Re: Philosophy
Could u plz define the concept of TABOO for me. I know u will give me that traditional Victorian definition that was used and still used to undermine other cultures and conceal the defencies of one’s own. I will then give u a better definition, not my own but of an auhority in the field, that will help in the understanding of a lot of social phenomenon that has preplexed many in the past. Waiting for ur definition.
Re: Philosophy
Ok please give me the better definition why wait for my faulty definition.
Hope you have read the book,''Totem and Taboo''
Is Freud victorian?I have lost all sense of time and space.Please enlighten me,sir,Nadeem shad.Thank you.
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would you have posted chinese i would not have understood more:D
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I mean you are in thebest state of mind.
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jugga, my humble and polite request to make your posts a bit more easy to understand, even for a layman like me. A bit more punctuation and coherence would be much appreciated. Thank you
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ok thank you
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I never read *Taboo and Totem *by Sigmund Freud and therefore did not know that you were referring to that book. Sorry for misunderstanding. But I don’t think that Freud’s understanding of taboo concepts would be characteristically different from that of the philosophers and anthropologists from the Victorian Age.
Captain James Cook was the first European who mentioned the Polynesian word TABOO in the journal of his third voyage across the Pacific in 1778-79, in its various Tongan, Tahitian and Hawiian versions. (Dor example, taboo is termed as KAPU in Hawaiian version) James Cook and his fellow English seamen were astonished to observe that on the one hand Polynesians were too liberal regarding sexual habits, but one the other hand they had placed prohibition on men and women eating together. Seamen asked the Polynesians why men and women were prohibited from easting together; they were told that the practice was a TABOO. But when seamen asked the Polynesians what they meant by a TABOO, they could give little information.
Nineteenth century Victorian rationalists and Protestants became overly interested in these TABOO concepts, for the reasons we may discuss later on. Roberson Smith and Frazer are two prominent names from those times who discussed the concepts at length. Since Polynesians could not give any explanation of their practice, they were ridiculed by the Victorians as arbitrary religious prohibitions. Later on, this concept of TABBO gets vulgarized even further by being used for explaining every custom and practice alien to the Western culture. Today’s Oxford students just follow their forefathers in understanding and employing the TABOO concept.
But how did it come that the Polynesians were using the concept which they didn’t understand. The Victorian Rationalists had handmade answer for that; Polynesians were primitives and hence inferior to the Victorians who practiced a superior rationalist morality. In the 20th century when people began challenging the Victorian ethnocentric prejudices, new reasonable explanations were presented. Theses of Mary Douglas and Franz Steiner are quite illuminating.
Both have the opinion that the TABOO rules have a history that falls into two stages. In the first stage they are embedded in a context – i.e. a cosmology, a moral theory. In the second stage, the initial context is lost and set of background beliefs which made them intelligible is forgotten and abandoned. The TABOO rules are fragmented in this later stage and hence appear senseless and arbitrary. Thus, TABOO rules were not arbitrary rules but they appeared so because the Polynesians had abandoned and forgotten, for whatever reason, the system of beliefs which justified them. Once they were logical in a certain moral conceptual scheme and context.
Unfortunately, in the academic circles of the west these explanation get much regard and are discussed regularly but among the commoners the customary Victorian styled explanation is popular because by using it they can blame the customs and practices of other cultures as TABOO, a kind of primitiveness and inferiorness.
The cultural editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten termed the prohibition of drawing blasphemous caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) as a TABOO. Thou Speaks Commoner. He forgot that the Muslims can still give reasons for this prohibition by simply arguing that like the western man we cannot challenge every authority and thus ridicule it. The conceptual scheme and the background beliefs that make this prohibition intelligible, logical and senseless for us are not lost yet. This is why Hawaiian ruler Kasmehamecha II abolished TABOO rules without resistance from the public but the publishing of blasphemous caricatures received a strong resistance from the Muslims all over the world.
Sir, I hope you are enlightened now.
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As a moderator you should have the ability to read between the lines.Leave the job if you are so impatient.That is my humble advice.Think over it philosophically.
Thank you.
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Thank you very much sir,Nadeem Shad.
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To the first post,
I don't know people ever been so philosophical, But people don't like to have philosophical discussion in a country like Pakistan is that the bigger questions are not raised for them.
When people are occupied with feeling of certainty because of religion, and disucssion is considered as bad moral even equivalent to fight and meaningless, futile thing, and silence is considered as a proof of wisdom. Its quite improbable to find somone indulging in philosophical debate.
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straight to the point 
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dear stomp,
philosophy is actually the air some people breathe. its pure, its logical in its form and it is much understandable than the lefts and rights of round about ways of our day-to-day dealings in the real lives.
philosophy is about pragmatism. it is about the mind being at work full force with a singular focus of reaching out to the ultimate truth.
many a times, the questions about life and death - the circle of life - come to mind - and depending upon if one is a believer or not, philosophizing about the purpose of human life leaves the mind - at times, totally strained.
for women and men, therefore, having a consultative discourse on topics of morality, philosophy about life in general and outlook on personal lives in particular, is indeed very much essential to the growth of the intellectual vigor of us all.
thanks for posting the query - reminding the import of the topic it self, and throwing ideas out on it, briefly
best,
dush