Relativism
and
Ethical Relativism
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Do you agree?
1. What’s right for you may not be what’s right
for me.
2. What’s right for my culture won’t necessarily
be what’s right for your culture.
3. There are no absolute moral truths.
4. No moral principles are true for all people at
all times and in all places.
5. No ethical principle is any better than any
other.
6. All ethical opinions, lifestyles and worldviews
are equally right.
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Opinions in ethics
• All moral norms are relative to particular
cultures.
• The rules of conduct that are applicable in
one society. It is claimed, do not apply to
the actions of people in another society.
• Each community has its own norms.
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Serious doubts about the whole
normative ethics.
• If right and wrong are completely
determined by the given moral code of a
particular time and place;
• If moral code vary from time to time and
place to place
• It would seem that unchanging cross
cultural principles that could constitute an
ideal ethical system applicable to
everyone.
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Cont…
• The purpose of normative ethics is to
construct and defend just such a universal
system of principles, beliefs in the relativity
of moral norms denies the possibility of
normative ethics.
• It is therefore important at the outset to
examine the theory of ethical relativism.
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Relativism
Relativism is the concept that points of
view have no absolute truth or validity,
having only relative, subjective value
according to differences in perception and
consideration.
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Relativism
Relativism is not a single doctrine but a
family of views whose common theme is
that some central aspect of experience,
thought, evaluation, or even reality is
somehow relative to something else.
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Ethical relativism
• Ethical relativism is the position that there
are no moral absolutes, no moral right and
wrongs. Instead, right and wrong are
based on social norms.
• Ethical relativism would mean that our
morals have evolved, that they have
changed over time, and that they are not
absolute.
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Advantage
• One advantage of ethical relativism is that
it allows for a wide variety of cultures and
practices.
• It also allows people to adapt ethically as
the culture, knowledge, and technology
change in society.
• This is a good and valid form of relativism.
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Disadvantage
• The disadvantage of ethical relativism is
that truth, right and wrong, and justice are
all relative.
• Just because a group of people think that
something is right does not make it so.
• Slavery is a good example of this. Two
hundred years ago in America, slavery
was the norm and morally acceptable.
Now it is not.
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Cont…
• Relativism also does not allow for the
existence of an absolute set of ethics.
• Furthermore, if ethics have changed over
time, there is the problem of self
contradiction within the relativistic
perspective.
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Cont…
• 200 years ago slavery was socially
acceptable and correct. Now it is not.
There has been a change in social ethics
in America regarding this issue.
• The problem is that if slavery becomes
acceptable again in the next 200 years,
who is to say if it is right or wrong?
• We would have a contradictory set of right
and wrong regarding the same issue.
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What the answer is?
• All moral values are relative,
• Or cultural-bound
• May be expressing any one of three
different ideas
– They may be making an empirical or factual
assertion (Descriptive Relativism)
– They may be making a normative claim
(normative relativism)
– They may be understood to be uttering a meta
ethical principle (Meta ethical Relativism)
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