Andrew Adnan Fortuna

ITETHIC

Book: Contemporary Moral Problems

Book Review: Chapter 4 – Trying out One’s New Sword

Library Reference: N/A

Internet Reference:

http://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Moral-Problems-James-White/dp/0495553204/ref=pd_sim_b_2/185-6566170-6503008

Learning Expectation:

            I expect to learn a deeper understanding towards Moral Isolationism. I also expect to learn that a story of a sword will help me better understand ethics.

Quote:

            “My own impression is that we believe that outsiders can, in principle, deliver perfectly good indictments-only, it usually takes more than two weeks to make them damning.”

Book Review:

            I really enjoyed reading this article. I was clueless at first on how Mary Midgley connected a story about a sword to moral issues. I must admit, she did quite well. I had fun learning about tsujigiri. It is an act practiced by the Japanese wherein the Japanese Samurais test their swords with human beings regardless if they did something bad or not. If I were to ask my own opinion, I totally disagree with their culture. But who am I to judge them right? For them, this is a good thing because this helps the Japanese Samurais test their swords. In their culture, if Japanese Samurai were to used “tsujigiri” and their samurai was not able to slash a person with just one blow, that Japanese Samurai is a disgrace to his family and to his country. Back to my opinion, I still do not get why do Japanese have to sacrifice a life just to test his/her own sword?  I truly believe that there are a lot of ways to test it, like using it against a tree, etc.

            Mary Midgley believes that a person has no right to criticize one’s culture if that person has not yet tried to live and apply that culture to his/her life. I agree to what Mary Midgley said because we really have no right to judge other people’s culture because we had no experience of applying it whatsoever.

Integrative Questions:

1.)   Does Mary Midgley believe in Moral Isolationism?

2.)   What is Moral Isolationism?

3.)   What is “tsujigiri”?

4.)   Who does the Japanese Samurais use to test out their swords?

5.)   Is “tsujigiri” ethically right?

What I’ve learned:

            What I learned in this article is about how differently culture can be. We may have a culture here which is very indifferent in some other places. A good example of this is our eating of “balut eggs”. In some other places, eating “balut eggs” is not pleasant.

          So that means, we do not have the right to judge other people’s culture because we are all made differently. We all have different points of view. I believe that if “tsujigiri” was practiced here in the Philippines, this might not be that brutal for us no more. That even might be a good thing for us.