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71
interdependent because our instinct for survival requires us to work with others in order to produce our means of subsistence. It is virtually impossible to engage in productive activity alone. I have stressed instinct because we are living organisms first before we become anything else. We are a species and have survived as a species. Our existence as species-being, to use Marx's phrase, makes us essentially social creatures. The individual is the social being, as the young Marx put it.5 This need for social existence, this instinct to engage in productive activity is an intrinsic property. This property is not culturally determined. It obtains across cultures and is universal. Such activity is conducted in cooperation with others.
Aristotle, in Book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics also underscores our social nature although he does so in his discussion of friendship as a virtue.
After what we have said, a discussion of friendship would naturally follow, for it is a virtue, or implies virtue and besides is most necessary for living. For without friends, no one would choose to live; though he had all other goods; even rich men and those who are in possession of office and domination of power are thought to need friends most of all; for what is the use of such prosperity without the opportunity of beneficence which is exercised chiefly and in its most laudable form towards friends? Or how could prosperity be guarded without friends. . . . And in poverty and other misfortunes men think friends are the only refuge. (Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII)
I shall discuss sociability below but before I do so, I would like to make it clear that we have other properties too, many of them negative. We can be competitive and aggressive. We are capable of envy and cruelty.
Object Description
| Title | Negotiating pluralism and tribalism in liberal democratic societies |
| Author | Sadagopan, Shoba |
| Author email | sadagopa@usc.edu; shobasadagopan@gmail.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Philosophy |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2008-08-22 |
| Date submitted | 2008 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2008-10-15 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Lloyd, Sharon |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Dreher, John Keating, Gregory |
| Abstract | My aim in this dissertation is to enquire whether toleration as a practice is achievable. It is prior to the question of how it can be grounded as a virtue. I argue that in liberal democratic societies where there are struggles for recognition on the part of ethnocultural groups, it is possible to negotiate pluralism and tribalism in a way that a stable pluralist society can be maintained. My core thesis rests on a theory of interdependence based both on a theory of human nature and on the material fact of globalization. Insofar as we affirm our nature as human beings engaged in productive activity with other human beings, insofar as we value a world that facilitates that activity, toleration is desirable. It is achievable because with globalization there is a tendency towards homogenization that erodes cultural differences. There is less reason for conflict because what we have in common, our interdependence, goes far deeper than culture. A further sufficient condition may be found in well thought-out policies that are executed through education and dialogue. |
| Keyword | toleration; value pluralism; liberalism; cultural homogenization; globalization; common citizenship |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m1658 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Sadagopan, Shoba |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-Sadagopan-2395 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume26/etd-Sadagopan-2395.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 74 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 71 interdependent because our instinct for survival requires us to work with others in order to produce our means of subsistence. It is virtually impossible to engage in productive activity alone. I have stressed instinct because we are living organisms first before we become anything else. We are a species and have survived as a species. Our existence as species-being, to use Marx's phrase, makes us essentially social creatures. The individual is the social being, as the young Marx put it.5 This need for social existence, this instinct to engage in productive activity is an intrinsic property. This property is not culturally determined. It obtains across cultures and is universal. Such activity is conducted in cooperation with others. Aristotle, in Book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics also underscores our social nature although he does so in his discussion of friendship as a virtue. After what we have said, a discussion of friendship would naturally follow, for it is a virtue, or implies virtue and besides is most necessary for living. For without friends, no one would choose to live; though he had all other goods; even rich men and those who are in possession of office and domination of power are thought to need friends most of all; for what is the use of such prosperity without the opportunity of beneficence which is exercised chiefly and in its most laudable form towards friends? Or how could prosperity be guarded without friends. . . . And in poverty and other misfortunes men think friends are the only refuge. (Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII) I shall discuss sociability below but before I do so, I would like to make it clear that we have other properties too, many of them negative. We can be competitive and aggressive. We are capable of envy and cruelty. |
