Foundation News

What is Ethical Relativism?

As part of our ongoing Diversity Project, the Chumir Foundation is developing resources to help people think clearly about how we can live well in a diverse society. A key issue in this regard is “ethical relativism.”

 

What is ethical relativism?

 

“Ethical relativism” is the view that what is right and wrong can only be determined or justified relative to the standards of the individual, group or culture in question. More specifically, “cultural ethical relativism” can be stated as follows:

 

Ethical standards vary from culture to culture; therefore, there are no universal moral standards which apply across cultures.

 

On this view, female genital mutilation (FGM) is not wrong in Somalia because the practice accords with local tradition, but it is deeply wrong here because it is contrary to Canadian gender equality (amongst other reasons).

 

Ethical relativism appeals to many people. But as we shall see, it leads to a number of inconsistent and unsatisfactory conclusions. First, let us make an important distinction, for there are two main types of ethical relativism:

 

• Descriptive relativism notes that there are differences among cultures’ ethical practices and standards without saying anything about their justification.

 

• Prescriptive relativism goes further and claims that people ought not to apply the standards of one culture to evaluating the behaviour of another culture. This is usually called “cultural relativism.”

 

At the Chumir Foundation we are primarily interested in cultural ethical relativism and so we will focus on the latter, that is, prescriptive relativism. 

 

And as a heads up on where we are going here, consider this:

 

If it is true that people ought not to judge the morality of another group’s behaviour, then people in the developing world cannot criticize the much higher per capita consumption of resources in the developed world. Why? Because the standards of the developing world cannot be used to judge the behaviour of people in other parts of the world.

 

This is not, we think, what relativists had in mind when they signed on for relativism. Relativism, contrary to what many of its adherents believe, is not a progressive doctrine.

 

What motivates relativism?

 

Here are several well-intentioned reasons why relativists think people from one culture ought to refrain from judging the ethical practices and standards of another culture:

 

• Descriptive relativism seems right because globalization has increased awareness of the diversity of cultures with different moral practices and standards;

• There is the perception that moral disagreements are irresolvable because there appears to be no intercultural standards of evaluation;

• There is a desire to “live and let live”;

• There is a fear of absolutism (“our way is the right way”);

• There is widespread belief that people should respect, or at least tolerate, other people’s cultural values and practices;

• There is skepticism or uncertainty about the justification of one’s own moral values;

• There is deep unease about imperialism towards other cultures; this is one of the legacies of colonialism.

 

We don’t think these factors justify or require us to adopt relativism. On the other hand, they are understandable reasons for being tempted by relativism. But what are the arguments offered in support of this view?

 

Arguments for relativism

 

1. The actual diversity of moral practices and standards

 

There is no denying that human behaviour and ideas of right and wrong vary from culture to culture and across historical periods. As noted, Somalians think FGM is morally permissible, whereas we do not. Let’s call the view that moral standards differ from culture to culture the “diversity thesis.”

 

But right away we should notice that just because there happens to be such diversity of moral standards, it doesn’t follow that each set of standards is equally right or justified. The diversity thesis is a claim about what is the case in the world, not about whether one set of standards is better than another.

 

2. The dependency of those practices and standards on the specific culture

 

The relativist takes the diversity thesis further, though, by combining it with what we can call the “dependency thesis.” This is the idea that the wrongness or rightness of actions depends on or is relative to the culture from which they emanate.

 

The diversity thesis points out that Somalians and Canadians, for example, have different standards. Then the dependency thesis says that only the standards of Somalians should be used to judge the actions of a Somalian. If this is true then it is also true that the standards of Somalians should not be used to judge the actions of Canadians. 

 

This is cultural ethical relativism in a nutshell. And if taken seriously it means—amongst many other things—that we should allow Somalian communities in Canada to practice FGM, and we may even have to consider funding it under our public health care system. Relativism also means that Somalians and other Africans cannot be critical of Canadians’ refusal to spend more money on humanitarian or development assistance to Africa. Nor can it be said by anyone other than Norwegians that Norway is a morally better society for having devoted the highest percentage of GDP in the world to foreign aid.

 

The problem of ethical disagreement

 

Ethical disagreement is an inevitable feature of human life, but there is much confusion about just what is at issue in ethical debates and how or whether ethical views can be justified.

 

Since there are no standards of intercultural evaluation, claims the cultural relativist, ethical disagreements are, by their very nature, irresolvable. This is often taken as further support for relativism: if disagreement is inevitable and irresolvable, we should just agree to disagree. Ethical standards are more like questions of taste than of fact: “I like strawberry ice cream and you like chocolate; neither preference is ‘right’ or ‘better.’ End of story.”

 

Notice that one of the consequences of ethical relativism is that no one can ever be wrong about their ethical beliefs or values. Nor can anyone ever be right since all ethical views are relative to individual preference or cultural values.

 

This presents an obvious problem for ethical debate: if ethics are relative to some standard, say, individual preference or cultural values, then it is hard to see how individuals or cultures with competing ethical beliefs could ever resolve their moral disagreements.

 

The relativist takes the fact of moral disagreement as evidence for its inevitability.

 

Why we aren’t relativists (even if we think we are)

 

But just because we don’t in fact agree about ethical standards, it doesn’t follow that there aren’t any ethical standards that transcend our given cultural standards. Why else would we argue about ethical matters, unless we think that there are standards that are better than others and that we can rationally persuade other people (and be persuaded ourselves) about the rightness of some standards and the wrongness of others?

 

How does relativism help us deal with the problem of moral disagreement? Imagine, for example, if instead of ice cream preferences we agree to disagree about the morality of slavery. Is this just a case of “I oppose slavery and you endorse it—oh well, we agree to disagree about whether slavery is right or wrong.” Does this square with our deep sense of moral concern regarding practices we think are wrong? Relativism doesn’t do justice to moral disagreement: when we consider difficult ethical cases, rather than trivial questions of taste about ice cream, we see that we don’t really think morals are relative after all.

 

As a response to the contentiousness of ethical disagreement, relativism doesn’t help since it just leaves everything as it is.

 

Does moral diversity imply relativism?

 

We have noted that there are diverse moral practices and standards, but perhaps such diversity does not imply relativism.

 

For example, can you imagine a culture or society with no conception of honesty and no prohibition against lying?

 

If a culture had no prohibition against lying, they would never be able to trust anything that any of their members said. Of course, cultures do have different rules about lying; for example, there are a variety of cultural views about the acceptability of telling “white lies” to spare someone’s feelings. In some cultures it is expected that when Aunt Martha asks you whether her hideous hat looks nice you will say “yes”, whereas in other cultures it is acceptable, if not expected, to say, “No, it is an ugly hat Aunt Martha.”

 

We can have significant relativity at the descriptive level of how a concept is applied, but agreement at a deeper level: cultures differ on what counts as appropriate honesty, but they all value honesty in some form. So there is more overlap amongst ethical concepts than the argument from diversity leads us to believe.

 

But the relativist says more than that different cultures express the same concepts in different ways. The relativist maintains that the concepts themselves are culturally relative, that is, they are products of the culture in which they are expressed.

 

Consider Herodotus’ account that the Callatians ate the bodies of their dead fathers while the Greeks practiced ritual cremation of their dead. Each cultural practice was abhorrent to members of the other group. Yet even here we can see a shared value: both groups expressed respect for their dead in funerary rites, albeit in very different ways.

 

So the relativist claim that there can be fundamental, irresolvable disagreement between cultures seems overstated. There seems to be common ground to resolve moral disagreements by appealing to shared values; for example, the Callatians and Greeks could at least begin to understand each other by appealing to their shared respect for their ancestors. This doesn’t mean that they would come to easy agreement about the ethics of respecting the dead, but it seems wrong to assume that they have no shared values.

 

Arguments against relativism

 

Earlier we noted some of the well-intentioned reasons for being a relativist, especially the desire to be tolerant of other cultures and to avoid making imperious judgments about others’ cultural practices. While these aims are laudable, there are some serious reasons to be sceptical about the truth of relativism.

 

Whose culture? 

 

A key difficulty with cultural relativism is that cultures aren’t uniform, so perhaps the idea of irresolvable moral disagreement between cultures doesn’t make sense.

 

We tend to think of cultures or societies as being like a Mondrian painting—a series of discrete blocks or silos which do not interact with each other and cannot understand each other.

 

Piet Mondrian, Composition A

 

But, in fact, aren’t cultures or societies more like a Jackson Pollock painting? As British philosopher Mary Midgley puts it, “If there were really an isolating barrier … our own culture could never have been formed. It is no sealed box but a fertile jungle of different influences—Greek, Jewish, Roman, Norse, Celtic, and so forth, into which further influences are still pouring.”

 

And isn’t there significant disagreement within cultures about ethical issues? For example, consider the range of disagreement in the abortion or gay marriage debates within Canadian or American society.

 

Jackson Pollock, Convergence

 

Moreover, isn’t there significant overlap amongst different cultures? Again, try to imagine a culture without a conception of honesty. Can you?

 

Of course, different cultures may enact their concept of honesty differently, but if they didn’t share a concept of honesty at some deeper level, how could they even argue about whether “white lies” are acceptable or not?

 

Remember that relativism arises because of the diversity thesis: we notice the differences between cultural conceptions of ethics and some people conclude that there are no common ethics shared across cultural boundaries.

 

But this seems to be a false assumption, or at least it is overstated.

 

Relativism is self-refuting

 

A standard refutation of relativism is that it is self-refuting. The argument goes like this:

 

   (P1) The relativist claims that all ethical judgments are relative.

   (P2) Premise 1 is a universal judgment and an ethical judgment. So it is both universal and relative.

   (C) Therefore, relativism is self-refuting.

 

The argument is that there is a fundamental inconsistency in arguing absolutely for the relativity of every judgment but this one.

 

The relativist denies that there is any absolute standard for comparing ethical standards but then claims that we ought not to judge others’ ethical standards. This is itself an ethical judgment (“ought”) and so the relativist is caught in a contradiction: they deny the objectivity and universality of all ethical judgments except for the one that we ought not to judge others’ ethical judgments.

 

But why should anyone else accept this? Can’t we just say to the relativist: “well that’s just your opinion about ethical judgments, but since it is on the same level as every other ethical judgement, we don’t have to accept it”? So the desirable aspect of relativism—that it fosters tolerance—is slipping away.

 

How tolerant must we be?

 

Put another way: there is a problem about tolerance. The relativist says that there are no universal standards except for tolerance, but according to relativism, why should we be tolerant? Why should a society which has no norm of tolerance accept that it should be tolerant? And why should a society with a robust belief in tolerance be willing to tolerate the potentially harmful practices of a society which does not?

 

Respect and tolerance of other people’s values and practices do not entail that we may not judge them. In fact, respect may actually require judgment, properly understood. Isn’t there something condescending about saying, “I don’t understand what you stand for, but I think it is good”?

 

Imagine saying “I don’t understand your belief in the rightness of holding slaves, but I think it is good and I respect your decision to do so.” This would mean that the person could stand for the exact opposite belief and I would still respect him. Isn’t this actually disrespectful? In effect I’m telling him that I don’t care what he stands for because his views don’t matter to me.

 

Coming to understand someone else’s beliefs, and therefore respecting them, involves being able to justify our favourable judgments of their beliefs. If we can justify our favourable judgments, logically we can also be justified in making critical judgments.

 

The need for humility

 

Of course, this requires humility about our own moral values—there is no room for smug superiority here. Remember the whole issue of relativism arose in response to intercultural evaluations and the need to avoid ethnocentrism. If we are willing to criticize others, we must be open to criticism in return.

 

For example, many people in non-western societies criticize our treatment of elderly people. How, they ask, can you leave your elderly parents alone in a nursing home rather than care for them at home? To dismiss this criticism out of hand because it comes from people “outside” of our culture would be to slide back into the moral isolationism that relativism fosters.

 

Asymmetry of judgments and moral isolationism

 

Notice that ethical relativism would prevent us from praising just as much as from criticizing other cultures. If relativism is right then it doesn’t make sense for people outside Scandinavia, for example, to praise the generous social safety net there as morally superior to, say, the extremely low welfare payments in a place such as Alberta.

 

And if relativism is true, then we are immune to the moral judgments of others.  If we can’t criticize (or praise) other cultures, why do we think that they can criticize (or praise) us? For example, western societies use most of the world’s resources, but, if we are relativists, we can’t justify criticism of this fact coming from the developing world—over-consumption is just our way of doing things; no one can say that it is unfair if there is no intercultural concept of fairness.

 

Mary Midgley points out the necessity of moral judgment:

 

The power of moral judgment is … not a luxury, not a perverse indulgence of the self-righteous. When we judge something to be good or bad, better or worse than something else, we are taking it as an example to aim at or avoid. Without opinions of this sort, we would have no framework of comparison for our own policy, no chance of profiting by other people’s insights or mistakes. In this vacuum, we could form no judgments on our own actions.

 

To accept relativism is to accept a kind of paralysis in our ability to make ethical judgments.

 

Relativism can lead to ethical paralysis

 

If we accept relativism, then we seem paralyzed with regard to our obligations to others. If we don’t think we can justifiably make judgments about practices and beliefs we find objectionable, then we have no impetus to work to change those practices and beliefs. If all ethical standards are equal, there are no grounds to criticize practices which we find ethically wrong—after all, that’s just “their” way of doing things and “we” have “ours.”

 

But, if we reject relativism, that is, if we think that we can make ethical judgments about the practices of other cultures—and vice versa—then it seems that we do have some obligations towards others.

 

For example, if we are relativists, we have no grounds for opposing the beliefs of extremists in Afghanistan who think that girls and women have no right to an education or any control over their own lives. Now, assuming that we reject relativism and we do think we have an obligation to oppose the subjugation of girls and women, there remain very difficult questions about how best to carry out these obligations. But this doesn’t mean that we should fall back on relativistic moral isolation.

 

At the very least, we have an obligation to engage in respectful, critical dialogue with others, starting from our common ground whenever possible, to see if we can arrive at the best ethical practices and standards available. Again, this is a two-way street: we are not suggesting that it is up to one group to be the “ethics police” towards others. But the difficulty of engaging in intercultural dialogue about ethics shouldn’t lead us to retreat into either ethnocentrism or relativism. Instead, we should approach ethical debate with sensitivity and openness to pursuing the best arguments to the best ethical outcomes.

 

 

Want to learn more about relativism? 

 

Check out these sources:

 

• Are you a relativist? Try the Ethics Updates relativism survey.

• Read some questions and answers about relativism on AskPhilosophers.org

• Listen to Prof. Simon Blackburn discuss moral relativism on Philosophy Bites

• Listen to Prof. Kwame Appiah discuss cosmopolitanism on Philosophy Bites

 

 

Bibliography

 

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. W.W. Norton, 2007.

 

*Benedict, Ruth. “Anthropology and the Abnormal”, The Journal of General Psychology 10, 1934, 59-82.

 

Gowans, Chris. “Moral Relativism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta, ed. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/

 

Hinman, Lawrence. “Ethical Relativism”, Ethics Updates 11/8/2007 http://ethics.sandiego.edu/theories/Relativism/index.asp

 

Ladd, John, ed. Ethical Relativism. Wadsworth, 1973.

 

Melchert, Norman. Who’s to Say? Hackett, 1994

 

*Midgley, Mary. “Trying Out One’s New Sword”, Heart and Mind. St Martin’s Press, 1981.

 

Pojman, Louis. “The Case Against Moral Relativism”, The Moral  Life. Louis Pojman, ed. Oxford University Press, 2004, 166-90.

 

Rachels, James. Elements of Moral Philosophy. McGraw-Hill, 1978.

 

Tamir, Yael. “Hands Off Clitoridectomy,” Boston Review, Vol 21, No 3, Summer 1996 http://bostonreview.net/BR21.3/Tamir.html

 

(See also: “Judging Other Cultures: Replies to Yael Tamir's ‘Hands off Clitoridectomy’”, Boston Review, Vol 21, No 5, Nov 1996 http://bostonreview.net/BR21.5/br21.5.html)

 

Wong, David. “Relativism”, A Companion to Ethics. Peter Singer, ed. Blackwell, 1991.

 

* Widely anthologized in introductory philosophy textbooks.

• About Ethics