Quotation
Quote by Isaiah Berlin
To understand a culture is to say to yourself, If I’d been living then I could conceive that I could have believed that and remained rational and been quite a decent sort of person.
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Understanding a culture requires more than judging its beliefs by present-day standards. The comparison asks us to imagine living in that time and recognize that we might have accepted those beliefs while still seeing ourselves as rational and decent. This does not mean agreeing with them; it means trying to understand how they could seem reasonable to people then.
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- Source
- Michael Ignatieff’s Biographical Interviews with Isaiah Berlin, Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library, University of Oxford
- Format
- Official Statement
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