourer killed his wife and four daughters by throwing petrol over them as they slept and igniting it.”
Now I don’t believe for a second that every Muslim is a Mohammed Riaz, or that such atrocities do not occur in other cultures, BUT they are certainly more common in some cultures than in others.
It must take a supreme effort of belief over observation to be blind to this.
If there is one element of Eagleton’s character that has been thoroughly established by this point in his career, it is the vast superiority of his powers of belief and bald assertion over his powers of observation or reasoning.
Which is just a long-winded way of saying that he’s a git.
Speaking as an english born plumber,I say spare the rod and you spoil the child!
Actually, if you spare the rod, you’ll get blocked drains!
Yeah, and when you get blocked drains please do not expect children to do the dirty work by unblocking them. Instead call in the plumber, it’s his expertise. If he should happen to leave some spare rods behind in the process remind him gently, on handing them back that you are not “into rods” in the least.
Neither is likely to believe that lying and cheating are the best policy, or that they should beat their children. They may have different customs and beliefs, but what is “striking” is the vast extent of common ground between them on the issue of what it is for men and women to live well.
See – I put “striking” into inverted commas and see how post modern that sounds – nice pun on “beat” and “striking” which must be significant in some way.
How irritating Eagleton is! I was forced into a fisking out of sheer exasperation.
http://rosiebell.typepad.com/rosiebell/2007/02/terry_eagleton_.html#more
Isn’t B&W great? We get experts on plumbing and rods and blocked drains. I’m serious! I think those three comments (Richard, GT, Marie-Therese) make a splendid little snapshot.
“How irritating Eagleton is!”
Isn’t he though?
How about Terry Eagleton conceding that there are some people who believe they should beat their children (which he isn’t denying) and then doing some research into who those people are and whether there are common factors in their other beliefs. That would be really helpful.
No, he isn’t explicitly denying it, but that’s just what makes Eagleton so very irritating: he creates the impression without explicitly saying it. I despise people who do that; I despise them more all the time.
We are all agree on moral values. The fallacy in Eagleton’s view that everyone agrees might simply be that some words are almost always used in a positive and some almost always in a negative light. “Beating one’s children” is something that everyone will agree is wrong. Punishing one’s children by whipping them or slapping them or caning them is something that some people will think is not only acceptable, but obligatory. Everyone agrees that murder (unjustified killing) is wrong. Some people, though, will believe that killing one’s daughter because she has been raped is not only justifiable (and hence not murder), but obligatory. A Muslim terrorist, a social conservative politician, a Mafioso, and a gay couple seeking marriage will all agree on the importance of family. What they mean by family will not be the same thing, of course. Consult Hume’s “Essay on the Standard of Taste” for this insight.
Ah yes – good point. I overlooked that. Well spotted. I’m not sure it’s a fallacy so much as a deliberate bit of deceptive rhetoric. In fact now you mention it I have a feeling that’s a very common (and very tricksy and probably very effective) move – say something like ‘No one believes in X’ where X is a carefully deceptive word of that kind. No one approves of domestic violence, or rape, or murder, or bullying, etc etc etc – but we all have these little get-out clauses, where what we do doesn’t fit the definition of those words.
It’s like that observation that Irshad Manji makes about the clause in the Koran that is endlessly repeated as ‘Murder is not okay’ with the following clause ‘unless there is wrongdoing in the land’ omitted.
This is something to be very very careful of and watchful for.