Ethical Relativism

There are many theories on ethics that moral philosophers continuously debate about with each one having its own strengths and weaknesses. But what is really becoming popular these days, due to the influence of postmodernism, is ethical relativism.

There are different models of ethical relativism as well, which we will be taking a look at in due course; however, if we were to provide a broad definition of ethical relativism, it would be:

“Ethical relativism is the doctrine that the moral rightness and wrongness of actions varies from society to 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.”[1]

We as Muslims obviously reject this doctrine outright; however, do we only do so blindly due to our faith in Islam, or are there solid rational objections against this doctrine that even somebody like an atheist would appreciate?

What is Relativism?

The ethical relativist holds that “oughts” (ethical obligations) are applicable only in relation to a particular culture or society. They are relative to a particular set of circumstances, and when transferred into a different context, they lose their validity.

Consider the following ethical questions:

• Is it okay to eat pork/drink alcohol?

• Is it kind to give money to beggars?

• Is it permissible (or obligatory) to practice female circumcision?

• Should the law ban smoking?

• Should we cremate or bury (or eat!) the dead?

• Should your children have the MMR vaccine?

In all of these cases, there is substantial disagreement about the right answer. However, there are different kinds of disagreement in play here. Much disagreement about ethical questions can be traced to matters of (non–evaluative) fact. So, in the case of whether we should give the MMR vaccine to children, there is disagreement about whether the vaccine is harmful to children and the level of risk involved. We might hope that if we could all agree about the facts, we would have little trouble resolving the ethical dispute. So, for example, if we could all agree that the vaccine was safe, we could all agree that we should give the vaccine. However, in some other cases, the disagreement is not traceable to disagreement about facts. Instead, the disagreement seems to be more about religious beliefs, culture, and upbringing.

One of the premises underlying ethical relativism is the dependency thesis, which holds that moral acts of right or wrong depend upon the nature of the society in which they occur.

You do not have to be an ethical relativist to recognize that societies and customs do influence the way moral principles are applied. In Islam, we recognize this very well, and the jurists have spoken at great length about how customs may affect religious rulings. However, principles remain the same.

The ethical relativist, on the other hand, must take a bolder stance. He should argue that moral principles themselves are cultural byproducts of the societies they arise out of. In other words, moral principles to them have no authoritative transcendental property inherently built into them. They are simply the result of social approval.

What Are Its Implications for Ethical Disagreement?

What does relativism tell us about ethical disagreement? Well, it pretty much tells us two things:

1. It implies that one ought to conform to the “oughts” that apply in one’s own culture or society since such obligations only exist relative to a particular culture.

2. It implies that we should not judge the actions of other cultures except by their standards since our own ethical standards do not apply outside of our own culture.

To be a relativist, then, is to deny that ethical reasoning can ever be universal in scope: reasons that are valid in one era, culture, or country are not valid in another. We cannot be objective in answering ethical questions and so instead must look to the particular circumstances in which the question is asked.

What Makes Ethical Relativism Appealing to Many People?

Consider the examples I shared earlier. Most people feel that, at least in the burial vs. cremation case, it is attractive to say that you should do whatever the local culture says you should. These intuitions about culture are reflected in some of the reasons that people give for adopting a relativist position:

• We disagree about ethical questions: who is to say who is right?

• It is important to be tolerant of other people’s views about right and wrong

• When considering other cultures, we should show humility and not assume we are always in the right

• Sometimes, there are no right answers to an ethical question

• If the circumstances people live in are different, surely the same reasons cannot be valid

Subjectivism

Some people argue that ethical relativism does not depend on society but the individual. Ernest Hemingway pretty much describes what it is all about:

“So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after and judged by these standards, which I do not defend, the bullfight is very normal to me because I feel very fine while it is going on and have a feeling of life and death and mortality and immortality, and after it is over I feel very sad but also very fine.”[2]

A Critique of Subjectivism

The late philosopher, Louis P. Pojman, puts it masterfully:

“Absurd consequences follow from subjectivism. If it is correct, then morality reduces to aesthetic tastes about which there can be neither argument nor interpersonal judgment. Although many students say they espouse subjectivism, there is evidence that it conflicts with some of their other moral views. They typically condemn Hitler as an evil man for his genocidal policies. A contradiction seems to exist between subjectivism and the very concept of morality, which it is supposed to characterize, for morality has to do with proper resolution of interpersonal conflict and amelioration of the human predicament. Whatever else it does, morality has a minimal aim of preventing a Hobbesian state of nature, in which life is “solitary, nasty, poor, brutish and short”. But if so, then subjectivism is no help at all, for it rests neither on social agreement of principle (as the conventionalist maintains) nor on an objectively independent set of norms that binds all people for the common good. If there were only one person on earth, then there would be no occasion for morality, because there wouldn’t be any interpersonal conflicts to resolve or others whose suffering he or she would have a duty to ameliorate. Subjectivism implicitly assumes something of this solipsism, an atomism in which isolated individuals make up separate universes.

Subjectivism treats individuals as billiard balls on a societal pool table where they meet only in radical collisions, each aimed at his or her own goal and striving to do the others in before they do him or her in. This atomistic view of personality is belied by the facts that we develop in families and mutually dependent communities, in which we share a common language, common institutions, and similar rituals and habits, and that we often feel another’s joys and sorrows.”[3]

Conventional Ethical Relativism

After slightly digressing and looking at subjectivism, we come back to conventional ethical relativism, which teaches that there are no objective moral truth claims and that moral principles depend upon cultural acceptance.

One form of the argument is as follows:

Premise 1: If morality is relative to its culture, then there is no independent basis for criticizing the morality of any other culture but one’s own.

Premise 2: If there is no independent way of criticizing any other culture, then we ought to be tolerant of the moralities of other cultures

Premise 3: Morality is relative to its culture

Conclusion: We ought to be tolerant of the moralities of other cultures

Critiquing Conventional Ethical Relativism

There appear to be several shortcomings in this theory.

1) Cultures are always variable to transformation, whether for the better or worse. If cultures do happen to change for the worse, that should not mean that people should simply “go with the flow,” so to speak. If a culture is accepting of child sacrifices (like the Aztecs) or of bestiality, etc., that does not give us the green light to accept such practices in the name of “cultural diversity and respect.”

2) This argument presupposes that we must sanctify cultures and elevate them to a station so high that they cannot be objectively questioned and critiqued. On what basis does this presumption rest, though? There does not appear to be any reason why we must not objectively critique certain cultural practices. To say that this would offend people’s sensibilities is not an argument. It only points out that we must be cautious, diplomatic, and wise when we critique the cultural practices of others; it compels nothing more.

3) It is hard not to interpret the argument as presuming some sort of fatalism. That is, that since it allegedly appears “hopeless” to convince people to recognize the faults in their own culture, that this somehow entails that we must not critique those cultural practices. The fallaciousness of that reasoning speaks for itself.

4) The argument is self-referentially incoherent. What should a person do when his own culture is so intolerant of other cultures and frowns upon treating other cultures respectfully? In other words, what should a person do when his own culture rejects the notion of ethical relativism? If he is correct in rejecting this aspect of his culture, then that means that ethical relativism is false, for the person in question identified a wrong that was culture-independent. And if he is correct in accepting this aspect of his culture, then that also means that ethical relativism is false as well because both the person’s decision and ethical relativism could not be simultaneously correct. This is a serious dilemma for the ethical relativist.

5) This argument implies that moral reform is always a negative thing since “moral reform” by necessity entails going against prevailing cultural practices. That means that the steps that were gradually taken to abolish the Atlantic slave trade are to be censured, for they were opposing the cultural acceptance of slavery at the time. This is something that the ethical relativist himself would hardly entertain.

6) Another difficulty with this argument is that trying to define or even identify a particular culture becomes quite tricky. Who says what the necessary features or components of a culture must be? Who says what quantity of people it takes to form and create a culture? Who says what conditions must be met prior to creating a culture?

Conclusion

A great way to conclude the series would be with Louis Pojman’s words:

“Ethical relativism — the thesis that moral principles derive their validity from dependence on society or individual choice — seems plausible at first glance, but on close scrutiny it presents some severe problems. Subjectivism seems to boil down to anarchistic individualism, an essential denial of the interpersonal feature of the moral point of view, and conventionalism, which does contain an interpersonal perspective, fails to deal adequately with the problem of the reformer, the question of defining a culture, and the whole enterprise of moral criticism. Nevertheless, unless moral objectivism can make a positive case for its position, relativism may survive these criticisms.”[4]

[1] John Ladd, Ethical Relativism, p. 1

[2] Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, p. 13

[3] Louis P. Pojman, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 8th edition, pp. 16–17

[4] Ibid., pp. 25–26