Prejudices

[Paul Murphy]

Joe Varo, responding to Henry M:

>It's just that
>the word "prejudice" has so much baggage along with it.  "Prejudice"
>basicly means a "pre-judging" or, as you say, an "assuming".
>
>Unfortunately, at least here in the US, "prejudice" has come to be very
>much equated with "bigotted".

I've been wondering when some of our more philosophically informed lit-crit
(.edu) friends would weigh in with this, but nothing yet.

So here goes:

We could talk here about Hans-Georg Gadamer's account of prejudice in his
_Wahrheit und Methode_, in which he seeks to defend prejudice precisely in
the terms stipulated by Mr. Varo: as pre-judgment. (This works well in
German, where *Vorurteil* can be disassembled into *Vor-urteil*). Gadamer
identifies the 'prejudice against prejudice' as a rationalist /
Enlightenment dogma which fails to account for the 'situatedness' of all
human activity. H-GG goes on to argue against any oversimplifying
freedom/determinism binary, such that situatedness within a given
socio-historical context does not necessarily cash out as environmental
determinism (i.e., we're doomed to be prejudiced and our prejudices can
never be modified, no matter how hard we might try), but rather that we
interact with our environment -- which includes literary texts -- in such a
way that we can bring our prejudices to light (we can 'thematize' them, to
greater or lesser degrees of cogency) and can begin to modify or transform
them. There is no sub specie aeterni(sp?) vantage-point, no 'view from
nowhere', from which we can behave rationally, but this does not mean that
having prejudices, or being pre-disposed towards determinate ways of
interpreting ourselves and the world, is really a 'bad' thing.

It's been years since I've read Gadamer, so I hope this thumbnail account
isn't totally misguided.

Trying to be helpful,
Cheers,
Paul

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                             Paul Murphy
                       paul.murphy at utoronto.ca
                 ------------------------------------
            "It is easier to raise a shrine than bring the
                       deity down to haunt it."
                    -S. Beckett, _The Unnameable_