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Critical evaluation of moral relativism
Critical evaluation of moral relativism
Critical evaluation of moral relativism
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Relativism is defined as the belief that there's no absolute truth, only the truths that a particular individual or culture happen to believe. If you believe in relativism, then you believe different people can have different views about what's moral and immoral. No set of moral beliefs is better than any other; that is moral relativism. We all have some sort of idea of what is right and what is wrong. From the time we are children and as we begin growing up we demand for justice; whats right and whats wrong. For example as a child Thats my toy please dont play with it, a pre teen those are my things please dont use it, and a teenager or young adult, He’s my boyfriend please dont talk to him. Everyone says such things and feels such ways regardless of their social, …show more content…
economical or physical status. C.S Lewis believes that if a society is going to excel or flourish, people must accept and understand the fact that morality is not a matter of personal opinion, but that there is such a thing as a “moral law” that applies to everyone.
He believes that people have lost the meaning of “objective value” which is the knowledge of some attitudes or views being completley true and others being completley false. In “Men without chests” Lewis relates how an English textbook he calls The Green Book, and whose authors he names “Gaius” and “Titus”, discusses a story about the poet Coleridge and about a waterfall. Two tourists were alongside Coleridge, and one refered to the waterfall as “sublime”,as the other one stated it was “pretty.” Coleridge automatically accepted the first judgement and rejected the second with absolute disgust. “When the man said This is sublime, he appeared to be just making a remark about the waterfall. Actually, he was not just making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings. What he was really saying was really I have feelings associated in my mind with the word “Sublime”, or in other words, I have sublime feelings. So when he looked at the waterfall sublime was the word he expressed based off of what he was actaully feeling. Lewis feels beauty is reduced to nothing but
subjective feelings. For Gaius and Titius, there are only what one would call soulish emotions, but no final reality to which to conform them. To ascribe an emotional response to an object was itself justified by the nature of the object perceived, “just as to say that a shoe fits is to speak not only of shoes but of feet” (p. 32). But this objective reference point for human feeling is exactly what Gaius and Titius systematically eliminate from consideration apriori. For them, sentences containing predicate values example, “the waterfall is sublime” refer solely to emotion (p. 32) and nothing more than that. According to this way of thinking, therefore, facts like waterfalls are valueless, and values like sublimity are factless, and no reconciliation between facts and values or values and facts is possible
Ethical relativism is a perspective that emphasizes on people's different standards of evaluating acts as good or bad. These standard beliefs are true in their particular society or circumstances, and the beliefs are not necessarily example of a basic moral values. Ethical relativism also takes a position that there are no moral right and wrongs. Right and wrongs are justified based on the particular social norms. Martin Luther King's moral critique against racial injustice is reliable with the idea of ethical relativism. Dr. King took a moral judgment that institutionalized racism is unacceptable in America about the nature of ethical truth. King's moral views about the discrimination of blacks in the United States were inappropriate. His
Cultural relativism is defined as the belief that no one culture is superior to another morally, politically, etc., and that all “normal” human behavior is entirely relative, depending on the cultural
Nonetheless, Lewis also emphasizes the idea of distorted love associated with a person’s will or intellect, because he “hints at a vestige of this hierarchical thinking, but his belief that ‘no natural feelings are high or love, holy or unholy, in themselves’ is reflected in the very structure of his hell and heaven” (Simone 153). Therefore, Lewis simply suggests that a soul need only to choose to forsake their prideful reasoning, and desire God’s will above all else. This is why scholar Jerry L. Walls insists that Lewis’s work was created to explore ““the ‘conditions’ of the afterlife, but only in showing more clearly ‘the nature of choice’ that leads to either heaven or hell” (252). Hence, Lewis’s narrator encounters various souls who cannot see beyond their own desires. For example, when an embittered wife named Hilda, who desires to see her husband Robert, says ““give him back to me.
In its entirety, moral relativism is comprised of the belief that, as members of various and countless cultures, we cannot judge each other’s morality. If this theory stands true, then “we have no basis for judging other cultures or values,” according to Professor McCombs’ Ethics 2. Our moral theories cannot extend throughout cultures, as we do not all share similar values. For instance, the Catholic tradition believes in the sacrament of Reconciliation. This sacrament holds that confessing one’s sins to a priest and
A discussion of moral theories must begin with a discussion of the two extremes of ethical thinking, absolutism and relativism. Moral Absolutism is the belief that there are absolute standards where moral questions are judged and can be deemed right or wrong, regardless of the context. Steadfast laws of the universe, God, nature itself are the forces that deem an action right or wrong. A person’s actions rather than morals and motivations are important in an Absolutism proposition. Moral Relativism states, that the moral propositions are based on Ethical relativism is the theory that holds that morality is relative to the norms of one's culture. That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another. For the ethical relativist, there are no universal moral standards that apply to all peoples at all times. Ethical relativism is the theory that holds that morality is relative to the norms of one's culture. That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another. For the ethical relativist, there are no universal moral standards -- standards that can be applied to all peoples at all times. Culture and personal morals cause a person to make certain moral decisions.
Cultural Relativism is a moral theory which states that due to the vastly differing cultural norms held by people across the globe, morality cannot be judged objectively, and must instead be judged subjectively through the lense of an individuals own cultural norms. Because it is obvious that there are many different beliefs that are held by people around the world, cultural relativism can easily be seen as answer to the question of how to accurately and fairly judge the cultural morality of others, by not doing so at all. However Cultural Relativism is a lazy way to avoid the difficult task of evaluating one’s own values and weighing them against the values of other cultures. Many Cultural Relativist might abstain from making moral judgments about other cultures based on an assumed lack of understanding of other cultures, but I would argue that they do no favors to the cultures of others by assuming them to be so firmly ‘other’ that they would be unable to comprehend their moral decisions. Cultural Relativism as a moral theory fails to allow for critical thoughts on the nature of morality and encourages the stagnation
Moral relativism maintains that objective moral truth does not exist, and there need not be any contradiction in saying a single action is both moral and immoral depending on the relative vantage point of the judge. Moral relativism, by denying the existence of any absolute moral truths, both allows for differing moral opinions to exist and withholds assent to any moral position even if universally or nearly universally shared. Strictly speaking, moral relativism and only evaluates an action’s moral worth in the context of a particular group or perspective. The basic logical formulation for the moral relativist position states that different societies have empirically different moral codes that govern each respective society, and because there does not exist an objective moral standard of judgment, no society’s moral code possesses any special status or maintains any moral superiority over any other society’s moral code. The moral relativist concludes that cultures cannot evaluate or criticize other cultural perspectives in the absence of any objective standard of morality, essentially leveling all moral systems and limiting their scope to within a given society.
Moral relativism is the concept that people’s moral judgement can only goes as far a one person’s standpoint in a matter. Also, one person’s view on a particular subject carries no extra weight than another person. What I hope to prove in my thesis statement are inner judgements, moral disagreements, and science are what defend and define moral relativism.
Vaughn first defines ethical relativism by stating that moral standards are not objective, but are relative to what individuals or cultures believe (Vaughn 13). Rachels says that cultural relativism states “that there is no such thing as universal truth in ethics; there are only various cultural codes,
Moral relativists believe that no one has the right to judge another individuals choice, decisions, or lifestyle because however they choose to live is right for them. In addition everyone has the right to their own moral beliefs and to impose those beliefs on another individual is wrong. At first glance moral relativism may appear ideal in allowing for individual freedom. After all why shouldn’t each individual be entitled to their own idea of moral values and why should others force their beliefs on anyone else. “American philosopher and essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), tells us, what is right is only what the individual thinks is right. There is no higher court of appeals, no higher, universal, or absolute moral standard.” (pg 121) Moral relativism means if does not feel wrong than it must be right.
Cultural Relativism has an entirely separate meaning. Because this idea defines moral principles as being rooted in the beliefs of a particular culture, it identifies right and wrong in terms of the practices of a specific group of people. For example, the Greeks would burn the bodies of their deceased members. However, the Callations would eat the bodies of their deceased. Assuming that Cultural Relativism is correct means viewing each of these practices as right for the respective culture. In the Greek culture, they say that burning bodies is how to treat the dead so this is right for their culture. On the other hand, the Callations say that eating bodies is the proper way to handle those that have passed on. Because the Callations say this is right, it is right for their culture. The same thought process holds true for practices that are seen as wrong in cultures. For example, the Japanese believe that laughing during business meetings is inappropriate. This is wrong because of Japan’s practices. Cultural Relativism makes moral assessments based on one culture’s
The takeaway is that both theories share the guiding principle that morality is based on culture or society. Implicit in the basic formulations of both theories, the moral code of a culture is neither superior nor inferior to any other. The codes of individual cultures are just different and there is no standard or basis upon which to perform any type of comparison. Therefore, under both theories, the lack of standards across cultures implies that attempts to judge relative correctness or incorrectness between them cannot be justified. For Cultural Relativism, it is perfectly normal that something one culture sees as moral, another may see as immoral.
Culture Relativism; what is it? Culture Relativism states that we cannot absolute say what is right and what is wrong because it all depends in the society we live in. James Rachels however, does not believe that we cannot absolute know that there is no right and wrong for the mere reason that cultures are different. Rachels as well believes that “certain basic values are common to all cultures.” I agree with Rachels in that culture relativism cannot assure us that there is no knowledge of what is right or wrong. I believe that different cultures must know what is right and what is wrong to do. Cultures are said to be different but if we look at them closely we can actually find that they are not so much different from one’s own culture. Religion for example is a right given to us and that many cultures around the world practices. Of course there are different types of religion but they all are worshipped and practice among the different culture.
Wordsworth had two simple ideas that he put into his writing of poetry. One was that “poetry was the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” The second idea was that poets should describe simple scenes of nature in the everyday words, which in turn would create an atmosphere through the use of imagination (Compton 2).
Many theories attempt to explain ethical standards and how certain cultures perceive these standards or practices. When explaining certain ethical standards Cultural Relativism is an failed illogical theory for many reasons. Cultural Relativism is a theory that attempts to explain an idea that no culture is superior to any other culture and that all people’s perspectives are biased by their own cultural background. Generally, it is the opinion that all cultures are of equal value and equality to each other, therefore, there is no one culture is inferior to any other.