“Only in the Western nations, i.e., those influenced by Greek philosophy, is there some willingness to doubt the identification of the good with one’s own way. One should conclude from the study of non-Western cultures that not only to prefer one’s own way but to believe it best, superior to all others, is primary and even natural—exactly the opposite of what is intended by requiring students to study these cultures. What we are doing is applying a Western prejudice—which we covertly take to indicate the superiority of our culture—and deforming the evidence of those other cultures to attest to its validity. The scientific study of other cultures is almost exclusively a Western phenomenon, and in its origin was obviously a search for new and better ways, or at least for the validation of the hope that our own culture really is the better way, a validation for which there is no felt need in other cultures. If we are to learn from those cultures, we must wonder whether such scientific study is such a good idea. Consistency would seem to require professors of openness to respect the ethnocentrism or closedness they find everywhere else. However, in attacking ethnocentrism, what they actually do is assert unawares the superiority of their scientific understanding and the inferiority of the other cultures which do not recognize it at the same time they reject all such claims to superiority. They both affirm and deny the goodness of their science.”
–Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, p.36
Perhaps we could summarize it this way —
Anti-ethnocentric Ethnocentrism: The belief that our way of thinking, which states that no one’s way of thinking is better than anyone else’s, is better than anyone else’s way of thinking, which states that their way of thinking is better than ours.
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