Download Kerns Relativism and Essentialism

Dr Tom Kerns
North Seattle Community College
Two definitions:
Ethical Relativism
and
Ethical Essentialism
Ethical relativism and ethical essentialism are two different schools of belief about the nature of ethics.
Almost everyone who thinks about it will probably find that they are already in one of the two camps, even
if they haven’t fully defined it that way for themselves, and even if they haven’t thought about the matter
very consciously. What we will want to do here is just identify what each of these two schools is so that
we can use these terms in our future classroom discussions.
Both ethical relativism and ethical essentialism recognize that there is a wide variety of social norms in
the world regarding what is good or evil. Many cultures have norms that differ so much from each other
that they are virtually contradictory. And social norms of conduct have also varied through the ages, with
some eras having very different norms than other eras.
But while both ethical relativism and ethical essentialism recognize that there are in fact many different de
facto social norms, they have different interpretations of what that fact means.
Ethical relativism believes that the fact of different social norms proves that there are in fact no behaviors
or actions that are in themselves right or wrong. What is right or wrong always depends entirely and only
on what a given community believes at a given time.
Ethical relativism believes that there is no independent, objective morality, but only the many different
varied moralities as they appear in all their multiple forms, in different times and places. There is no
essential morality, accordiing to ethical relativism; there are only the multivarious norms of moralities in
all the different eras and cultures around the world.
Ethical essentialism, on the other hand, believes that all the multivaried forms of social norms around the
world (including one’s own) are actually only what appear to those cultures to be moral. The various
norms themselves only show us what different cultures and eras believe is proper moral behavior. What
some cultures believe may not actually be truly moral, but may only appear to that culture to be moral.
Some eras and some cultures, for example, have believed that the practice of slavery was morally just
and good, or that the killing of infants (infanticide) was morally acceptable. But just because a culture
believes those things does not necessarily mean that slavery or infanticide are actually morally good. It
just means that in that particular culture or era, the practice of slavery or infanticide was believed to be
good.
Ethical essentialism, in other words, believes that some actions are good or bad in themselves, in their
essence, even if some cultures do not yet recognize those actions as good or bad. According to ethical
essentialism, cultures can be mistaken about their ethical beliefs. Cultures can make mistakes. Cultures
can get it wrong, i.e., they can fail to recognize which actions are right or wrong, and it may be only in the
long view of history that we can look back and recognize how cultures were mistaken.
Ethical relativism, on the other hand, would find it difficult to say that some cultures are mistaken in their
ethical beliefs. Ethical relativism believes that a culture’s moral beliefs are what constitute morality.
There is no external standard agaiinst which to measure the validity of a culture’s moral beliefs, says
ethical relativism.
Ethical essentialism, though, says that there are certain actions which are truly and essentially wrong
(slavery may be an example; torture may be an example), or truly and essentially right (treating people
with respect may be an example), and that it is only when a culture recognizes this that they become a
morally just culture.
Ethical relativism would say that the concept of “morally just culture” is a flawed concept because it
implies the existence of an external, essential moral standard against which cultures can be measured.
Ethical relativism says there is no such thing as an objective, essential standard for measuring a culture’s
“goodness.” All standards, it would say, are culture bound, hence relative.