Philosophy, Sex, Race, and Culture
1. Do you believe that men and women think differently? How do
you know? If so, to what do you attribute the difference—nature,
education, or choice?
2. Do you believe that members of different races think differently?
How do you know? If so, to what do you attribute this difference—
nature, education, or choice?
3. When you describe yourself (notably, to yourself), with what do
you most closely identify—your nationality, your neighborhood,
your social class, your sex, the people you love, your race, your
beliefs, your achievements or ambitions, or still something else?
Of what importance to your self-identity are the features you
chose not to mention?
4. What makes one culture different from another? How is it
possible to translate a practice or a belief from one culture into
another? Do you believe that all cultures could understand one
another, if only they learned to “speak the same language”?
5. Why do you think it is that white males have so dominated
Western cultural life?
6. Before the legal abolition of slavery, was it morally legitimate to
own slaves? Why or why not?
7. In India, some wives have been expected to share the funeral pyre
with their just-departed husbands. In what terms is it possible
for us to criticize or object to such a practice? In some parts of
Africa, even very recently, young women have been expected to
undergo the painful operation of clitoridectomy. In what terms
is it possible for us to criticize or object to such a practice? In
many countries today, infant boys (or, sometimes, young men)
are expected to undergo the painful operation of circumcision.
In what terms would you criticize or defend such a practice?
