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Ethical Relativism
Defining Relativism
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Ethical Relativism is the view that the rightness or
wrongness of an action depends partially upon the beliefs
and culture of the person doing the action
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Cultural Relativism says that an action is good if and only
if one’s culture says it is good (and likewise for bad)
Subjectivism says that what is right or wrong depends on
what the individual acting believes to be right or wrong
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This is contrasted with Objectivism says that there is one
standard of right and wrong for every person in every
culture at every time.
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It is also contrasted with situational ethics, which says
that the rightness or wrongness of an action depends on
the situation in which the action was performed
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Relativism says that the same action in the same situation
can be right or wrong for different people.
Cultural Relativism
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One central idea behind cultural relativism is the
connection between “norm” and “normal”
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Each culture has their own set of what is normal, which
people in that culture get used to.
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In America it is normal (and expected) to drive on the
right side and bad/unnormal to drive on the left, but in
the U.K. the opposite is true.
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In some cultures it is normal/good to burn the dead and
wrong to eat them, while in other cultures it is
normal/good to eat them and bad to burn them.
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The claim of cultural relativism is that there is nothing
deeper to morality than cultural customs we have come to
expect of people.
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Since different cultures have different norms, we should
not assume there is one “correct” norm.
Cultural Relativism
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In addition to the argument from cultural difference, there
also seems to be arguments for relativism from a certain
view of tolerance.
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Cultural relativism seems to celebrate differences as being
good and right, rather than judging people for being
different from us.
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There is a deep seeded view in current culture that
everyone has their own perspective. Because we cannot
relate to how other people were raised, we shouldn’t judge
them. At most we should only judge those we are closest
with and understand best.
Obvjectivism
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An objectivist will respond to these claims by noting that
different customs does not necessarily indicate an ethical
difference.
If one culture eats the dead to pay their respects, and
another culture burns the body to pay there respects,
there seems to be a sense in which the underlying ethics of
respecting the dead is the same, even if the way they
respect the dead is different.
Likewise, one could reasonably say that there is nothing
ethical about driving on the right or left side of the road.
It is ethical not to endanger yourself and others, so it is
ethical to follow the local driving customs, but what those
customs are is a completely non-ethical issue.
On the other hand, things with obvious moral status (such
as rape or murder) do not seem to vary across cultures in
the same way.
These are only meant to respond to the case for relativism;
there are also massive problems with relativism.
Problem 1
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Cultural relativism implies that we cannot say any other societies’ values
and norms are better or worse than our own.
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This is precisely what defenders of the view like about it.
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However, this is really difficult to maintain in the face of really terrible
cultures (e.g. Nazis)
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Are we really prepared to say that ISIS raping, crucifying, and beheading
people (including children) for not converting to Islam is a perfectly
acceptable and wonderful part of their culture which we should celebrate?
Problem 2
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Cultural relativism implies there is no such thing as moral progress or
regress within a culture.
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Consider, is the U.S. better for having gotten rid of slavery?
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In order to say that, you have to be able to say that one culture (our
contemporary one) is better than another culture (that of our ancestors),
but this is precisely what cultural relativism denies.
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If we could judge one culture as better than another, that would mean
that there was some independent standard by which we could judge how
good a culture is based on how close it fits that standard, but that is the
definition of Objectivism.
Problem 2
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Some people try to get around this problem by saying that from the
perspective of our culture, of course slavery is wrong! We are completely
correct (qua relativism) to criticize our ancestors, because our culture
condemns slavery!
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However, while it is “correct” for us to say that slavery was wrong, it was
also equally “correct” for American’s 200 years ago to say that abolition
was wrong.
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This doesn’t just apply to the slave-owners either; since the slaves were
part of a society that condemned abolition, they would have been
“correct” in saying that abolition is wrong and slavery is good.
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We don’t yet know what way our culture will proceed, so for all we know,
it will be “good” in the future to torture, bully, or otherwise harm people.
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Given cultural relativism, moral judgments may be correct or incorrect,
but this will in no way help us progress as a society.
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In fact, many progressive movements will be wrong because they will go
against what our culture currently accepts.
Problem 3
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Cultural relativism says that what is good and bad depends on one’s
culture, but “culture” is a incredibly vague concept.
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Consider: you are a part of American culture, so for you, abortion is ok.
But, you may also be a part of Catholic culture, so for your, abortion is
wrong.
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Other cultures you could belong to would be a political party, a Notre
Dame culture, an academic culture, a global culture, a football culture,
etc.
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There are so many cultures of so many different sizes; given how many
disagree with each other, how is the individual to figure out what is right
or wrong for them based on their culture.
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What it seems to come down to is what culture you want to identify with
more.
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Thus, it seems cultural relativism devolves into subjectivism.