In a message dated 12/09/1999 3:57:23 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
 
<< I think anyone making generalizations knows that there is something false
about them, as well as something true. But to avoid making them is to live in
a state of perpetual equivocation. And what does that get you?
    Tenure, perhaps, but in this world of ours, little else.
  >>
 
actually my post objected to crass simplifications.  however, to address your
very different point, anyone who is in fact knowledgeable on particular
subject is usually able to make generalizations that increase the general
understanding as opposed to doing a kind of intellectual violence to it; in
other words, a generalization doesn't have to be reductive.  one doesn't
necessarily have to live in a state of perpetual equivocation if one is
informed and, ideally, is able to extrapolate from that erudition.  in any
event, I don't know what's to be gained by dismissing Confucianism as a
"patriarchal" system, except to smear, by using a very broad brush, brother
Pound in the process -- which strikes me not only as inappropriate but
dishonest as well.  as for tenure, you undoubtedly know more about that than
I do.
 
joe...