[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by davem

Can we judge those societies as 'wrong' according to some objective standard, or are we merely imposing our own subjective values on them?

Good question. I do not pretend to know the answer. Certainly, it is arguable that they were "wrong" according to an objective standard (natural law?), but equally one might argue that what is "right" and "wrong" within a certain society is what that society deems to be "right" and "wrong". All I would say is that the standards of those societies were applicable to those who lived within them, even though we would now say that such standards were wrong and that those who disagreed with and/or sought to resist them were right.

Originally Posted by davem

As to books - why cannot a book teach the reader a new 'meaning' or way of thinking - one they did not have before? We can't assume the reader is the whole source of what they find in a book.

I am most definately not saying that a reader's experience of a book, and therefore its individual meaning to him or her, cannot change through further reading, discussion with others etc. My own interpretation of LotR has changed through discussion here at the Downs and through reading Tolkien's other works, his Letters etc. But the "new meaning" is still within the reader's own experience.