PHILIP THURMAN: Meeting in the field over and above ideas of wrongdoing plus rightdoing — BusinessLIVE

There exists a quote through 13th-century Persian poet Rumi cut right into a sheet associated with rusting metal embedded in the Dylan Lewis Sculpture Backyard in Stellenbosch. It says: “Out above ideas associated with wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. Ill meet a person there. When the soul is situated down because grass… Concepts, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ does not make any sense. ”

These lines in many cases are cited being an expression of relativism — a declaration that correct and wrong, good plus bad, are unhelpful binaries. In this particular interpretation, if human souls can escape the filter world views that form our judgments of others’ actions, we can fulfill and combine in a way that will cannot be accommodated by the paradigms of religion or politics. Ethical considerations give way in order to aesthetics plus affect…