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" "Knowledge which ... transcends the bounds, the prejudices and prejudgements of any one society and culture is not an illusion but, on the contrary, a glorious and luminous reality. Just how it was achieved remains subject to debate.
Ernest André Gellner (9 December 1925 – 5 November 1995) was a philosopher and social anthropologist, cited as one of the world's "most vigorous intellectuals."
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What are the motives of those who wish to endorse all cultures? A part of their motive is, no doubt, a kind of universal benevolence — let a hundred flowers bloom, let all cultures enjoy their own life and their own values. This kind of liberalism on behalf of cultural wholes faces the same difficulty as liberalism on behalf of individuals (but it does not even attempt to face it) — is it to be freedom for the pikes or the minnows? Many traditional cultures are exclusive and intolerant, and oppress subcultures within their own territory. Who exactly is to be granted this protected status?
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I do not recommend any legislative action against hermeneutics. I am a liberal person opposed to all unnecessary state limitation of individual liberties. Hermeneutics between consenting adults should not, in my view, be the object of any statutory restrictions. I know, only too well, what it would entail. Hermeneutic speakeasies would spring up all over the place, smuggled Thick Descriptions would be brought in by the lorry-load from Canada by the Mafia, blood and thick meaning would clot in the gutter as rival gangs of semiotic bootleggers slugged it out in a series of bloody shoot-outs and ambushes. Addicts would be subject to blackmail. Consumption of deep meanings and its attendant psychic consequences would in no way diminsh, but the criminal world would benefit, and the whole fabric of civil society would be put under severe strain. Never!