Monday, October 01, 2007

Female circumcision is.....right?

I had my first class in Philosophy today. It was just a general introduction with a few key points made by one philosopher. The lecturer gave us the interesting example of female or "pharoahnic?!?" circumcision. I don't want to bore people but the jist of the argument was, apart from one side saying it is wrong and the other saying it is right, how can you genuinely know whether it is right or wrong? Hmm..

I know slavery is wrong, but can I genuinely say why it is wrong and give a convincing answer? I don't think so, not yet..


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2 comments:

Unknown said...

I disagree, not "all" things need to be questioned, there are "given" things based on political and authorial justification, hence they were considered "right" at the time and now our job is to question thet process of justification. And there are things that are wrong by their affect. Is killing wrong? Well its affect tells us it is. I don’t need to give a convincing answer why slavery is wrong, I think the right line should be written is whether there are good reasons saying slavery is right! even that, is a waste of my time.
Deconstructing fixed entities is rather applied on typical traditional processes. In South Egypt and Sudan, women are subjected to circumcision because they shouldn’t enjoy sex! Women should not enjoy their bodies. They don’t have the simplest right to explore their bodies. Must I "wonder" about what's wrong/right about that? I wonder..

Maysaloon said...

:)

Lak Razan the jist of the lecture was where does the concept of "right" and "wrong" come from. I didn't mean to question the concept of slavery or female circumcision but he just used it as a point because there are people who have had the procedure done on them and wish it on their own daughters too and who argue very strongly for it on cultural grounds just as you have argued against it. If we argue everything from relativity we quickly start to lose a lot of our confidence and things get a bit blurry. Philosophy is not entirely a waste of time, just interesting for those who have the time... like me ;-)

Lak welcome btw, it's been a long time!