On Moral Relativism
This essay is a reaction to Piers Benn’s entry on Ethics in Fundamentals of Philosophy (Routledge, 2003)
To begin to build an argumentative position on Moral Relativism, we must first properly understand the definition and claims of Moral Relativism, as well as study its criticisms and the merit that they hold.
Moral Relativism is most commonly defined as the position that any set of moral values are independent from judgement due to the uniqueness of the culture or time period that they belong to. This independence of judgement is of both action and thought, and thus tolerance as a moral value is not moral relativism. It also flows that since any set of moral values are unique by their own right, there cannot be a possible ideal set of moral values.
The primary criticism off moral relativism is the accusation that since it is begging the question, it is detrimental to moral engagement. Secondary criticism refer to the position of tolerance and human rights violations being inadequately dealt with in the realm of moral relativism.
The first point that the discussion on moral relativism invokes the domain in which this theory comes into play. Since according to its definition moral relativism attempts to negate the comparison between two cultures, it comes into play when two distinctive culture come into contact. Indeed, this seems true since most discussions on moral relativism arose during Hellenistic Greece and the Colonial period. But what about a world where only one culture is found, perhaps invariant of time?
The point that is intended to be made here is that moral relativism is independent of its scale and thus in its extreme sense can be applied to individuals as distinct ‘micro-cultures’ and therefore does satisfy the criticism of ‘begging the question’; since at that point the usefulness of the theory vanishes for moral engagement.
Such a position is quite absurd, and is to some extent a straw-man fallacy; Moral relativism is not meant to be diffused to the individual, but to be applied between distinct recognizable cultures. Thus moral relativism as a position becomes not an ethical theory but a position on dealing with the clash of cultures, allowing for the mix of practices and over the passage of time, to result in the change of moral values.
In essence then, Moral Relativism dos not take any position on the evolution of moral values inside a particular culture and allows for moral engagement being confined to that culture.
Humans have walked the earth for over a million years and have had civilizations for over 5000 years. The anthropological sandbox that is Earth has allowed for a development of a plethora of cultures and consequentially, moral values surrounding them. Both the similarities as well as dissimilarities of cultural differences can be accounted for by three primary factors: Environment, interaction between cultures, and the irrationality of the human mind. Although much of human history has been shaped by moral objectivists (religious wars etc.), the very existence of such a diversity between cultures cannot be explained by the claims of moral objectivists. If there was an ideal moral system why would such a diversity exist? Granted, environment can play a large role in the shaping of a culture and its moral value, but similar environments producing vastly different cultures? Critics have often stated the argument that these differences are being over exaggerated and that on a whole humans seem to have the same ideals like honesty, compassion etc. These points are negligent of the fact that these similarities hold only for humans and not necessarily for other conscious beings . These so called ‘ideals’ are in essence a product of the environment ‘Earth’ and follow from the natural selection of great apes. Moral objectivism would apply such ‘human ideals’ to even extraterrestrial intelligence should they be encountered. Thus moral relativism is a more robust theory.
There is the position that moral relativism is criticized for; its all inclusiveness. It is an excellent theory that it attempts to explain/ include development of moral values. Any attempt to apply it non-trivially results in its collapse. This is of course true. The sheer freedom this theory offers makes its fragile; however no moral relativist actually stands by absolute moral relativism; they are confining themselves to a facet of the theory like cultural moral relativism or individual moral relativism. To criticise one using arguments about the other is absurd.
Thus it is the position that all aspects of moral relativism are robust, but not when taken together, which makes sense. We can claim then that moral relativism is robust when applied to a specific domain and with such a modification the theory answers all its criticisms.
Any similarities between the moral values of different cultures are not evidence of an ideal moral system but in fact are result of the environment that is the human brain. If in the course of time the brains and minds of humans evolve into something else, these ideals and might vanish to give rise to new ones. Moral relativism is the only theory that thus would hold the test of time.
The criticisms regarding the upholding of human rights is answerable thus; human rights as a whole, arise from the moral values of a morally absolute, largely western dominated culture. A possible different charter of human rights could be present today if a different culture were to be dominant. The fact that these dominant cultures are engaging with their distinctive, non-dominant neighbours produce a change within both these cultures, not unlike the physical description of the mixing of two gases to equilibrium. Thus culture is the driving force behind moral relativism, and any absolutist position is naive to attribute the change in moral values as the evidence of the ‘ideal value system’.
The clash of the non-tolerant system, say for example Pakistan, with the comparatively tolerant stance of the rest of the world would be resolved into one of these states of existence: a more tolerant Pakistan or a less tolerant world. The cultural and economic factors could drive this change and its direction , just as for example, the USA has affected the rest of the world for the past 80 years.
Thus we see that moral relativism, although susceptible to its inability to allow moral engagement to the liking of some, is an overall robust theory explaining evolution of moral values. We can proceed to engage in discussing perhaps the evolution of cultural moral relativism from the individual moral relativism to better formulate the driving factor for the evolution of moral values. To judge them in an absolute sense, however, is not appropriate.
