Is there anyone who would?
Sam Harris has a new article on a science of morality at the Huffington Post. There’s a lot there, but one observation in particular snagged my attention.
I wonder if there is anyone on earth who would be tempted to attack the philosophical underpinnings of medicine with questions like: “What about all the people who don’t share your goal of avoiding disease and early death? Who is to say that living a long life free of pain and debilitating illness is ‘healthy’?
Wonder no more! There is indeed. There is the anthropologist Frederique Apffel Marglin, who once wrote* that
In absolutely negativizing disease, suffering and death, in opposing these to health and life in a mutually exclusive manner, the scientific medical system of knowledge can separate in individuals and in populations what is absolutely bad, the enemy to be eradicated, from what is good, health and life. In the process it can and does objectify people with all the repressive political possibilities that objectification opens.
And she meant it. She wasn’t writing a parody of postmodernist science-skepticism, she was writing the thing itself. I observed in 2003
There is something a little breathtaking in a level of science-phobia that can see ‘negativizing’ disease, suffering and death, as harmful and repressive. One is reminded of Woody Allen’s retort to a character’s reproach, in ‘The Front’, that he really wanted success: ‘So what should I want, a disease?’ Does Marglin seriously think that disease, suffering and death (the death of other people, remember, as well as one’s own) would be a source of joy and pleasure if only it weren’t for the ’scientific medical system of knowledge’? Has the postmodern left become so tone deaf that it can hear no echo of the complacent droning of landowners and priests (and colonialists, surely) about the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate?
*F.A. Marglin, ‘Smallpox in two Systems of Knowledge’, in Dominating Knowledge: Development, Culture and Resistance, eds. F.A. Marglin and S.A. Marglin (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990).
Wow, that’s some painful mental masturbation there…where do these people come from?
Perhaps this is one of the downsides of science being so successful at fighting disease, death, etc., is that people become complacent and oblivious enough to write stuff like the above, in the same way that some “thinkers” in liberal democracies take their rights and liberties so much for granted that they can come up with pieces about how horribly awful and imperialist it is for us to think that life (especially for women) is better under liberal democracy than in medieval theocracies. (Yes, meant a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I do have to wonder about this kind of mindset that seems to think that we were really all better off during the Middle Ages because they were more “spiritual” or “closer to the earth” or whatever…)
Frederique Marglin is really special.
I once did a post about something Martha Nussbaum wrote, I forget where, about a conference where Marglin talked that kind of nonsense and Eric Hobsbawm got up and said what was wrong with it and a lot of young hotshots at the conference had no clue who he was and tried to kick him out for being a horrible old reactionary. The levels of irony…
I wonder if the search engine can find that post…
Oh yes, it can find it in a heartbeat, without even getting out of its chair. (Thanks, Josh!) And yet, are we sure that’s better than having smallpox? :- /
Great comments, too – made me all nostalgic – Andy Gilmour, Nick Cohen, J Carter Wood, KB Player, Don – and then at the end – oh dear, it’s Bruschetta Boy, pouring his usual disdain all over everything. Ho hum.
Astonishingly, there is at least one who would. Witness this commenter at PZ’s place.
A taste:
Ophelia: Yes, I clicked over to that piece, which I recalled reading a while back. It’s interesting, though hardly surprising, that old-line Marxists would hardly find this kind of relativist pap congenial with their own ideas, which are, after all, based on at least some notion of objective truth, even if one feels it is completely mistaken. In this, they often come into direct conflict with the post-colonial, anti-imperialist, postmodern left, who are in effect defending the ancien régime of traditional, usually patriarchal culture and religion as “authentic” and representative of “different ways of knowing” and all that — Meera Nanda is very sharp about how these self-defined “progressives” end up defending and helping the most regressive and superstitious traditions in India, and giving backing to hardline Hindu nationalists to boot. One could also mention the female academics who attempt to put a patina of feminist and intellectual legitimacy to all manner of religious misogyny, often in an Islamic context, e.g., by defending segregation of women and the niqab, by claiming that these are “really” empowering or representative of a “different” conception of womanhood, just as valid as “Western secular feminism,” and with the bonus of serving as a “protest” against Western imperialism, since after all “Western feminism” is really a stalking horse for colonialism (completely ignoring all those women in the society who have been harmed by it and strive against it).
Yes indeed, Lisa – it was an article of Meera Nanda’s that first alerted me to that Marglin article. Meera rocks.
I do think that in these cases we are dealing with people who have never confronted, either literally or intellectually, anything worse than ‘Western Imperialism’ [or what they choose to construe as such], and therefore are blind to the notion that anything could be worse. Moreover, deciding that WI is The Worst Thing in the World Ever justifies them in de-relativising it under the cloak of ‘cultural relativism’. Thus, that which opposes WI is good, whereas what might have preceded it [in India, for example, a few thousand years of various forms of imperialism, both cultural and religious, and usually violently oppressive, as a whole series of quite different ethnic groups and invading populations fought for dominance] is irrelevant.
A true ‘historical relativist’ might observe that what happened in India under the British was just the last in a long line of imperialisms, and unlike all the others, ended up giving birth to a political entity that was ‘India’, and is the World’s Largest Democracy. But then such a relativist might sound like she approved of The Worst Thing in the World Ever, and everyone else would cover their ears and run from the room shrieking…
What have the Romans ever done for us, eh?
Wow… That smallpox paper is a real piece of work…
Excellent research there, Dr. Marglin. Very convincing. I guess this must be the traditional, indigenous, holistic, congruent, harmonious way that people in India research a topic.
Dave, that sounds like what happened to Niall Ferguson a few years ago when he had the gall to point out that WI was in some ways better than the real alternatives. Lotsa running from rooms shrieking.
Wes well you see her research methodology was validated by the fact that this friend she chatted with was not a US Aids reasearcher but a much respected member of the US Aids researchers community. I’m sure you’ll agree that that is sufficient.
Of course! We wouldn’t want to impose our hegemonic system of knowledge on her. We should allow for multiple ways of knowing, such as knowing via anonymous hearsay, or the traditional Hindu way of knowing called rapsahanatu kapi botandhi, which means, “Making up bullshit to defend the status quo in a country you don’t have to live in.”
OB, yeah, but Ferguson’s still a right-wing prick. And a rich right-wing prick, too. They’re the worst kind. If only all around were not confusion and madness, all passionate intensity flown to the extremes, and the centre of actually making humane sense not such a lonely place to be…
To be fairer to Frederique than she probably deserves she does live in India. But my main wish is to be a fly on the wall when she and Steven have cosy after dinner chats. I bet they’re full of laughs.
Dave, I know – but the knee-jerk squalling was memorable all the same.
“My Dinner With Fred and Steve” – grossed 12 billion its first weekend.