ABSTRACT
In his 1964 paper “Understanding a Primitive Society”, Peter Winch attacked E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s classic ethnography Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Winch claimed that some of Evans-Pritchard’s depictions of Zande practices contained logical fallacies rooted in a form of European ethnocentrism. Cora Diamond has criticized Winch’s arguments for resting on an unwarranted assumption that genuine conflicts between different systems of thought are unintelligible. She claims that it is also possible to regard such conflicts as taking place in a logical space provided by the conflicts themselves and not necessarily only by the resources of each system of thought taken in isolation. This chapter focuses on three aspects of Diamond’s criticisms. The first aspect concerns Diamond’s argument for a kind of non-metaphysical realism based on features internal to our grammar. The discussion here brings out that Diamond’s arguments can show only that a grammar may contain the bare concept of getting things right within some as of yet unexplored logical space. It does not show that every grammar qua grammar must contain the same feature. Discussion of the second aspect reveals that while Diamond’s argument criticizing from “outside” is logically in order, it requires us to suspend other important argumentative practices. Third, and most importantly, the fact that the feature of our grammar that makes criticism from outside intelligible for us is not a given, but rather has an historical dimension to it. This suggests that there is no guarantee that this feature of our grammar is immune to change. And this in turn raises the normative question as to whether this feature is worthy of continued articulation and support in our practices.
