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Thou shalt not judge

for our contemporary culture,

especially for the typical university culture,

this is perhaps the first and greatest commandment. It may be, in fact, in some places,

the only commandment. So the great sin on most university campuses, the great sin of our age is to be

judgmental. And in a certain way, you could say that it's become the capital vice of postmodernity.

Now, this poses a challenge to us if we make judgments.

If being judgmental is a vice and to be avoided does it follow that when we make a

judgment we're engaging in an act of vice that's the question I want to pose and how to think about whether or not we are being judgmental or doing the right thing in making a judgment.

It seems that most people have no trouble accepting that there are scientific truths that we can know as valid in all places at all times.

And so when we say do not judge, most people would agree we're not talking about adopting a perspective of theoretical or universal philosophical skepticism, about our mind's

capacity to know the truth. So most people will say, oh, well, you know, science does give us

some truths, but we're talking about something else when we say don't be judgmental. Okay,

that's a good question. What else are we talking about there?

So our task in this talk is to address what we mean when we talk about being judgmental

and what we mean when we talk about making a judgment.

In what sense is being judgmental, a vice or a sin?

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