Dear teachers,
there's a sentence in this excerpt from a scientific essay about pleasure that I cannot understand:
"Certainly people have mistaken
essentialist beliefs. Sex with a virgin won’t cure AIDS and eating
the corpse of a person who speaks English won’t improve your
own English. Human groups, such as blacks and Jews, don’t have
essences that clearly distinguish them from other groups".
Does the final sentence mean that human groups cannot be distinguished between each other (i.e., there are not essences that allow to distinguish blacks form jews), or that they cannot be distinguished from other groups. I find this sentence is not clear.
Thank you in advance for your advice.
G.
there's a sentence in this excerpt from a scientific essay about pleasure that I cannot understand:
"Certainly people have mistaken
essentialist beliefs. Sex with a virgin won’t cure AIDS and eating
the corpse of a person who speaks English won’t improve your
own English. Human groups, such as blacks and Jews, don’t have
essences that clearly distinguish them from other groups".
Does the final sentence mean that human groups cannot be distinguished between each other (i.e., there are not essences that allow to distinguish blacks form jews), or that they cannot be distinguished from other groups. I find this sentence is not clear.
Thank you in advance for your advice.
G.