Question

What is ethical relativism? What are the difficulties with the theory? What does it have to offer us, even if it seems largely mistaken??

Answer 1

Ethical relativism is a theory which maintains that “morality is relative to the norms of one’s culture.” Simply speaking, it says that right or wrong action relies on the moral societal norms where it is a way of life. One action might be right in one society but might be wrong in the other. For people who practice ethical relativism, there are no common moral principles – principles which can be applied universally to all people every time and all the time. They have their own judgment for any moral standards against societal practices.

The difficulty with this theory is that as per the theory there are and cannot be any universal and standard framework for resolution of moral disputes or mutual agreements on matters related to ethics amongst different members of society. Some beliefs might be related to culture whereas others are not. Dressing codes and decency might be correlated to each other in one community and seen as ethical issue whereas in other societies they might not have any correlation at all. In other words, some practices are related to each other does not mean all practices should be related to each other.

The largest mistake in this theory is that as per some thinkers standard moral practices can exist even if some practices and beliefs vary in different cultures. Simply speaking, we admit that there might be cultural differences in moral standards but also say that some of these moral practices are ethically wrong. This theory justifies moral beliefs and practices, but fails to accept that some societies hold their own views with better logical reasons