Ethical Relativism Is A Problem For A Couple Reasons

Loretta Kopelman’s dissertation, Female Genital Circumcision and Conventionalists Ethical Relativism, takes a new approach in a global plight. Kopelman begins her thesis by elaborating on a particular tribe in southern Kenya. She describes how young girls are being mutilated for marriageability. Their fathers, eager for large dowries, perform the ritual on girls as young as nine. While some victims are able to escape and seek sanctuary, this obviously isn’t always possible and thus these girls must live with an inflicted deformity their whole life that doesn’t only cause serious health complications but sometimes even death.

Culture is the Backbone of a society, when something/someone tries to alter it or go against it everyone will notice. In this issue pointed out by Ruth Macklin, we look at the problems that can arise when an individual’s culture and autonomy clash. Every year there at least 30 million immigrants from all over the world that move to the United states of America, making America one of the most culturally diverse country in the world. Keeping this in mind, we will focus on Ruth Macklin’s issue of Multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is the co-existence of diverse cultures, where culture includes racial, religious, or cultural groups and is manifested in customary behaviors, cultural assumptions and values, patterns of thinking, and communicative styles. Critics argue that we associate culture with a society, community and or family, but rarely with a single individual, thus placing it above the individual person. In this paper we are going to look at four different scenarios on from Ruth Macklin’s article.

Moral Relativism is tempting as an easy choice. If someone says he or she is a moral relativist about precise issues they perhaps have an underline principle that is morally true everywhere and is not relative. However, trying to find those underline principles is really hard.

Moral relativism is a problematic idea that will lead to a global society with no rules. If it is believed that you can not judge another for what they find morally acceptable, then it is not a far reach to say that you can not stop another person from doing what they find morally acceptable as well. With actions such as that, the world we live in would be drastically different from what it is now.

There are disadvantages to having a presence of moral relativism. There is a chance that people will abuse their power to have individual perceptions of right and wrong. Since each culture has their own

My conclusion on moral relativism is that it can do more harm than good as “it endorses social evils” and makes it hard to attain a utopia. If one culture endorses slavery, moral relativism will have no objection. This also “promotes moral apathy”, an idea which I disagree with. (Lecture 7. Moral Relativism-

Ethical relativist deny any objective moral values. Cultural relativism explains that in different times and in different places people act in different ways; they acquire different values and ideas of what is morally right and wrong. Moral relativism explains that there are no moral absolutes; everyone can do what they please and how they want whenever they like.

Relativism is what the person deems to be right or wrong depending on their culture, but as compared to the deontological perspective, relativism is less absolute, more circumstantial, and able to adjust to what the person wants to be right. For example, some southerners made the note that slavery occurs in the Bible, but did not mention where the bible speaks about slavery, just that slavery is in the Bible. Those that supported slavery would have quoted verses such as 1 Timothy 6:1-2 which starts by saying “All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered.”, and continues to say that if the slave’s master also believes in God, then the slave should treat their master even better because their master will care for the slave’s well-being. This verse alone would give southerners an argument to show how slaves were treated and how the masters treated their slaves, and as a result could have given northerner’s the idea that slavery isn’t as bad as it seems. Leviticus 25:44 says “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves.” This gives the southerner’s the idea that if Israelites could do this then so could they. These examples show that the southerners used the Bible and interpreted it in the way

Before diving into the arguments for and against moral relativism, it is important to define some key terms including morality, cultural diversity, and tolerance. David Fisher, a Teaching Fellow at King’s College, London defines morality in his book, Morality and War: Can War Be Just in the Twenty-first Century?. “Morality is thus neither mysterious nor irrational but furnishes the necessary guidelines for how we can promote human welfare and prevent suffering” (Fisher 134). Cultural diversity is simply the existence of various cultures in society. Tolerance is just the ability to accept something that you would not normally agree with.

From a relativist's perspective, moral values are only applicable within certain cultures and societies. Something that may be viewed as morally correct in the United States could be unethical in Zimbabwe and vice versa. For example, in Somalia, it is acceptable, or moral for a family to kill a female family member if she is raped, while here in the United States the murder of a family member is viewed as extremely unethical and cruel. A more simplistic example of this is the fact that it is not unethical in American culture to consume beef, while in India it is viewed as unethical. The reason for this is because of the diverse cultures and their own set of moral standards. This theory states that there are many values and ideas that can be considered morally correct while disagreeing with one another. However, there are also few downsides to this theory. Relativism may lead to immorality because of opposing perspectives and cultures. Just because one culture views something as good or bad, right or wrong, does not mean this is true. This theory is based off of personal preferences and values, which can lead to conflict and clashing of values. Relativism also does a poor job of establishing an absolute set of ethics, and does not take into consideration that the values and norms of a society can change over time.

Ethical Relativism takes the position that morality is relative to time periods, cultures, subcultures within cultures and time periods (Velasquez, Andre, Shanks & Meyers, 1987).

Ethical Relativism What is right and wrong is a widely opinionated discrepancy among the human race. It varies between cultures, societies, religion, traditions, and endless influential factors. Ethical relativism is described by John Ladd as the “doctrine that the moral rightness and wrongness of actions varies from society and that there are no absolute universal moral standards binding on all men at all times. Accordingly, it holds that whether or not it is right for an individual to act in a certain way depends on or is relative to the society to which he belongs”(Pojman, 24).

To compare Ethical Egoism with Ethical Subjectivism, we could use the abortion example. If it is in the mother’s best interest to do abortion, then it is right to do it. Along with Ethical subjectivism, when people say, abortion is “murder,” they are expressing their feelings towards this case, and when other people say abortion is an optional and it’s up to the women to decide, they’re also stating their feelings. The decision would be based on how you feel abortion not weather its right or wrong. Ethical subjectivism opposes with the concepts of good and bad or right and wrong, and it believes that these concepts do not exist. For this reason, ethical subjectivism was more developed afterwards and has divided into many other theories such as relativism which advocates that good

Moral relativism is the philosophy that moral or ethical propositions do not represent moral truths, but are effected by the environment in person’s life. Christians have a worldview that believes otherwise based on the biblical worldview of what is right and wrong proposed by James Sire. Issues that are ethically questionable but not specifically banned in Leviticus, or in the Bible in general, such as gambling, drinking alcohol, and divorce are examples of how even seemingly unclear topics are still outlined by God. The Lord gives Christians the instinctive knowledge of right and wrong based on Scripture that does not and will never change, contradictory to the constantly evolving culture that is moral relativism.

Cultural and ethical relativisms are widely used theories that explain differences among cultures and their ethics and morals. Morality deals with individual character and the moral rules that are meant to govern and limit one’s character. On the other hand Ethics is somewhat interchangeable with morals, but it actually defines the principles of right conduct, thus to some extent, enlarging its scope to a societal or communal level. Ideally, ethics play a vital role in determining the dos and don’ts when dealing with the society. This essay will discuss what ethical realism is, analyzing why ethical relativism is unsound and unreliable in relation to the relevant evidence and literature, providing valid reason to ascertain why this is the case.