Ethical Relativism

1272 Words3 Pages

Ethical relativism says that there is no right or wrong. That is because different people have different moral beliefs and different societies have also different moral beliefs. Every person has its own personalized beliefs about multiple issues. For example I believe that stealing can be accepted under certain circumstances (for instance if the person is hungry and has no money to buy food then he/she should not be blamed for stealing). On the other hand someone else might believe that stealing is an unacceptable act and should be banned no matter what. There are no absolute truths in ethics and what is morally wrong or right varies from person to person and from society to society. Egoism theory is almost identical with ethical relativism …show more content…

According to both theories a rapist act could considered as ethical since for him the sexual need is higher than the other persons rights.
Whether we agree or not though some things seem wrong. Every person has values which are dependent on the culture and the way this person has lived until now. Someone who has been raised in a hostile environment it is possible to adopt values which are not accepted from the majority of people. For example a child who has been raised by an alcoholic parent who abuses it it is possible later on his/her life to adopt the same acts. Furthermore there are some African cultures who accept the female genital mutilation. That is something that in the rest of the world is considered unethical and it is being banned by the law, so according to the African cultures it is right for women to cut their genital organs and on the other hand it is right for us to understand that even though that seems harsh and wrong , this is a different culture and we should be able to understand and accept it. The reason that these people do it includes social acceptance and the fear of social exclusion, religion, the feeling that they should belong into a social …show more content…

It has to be mentioned that according to this theory a person can have his/her rights violated as long as he/she has a complete knowledge of the consequences. According to our previous example genital manipulation is completely ethical from an African culture and if the women were able to decide and know the consequences of that act could be equally right according to libertarianism as well. Religion, culture, social acceptance are three major values which make people act in a way that if these women were not influenced by them, they might act completely different. So if a woman from that culture was able to decide whether to cut he genital organs or not it is possible to agree with that because of the cultural bias. Both libertarianism and relativism shouldn't be considered as ethical in this

Open Document